Misogynists on rampage
We can all assume our favourite rhetorical stance, of course, but I hope that you will take the time to go read the diary of George Sodini, the affluent programmer who shot twelve women and then himself in a Pittsburgh LA Fitness aerobics class on August 4.
This killing mirrors other recent mass murders where - ever since Marc Lépine at École Polytechnique de Montréal, 20 years ago -an isolated, self-centered male spouting spite and hatred against women have killed as many of them as he could before taking his life, leaving behind complacent, narcissist writings about himself and the "lack of joy in his life" (Lépine).
What does this tell us about a new, disturbing masculinity pattern and men's sense of entitlement over women? Can we discuss this and explore prevention/defusing strategies, instead of the usual baiting, please?
Last page:
Wow!!
I just looked out my front window and saw a beautiful college-age girl leave Bob Fox's house, across the street. I guess he got a good lay today. College girls are hoez. I masturbate. Frequently. He is about 45 years old. She was a long haired, hot little hottie with a beautiful bod. I masturbate. Frequently. Some were simply meant to walk a lonely path in life. I don't usually look out, but just happened to notice. Holy fuck. I have masturbated since age 13. Thanks, mum and brother (by blood alone). And dad, old man, for TOTALLY ignoring me through the years. All of you DEEPLY helped me be this way.
I wish I can go back to 1975 and fix things. Awe, that wont work, big BULLY BROTHER would assert his bull shit. He was twice my size. He never messed with guys bigger than 5'10, or so. He is a PUSSY at heart. Remember, Michael is my brother (we have common parents, that's all) is still a BOSS. Repetition only for emphasis: HE IS ONLY A BULLY, even at 50ish! Never forget that! Because he exudes confidence. People believe bull shit if delivered WITH CONFIDENCE. Get it??
On the same thought, things occured to me today. Michael NEVER had an attractive girlfriend. Debbie, Barb, Kim, ... then I lost track. Not to say I had any (execpt Pam, who was about a 7.25). He married a Chinese-descent, petite woman with no body, no ass, no chest and no personality. She never laughs or smiles, neither does he. But she is highly intelligent and an excellent cook. I can testify to that! She home bakes her own DELICIOUS wheat bread! But who cares about that type of small bull crap? Mike even mentioned when we were visiting dad that "she's not very attractive".
I don't know where I am going with this. I am getting tired, feels good to write and get it all out.
On still another thought, I had 20+ years of sobriety and achieved nothing about friendships, girlfriends, guys, etc. Zilch. What a waste.
Bye, for today.
August 2, 2009:
The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends, but not being able to achieve and acquire what I desire in those or many other areas. Everthing stays the same regardless of the effert I put in. If I had control over my life then I would be happier. But for about the past 30 years, I have not
August 3, 2009:
I took off today, Monday, and tomorrow to practice my routine and make sure it is well polished. I need to work out every detail, there is only one shot. Also I need to be completely immersed into something before I can be successful. I haven't had a drink since Friday at about 2:30. Total effort needed. Tomorrow is the big day.
Unfortunately I talked to my neighbor today, who is very positive and upbeat. I need to remain focused and absorbed COMPLETELY. Last time I tried this, in January, I chickened out. Lets see how this new approach works.
Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.
I will try not to add anymore entries because this computer clicking distracts me.
Also, any of the "Practice Papers" left on my coffee table I used or the notes in my gym bag can be published freely. I will not be embarased, because, well, I will be dead. Some people like to study that stuff. Maybe all this will shed insight on why some people just cannot make things happen in their life, which can potentially benefit others.
Everybody's fault but his.
That is frightening martin.
Moving this to the feminism forum.
Well this action goes along with the Alberta man, 2 weeks ago, whose belief in his ownership of the females in his family went 3 generations, as he murdered his wife, daughter and granddaughter, and then himself.
I tend to wonder whether crimes like these come about because "men hate women" or "the media and society devalue women", versus whether men just don't know how to live among women, but heterosexuality forces them to.
In other words, I wonder how many gay men kill women, versus heterosexual men. A general hatred, or a socially-promoted hatred, would (or should) affect men equally, and if so, you'd expect similar rates of gay and straight men killing women. If not, then I'd suggest that the pairing of men with women is part of the problem, not specifically hatred of women itself.
To put it another way, if Sodini were gay, and couldn't find any gay men who would date him, would his anger still bubble over to killing women?
The other issue, of course, is that killing a bunch of people is the American answer to everything. Laid off? Get a big gun and go shoot as many co-workers as you can. Fail a course? Go get a big gun and shoot your professor and as many fellow students as you can. It really seems to be the U.S. answer to any time one feels hard done by or disrespected (and it's certainly gendered).
Ownership and entitlement to ownership of females. Sodini complained endlessly in his diary of not having any female partners. Here are a few more entries. What does this tell us about a culture that keeps selling to men the dream of universal sexual access to women?
(...)
May 18, 2009:
I actually had a date today. It was with a woman I met on the bus in March. We got together at Two PPG Place for lunch. The last date for me was May 1, 2008. Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one. Not one of them finds me attractive. I am looking at The List I made from my May 4th idea. I forgot about that for several days. That tells me where I stand. These problems have gotten worse over a 30 year period. I need to expect nothing from me or other people. All through the years I thought we had the ability to change ourselves - I guess that is incorrect. Looking at The List makes me realize how TOTALLY ALONE, a deeper word is ISOLATED, I am from all else.
I no longer have any expectations of myself. I have no options because I cannot work toward and achieve even the smallest goals. That is, ABOVE ALL, what bothers me the most. Not to be able to work towards what I want in my life. I believe I am deserve that. I read recently it is called "self efficacy", but who knows. Is that more psychobable?
May 25, 2009:
I was invited to a picnic, and I went. An older woman there, out of the blue, asked if I liked high school. Then quickly asked if I was picked on very much. Intersting why she would ask that. But, thanks, I already know what the problem is, but a solution eludes me.
May 29, 2009:
Another lonely Friday night, I'm done. This is too much.
June 2, 2009:
Some people I was talking with believed I date a lot and get around with women. They think this because I showed an email I got from a hot woman to the department gossip, but it didn't work out. All this is funny. Actually, I haven't had sex since I was 29 years old, 19 years ago. That's true.
June 5, 2009:
I was reading several posts on different forums and it seems many teenage girls have sex frequently. One 16 year old does it usually three times a day with her boyfriend. So, err, after a month of that, this little hoe has had more sex than ME in my LIFE, and I am 48. One more reason. Thanks for nada, bitches! Bye.
July 4, 2009:
Wow, already late evening. I stayed in all day. Can't believe there was NOTHING to do today. No parties or picnics. WTF. No need to leave now.
July 20, 2009:
Been a long time since last write. Everything still sucks. But I got a promotion and a raise, even in this shitty Obama ecomomy. No more grunt programming. Go figure! New boss is great. He tactfully says when you did something wrong or complements on good things. Never confused with him. But that is NOT what I want in life. I guess some of us were simply meant to walk a lonely path. I have slept alone for over 20 years. Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend it was 1982. Proof I am a total malfunction. Girls and women don't even give me a second look ANYWHERE. There is something BLATANTLY wrong with me that NO goddam person will tell me what it is. Every person just wants to be fucking nice and say nice things to me. Flattery. Oh yeah, I am sure you can get a date anytime. You look good, etc. Pussies.
