While I agree he would not have gotten a “sane” woman, I absolutely do think that there are women out tehre who would have found him attractive if he had made a productive effort at meeting enough women. There are plenty of women who are messed up in the right ways that they would not have minded his particular brand of craziness.
I have worked on psychiatric wards. It is fairly common for romances to bloom between patients who meet on the psych ward. Someone else has already pointed out that if he had wound up in prison that he most likely would have acquired some female admirers. While an individual woman might have standards that exclude this guy, I have no doubt that someone out there would have been interested if he had really tried to meet enough women.
A socially outgoing person can find a mate even if they are stupid, ugly, and loser-ish. It’s just the socially awkward who keep to themselves and don’t try to meet people that end up alone.
Ffs. It was clearly a misogynistic/gender crime, in that he selected the people he killed purely because of gender. No-one is saying all men are like this, yada yada yada, but there is certainly a case to be made that the general portrayal of women in society contributes to a sense of entitlement that this killer appears to have had. He talks of being pissed off at ‘thirty million’ women who rejected him, yet, as the OP points out, seemed to have only considered ‘desirable’ women as worthy of him. But no, instead of considering this, let’s make jokes about ironing shirts and giving blowjobs. How hilarious. The term ‘testosterone poisoning’ may not be the most helpful, but the point that this man acted out of a general misogyny that is often reflected in many parts of society is clear enough, or at least up for discussion.
If he had posted on his blog how he hated black people*, and then gone and shot at a roomful of black people, just because they were black, there would be no doubt that these were racially motivated killings and to be condemned. He shoots at a roomful of women, and we get blowjob jokes.
Feministing, while it can often be way over-analytical, has an interesting piece and comments on the shootings here, and there is an excellent piece about gender-motivated crime by Bob Herbert in the New York Times (2006) here .
[SIZE=“1”]*He did post racist commentary, and was clearly racist as well as sexist, but the shootings were clearly gender rather than race based.[/SIZE]
I suppose that you could argue that, somehow, as the recipient of the benefits of all of this oppression and portrayal of women as objects that I am somehow blind to the True Facts™. That being said my actual experience living in this culture simply does not match the whole “we suffer from testosterone poisoning and live in a culture that encourages devaluing women” paradigm evidenced in the OP. I have had constantly drilled into my that because I am a man I am somehow inherently bad, stupid and not valued. I have had woman bosses as much if not more than male bosses. As far as the media goes I see as much unrealistic dehumanizing portrayal of males and I do females. Simply stated as far as I can tell I live in a world where woman can do anything that men can do.
So, was this a crime motivated by misogyny? Absolutely. I just think that the intuitive leap that the OP seems to be making is an absolute load of shit and I am getting pretty damn tired of it (in society as a whole, that is).
WTF does this have to do with what our culture has nurtured? I mean damn, I’d be completely with you if you didn’t make it some resoundingly stupid social commentary.
I’m tired of this culture being poisoned by feminist man hate where they think that all men are responsible for every fucking psycho that walks off the line.
It tells us that your idea of what Homeland Security does is firmly rooted in fantasy land. The Government doesn’t have that kind of total surveillance. They rely on tips, the surveillance equipment is only utilized if they are ALREADY working on a case.
The thing most disturbing about this (aside from the horrible loss of life at the hands at this useless fuck) is the media’s breathless coverage of the story. I watched NBC Nightly News report… an almost sympathetic story of how tortured this guy was, quoting his blogs, and so on. Not a word about any of the victims.
I know there’s a sensational factor regarding how this went down, but here’s another shortcut to fame for the losers out there. Blog about being a loser and mow down a room full of innocent people!
I get that it is kind of funny to joke about, but think about it for a second. You leave your office today and outside is a woman with a great ass who is a card carrying non-succubus and decide that, hey, since that is all a man needs you might as well take her home. You get to your place and have wild, passionate sex and fall asleep with her in your arms. Then at about 3 in the morning you are woken up by a “bzzz…click” sound to find that she is taking pictures of your penis while you sleep. That wouldn’t be a deal breaker? She still has a nice ass and her card declaring her a non-succubus is still there so even though she is being incredibly creepy it doesn’t matter, right?
No, if he’d done that, I wouldn’t have blamed it on our culture and how we’ve nurtured racist ideas for 400 years. I’d blame it on him having a screw loose, just like I do in this case.
Not really. That’s really not all high on the creepy meter actually. It sounds more like a fetish, like wearing lots of leather than anything creepy.
As for the lunatic and his sexual frustration, it sounds like a good argument for legalizing and accepting prostitution to me. Maybe if he’d felt free to just buy some sex he’d just have been an obnoxious loon rather than a murderous one.
