I guess I expect the reaction from most quarters here to be dismissive
You would be correct.
So you don't think misogyny and sexual entitlement in male-dominated cultures are problems?
Yes, you nailed it. That's
exactly what I said.
No. Misogyny is real, and misogyny can kill. ____-dominated anything is typically unhealthy and leads to bad sh*t. With this I agree wholeheartedly. Misogynists, like those who genuinely and viciously hate any group of innocent people, are scum.
It would be simple if that were the gist of that article, and all that the author meant to imply, but it wasn't.
Much of what I have a problem with in this conversation was exactly the sort of stuff in that article. The "I'm not saying ___,
(but I'm totally saying ___)" sort of statements, the accusatory generalizations, the obsession with the term "rape culture" when that term helps no one, indirectly encouraging its use as a cudgel against innocent people, and actively strips focus away from individual responsibility, the staggering over-simplification, the dismissal of mental health as if that's somehow a suspicious scapegoat and had nothing to do with it, because statements like this:
...are totally the writings of a sane man with no psychotic delusions at all and just part of, as the article calls it, "a standard frustrated angry geeky guy manifesto."
"Except for the part about mass murder" of course, the article is quick to include as a caveat. You know; minor detail.
It would be the grossest understatement of all to say our culture has a lot of work to do with itself. But the amount of leaping on this controversy to prove some sort of point kind about.. Revenge of the Nerds? I don't find it helpful, and I actually find it sort of insultingly simplistic. The article ends with saying that Elliot Rodger just "needed to grow up" implying that Rodger is totally just like any other guy, totally not abnormal in any personal respect. Just an immature geek who decided to one day pick up a gun because he couldn't "grow up" and all the talk about mental health is a smokescreen.
And it's statements like that which lead to the insulting idea that men should somehow have to "prove" themselves as "safe" instead of just assuming
that is the default that it totally is. A few days back I
posted a report from RAINN.org that mentioned their research showing that, with one group of studies, "3% of college men are responsible for 90% of rapes." With another only "3% - 7%" of college aged men have committed, or would ever consider acting out, sexual assault.
This may scare some women out there, and I understand that. Yet, we're talking about an
incredibly small percentage of people, and this constant latching on to broad, sweeping terms like "rape culture" encourages a kind of hysteria. A hysteria that's not all that dissimilar to stereotypes of black people as violent criminals, or muslims as bigots or terrorist sympathizers. Black people do commit more crimes as a percentage of people than whites do, afterall. Several times more likely to commit murder, several times more likely to steal, and several times more likely to commit crime on a white person than the other way around.
None of that justifies bigotry or stereotypes.
None of that excuses a person who would say they have residual feelings of discomfort around blacks. Why is it okay to encourage a sense of fear among women toward the men they meet in their daily lives, the vast,
vast majority of which are not going to harm them?
Again: Is there any evidence that Rodger had any mental illness or anything specific and certifiable for which he was in therapy other than Asperger's Syndrome? Because I haven't seen any.
It's impossible to truly know without being close to the situation, but he had seen several psychiatrists and was prescribed medication(s) (in at least one instance, the medication being
Risperidone) that he refused to take. It's used to treat schizophrenia, but also childhood autism, so your guess would be as good as mine. Granted, I don't think it takes much to read his manifesto on top of that, and
maybe think he was suffering from some form of schizophrenia, but regardless it's quite clear he had severe psychological issues that were not being treated.
2) Violent computer games
3) Action movies
It's deeply disturbing to me how much otherwise intelligent leftists can give of echos of Jack Thompson, becoming the cultural nannyists they would've otherwise hated if this were even just a decade ago.