Awwww, wait. I can just start being self-righteous and say I live a good, clean life. I am holy, that's all Rick Knapp stuff. Hear that you mother fucker: I Am Just Good! (...)
I can only conjecture about this, but I would bet that if Sodoni had a wife or girlfriend he wouldn't demand, nor feel entitled, to sexual access to the other 3 billion women, nor would he have murdered four women. I doubt he expected a harem.
Now I suppose that brings up the question of "entitlement" to a wife or girlfriend, and that's an interesting question. I've known at least one person who's made it into his forties without ever having had a girlfriend, or sex. I know it bothers him, and I know that to some degree he blames women for this and is angry (and for what it's worth, it's my thinking that that anger and resentment is like a smell on him, but I digress). I don't know if it really is "entitlement" to want to pair off as most everyone else seems to.
When we speak of things other than love and companionship, like money or opportunity, we seem to understand that if you deny people those things for their entire lives, they'll resent you for it, and perhaps even attack you for it. I'm most definitely NOT condoning or excusing men who attack women, but I wonder if there might not be any parallels there. We all only get the one life (Buddhists notwithstanding) and if, for some reason, I were destined to spend mine alone and die alone, I don't know how resentful I'd be, or who I'd turn that resentment toward.
Interesting reflection, Snert.
I also wonder whether he would feel so resentful about being alone if our society didn't commodotize (did I just make up a word there?) love and sex and relationships, and make them the be-all, end-all of everyone's existence.
Sure, I think the guy was misogynist, but I also don't think it's just as simple as slapping a label on someone and considering that to be the explanation for why they are violent towards women. I'm curious about WHY certain men become murderous misogynists and others don't.
In respect to the missives of this very troubled and now dead person, the following stuck out to me:
"Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid."
That some so called "Christians" believe this, and thus condone their own unjust, at best, actions, boggles the mind. That he used this to massacre and terrorize women is troubling.
The man in AB was also "Christian", of the type that betlittles women too.
Actions of this type must be viewed as actions of hate against an identifiable group.
And as a type of "honour killing".
But must we put on 24-hour watch men who arent sexually serviced to their heart's content? Reading Sodini's diary makes it clear that he was responsible for his isolation but defined it, as Tommy_Paine wrote, as everybody's fault - and especially young women's - but his own.
I think you're oversimplifying, Martin.
There's a difference between not being "sexually serviced to their heart's content" and being so socially backward that you can't find a partner ever. That doesn't mean, of course, that you have the right to have a relationship with someone, nor does it mean that it justifies going out and killing a bunch of women because none of them paid attention to you.
That said, there are lots of guys out there who DO believe, somewhere deep down, even if they don't know it and would never admit it even to themselves if it was said plainly, that it is the duty of their partners to sexually service them on demand - or to at least do so on a schedule they consider "normal". And while most of those who have internalized this expectation don't go on killing sprees, or even rape women, the fact that the expectation is there is enough to make them feel resentful when they don't get what they want.
I'm not sure that Sodini was "responsible for his isolation", any more than I think anyone with psychological or socialization problems is responsible for the effects of it. How he chooses to deal with that isolation and react to it is, of course, up to him. Unfortunately, in a society where male aggression is glorified, expectations of sex and relationships are normalized, and individualism and "personal responsibility" is the framework, then people's psychic distress when they can't get what society says they must have gets ignored, people don't get the help they need, and the people who can't cope for whatever reason (like this guy) go undetected until he goes off on a killing spree.
Because his expectations and resentment of women who don't live up to them is basically normal in our society. It's his reaction to it that is abnormal. So the popular thing to do is to focus on the reaction and turn this guy into a monster instead of dealing with the socialization he (and the rest of us) experience.
In respect to the missives of this very troubled and now dead person, the following stuck out to me:
"Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid."
That some so called "Christians" believe this, and thus condone their own unjust, at best, actions, boggles the mind. That he used this to massacre and terrorize women is troubling.
The man in AB was also "Christian", of the type that betlittles women too.
Actions of this type must be viewed as actions of hate against an identifiable group.
Frankly I do not find this belief to be something likely to boggle the mind. While an akward paraphrase, it is pretty clearly rooted in what I would consider mainline protestant theological traditions - the Doctrine of Election and the Doctrine of Grace. All it demonstrates is the ease with which practically any position, however repellent, can be propped up with religious "justifications". There is an incredible amount of toxic thought out there which echoes long-standing theological positions -- all it indicates to me is that a priviliged position for religious opinions is an underlying part of the problem.
Excellent post michelle, though I am not sure if it is just not a broadening out of what martin is stating with his succinct "type of honour killing".
The/some men are still feeling defamed, in your situation by the females, who do not meet their sexual expectations, internalized or not. It is a "problem", for some of them, hence the resentful feeling. They are taking it personally (aka "problem with it") as an action against themselves, as such, "honour" is hurt, especially if they believe other men are getting it more/better than they are and might think less of them, if the truth were known.
Perhaps we grew up in differing protestant religious philosphy areas, as the 'chrisitanity" I experienced in my growing up years, did not excuse personal culpability for action, because one was saved by Jesus dying on the cross. It was something that I came across when I moved to BC, and one sees it all the more nowadays in the Evangelical movement. It still boggles my mind that they can excuse themselves for anything based upon myth.
I concur it is and that it has grown even more so.
In Sodini's case, the resentment is that women are getting it more than him. And that women aren't choosing him.
One of his angriest posts is a response to his realization that there are teenaged females who have had sex more than he has had at the age of 48. Nothing about the young males.
He is watching all these women have sex. He is masturbating compulsively. He is angry that it's supposed to be his job to pick and choose as the man. And yet he sees himself picked over by 38-million women. He has no opportunity to reject. He is rejected. To right this wrong - his wallflower syndrome, his feminized position - he must assert his masculinity and put women in their place symbolically. He has lived alone. He cannot die alone. He must take women in death, as he failed to in life.
I think it is very important to discuss the problem without "buying" Sodini's mindset as one does when writing "When we speak of things other than love and companionship, like money or opportunity, we seem to understand that if you deny people those things for their entire lives, they'll resent you for it, and perhaps even attack you for it."
People who try to work with abusers learn to be wary of this trap, where a search for empathy and understanding, as a possible key to facilitating change, easily ends up with our mirroring the perpetrator's deresponsibilizing "self-talk".
I wrote of Sodini's responsibility because it struck me, reading his diary, that he was not that socially isolated, but rather seemed hostile to the women who approached him or dissatisfied that relationships didn't just "happen".
So, let's be clear that no one was "denying" him love and companionship. I would rather guess, from his own diary entries, that he chose between the risk of attempting a relationship and the security of his closed world. That he would blame women for this choice speaks to social pressure and to good old-fashioned envy for the young trophy "hoez" of his neighbour and pornographic accounts of young womens sex lives, the very young women he killed and justified killing in revenge for a slight he totally invented.
(Have you read the diary? Sodini's site has been pulled down, but it has been copied on a number of other sites. Simply enter one of the sentences quoted above in a search engine.)
P.S.: Excellent analysis, writer.
Another excellent post, thank you writer.
And yes, his "honour" (aka masculinity) has been hurt and the only way to fix it, is to take as many as he can in death.
In Sodini's case, the resentment is that women are getting it more than him. And that women aren't choosing him.
One of his angriest posts is a response to his realization that there are teenaged females who have had sex more than he has had at the age of 48. Nothing about the young males.
