![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Last night 14 people were shot and seven died on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara. The alleged shooter apparently posted this video before the shooting started. (Edit: his family's lawyer has revealed that the person in this video, Elliot Rodger, is indeed last night's mass murderer.)
The video alone reveals this kid’s problems. He’s not bad looking and he obviously has money, but he's creepy and obviously angry. Women have learned to sense that from a mile away. (They have to — it’s a matter of survival, after all.) He doesn’t bother to get to know women before making sexual advances on them. It’s no wonder he died a 22 year old virgin. He was doing the whole dating and sex thing wrong. All of it.
He thinks he’s entitled to sex and affection because he’s a “gentleman." And really, what gentleman doesn’t murder six total strangers because he’s sexually frustrated?
He thinks he has a right to get laid. I'm not making that up --- he actually states this in the video. Since when does anyone have a right to get laid? Where the hell did he get that idea?
And then he has the temerity to think that he's the "real alpha male" because he has a handgun and is willing to use it on total strangers that mean him no harm. There is, of course, nothing "alpha male" about that. A 90 year old woman with arthritis and sufficient motivation could theoretically do the same thing.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: we're failing our boys as a society. Nobody taught this kid how to be a man who respects others, or in particular how to treat the women he wants in his life. Nobody taught him how to deal with frustration, or how to express his manhood other than behaving as a wild, violent animal. Instead he picked up that dangerous trope that we see over and over again, that violence is an acceptable way to reclaim and assert one's manhood when other avenues fail.
We're still not having a serious conversation about this. People are still dying as a result.
The video alone reveals this kid’s problems. He’s not bad looking and he obviously has money, but he's creepy and obviously angry. Women have learned to sense that from a mile away. (They have to — it’s a matter of survival, after all.) He doesn’t bother to get to know women before making sexual advances on them. It’s no wonder he died a 22 year old virgin. He was doing the whole dating and sex thing wrong. All of it.
He thinks he’s entitled to sex and affection because he’s a “gentleman." And really, what gentleman doesn’t murder six total strangers because he’s sexually frustrated?
He thinks he has a right to get laid. I'm not making that up --- he actually states this in the video. Since when does anyone have a right to get laid? Where the hell did he get that idea?
And then he has the temerity to think that he's the "real alpha male" because he has a handgun and is willing to use it on total strangers that mean him no harm. There is, of course, nothing "alpha male" about that. A 90 year old woman with arthritis and sufficient motivation could theoretically do the same thing.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: we're failing our boys as a society. Nobody taught this kid how to be a man who respects others, or in particular how to treat the women he wants in his life. Nobody taught him how to deal with frustration, or how to express his manhood other than behaving as a wild, violent animal. Instead he picked up that dangerous trope that we see over and over again, that violence is an acceptable way to reclaim and assert one's manhood when other avenues fail.
We're still not having a serious conversation about this. People are still dying as a result.
