Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

any srs anti-gun group will be dedicated to things that could actually happen

the NRA's goals were insane once upon a time too

had a heated discussion with a friend last night who blames this on 'the media' and 'violence in the culture'' (videogames and movies). unproductive sidetrack into tipper gore and the 90s. tried my best to push the idea that gun control is the way forward. but 'freedom'! 'individual rights'! ugh, ok whatever, but couldn't we just try 'gun control' in some small place in this country and see if it works? i mean i get that violence is complicated, but at some point you have to do something simple about a complicated problem, no? does not mean that the problem is solved across all domains, but baby steps ffs.

when was that? 1680? xp

it drives me crazy when people suggest that gun control "will not solve the problem. crazy people will still kill people, etc." of course it won't eliminate the problem entirely. statistically, some bad things are going to happen. it's about limiting the horribleness of the things that can happen out there in the tails of the distribution. it's also about reducing the frequency of the most horrible things. if people built bridges with that same "well, you can't stop all bad things from happening so let's just have a free-for-all" shit attitude, we'd see more problems with bridges as well.

obviously I'm not arguing with anyone itt, so that is not a helpful post. but that seems to be a common logical thread running through my facebook lately, and I am venting.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/linkableblob/4905120/data/chart3a-deaths-resulting-from-firearms-data.jpg

and that doesnt even show that 165 of them deserved it

if you show these people data on australia, they'll point to norway. to extend my horrible bridge analogy, it's like showing someone a rickety old bridge in the USA ,and then demonstrating out how such a bridge was reinforced to be safer for everybody in australia. they then point to some fancy norwegian bridge and say, but "that bridge doesn't need to be reinforced, so we don't have to reinforce our bridge either". then we all walk across the rickety old bridge that's not reinforced and die.

much like anti-abortion advocates are really just anti-birth control, anti-gun control advocates are really just anti-not-murdering.

obv the US is a pro murdering country and if you don't like it you can go to canada u hippie

yeah, there's just a huge number of people in the u.s. who basically love sanctioned murder. it gets them up in the morning.

this has the unfortunate consequence of reminding of that "his hobby is moyda" adam sandler song

well see a life avoiding Sandler has its benefits after all

many, many benefits

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-friedland/virgin-homicides-the-matr_b_5435217.html?utm_hp_ref=college&ir=College

I don't think Rodger hated women as much as he hated himself. He was very intelligent, good-looking, if small and awkward, a wealthy drop-out from the local city college who could not compete for women with the muscled bros who surfed, spiked the volleyball and were thriving in a state university that over the years has become a major academic institution. He wasn't as big or strong as they were; he wasn't as academically qualified as they were; he wasn't as white as they were. And he couldn't get the blonde sorority women who were so alluring to him to pay him any mind. Indeed, he didn't have enough self-confidence to even approach them.

* * * *

Rodger's violence was fueled out of his humiliation as a man. Hatred of the women who spurned him was its result, not its cause.

* * * *

With the economic pillars of masculine domination crumbling, sexual conquest and physical strength are all that is left to many men as ways to prove themselves to be "real" men. Their importance is intensified by the fact that we live in a world where the market increasingly rules all and an individual's ability to get his own personal pleasure is the ultimate measure of human worth and dignity. Without education, without work, without physical strength, attracting women appeared to this 22-year-old virgin as the only terrain in which he might prove his manhood

* * * *

Slightly built, beaten up by boys he confronted in Isla Vista, called a "faggot" as a kid and online, he was now armed with guns and ammo.

not sure about one line ("Hatred of the women who spurned him was its result, not its cause") or part of the article's conclusions, but otherwise, this is the point i was making above.

yeah, I'm not yet sure if I fully agree with all of the points therein. But I still don't trust that I can think about the cause and prevention with a clear head.

eh if you read his manifesto it is pretty apparent he is not intelligent or wealthy

I don't think Rodger hated women as much as he hated himself.

It's not a zero-sum game here and this is clumsy/bad logic. He hated himself AND he had learned that it was rewarding to hate women, that it was consistent w societal norms, acceptable to his peers (online if he had none irl), and emotionally satisfying in a way that hating himself wasn't.

Hatred of the women who spurned him was its result, not its cause.

Again, THERE'S NO SIGN THAT ANY EVER SPURNED HIM. First of all, "women," in this construction, is a vague and totally amorphous blob of every woman out there and therefore none in particular. It's meaningless. Additionally, the logic that women's rejection--even if with good cause because this man was both violent and cruel--could have in any way altered his path by being "nicer," and let's not mince words, what we mean is sexually available for him to use and dominate, because that's the only way he related to them, is abhorrent and blames "women" (again, all and therefore none) for his malformed worldview. Yes I know that's a long sentence, there was a lot of wrong to deal with, okay?