He is watching all these women have sex. He is masturbating compulsively. He is angry that it's supposed to be his job to pick and choose as the man. And yet he sees himself picked over by 38-million women. He has no opportunity to reject. He is rejected. To right this wrong - his wallflower syndrome, his feminized position - he must assert his masculinity and put women in their place symbolically. He has lived alone. He cannot die alone. He must take women in death, as he failed to in life.
Excellent post writer. I would add to this that many mass murderers often murder those who are up one rung of the class ladder. Women represent the objects that he cannot have. Many mass murderers believe that by killing a certain class's most precious assets (women - as killers see them) they are in an act of rebellion, against society as a whole and in particular against those to whom they seeks to emulate.
Elliot Leyton wrote in Hunting Humans, that the basis or root of the mass murderer's angst is the denial, isolation and rejection they feel from the class they are trying to emulate. While I do not agree that his assesment is completely true, I do believe that men who kill like this have a deep hatred for those who they see as better than them, and will strike out by killing their most precious assests (daughters and wives).
Perhaps it is the very way that society treats women, as objects to be preserved, as agents with no real agency, as objects of desire... that drives these men. They truly believe that if they kill these women, they have gotten one over on society.
The United States has the highest mass murder killings in the entire industrialized world. There is a reason for that. Leyton posits that reason lies in the massive class imbalances. I don't think it is that simple, but I think his argument does have some validity.
This is a really great thread. Thanks so much for your insights, everyone.
Fron a NYTimes article:
"(. . .)Mr. Sodini's writings and rationale are all too familiar, said Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist and adjunct law professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, who has studied mass murderers.
"Mass shooters aim for the attention and notoriety of other mass shooters," he said. "If you read this blog, it may explain to the reader why he feels hopeless, but it doesn't explain why he decides to take the lives of innocent strangers, which is the point. He's channeling that sense of masculine, sexual failure into a conquest that results in a mass killing." (. . .)
And yet Welner doesn't take into account Sodini's obsessive misogyny either, that bizarre notion that 30 million U.S. women rejected him personally and need to pay for it. He goes beyond mere pathologizing, but merely describes the massacre as an interaction between Sodini and future mass killers... as if women's lives and interests never entered the picture.
Precisely Sodini's position.
The article also quotes Sodini's neighbour as having presumed he was gay since he was never seen with women at his place, validating the killer's self-justificating conceit that "A man needs a woman for confidence. He gets a boost on the job, career, with other men, and everywhere else when he knows inside he has someone to spend the night with and who is also a friend."
The difficult questions regarding these sociopaths is how to detect them or how they become killers?
"that bizarre notion that 30 million U.S. women rejected him personally and need to pay for it....as if women's lives and interests never entered the picture."
I think there is a sliding scale of male perceptions along these lines.
The journals do shed a lot of insight.
What is clear, is that he felt that life had nothing to offer him, and that his self-worth was dependent on obtaining sex and a relationship. At no point, at least in the excerpts here, does he lament a lack of frienships with other males.
Marc Lepine felt a similar frustration when it came to being rejected by women. I think that many people, particularly in big cities, feel this loneliness, although very few fortunately, decide to end their lives in such a selfish manner.
I hate to blame anyone but the perpetrator in this instance, however:
Our transition from small towns to big cities leaves a lot of people alone. Those that aren't attractive, or funny or interesting are often ignored, forgotten and alone. There is a real lack of community that exists in big cities, that allows people to sink to such depths.
Our society, and our media (shows such as Entourage) place a lot of emphasis on having sex with beautiful people, and some mistake that for a good indicator of success and happiness. This is only one sad consequence of that sentiment, while there are many others that are much broader, although less disproportionate in their suffering.
I don't really see much significance in his religious ramblings, although I am sure that there are many that will find some. They don't really make any sense - much like the ramblings of a man grasping for hope when death is so close.
The religious ramblings, make complete sense actually. I have actually heard "christians" state that it doesn't matter what they do to others, they are already "forgiven", as along as they believe in "Jesus".
Sodini wrote that he had already suffered his penalty* by having been "rejected" by 30 million women, so that gave him licence to punish as many women as possible in "return". Whatever... We just have to be clear that no man deserves the entitlement he took for granted and slowly whined himself to killing speed, avoiding any positive interaction with people in order not to reduce that virile anger.
*". . . how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. . ."
Thanks Martin for your words so far. Somewhat shocked I write from the frontlines at Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter. The Pennsylvania Femicide was committed with a general hatred for women but I take it personally. The following letter was sent to the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape to demonstrate our solidarity.
Aug 5 2009
To the Women of Pennsylvania
We want to send our condolences to the friends and family of the dead women in Pennsylvania. We send our best wishes to the wounded. Women live with so many normalized threats to our lives that we hardly notice how much we do to avoid sexist violence. What a brutal reawakening that there is no safe place for women.
The numbers of women killed by men continue to rise mostly one at a time but they are not isolated. This year is the 20th Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre and feminists said then as we repeat now "The Motive is Misogyny". This "lone gunman" shares a fear and hatred of women with the men who beat their wives, rape, harass and prostitute women and children. Although he did not target women as feminists, as was the case with the Montreal Massacre, George Sodini was determined to send a message to all women. But we refuse to listen and we refuse to obey.
The day after the Montreal Massacre on behalf of the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centers, the collective of Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter sent a message to the women in Montreal. It is a no coincidence that the same words apply in this Pennsylvania Femicide.
"We will not excuse his acts when we know of the sadness and failure of his life. We will not blame his mother or lover or the women who refused to be his lovers. We will not blame the women he names in his letter from the dead. (Internet in this case) We will not blame the feminists who fought for women's liberties.
We hold responsible the men who taught him to expect women to fill his every need. We hold responsible the men who failed to teach him to live with moments of disappointment and anger without reprisals."
From our rape crisis line and transition house for battered women and their children in Vancouver, Canada, we brave on. We find reassurance in the other feminists struggling for equality and freedom everywhere in the world. We have to continue to stand together and we must continue.
Tamar Eylon,
On behalf of the Collective of Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter
Thanks for that, Tamar. Excellent. And moving.
Keystone, I don't think you were "blaming anyone but the perpetrator". I thought your post was excellent, and it describes some of the societal factors that go into creating a Sodini, or a Lapine. Thanks for your post.
Tamar, thank you.
I've been reading this thread for the past 2 days, and other comments on the internet about this incident.
I don't have too much to add, but I want to thank writer for her words above, and Tamar as well.
Not only am I also curious about this, I would really like to know what we can do, both as a society, as well as what other men can do about such men.
I think it's been said already, but I'll add my part. Misogyny, thoughts and actions, are on a continuum. At the far end is not "completely free of misogyny, but "struggling to rid one's mind of misogynist assumptions and lies". And men and women internalize misogyny of course. At the other end, the end that GS was on, is one extreme form of what misogyny looks like. We can't just lop off that end and it's all better.
The religious ramblings, make complete sense actually. I have actually heard "christians" state that it doesn't matter what they do to others, they are already "forgiven", as along as they believe in "Jesus".
Yep they totally do from his perspective. Of course not so much to people who don't hold those beliefs. It's quite clear that he believes in eternal heaven and hell as a core belief. He knows what he is planning to do is wrong yet in order to get past the 'fear' of eternal damnation and the dealing with God factor that he believes is coming interprets what he is about to do as no more then a 'work' and though he knows a huge sin he justifies for himself that since he's been told that 'works' don't really matter then he'll be okay on that front. Since appears to believe in God he HAS to justify what he's doing it on that level because he's planning to die. So yeah perfect sense.
