Content note: misogyny, violence against women, misogyny denialism.

I’m working on my own post about Elliot Rodger, misogyny, and misogyny denialism. In the meantime, here is a roundup of some more of the best stuff I’ve read about it. I’m finding it really helpful to read what other people are writing about this: it’s clarifying my own thoughts, and it’s making me feel less alone. (My previous roundup is here.)

Arthur Chu, The Daily Beast, Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds (total genius, an absolute must-read):

I’ve heard Elliot Rodger’s voice before. I was expecting his manifesto to be incomprehensible madness—hoping for it to be—but it wasn’t. It’s a standard frustrated angry geeky guy manifesto, except for the part about mass murder.

I’ve heard it from acquaintances, I’ve heard it from friends. I’ve heard it come out of my own mouth, in moments of anger and weakness.

Lindsay Beyerstein, Duly Noted, Elliot Rodger’s War on Women:

By any meaningful standard, Rodger planned and executed a terrorist attack. He orchestrated the violence for maximum symbolic impact and took steps to disseminate his message through the mass media. In many ways, he’s a classic example of what terrorism experts call a lone wolf or self-radicalized terrorist.

Rodger’s beliefs were extreme even relative to the most fevered corners of the Men’s Rights Movement. However, his views did not emerge from an ideological vacuum. Rodger’s views were a logical extension of misogynist philosophy that says that women need to be dominated and controlled for the good of society.

Attempting to shoot up a sorority house because you want to control women is just as political and just as terroristic as attempting to shoot up an abortion clinic.

Soraya Chemaly, XOJane, When Do We Talk About “Unpleasant” Truths In the Wake of Elliot Rodger’s Destruction?:

I wanted to yell, this is a man who said he wanted to put women in concentration camps and starve them. Why is the news media not saying that? He was sick, yes, but there are men who are effectively doing this to children and women in their homes, here and elsewhere, as we go about our lives. They exist on a continuum not separate from us, but alongside us.

Amanda Marcotte, AlterNet, 4 Myths About Sex and Women That Prop Up the New Misogyny:

Unsurprisingly, then, there’s a great deal of misinformation upholding the troubling trend of new misogyny that festers in everything from “men’s rights” forums to “pick-up artist” communities to the various rape apologists and two-bit woman haters that litter the right wing media landscape. The tragic shooting in Isla Vista, which was committed by a young but hardened misogynist named Elliot Rodger, has shown a spotlight on this weird but influential world where ugly myths about gender and sexuality flourish.

Amanda Marcotte again, The New Prospect, How ‘Pick-Up Artist’ Philosophy and Its More Misogynist Backlash Shaped Mind of Alleged Killer Elliot Rodger:

Obviously, the discourse of male entitlement to female attention has long been a problem in our society. Young men angry at women for supposedly overlooking their charms for less worthy and more brutish sexual rivals existed long before The Game was published or PUA/MRA forums proliferated online. But the internet and the PUA community have created a self-haven for young men engaged in this self-pitying discourse, encouraging them to cultivate that chip on their shoulders, wallowing in misogynist accusations that women en masse are failing them by not giving up the sex these ostensibly unappreciated men believe they deserve. With so many men spending so much time egging each other on, and trying to top each other when it comes to blaming women for their own pitiful lives—to the point of advocating for the denial of basic rights to women—it’s little surprise that one of them would finally work up the nerve to get his “revenge” for all these imagined slights.

David Futrelle, We Hunted the Mammoth (formerly Manboobz), Men’s Rights Activists respond to the Elliot Rodger murders with a hearty “Nothing to see here! Move along!”:

It’s not that they’re not talking about the tragedy. A look through the top 100 posts in the Men’s Rights subreddit, the largest Men’s Rights forum online, reveals that roughly a third of them, including the top stickied post, relate in some way to Elliot Rodger’s rampage and the discussions that have come up online and in the media in its aftermath.

But the message of virtually all of these posts is: “Nothing to see here! Move along!” There are numerous posts expressing outrage that anyone would see any connection between Rodger’s toxic misogyny to the Men’s Rights movement; there are others mocking and attacking the #YesAllWomen hashtag; there’s even one suggesting that Rodger, who wrote about how he longed to watch all the women of the world starve to death in concentration camps, wasn’t actually a misogynist at all.

vampmissedith, cry laugh feel love peace panic, When I was a freshman:

When he was arrested, some of my sister’s friends (some female, even) told her that she was selfish for saying no so many times. That because of her, the entire school was in jeopardy. That it wouldn’t have killed her to say yes and give it a try, but because she was so mean to him, he lost his temper. Many of her male friends said it was “girls like her” that made all women seem like cockteases.

Wouldn’t have killed her to say yes? If a man is willing to shoot someone for saying no, what happens to the poor soul who says yes? What happens the first time they disagree? What happens the first time she says she doesn’t want to have sex? That she isn’t in the mood? When they break up?