So, the man-consensus here by resident experts is that Elliot Rodgers wasn't an MRA. I have to wonder why this is such a sensitive issue for you all? What exactly are you defending? It seems as if you're worried that this psycho kid will damage the good reputation of MRAs or something...I'm not saying you are, but it really boggles the mind why you are directing such vigor towards denouncing people who
suggest that he was an MRA or that this mass murder stems from misogyny.
Fine, let's talk about his MRA qualities.
Some people are getting caught up on the idea that he supposedly did not explicitly identify as an MRA, and this therefore absolves him of membership in such a group. I have already argued that this explicit self-identification is not necessary, and it remains unchallenged. I will also prove that this statement about Rodgers is false, that he did identify as an MRA, and did display many of the classic characteristics of MRAs, such that even if he did not explicitly identify as one, he was still in all practice and form an MRA.
First, regarding his MRA qualities.
This TIME article about the Men's Rights Movement describes its basic beliefs and motivations.
MRAs believe the traditionally oppressed groups have somehow seized control and taken away their white male privilege. They tap into fear and insecurity and turn it into blame and rage. Often the leaders of these groups are men who feel as though they got screwed in a divorce. They quote all sorts of statistics about child custody and unfair alimony payments, because in their minds, the single mother who has to choose between feeding the kids or paying the rent is a myth. They believe passionately in their own victimhood and their creed goes something like this: Women are trying to keep us down, usurp all our power, taking away what it means to be a man.
One popular MRA site is AVoiceForMen.com, with a mission to expose misandry on all levels in our culture and denounce the institution of marriage as unsafe and unsuitable for modern men as well as promote an end to chivalry in any form or fashion and educate men and boys about the threats they face in feminist governance. They also want an end to rape hysteria and promote civil disobedience.
Furthermore, the
wikipedia article on the movement:
The men's rights movement (MRM) is a part of the larger men's movement. It branched off from the men's liberation movement in the early 1970s. The men's rights movement contests claims that men always have greater power, privilege or advantage than women and focuses on what it considers to be issues of male disadvantage, discrimination and oppression. The MRM is considered to be a backlash or countermovement to feminism, often as a result of a perceived threat to traditional gender roles. The men's rights movement has been involved in a variety of areas related to law (including family law, parenting, reproduction and domestic violence), government services (including education, compulsory military service and social safety nets), and health that they believe discriminate against men. The men's rights movement's beliefs and activities have been criticized by scholars, the Southern Poverty Law Center and commentators, and sectors of the movement have been described as misogynist.
The men's rights movement is considered to be a backlash or countermovement to feminism. The men's rights movement consists of diverse points of view which reject feminist and profeminist ideas. Men's rights activists have said that they believe that feminism has overshot its objective and harmed men.They dispute that men as a group have institutional power and privilege and believe that men are victimized and disadvantaged relative to women. Men's rights groups generally reject the notion that feminism is interested in men's problemsand men's rights activists have viewed the women's movement as a plot to conceal discrimination against men
There's a lot more to the Men's Rights Movement, but the core which supports all their reasoning and positions is the above: a reaction to feminism encroaching upon traditionally male purviews, including behavior.
Now, to Rodgers' behavior.
I have
previously demonstrated his hatred of feminism and women-blaming due to entitlement. I will reproduce this below, using quotations from Rodgers' writings cited in
this NPR story.
Sheriff Bill Brown had earlier on Saturday said a YouTube video titled was connected to the crime.
In it, Rodger is sitting in a parked car with the sun low on the horizon. He talks about his frustration with women and says that at age 22, he was still a virgin.
"You never showed me any mercy, so I will show you none," he says, laughing. "I'll give you exactly what you deserve all of you. All you girls who rejected me and looked down upon me and treated me like scum, while you gave yourself to other men. And all of you men for living a better life than me. All of you sexually active men. I hate you."
Rodger warns that this will be his last video and that he will "slaughter every single one of you."
Rodger seems to have left a vast digital trail. , for example, he uploaded multiple videos musing on his loneliness.
, "Why do girls hate me so much?"
He wonders why it is that someone who owns a nice car, expensive glasses and is the "ultimate gentleman" cannot attract girls.
"I'm so magnificent. I deserve girls much more than all those slobs I see in my college, who are somehow able to walk around with beautiful girls," he says.
In a video : "I temporarily took all of my Vlog's down due to the alarm it caused with some people in my family. I will post more updates in the future."
A user who calls himself Elliot Rodger and uses the same picture, also posted to a bodybuilding message board expressing the same regrets.
Journalist Matthew Keys , in which Rodger says "feminism is evil."