It's a really simplistic understanding of the whole 'works vs grace' theology which as you state gets turned into a 'Well I can do whatever I want cause it doesn't matter' base viewpoint. It might be hard to understand for people that don't believe this sort of stuff but on a broader level the religious factor is really just an extension of all of his other attempts at justification. If we're looking for insight for the broader conversation the religious part shows that he actually does know on some level that what he was planning and did is wrong or a bad thing, not just on societal level but on a cosmic level as well, yet he does it anyway.
His ramblings are a rather perverse "understanding" of Pauline and Jamesine (?) theology mixed in with Reformation/Catholic Reformation debates.
Keystone wrote: "Marc Lepine felt a similar frustration when it came to being rejected by women."
I have seen no indication of that. It was male institutions that rejected him. In his suicide note, Lépine complained of having been rejected by the Canadian Forces because of his asociality (like Sodini). He was also rejected by École Polytechnique de Montréal for unsufficient grades after he failed to complete assignments and exams.
Like Sodini, Lépine stopped seeing reason for living and projected his failure onto women, in his case driven by the antifeminist hate propaganda he quoted, one that claimed women had taken over men's rightful places, while Sodini seems to have been driven by a generalized and internalized hypersexual view of young women: "so beautiful as to not be human, very edible," all felt to be rejecting him.
To respond to Michelle's question, I am afraid there is nothing to distinguish in advance which isolated male will act out society's treatment of women as worthy targets. Like radioactivity or popcorn on a plate, there is no determining factor defining who will become the next occurence. I think that the problem is the escalating heat under the plate, and a culture where renting, hurting and sometimes killing people, esp. "commoditized" women, is treated as male self-realization and popular entertainment for lookers-on.
Yeah they seem to be Caissa. In layperson terms it's a debate over 'It's about what you do vs about what you believe' and such debate has been going on, in various forms for about 2000 years.
I wrote this in a discussion I had on my Facebook wall, and feel it applies here:
I do agree they are different, Sodini and Lepine. But I feel they both felt they had rights that were promised them by society, that women had frustrated and refused to grant or allow them access to. They both felt wronged by this, and had to set the record straight.
---
YouTube vid about emotions, in which he refers to his dating guru - and younger women
his dating guru, who preaches about hooking up with young women
fricking religious women-hating nutjobs that seemed to help shape Sodini's world view
I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "buying" his mindset. And your comment kind of reminds me of people who object to what they believe to be others "buying the terrorists' mindset" when looking at causes of terrorism. Sure, it's gross, but unless you can briefly see the world as they see it, how will you understand their motivations? If they saw the world as you or I do, they wouldn't be killers.
For the record, I, me, personally, do not believe that this man was hard done by, but clearly he believed he was,
We're clear on that.
It seems to me that he was an older, angrier, more violent version of the younger men who believe that "women don't like nice guys" or "women SAY they like a guy with a sense of humour but really they only like the jerk with the Porsche". Having met a number of such guys in my life, it's seemed to me that they all have a strange sense of the dating game as being like some kind of job application or something; if you have the "qualifications", you're supposed to get the job, and if not then something unfair must have happened... the "game" must be rigged! Nobody ever seems to reflect much further than pointing out that they believe themselves qualified.
Sodoni himself rants that nobody would tell him what was wrong with him. Did he really believe he could have listened? That he could ever have understood? I'd bet a handful of money that somewhere at some time somebody tried to tell him and he dismissed it. I see this as congruous with a modern inclination toward externalizing all failures. Nobody ever misses out on a promotion because they have poor people skills, it's because the boss gave the promotion to Bob, the ass-kisser! Nobody ever gets a poor mark on an essay because they did poor research and can't write, it's because the teacher has it in for them! And nobody fails at dating because they're so angry and resentful that it leaks from every pore, it's because women have conspired to deny them.
Here's my totally speculative guess: isolation. I think it functions as an echo chamber, magnifying and amplifying these guys' screwed up thinking unopposed. I'm sure there are many other required factors too, but I think isolation is the deciding factor.
I find the video from Sodini chilling to the extent it directly connects with men's porn-induced dream of hooking up with a woman twenty years their junior:
From that Youtube entry: "So my objective is to be real and learn to be emotional and to, you know, to be able to emotionally connect with people because when I am 10 to 20 years older than she is, you know, she has to feel good about this thing."
Thank you Tamar.
~
Of note, there is no excuse for his actions, contained within my statements about his "religious beliefs", it is just a component of how he was able to excuse his planned actions. For other men it would/could be a different one.
I agree maysie about the sliding scale, or as you put it, a continuim, of misogynistic thoughts and feelings, and trying to get rid of the extreme end that this man was on, will do nothing.
It is greatly disquieting to realize that the numbers of women killed by men is rising steadily, and this has happened on the backdrop of California striping the funding from their domestic violence programs.
martin, Snert, take a look at the link to his love guru. Sodini was being fed the line that he could get a young woman, and not by being a nice guy.
Re: the love guru and the younger women fixation, it jumped off the screen at me when Sodoni said that there are 30 million "desirable" women in the United States.
Isn't that always the way, with the poor lonely hearts? It's not that everyone rejects them, it's that the cheerleaders and supermodels reject them. Plain Janes don't even make the equation. There's something ironic about people who feel unfairly dismissed, dismissing.
Thanks writer. The link to Steele's advice makes Sodini's relationship to Marc Lépine even tighter than I thought. Both were driven by masculinist woman-hating literature.
Writer, thanks for posting the link about the last book he read. From what little I gleaned from the part of his writing that was posted I was thinking that more then likely followed that sort of strident sexist theology but since it wasn't there I didn't say anything about it. That article makes it quite clear that it was definately part of it. Whether he gravitated to it because he already believed that way in a sort of act of confirmation bias or whether it was a formative factor, I suppose would be a question. It sure as hell didn't help.
A standup comedian I forget once remarked "They are teaching dangerous amounts of self esteem to kids today."
I think that observation is "funny" because it's goes pretty far against the grain of conventional thinking, yet hits an unarticulated nugget of truth.
---------
Thinking back to Columbine, I seemed to be the only person who thought that the problem was, as Michelle says, isolation. In the murders this thread is about, it's an isolation that I like to call "Ceasar madness"--- when an individual looses their mind because they don't get any meaningfull feedback from people around them.
Then there's a larger kind of isolation. Like those murderers at Columbine. Where people have no context for thier problems. They don't know what others have suffered. They don't know what people like themselves have lived through, what is obtainable, what can be overcome. What is temporary.
Consider the two kids at Columbine, and this murderer. They occupied a place of comfort, freedom and opportunity that few people in the entire history of human civilization have enjoyed.
But a guy at school bullied me. My brother beat me up. I don't like Mondays.
That kind of rationalization can only come about through isolation in terms of education, media, psychology that tells people they are entitled to feel things that really, no they're not entitled to feel. That their suffering is unique to them. That the trauma of a Holocaust survivor is equal to the trauma of someone who's mommy took thier teddy bear away a month too soon.
Why do men more often than not seek out women for their targets?
Force of habit.
Women, in spite of continuing inequalities are not really the most helpless targets in society anymore.
And this is what this is all about, in the end. The individual cellebration, confirmation of the cellebrated goal of western civilization: That you are only alive, only important, only someone if you can exploit and victimize those less powerfull than yourself.
