Amongst the more outlandish of ideas going around about yet another mass killing (at least the second one of it’s type in the past five years, with at least one similar within the next 24 hours), Fox News decided to bring one of their psychological experts that blamed it on gay people. Because that seems to be the only thing Fox News psychological experts are able to blame for anything.
In an unsurprising show of solidarity, masculinist anti-trans hate site Gender Identity Watch (run by a failed writer for A Voice For Men), was tweeting all day about the killer possibly being/resembling a trans women. Because to a special kind of person, seeing a blatantly obvious racial/misogynist inspired tragedy is a perfect time to direct more vitriol towards a completely unrelated minority.
It was their only related original content the day of the tragedy, other than some half-hearted reblogs that seemed to glorify the violence, and/or help distribute his videos/blogs messages. You’ll note I won’t be posting that asshole’s picture or linking to his blog, his “My Twisted World” manifesto, or his Youtube channel because fuck him.
This is all only slightly less absurd than claiming it was a conspiracy to discredit the Men’s Rights Movements or gun rights or whatever, but of course MRA assholes , washed up punk rockers and other assorted clowns are doing exactly that as well. But if you think about it, how much difference *does* it make if he had been gay? Unless you buy FOXNews/Gender Identity Watch’s archaic and long ago discredited notions that being gay or trans is rooted in deep-seated misogyny, not much actually. It’s not like gay men and gender-non-conforming folk don’t find themselves under the crushing pressure of toxic hegemonic masculinity and coercive heteronormativity. The shit certainly manifests in gay male relationships, I’ve seen it firsthand.
And it’s like, it’s no secret dude hated women. Like, loathed and resented them through the lens of his sad impotent desire. Better writers than I have spelled that shit out in detail. And it’s not like online echo chambers of mewling racist/misogynistic/homophobic shitheads hadn’t already driven creeps to commit mass killing just a month ago. I’ve mentioned on my blog a couple times already the similarities between far-right wing ideology, the Men’s Rights Movement, and white supremacy, and fuck I’m just getting started. But yeah, shithead creep finds similarly minded shithead creeps that warp his perception with their creepy viewpoints and terrible Matrix references (seriously, wtf is the deal with imagery from Wachowski sibling movies getting co-opted by the worst humanity has to offer?).
Even flecks of human garbage that have the audacity to identify themselves as “incel” (involuntarily celibate) feel the need to simultaneously laud and distance themselves from Rodger’s particular brand of narcissistic entitlement. So like, there’s literally no question there was/is a culture out there willing to nurture this troubled kid into eventually acting out their collective hateful fantasies. I mean, by no means was he mentally stable, but keep in mind this was a kid from an impossibly rich family, who claimed he was seeing multiple therapists. I think it’s more about how society and psychology treats hypermasculine performativity, even hugely overcompensating, as synonymous with “high-functioning” in cases of mental illness than any ridiculous notion of him not getting the help he needed. If someone like that can’t “get the help they need”, we’re all fucking doomed.
But I have to wonder if there isn’t something even deeper than that, this sort of fundamental malfunction in the way society builds those designated at birth. Like, toxic masculinity is a great term for the result, but what particular limb of that great octopus of the patriarchy can we cut off so we’re not breeding more of people like this? These “artless, empathy-devoid, posturing obelisk in trousers and sensible shoes” I lamented the possibility of even so-called-“radical” society turning us all into. Alienated from self, alienated from romantic and sexual partners, barely present in their mule of a body, compulsively pursuing signifiers of achievement and pleasure without the capacity to enjoy or even recognize them. People who, at best, have to spend most of their adult lives unraveling the messages literally beat into them since childhood.
“You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Just this stony, but fragile thing, a statue of Ozymandius unto oneself. Unable to confide, unable to care, so puzzled by the idea of approaching others not as conquests or on the basis of what you can gain from them, but as just actually people.
Fuck that, and fuck the Red Pill. Hell, fuck the Blue Pill too, unless it contains at least 2 milligrams of estrogen.
Rani Baker Digs You. 
Hey whats up, just wanted to offer an explanation on the MRA thing. After reading a few articles on this topic, i can understand why some people would say/think that it would be a conspiracy to discredit the MRA (although thats kinda crazy to think of it as a conspiracy). But in the things i read about this always mention that Elliot was an MRA simply because he went on sites in a sentence or two and leave it at that, or saying that the MRA essentially taught him his ideology. And theres no back-up about the MRA specifically doing this. Yet it is stated in the same articles that he was active in a site called PUAhate which is against PUAs and yet MRAs dont have issues with PUAs as far as i’ve read. The connection that is being attempted isn’t really there.