"Women have control over which men get sex and which men don't, thus having control over which men breed and which men don't," the user writes. "Feminism gave women the power over the future of the human species. Feminism is evil."
Here we have the prime qualities of an MRA: anti-feminism and women-blaming.
Further, let us investigate his
141-page autobiography.
Page 82: It was societys fault for rejecting me. It was womens fault for refusing to have sex with me.
Page 94: I needed a girls love. I needed to feel worthy as a male. For so long I have felt worthless, and its all girls fault. No girl wanted to be my girlfriend.
Page 117: I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they havent evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, animal-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have rights in a civilized society.
Page 124:
womens rejection of me was a declaration of war.
Page 135: The ultimate evil behind sexuality is the human female. And later on that same page: Women are like a plague. They dont deserve to have any rights. Their wickedness must be contained in order [to] prevent future generations from falling into degeneracy. Women are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they need to be treated as such. He goes onto outline a plan in which he would starve all women to death in a concentration camp.
Page 100: They deserved the punishment I gave them. It was such a pity that my latte wasnt hot enough to burn them. Those girls deserved to be dumped in boiling water for the crime of not giving me the attention and adoration I rightly deserve!
Page 119: The Day of Retribution is mainly my war against women for rejecting me and depriving me of sex and love.
Page 101: It would be a day in which I exact my ultimate retribution and revenge on all of the hedonistic scum who enjoyed lives of pleasure that they dont deserve. If I cant have it, I will destroy it. I will destroy all women because I can never have them. I will make them suffer for rejecting me. I will arm myself with deadly weapons and wage a war against all women and the men they are attracted to. And I will slaughter them like the animals they are.
If you required more proof than this of his anti-feminist, MRA qualities, then there is probably no amount that will satiate you.
However, allow me to indulge. Let us move on to whether or not he had contact with, or identified with, the Men's Rights Movement at all.
Perhaps the simplest way is to
check the subscriptions page of this prolific Youtuber.
Among his subscriptions are such MRA groups as:
The Player Supreme Show" which rails against the feminization of men and talks about how to pick up women.
"RSDfreetour" which is a series of self-help seminars run by RSD Nation, a "pick up artist" site.
There's also a user called McHenry Cruiser who in addition to being a pickup artist is a comedian who has some kind of beef with Louis CK, and another called "Squatting Cassanova," who seems to be your average PUA.
Furthermore, Rodgers referred to himself as an "incel," short for "involuntary celibate," which is a very common term
MRAs and PUAs use for virgins. It identifies women as being at fault for a man's virginity.
Here
is another article which details some of his comments and messages left on Youtube and other message boards:
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Rodger also posted a message in January in which he expressed his outrage at white women socialising with racial minorities.
I passed by this restaurant and I saw this black guy chilling with 4 hot white girls. He didnt even look good, Rodger said in his post.
Then later on in the day I was shopping at Trader Joes and saw an Indian guy with 2 above average White Girls!!!
...
What rage-inducing sights did you guys see today? Dont you just hate seeing these things when you go out? It just makes you want to quit life.
If all incels were to start getting sedated by lucid dreaming, incels will become docile and there will be no revolution, he wrote. If we cant solve our problems we must DESTROY our problems.
He concluded with a call to arms against women: One day incels will realise their true strength and numbers, and will overthrow this oppressive feminist system.
Start envisioning a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU.
It should be plainly evident now that Rodger was at the very least inside the Men's Rights Movement's orbit, and that the parallels between his ideology and theirs are much more than coincidental: a direct and casual connection can be demonstrated.
Finally, let's look at the behavior of some of his forum mates.
This
extremely brave author in the PUAHate website's chat rooms, and recorded some shocking things.
PUAHate, as other outlets have discussed, is an offshoot of the Pick Up Artist community populated by men (and, allegedly, women) who believe Pick Up Artistry to be a sham waste of money not because women are more than "targets" and "prey," but because women are ing hopeless <c-word> who can't be convinced to give nice guys a chance. Women, argue PUAHaters, will only go out with good looking alpha males and would never look twice at anyone who isn't a musclebound dreamboat with a six-figure income, and most men will never be those things, and so the world is against them and life is unfair. From an observer's perspective, PUAHate is a group of self-pitying babies who believe they're entitled to women who are much more attractive than they are.
...
Over the course of the day, the number of participants in the tinychat ranged from around 10 in the early morning to dozens in the mid-afternoon. And because of character limits on the chat software, the transcript of the day's chat is confusing. In order to make it less so, in the excerpts you'll see below, I've consolidated sentence fragments written by individuals in succession and added punctuation for clarity. Otherwise, the text is as-written.