Read the links of writer's, and frankly they are even more disquieting about the non-safety of women. From the so called "Minister/pastor"whack, to the old man pedophiles, one can see the threat to women's safety in all its disgusting and frightening parameters.
And as it is quite obvious there is a huge market for this shit, one has to expand one's realization of just how many men, come from this internalized position.
Right. Which, scarily, gives the lie to the "isolation" rationale. Just how many men do NOT want a "hottie" twenty years their junior? I am reading Victor Malarek's "The Johns" to write a book review, and this power differential emerges as the main reason men flock to prostitution and especially sex tourism destinations such as Costa Rica and Thailand. His respondents go on endlessly about it, in direct hostility to "uppity" Western women.
How so?
edited: I mean, how was he not isolated? Or how do you figure that isolation wasn't a factor?
But there are women who live socially isolated lives all the time, with few social skills, without sexual partners or many friends, or any friends. They don't enact such violence, as a statistical group.
I'm not saying isolation isn't a factor, it clearly is, plus a huge capacity for imagination and creating worlds in his head. But I just don't see it being a stronger reason than being a man in a sexist woman-hating world, plus what everyone else has said already.
Pennsylvania shooter targeted women feministing.com: "So yes, let's continue to talk about this horrible shooting as a crime against women. But let's also make sure that we're discussing this not as an isolated crime - but as one part of an incredibly dangerous, culture-wide problem."
"According to the Editor & Publisher blog, Sodini’s website also contained slams against “the liberal media,” Obama, the election of “The Black Man,” and jokes about black men and white women. E&P notes that the AP and other outlets have omitted these details. Had Sodini aimed his guns specifically and only at people of color, ignoring information about his bigotry would not only be racist, it would also deprive the public of a full understanding of the nature of his crime. But while his racist webpages certainly add a fuller picture to this disturbed killer’s mindset, in this case the AP discussed the part of the website most relevant to the crime: Sodini’s anger at being sexually rejected, his deep-seated resentment toward women, and his stated plans to kill women." Once more with feeling: Media Must Report Gender Motivation for Mass Shootings Women in Media & News
"let's also make sure that we're discussing this not as an isolated crime - but as one part of an incredibly dangerous, culture-wide problem."
And as girls and women continue to be even more objectified in men's minds, and not worthy of opinions and perspectives, nor even life, it will get worse.
Right. Which, scarily, gives the lie to the "isolation" rationale.
edited to add: I wrote this before you edited this post and think I may have assumed you were referring to something that you were not ie the 'religion' stuff. I'll just leave it up anyway if that's alright.
Not necessarily. Without knowing more about his history with religion it's difficult to tell which came first or whether it was some sort of concurrent formation. Religion can be and for many a draw because it speaks to combat feelings or isolation and not belonging. One of it's main core beliefs is 'you're not alone.' There is however so many variations particularly in the realm of Christianity there is something for everyone and it's easy enough to find something or someone 'religious' who confirms or explains what one might already be thinking or believing and give whatever it might be cosmic validity. Sexist, misogynistic already? Well there's a church for you. Homophobe and think gays are a problem? Most definately lots to choose from. Want to feel okay about you're greed and wealth and need justification or feel comfortable for not sharing? Find you're nearest church that preaches the Prosperity Doctrine. Feeling like all the immigrants are responsible for you not being successful? Attend or read about 'KKK like relgious theology' Heck just surf the net and it's easy to find anything that will support preconcieved beliefs or worldviews.
Take for instance the quotes from Writer's link about Thiemes beliefs being based on certain passages. Deplorable, but even with a quick google search there's quite literally hundreds of interpretations of what just that passage means in the whole 'religious' scheme of things. My point I guess is that someone already perhaps feeling isolated and perhaps that already has real misogynist issues and is feeling maligned is going to gravitate to the ones that 'explain' it in a way that they may already understand and percieve to be reality. That there might be an interpretation that speaks more about equality or something different entirely isn't necessarily going to interest them or they're not going to bother to look any further.
The "once more with feeling" link of writers is an excellent article and the responses too are good reading, even posts 11 and 13 from men which try to mitigate it that it is a crime against women. They indicate what lengths both women and men will go to in order to try and deny the most serious nature of this.
Snert: "I mean, how was he not isolated? Or how do you figure that isolation wasn't a factor?"
My point is that Sodini's and Lépine's worldview is common to a lot of men. Indeed, it is the subtext of a woman-hating patriarchy that manifests it in songs, films, novels, pornography, and generalized gender discrimination.
Men may be playing out that politic individually, outside of couples or other compacts, but they act as a community, as Malarek points out in his analysis of Internet communication among "johns".
Sodini tried out a macho strategy taught to millions of individual men in a best-seller (one of its kind in a whole genre of masculinist advice to men) and he killed in spite for not having succeeded by it.
If we persist in seeing him or other killers like him as "isolated" - with the suggestion that he and men like him are to be pitied or helped even more - we risk losing sight of this collective woman-exploiting politic where millions of men go on being aimed at women like so many guided missiles.
martin, thank you. And Maysie, Snert, ElizaQ, remind, Stargazer, Michelle, Tommy, Ghislaine, bagkitty, RevolutionPlease. This is a precious thread.
Digging deeper, what I find is a deep contradiction in two misogynist philosophies that Sodini embraced. The religious - one woman/possession/object meant for one man, with pre-marital sex erasing the posibility of finding your soulmate. The social/sexual - dress well, swagger, play the prick and the young ladies/objects will fall prey to their primitive desires and you'll get all the sex you can handle, possessing them at will.
He doubly failed by these standards. And nobody would tell him why. The One was not delivered by God. 30-million rejected his tidy, clean, nice-smelling normalcy. In his journals, he mentions trying different things over the decades, and over those decades remaining profoundly alone.
He is a man who embraced his gender's hetero-sexist male dominating rules with a particular passion, because playing them out was all he had. Because inside there was a vacuum. And those rules let him down. Rather than looking to the rules and their source as the failure, the things to reject, he turned to the ones they were created to contain. The ones who didn't pop into the box like they were supposed to.
After he beat Karla Homolka to a bruised pulp, Paul Bernardo was beside himself with grief for losing her. He made maudlin, drunken tapes in a pathetic and non-sensical effort to win her back. On one of them, he says he took the flashlight he had used on her and beat himself with it. He seems surprised that it hurt. He tells his wife that she should have told him.
Agreed. Which is what makes Michelle's question ("I'm curious about WHY certain men become murderous misogynists and others don't.") so compelling. The worldview alone is not sufficient for creating mass murderers, so... what else?
I'm certainly not campaigning for any pity for him, nor would I know how anyone could really have helped him. But I agree with Tommy; when you have nobody sane in your life to temper your thoughts and beliefs, they can become delusional and dangerous very quickly.
I'm also not suggesting it's our duty to seek out and befriend all the loners and misfits, but who or what did this guy have in his life to counter the nonsense of his favourite author and his beliefs that his family, his coworkers, and all women everywhere had done him wrong? If the answer is "well, nothing" then it becomes a little less surprising that something like this would happen, no?
That doesn't leave him and his own free will blameless, of course, but to be honest, I wouldn't know what to tell a guy like Sodoni.
Open question to all: what would you have told George Sodoni if you could have? Assuming that someone near him sensed a problem, is there anything that you think they could have said to him to steer him away from his fantasies and toward something productive?
