The shooting in Isla Vista is horrifying on its own, my heart goes out to all affected.
The “reasoning” the shooter apparently gave is terrifying in how banal and common it is. His litany is a rant that can be heard in many corners of our online and offline worlds. In certain “men’s rights” message boards and blogs. We hear it in pop culture, from sitcoms to “pick up artists.” The arguments, the rejection, the misogyny, the twisted sense of hierarchy, and odd sense of Self and Others.
I by no means have a fully thought out thesis about this tragedy – and probably never will have – but one thing stuck out to me from his rant: Supreme gentleman. It is easy to say that a “true gentleman” would never have done something like this. That was my first thought, too.
But that isn’t actually true. “True gentlemen” have killed throughout history, sometimes for queen and country, sometimes for money, sometimes for honor, sometimes out of hatred. Gentlemen have certainly killed, again and again, when they understood themselves as “supreme.” It is, in my mind, no coincidence that the shooter chose that term. Supremacy, not only white supremacy, conveys the sense of hierarchy, and entitlement that enables violent actions in our societies. Supremacy can lift the individual, especially the male* individual, up so high that they think it is their right to act so inhuman to other humans. Supremacy kills.
In response to one particular line of disgusting thought: No, feminism did not create him. Feminism, if it’s worth its name, is a movement to end precisely the form of supremacy that the shooter thought he acted out of.
Elliot Rodger, for all I know, was mentally ill. His rampage was, even if he wasn’t diagnosed before, a psychotic break. But he did not have that psychotic break in a vacuum. He acted in a structure that legitimizes both his supremacy and violence. His mental issues are a part of what led him to act on his impulses in this way. To take his beliefs too far. To commit murder. That’s why this is a tragedy, and why it is in international headlines. But he’s not just a “crazy loner” who materialized out of nothing.
Thoughts?