Members of the forum start giddily reflecting on Rodger's fame and begin encouraging each other to write manifestos. After one PUAhater shared an image of an average-looking woman and told the room that she gets to have as much sex as she wants, one man with an Australian accent and an obviously electronically modified-sounding voice, intoned,
Are you trying to inspire me to shoot up a super market? What are you trying to do? There's only one solution. I'm going to make a bomb. It's going to be a pretty good gig in Australia soon. Thanks ... for showing me the light.
One user, who was contributing via audio, suggested to the members that they should all begin drafting their own manifestos, explaining,
When you post a video on Youtube it doesn't matter what the police say you've got your version of events on youtube before they have their say.
The Australian, seemingly unaware of the other Englishman's audio, added,
I do believe I have the knowledge to kill 100 people. I believe I have the knowledge to kill the entire school. I know that's pretty pathetic, I think.
Go back to my old school, past assembly, 9:00. Chain every single door. Shoot everybody in the assembly hall.
[9:17 AM]: they say we shount be entitled, hen everyones sex is all on display. isn't that unfair. that they say we dont deserve it then they SHOW US WHAT THEY ARE DOING SEXUALLY. it is like they want this to happen day to day
[9:17 AM]: elliot is an hero
The conversation is now on Elliot Rodger, the UCSB shooter, and whether or not he was justified in his rampage. What Elliot Rodger felt is stuff that all men secretly feel, the members agree.
I've removed their names because, honestly, <f> these guys and what they want. You'll understand more about why as the day goes on.
[9:24 AM]: 99% of men relate if they are honest
[9:24 AM]: yeah ive noticed the comment sections on this story people arent that vicious towards him. part of it is because he looked okay
[9:24 AM]: who wouldnt want to live in a socially constructed sexual utopia? imo people are waking up
[9:24 AM]: but the other part is men relate to hating women
[9:24 AM]: the socially constructionist view of reality is fundamentally flawed. guys who see this think... oooh wait...i get it now. his reaction was unique but the causes were no different. most men go through what he went through but most react differently. some die, some ignore society, some enslave themselves to society and wife
[9:27 AM]: media doesnt aknolwedge the majroity of males' discontentment with current sexual distopia
[9:27 AM]: its all about HATING WOMEN
The forum members are alternately shaken and giddy over Rodger's fame. Most of them seem a little giddy that an "incel" and "involuntarily celibate" man went out in such a blaze of glory. Others will follow, promises one member.
[9:28 AM]: he would have had a boring incel life then died of cancer without reference to "this". without ever leaving a mark or a wikipeda and go on just like it had in the past.he is famous 4 ever now.
guys i bet you this will happen more times in 2014. others will do it. promise
More self-aggrandizing manifesto talk.
[9:37 AM]: you NEED a manifesto or video or it's worthless
[9:37 AM]: this time there was major manifesto. old killers didnt do much in that regard. police censor and withhold killer motivations to avoidf public panic. its good that the reality is coming out to society in a very raw way
[10:05 AM]: if you are here after 31, consider going elliot. day 31 of may. thats the deadline
[10:05 AM]: guys. manifestos are currently being drafted by men out there
[10:06 AM]: if you are here in june, just off it
[10:06 AM]: dont think this is the the last. men realize they have nothing to lose
[10:07 AM]: i dont know why divorced men dont go on rampages
[10:07 AM]: that blonde was a total <b> but father claims she is a nice girl
[10:07 AM]: because older men get called old pervs, like george sodini
[10:07 AM]: *started a YouTube-video: Elvis Presley - It's Over..*
*For reference, George Sodini was the man who
killed 3 women and injured at least ten others when he opened fire on a gym in Pennsylvania a few years ago because women wouldn't sleep with him, much to the approval of misogynists.
[11:29 AM]: SORORITY GIRLS ARE NOT 'RANDOM' WHEN U JOIN A SORORITY U ENTER INTO OPPRESSION OF INCELS
In addition to the PUAHate support, Rodgers has also had
sympathy voiced for him on Twitter. The tweets are images, so I'm not going to reproduce them in this post, but if you follow the link you can read the article with the images posted at the relevant times.
*********
So, as you can see, Rodgers frequented MRA sites and interacted with their ideology on a day to day basis. His stated mission and motivations were identical to those stated by MRAs, and his actions were widely praised by MRAs as brave and heroic, worthy of emulation and commendation. Elliot Rodgers was an MRA, who murdered 6 people, women and men, out of misogyny, and because of patriarchy.
At this point, we shall stop pretending that either of these was not the case.