And regarding help, I don't believe it's our duty or responsibility to "fix" someone like Sodoni, but at the same time, when has it ever been successful to tell someone with huge emotional problems "just go figure it out for God's sake... everyone else seems to be able to!". How does a guy like Sodoni bootstrap his way to a healthy worldview?
Snert, this is the best I have to offer: Facebook Update Status | December 6, 2008 (does not go to Facebook)
I appreciate Martine, your insistence on analyzing Sodini's behavior in the larger context of women's oppression. As with Lepine, the media and soon after the public debate was focused on the killers' psychology. But if you agree that both mens' motivation was misogyny then there is little need to examine Sodini's actions further. There is however a great need to defend and stand up for women's use of public space. Women who are watching and certainly the women who were at the gym, hear the message loud and clear...stay home, hide, retreat etc. Women are being led to believe that being in large groups together makes us more vulnerable to targeted violence. In fact the grouping of women together has made us stronger and braver, in particular in using and claiming public space. There is a great danger of reinforcing his regressive message and the opposite is needed. Women need to be encouraged to take up more space, to make more demands and to continue to strive for more power, freedom and autonomy.
Tamar! You are such an important part of this exchange.
To reinforce your point - anyone looking at the statistics knows that WOMEN ARE IN GREATER DANGER in private space. We are more likely to be attacked at home. By those we know best.
The goal is to create a society where we are free. Wherever.
As with many discussions maybe it comes down to how one personally defines a word. I think those who are dissmissive of "isolation" are maybe defining it more litterally, while those, myself included, who point to this are using it more broadly.
Because I think we are all pointing to the same factors, in the end.
Cripes, I am having a kind of Derrida moment, where I wonder if we can communicate about this at all.
Trouble is, it's difficult-- even insulting to try-- to bring it all together within a few paragraphs. So, we'll pick this aspect and that aspect, be susinct, and then upset someone because this was not mentioned, or that wasn't articulated just the right way.
But it's what we do.
Yesterday afternoon I was getting ready for work, trying to catch the latest weather, surfing around, and settled for a moment on "Telia Tequila." I can only stomach this for a minute or two at a time, but somehow, as stupid as it is, I think it's important.
Somebody is watching this shit. Learning.
And you're warned about "mature content", when in fact there's nothing whatsoever "mature" about the show. And, it's a competition to earn Tilla's "Love".
That's what the good folks on T.V. are teaching kids about Love. And Maturity.
Okay, so I'm a kook. A nut, to be so concerned about something as mindless as this show. Or Lady Gaga videos, et al.
But it strikes me that the stuff I grew up on was dismissed as being wrong. Hemmingway too macho, for example. The old media, the old literature, surely, and I agree, wasn't exaclty women friendly.
But, look what's replaced it. Then look what's happening over the course of that replacement.
I'm not pointing to literature or pop culture as the cause of increasing violence against women. But, I think it symbolizes what's going on at a deeper level.
I recall, in no detail, about a murder case back-- I think-- in the 1920's where a young man or two young men used their upbringing, their trauma or what have you to justify the murder of someone else. Notable, because it was the first time such a deffence was used.
It seems to have opened up the floodgates in respect to avoiding what some call personal responsibility.
Which, again, is only part of the picture.
So, we eschew personal repsponsibility, while at the same time emphasizing "self esteem" to the point that little johnny is so gosh darn special, he can do no wrong.
In a world where empiricism is anitquated, in a world where anything can be true, according to yourself.
Combine that with MTV's deffinition of "Love" and "Maturity", and, well.
Be prepared for many of these discussions in the years to come.
Perhaps it could have been enough. A woman I know has talked at length with me about being scapegoated by her family, made "different" from other kids, ostracized and rejected, and it's affected her, but she believes real tragedy to have been averted by those few people, acquaintances or not even, who made a place for her and accepted her.
But for the most part (I'll exclude you but include me) I think that when it comes to loners, we're very interested in them when they do something tragic, but otherwise, not so much. I wonder how many hits Sodoni's blog got after his killings, and how that compared to before. Did anyone really care what was going on in George Sodoni's head before he started shooting? Evidently he even wrote it down for us!
I find it interesting that you pick out two females in entertainment as reflective of the problem.
I always find it interesting when folks write as though violence against women is a new trend. It isn't. And we've actually moved forward, considering that Margaret Mitchell was laughed at in the House of Commons when she spoke of domestic violence.
The case you are likely thinking of is Leopold and Loeb. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/Accountoftrial...
"To the moon, Alice!" Ha ha, the funny man on TV wants to punch his wife in the face!
I find it interesting that you pick out two females in entertainment as reflective of the problem.
Because, as far as those two women's entertainment persona's go, they are about as female as Al Jolsen was black.
They are charactectures. Drawn by men.
Tommy-Paine you're post made me think of this kid I used to baby-sit when I was a teen. It's so much more then that but not that I think back it kinda of encapsulates so much of your post. Think middle class, kid being put in classes before school even starts to be able to get ahead and the use of the word 'no' absolutely forbidden. That rule was one of the main ones on the list that the babysitter got. Well when Mom left that kid was an absolute shit and he knew I couldn't say 'No'. It was ridiculous. One of things I was supposed to do one day was facilitate (yes that was the word) a drawing session. No big deal I thought. So the kid starts drawing and I start too and he shows me a picture. Well he put breasts and a vagina on the stick figures and thought it was a riot and started giggle and saying the words over and over. Well at least he was using the right words I thought but I decided that drawing time was over because honestly he was creeping me out. I've worked with kids a lot so I'm not adverse to talking about things like that in and honest manner. I just couldn't put my figure on what was different about this particular kid. Then the kid starts saying 'well you know you have breasts' and I kid you not glommed his hand down hard on one of mine and wiggled his fingers, with a giggle, "See?" Well guess what, I sure as hell used the word 'no' as I grabbed his hand and pulled it away. His reaction "You're not supposed to say no, I'm going to tell." And he tried again and again thinking it was hilarious and even made a grab at my crotch. "You're going to get in trouble. Nayah Nyah." Then not only did I say no, I marched him off to his room and made him stay there after telling him how totally inappropriate that behavior was.
I'm really not sure why I went back to babysit for them again but I did. Young and dumb and without the capcity to figure out what was going on. Well I did get a polite and condencending talking to about the fact that I did say 'no' the last time. When I tried to explain why and what happen I was told that 'no' and sticking him in his room wasn't the right way but that I should have just explained it and that he was only exploring his boundries or some sort of crap like that. Boundries my ass.
They moved away soon after that.
Oh and this kid was only four years old. I wonder what he ended up being like.
Snert, I am hugely influenced by Alice Miller, who makes a compelling argument for supporting children's reality and making a transformative difference in their lives.
I've wondered the same about Sodini's website. It was under his name. He worked in IT. Did no one read this?
As to "us" not reading it. Just did a Google search - women gun sex lonely. 1,740,000 hits. Where to begin?
I wonder what he ended up being like.
A CEO.
I was wondering how a guy like that could go without being married for so long. I've worked in IT, but not for as long as Sodini did. And one of the first things that becomes apparent to the person trying to establish themselves as an IT worker is the long hours one tends to have to put in without overtime pay or recognition early on to become both competent and noticed. Some work places are very good with telling people to take personal time out and mental health breaks and such. But overall I think most IT jobs are demanding to the point of being high tech sweat shops. I'm thinking it's possible Sodini was so dedicated to getting a leg up in IT that he forgot to live and made too little time for himself to develop as a person. And perhaps Sodini suffered from some sort of obsessive mental disorder of some sort. I think in a lot of ways, IT workers, and really any profession nowadays, can suffer a form of sensory deprivation at times. But especially IT workers who deal mainly with things and not people to a larger extent. I think it's possible Sodini slowly digitized himself not only professionally but on a personal level. It's an analogue world and always will be. Strange man and a sad ending.