With the economic pillars of masculine domination crumbling, sexual conquest and physical strength are all that is left to many men as ways to prove themselves to be "real" men. Their importance is intensified by the fact that we live in a world where the market increasingly rules all and an individual's ability to get his own personal pleasure is the ultimate measure of human worth and dignity.

I...I can't. I need a lot more of something before I can tackle this para. Alcohol, possibly.

HE THREW COFFEE OUT HIS CAR WINDOW ONTO WOMEN WHO DIDN'T SMILE AT HIM and then wished that it were hotter so it could have burned their skin. For anyone to even engage with the theory that it was his lack of success at getting sexual access to women that made him violent requires a level of buy-in to patriarchy that invalidates anything they have to say.

in orbit very, very OTM

Their importance is intensified by the fact that we live in a world where the market increasingly rules all and an individual's ability to get his own personal pleasure is the ultimate measure of human worth and dignity.

WHAT WORLD IS THIS? IT ISN'T EVEN REAL.

yeah, analysis needs to begin at the point where you say that all of these women, even the semi-mythologized "perfect blonde sorority bitches," were totally right on in rejecting him. wouldn't you? he needed friends, fine. everybody does. but life is short.

I can't even deal with the fact that the author is a college professor of sociology who can neither write nor think, based on that essay.

by that i mean that the whole script of rejection-->murder needs to be erased. eh i'm not really making my point well.

xp

Those excerpted paras are so fucking stupid and wrong. There's no way I'm clicking that shit.

thanks, io. I selfishly posted that hoping to get some help in unpacking what seemed off about it.

Also that is such a stupid, terrible, stupid, STUPID title.

Yeah, I have some friends from religious studies who are championing it on fb (bc I think this dude is a religious studies professor?), but those excerpts and the title are indeed off-putting.

Yeah we shouldn't analyze Rodger according to his own terms. There was no world of hot sorority girls and musclebros that rejected him, there was just a world of people he couldn't relate to so he caricatured it according to familiar cultural tropes. His inability to connect is still an issue, but nothing in the world is the way Elliot thought it was because he saw women as non-people, as prizes.

Yeah we shouldn't analyze Rodger according to his own terms.

Gee, do you think?

For anyone to even engage with the theory that it was his lack of success at getting sexual access to women that made him violent requires a level of buy-in to patriarchy that invalidates anything they have to say.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Tuesday, June 3, 2014

i think i agree with most of what you said in the posts above. maybe i'm drawing something different from the article.

Yeah, I have some friends from religious studies who are championing it on fb

Congratulations, your friends are terrible.

haha ;_;

xp reading the article again, he seems to both reinforce (in the way io described) and try to take down the murderer's worldview.

He needs to not even try to be in this conversation, which, judging by that repugnant mess of a blogspot post, he's not going to be able to add anything to anyway. Just stop talking.

that's my reaction to most opinion writing in general
"please stop producing words"

otm. too much noise out there already.

my only hope is that this kind of blowhard eventually produces enough words to get lose support, but it takes coalitions in that place (i.e. UCSB religious studies department) for it to happen.

Rodgers had no friends, and no success with women (if you can call "not trying and seething with anger just for not being given BJs" by every hot sorority girl lack of success), and rightfully so, because he was clearly a major DUD psychopath. He reminds me so much of that kid from 'We need to talk about Kevin"

kind of striking me with this particular shooting how much the 'reasons' are right in front of us 24/7.

in orbit very, very OTM

― ey, Tuesday, June 3, 2014 2:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally

im still trying to figure out if his name was Rodger or Rodgers

that's my reaction to most opinion writing in general
"please stop producing words"

― La Lechera, Tuesday, June 3, 2014 2:20 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

standing and applauding every in orbit post itt

also even if every woman in the world had actively spurned this guy they would still not have an iota of blame

With the economic pillars of masculine domination crumbling, sexual conquest and physical strength are all that is left to many men as ways to prove themselves to be "real" men.

LMAO even if this was halfway accurate the only sane response is "get over yourselves, men"

it takes a religious studies professor to remind us all that the real culprit here is the rising tide of equality and the diminishing value inherent in classical notions of masculinity. if women could only be satisfied with their born roles to serve men, such violence would find its outlet in more traditional sources.

this is misplaced condemnation couched (clumsily) in the language of social critique and serves only to make clear how out of touch the author is

if women could only be satisfied with their born roles to serve men, such violence would find its outlet in more traditional sources.

Yes, in the home, where it belongs.

it takes a religious studies professor to remind us all that the real culprit here is the rising tide of equality and the diminishing value inherent in classical notions of masculinity. if women could only be satisfied with their born roles to serve men, such violence would find its outlet in more traditional sources.

― building a desert (art), Wednesday, June 4, 2014

i must not have read the article closely enough, if this is the point he was making.