Maybe Rogers wasn’t officially affiliated with the MRA movement, but from his rantings he most definitely towed the MRA party line. Hence, the connection between the two.
I found your site after creeping a bunch of aging virgin blogs looking to see what they had to say about Rodger. This guy incelblogger or something. Really bad stuff. Anyway, Rodger seems really gay to me. I don’t know anything about all the political relations media war shit and people writing rants about Rodger that just so happen to align with their political alignments. But what I do know, is, that the kid really, really seems like a closet gay dude to me. Anyway, thanks for reading this worthless comment!
There’s really no way to know for sure at this point, but it really doesn’t change the narrative much. Either way, the dude took his frustration and allowed it to stew in toxic rhetoric until he worked himself up into performing a drastic desperate act.
Does this site allow free speech?
You can say whatever you want and I won’t take it down, if that’s what you’re asking. I may say some snarky things back, tho. :3
That’s nice and quite surprising if it is true. Based on my experience, most writers who believe in concepts like entitlement and patriarchy don’t act this way. Anyway, I will make an argument soon.
Go for it. 🙂
This individual still looks like he’s twenty five.
Amazing.
what huh who
Actually, it does make a difference if he’s gay. Not for him personally, but for what he represents (sexual and gender-based violence) and for what he doesn’t represent but people think he represents (incels).
Whenever some male attacker like this comes onto the news, dodgy feminists (ie. would-be TERFs* who can tolerate and brainwash trans people) insist that any dyadic cis person with a penis over the age of 14 is a threat and declares whatever emotional crime someone decided to commit as though it’s gender-based violence that only operates in one direction, somehow, or sexual violence that magically only affects straight people (male violence is indeed more common, as is male sexual violence towards women. That doesn’t mean it’s the only kind that exists [and most male violence that isn’t sexual is towards other men]).
Therefore, if this arsehole was gay, it wouldn’t really be significant, but if he was gay *and also a major news story that everyone talked about*, it really would be pretty significant. Not literally, but in other people’s minds to a degree that is society-affecting.
It’s also Interesting that people like to make out that a mixed race guy was white (yes, he was a racist, I’m not denying that, but still). It’s almost like some people have an agenda.
As for incels, most of them are more likely to wind up killing themselves exclusively, growing out of it, dating each other, get plastic surgery, becoming a brony, masturbating to something, going gay or trans (if they’re cishet), marrying their work, taking a vow of celibacy, hiring an escort or owning ten cats and a rottweiler than they are likely to go out on a killing spree.
That said, since ER was indeed an outlier who followed the same principles, let’s talk about what that involves. And what it involves is not an inherent desire to kill people or to express bigotry, nor some form of mental deviance, but a recognition that they can’t find a partner and getting angry about it because it gets seen as rejection and neglect.
The reason the vast majority of people on such sites are currently straight cis men – besides the bigotry that some of them admittedly do like to spout out of anger and bitterness and feedback loop issue we’ll get to later – is that sexism and a range of other issues, both socially contingent and biological involving dating strategy – combine to make it harder for men to find someone to date (even though incels who aren’t straight men are still somewhat common and exist).
As a result, most of the people who feel comfortable being on these sites and who are vocal about it are straight men, and the people they feel have denied them sex/dates/love/social skills/status/counselling/ego-stroking are women (and also chads and general arseholes who are great at manipulating women).
This also creates a spiral effect, as any man who goes on a rant about a woman looks misogynistic by default, which means that incels who aren’t straight men don’t feel comfortable posting on the site, which means that it becomes an echo chamber of straight men and so on (passable trans men do get pissed off for similar reasons, but they tend to be better at eventually getting dates as men, and generally have a dating history from when they were in the closet).
*I actually don’t have a problem with TERF ideology anymore than I do with, say, people who think eating pork is evil or that never having sex brings you closer to God, so long as they don’t harass trans people or hold the kind of mainstream platforming that exists in the UK which winds up harming trans people, or if it’s being spouted by well-known people and taken seriously by people who don’t really believe in it but believe in it enough to shut down any person they know who’s thinking of telling them they’re trans; if people want to start the equivalent of a doomsday cult for people who think being trans is wrong, that’s their business, and if they want to make life easier for gender nonconforming people who don’t necessarily need to transition, I’m for it – but I’m using “TERF” here as a shorthand for paranoid bigots who think they’re radical, since that’s how it’s normally taken.