Lest we forget them with all this attention on poor George: Elizabeth Gannon, 49, Heidi Overmier, 46, and Jody Billingsley, 37.
Thank you for those names martin.
And he didn't kill the "young hotties" either.
A bit more about this:
Media analysis has so far ignored or glossed over Sodini's religious affiliations but the shooter's Internet diary suggest his last readings were the Bible and a book by a Texas evangelist, R.B. Thieme, Jr. who has written that husbands own their wives, as literal property and promoted an odd teaching that for each man on Earth there exists only one correct "right woman" in all creation....In his final weblog entry on August 3rd, 2009, written before carrying out the LA Fitness Center slaughter, Sodini wrote, "I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them." The Integrity of God was a privately published book by R.B. Thieme, Jr. and the apparent reference suggests that while George Sodini was estranged from the Tetelestai Church he was still under the influence of Thieme's writing, which may have exacerbated Sodini's social maladjustment and inability to meet women because of an extreme, idealistic doctrine Thieme espoused known as "right man/right woman."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/shooter-read-sexist-chris_b_252702.html
It may have? You think?
"inability to meet women"??? Have you read his diary? He recounts two recent interactions with women and seems to have simply preferred his closed Google-laced world and racist "hoez"/"hotties" fantasies to actual human interactions with equals.
Can we stop pitying this complacent assassin as if he was somehow the aggrieved party, when his victims's lives and families don't deserve even a footnote in the media coverage?!
No shit martin, and this ignoring the victim's is just as bad as blamming the victims, for violence against them by men, which Carlton University is busy doing.
"It saddens me to see our institution view the serious and disturbing issue of sexual assault in such a dismissive manner," said Erik Halliwell, president of the Carleton University Students Association.
"It is ludicrous to suggest that this assault was in any way caused by the actions of the victim herself, the institution has a responsibility to ensure that Carleton students have a safe environment in which to learn and work."
"I find it absolutely embarrassing and deplorable to see the University continue to blame the victim and reinforce the outdated and harmful stereotype that sexual assault is the fault of the woman," said Kimalee Phillip, President of the Graduate Students' Association.
She added, "The University should consider what kind of message it is sending to students. Their response discourages women who have been assaulted from reporting the crime to campus officials or the police if they believe that they will be blamed for the incident."
http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa/2009/08/07/10390786.html
This type of shit allows misogyny to continue.
"inability to meet women"??? Have you read his diary? He recounts two recent interactions with women and seems to have simply preferred his closed Google-laced world and racist "hoez"/"hotties" fantasies to actual human interactions with equals.
Can we stop pitying this complacent assassin as if he was somehow the aggrieved party, when his victims's lives and families don't deserve even a footnote in the media coverage?!
From post#1: Can we discuss this and explore prevention/defusing strategies, instead of the usual baiting, please?
Okay, I admit I've been expressing far too much sympathy for Sodini, a triple murderer and abominable product of society in the US. So what would you say to the victims' families to console them, martin? Could you assure them that this kind of thing will never happen again?
No, I don't see anything that could have been said to the murderer or that could be said today to the families of Elizabeth Gannon, Heidi Overmier, and Jody Billingsley. Talk is not enough. Sodini was not only a product but an agent of this sexist society, and the privilege he felt entitled to remains central to it. It will go on happening: murders of unruly women are a daily occurence in North America, and feelings of male entitlement and misogyny go on being propagated exponentially by the culture. All I can think of saying, and it is woefully inadequate, is "This is horrible. I am ashamed and angry at a world where Sodini fit in so well. Some people are fighting this. We hope to turn the tide." Some days, I even believe it.
Word.
And I think the problem runs deeper than just a sexist society. If it was only ever women being murdered, then I think we could lay the sum total of blame for murder and abuse in general squarely with sexist men. In this case, can we really attribute all of the blame to one misogynist male, an apparent abberration of an otherwise perfect society? Yes, the law says that we can and should. And this will be been done, gavel smacked and case closed? Not that I condone or advocate for misogyny. And for some reason I feel I must head off those knee-jerk assumptions and insinuations at the pass. It's a sick society overall. One where people and the needs of people are being displaced by a political and economic ideology that is incompatible with life in general. It's democracy and progress and all kinds of things happening in haphazard manner around the world. It's a new society where risk is transferred elsewhere, and people are made subserviant to an abominable economic and political ideology, instead of the reverse situation where democracy and the system serve the needs and aspirations of the majority of humanity. The system is losing its soul if it ever had one.
When was the last time men were mass murdered fidel at the gym? or elsewhere?
Well to be fair remind, many mass murderers have murdered men as well and I do think what Fidel says has some validity. It is a societal issue. People do feel estranged from and apart from society. So busy trying to measure up that they are so filled with hate and resentment they kill to feel better. It is true that many of these mass murderers feel they do not fit in enough, or can't progress upwards - in a world in which we are all told if we don't succeed it is our fault. This is by no means a way of saying this man should be sympathized with, it is just pointing out that society is a strange thing and the forces that dictate how we should live, how much we should make, etc.are and do form these types of people's murderous rages.
We have to wonder why the US has the most mass morders. We have to examine cultural differences. The problem is that no matter how disgusting this man was, and his actions are, we have to ask questions about what society we live in, that allows for this to happen. We have to figure out how to approach these topics and study them so that we can at least, hopefully, change things in this world.
I absolutely have no problem accepting that this man was a woman hating pig, and that society as a whole (masculine culture really) is a large part of the problem. But I don't think it is the only part.
Men who have been mass murdered have never been murdered as men nor by women. I'm with remind on this; Fidel's post seems to be trivializing the recent mass murders of women by gender-neutralizing them.
I have hesitated writing anything, because I don't want to take away from the analysis around misogyny being at the heart of such things. That's not my intention.
I just want to add that this incident also reveals a great deal about our society and people with mental illness. This guy was clearly sending out all kinds of signals that he was suffering some very serious mental health problems beyond just 'problems' with women. (Unless of course you want to include extreme misogyny as a mental illness as to opposed to the garden variety misogyny all to prevelant all around us). There had to be people in his life from co-workers, to family, to people who knew him and came across his blog that could see this. The signs are self-evident of severe emotional and social cognitive problems - yet no one did anything. Like most people they probably just dismissed it as some kind of 'phase' or whatever.
These women payed the price for western society's failure to deal with not only misogyny, but also mental illness. Sadley we seem to want to deny how prevelant both are and how dangerous not addressing these issues are- primarly for women.
Well, I must say, thank you to both Fidel and Stargazer for situating this abhorrent crime in a context that progressive people can relate to.
stargazer, I felt fidel's post was basiically excusing men for their misogyny, and I will not accept that.
I noted above the role that whacked out religions play in this type of incident and other societal ills.
Oh...so people who do not see it that way are not progressive eh unionist? nice slam!
I think Martin is correct; I can't think of any mass murderer who killed men specifically for being men, nor any in particular who even killed only men. There have been a few serial killers who restricted their victims to men, but for specific sexual purposes.
there has been much unfortunate twisting of meaning in religious understanding.
'religion' can be blamed for much, just as other institutions can be criticized.
in this case, the theology expressed by the sick writer in the OP would better have been balanced with some other perspectives in various traditions, including his own, and/ or some very good therapy.
I'm thinking of the guy who took down a bunch of people (students) at Kent University. The guy who took out all those people at a MacDonalds, not to mention all the other murderous rampages which occurred at places of employment by ex employees. Even the Son of Sam murdered men and women (of course for him the men were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time).
I am not discounting that misogyny placed a huge roll, but I think, as I said above, it is broader than that and I do believe that class plays a factor here as well.
men were not killed for being men
I thought about workplace killings, and I suppose that somewhere, at some time, some guy went to his workplace and killed several men, but I would expect, in that case, that he had a specific grudge against them (typical of workplace mass murderers) or that they were all men because of the nature of the job.
James Huberty, the San Ysidro, California mass murderer, was trying to kill immigrants (they were the target of his particular grudge).
Remind, all I meant was that "crime happens because there are criminals" doesn't wash with me. Societies and cultures like ours that are sexist to the core; that treat women like objects of gratification and as cheap labour; will inevitably produce crimes of every kind, including the Marc Lepine variety. Focusing on the individual criminal (who often is too dead to punish...) leads to the kind of tabloid idiocy found in the other threads here (krazy glue and sabucco), without even hinting at what we must do to eliminate such horrendous treatment of women. "The criminal is to blame" is a neat way for the right-wing to ignore the cause and the cure - and of course, the rich and powerful are never the ones who commit these atrocities. They don't need to. They run a whole system which grinds women underfoot.
Agreed.
Though sometimes the rich do it for kicks.
Unionist: all I meant was that "crime happens because there are criminals" doesn't wash with me.
Who said anything this simplistic?writer, i can't help asking: what did you mean by post #73?
No trouble, martin: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=word
Who said anything this simplistic?
No one, nor even infered it.
Well, since you're all so curious - remind said it - and remind inferred it - when she said this:
Fidel looked to the social causes of such crimes - and remind said this was excusing "MEN" (not criminal murderers - but "MEN") for their misogyny.
Unionist: all I meant was that "crime happens because there are criminals" doesn't wash with me.
Who said anything this simplistic?
Thanks for reading and commenting on the rest of my post.
Fidel looked to the social causes of such crimes - and remind said this was excusing "MEN" (not criminal murderers - but "MEN") for their misogyny.
Nope won't excuse it to just being "criminal murders" either
I think Martin is correct; I can't think of any mass murderer who killed men specifically for being men, nor any in particular who even killed only men. There have been a few serial killers who restricted their victims to men, but for specific sexual purposes.
According to US federal crime stats , 1973-2006:
According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, most murder victims were male, 79% in 2006.
===
Should we be concerned about violent crimes of all types where females are the victims? Absolutely. Yes!
Oh yes let's diminish because it is women slaughtered in one fell swoop.
If it happened in a synagogue it would be classified as a hate crime
or in a black baptist church, etc etc
but because it happened to women, in a woman's gym, it is simply just another crime of violence by a "mentally ill" person.
Fuck! That is sickeniing on so many levels.
I remember a police officer on CBC news a few years ago commenting on murder crimes in NYC. He is an emigre from Lebanon, and he said he couldnt understand the motivations for murder from Lebanon to NYC. He said that in his birth country, people are murdered for a reason as a rule. ie long running ethnic conflicts, war etc. But in NYC, he discovered that a street person could be murdered for five bucks, or a teenager shot to death for his boom box(portable stereo). It made no sense to him.
A police official published a report on homicides in Chicago a number of years ago. He concluded that there is a link between homelessness and violence. He noticed a link between rising rents and homicides. Street gangs evicted from one slum area have to go marauding into neighborhoods of rival gangs looking for squats to live.
And I'm not sure if the US leads in homicide rates. In countries like Venezuela, Mexico etc, women probably shouldnt go into bars or "cantinas" by themselves. Venezuela is a very macho country, and the men often carry pistols. They assume, or at least when I was there about 19 years ago, that women who go into bars are loose women and are likely prostitutes. I'm not condoning the macho culture or misogyny, it's just the way it is for some developing countries. And I think we have to work on developing respect for both genders equally in every country.
but because it happened to women, in a woman's gym, it is simply just another crime of violence by a "mentally ill" person.
I hope that is not refereing to my post above (#78). That is certainly not what I meant. This was and is a hate crime against women that comes from the deep well of misogyny in western society.
The point I was making is that we are ignoring both misogyny and mental illnesses issues at our peril. Well, not 'ours' so much as women's. And that this attack on women reveals both in a very stark way. The way our society reacts to people who are clearly mentally ill - but look 'normal' has been on my mind a lot lately.
Oh yes let's diminish because it is women slaughtered in one fell swoop.
If it happened in a synagogue it would be classified as a hate crime
or in a black baptist church, etc etc
but because it happened to women, in a woman's gym, it is simply just another crime of violence by a "mentally ill" person.
Fuck! That is sickeniing on so many levels.
I am not trying to diminish the seriousness of this crime, just trying to put it in perspective. I have no real idea why men like Sodini hated women like he did. I admit to not being a criminologist or social worker or anything of the sort. I was concerned enough to want to comment about this particular act of misogyny in the extreme. And I think that's a positive thing for me and everyone who's posted in this thread who have demonstrated some concern about it. Apparently I've spent too much time in this thread already and have no idea what I'm talking about. Carry on.
No I am out of this thread actually.
I guess that if Sodini had shot 120 women instead of 12, there would be less cocksure denial and attempts to put his crime in another "perspective" than patriarchy. Still a lot of work to do.
Ah, how quickly we forget the first ten words in this thread.
Ah, how quickly we forget the first ten words in this thread.
Be very careful
You can't say I didn't try.
You can't say I didn't try.
Wasn't it you or someone with a handle a lot like your's who gave us grief earlier for trying to discuss Sodini in a thread about a misogynist on the rampage?
???
Okay sorry, martin, my mistake. There attempts to get into Sodini's head by a few posters above. And the assessments are probably pretty accurate about his failure to come full circle with women and the ensuing frustration, I dont know. I'm not a professional, but I think they would agree with it. So how many more frustrated males are there out there, and for how long have they not been seeking help? Why didnt anyone around him notice Sodini's marathon anti-social behaviour and do something about it? Or could they? What can anyone do about the next Sodini?
I think there will be professionals who will want to do interviews with Sodini's family and friends and co-workers and gathering as many of the details as they can. Will there be a genetic sample taken from Sodini to determine if or whether there was a defect anywhere along a familial line? What drove this guy to do what he did? I'd be curious to know as long as it's spelled out for me in layman's terms. And I think the opinions in this thread are a pretty good start.
I am intrigued by this statement. Mental health/illness is solely a subjective opinion of somebody else's behaviour and thinking. So if somebody "looks" normal (by which I'm guessing you mean someone appears not to suffer from a mental illness) then they are normal. In the case of Sodini, prior to this horrendous act he hadn't committed any crime. So what exactly do you think society should have done in his case? Are you comfortable with authorities assessing citizens on the basis of crimes they might commit? I guess another way of putting it is: How many thousands of harmless crazies are you willing to assess, identify, and curtail their civil rights in order that one Sodini doesn't commit murder?
Signed,
A Harmless Crazy Person
Just posting to say this is the most fascinating thread I've read on this site for a long, long time.
Long thread.