Hijacking Mass Murder

Elliot Rodger took six lives in a planned rampage sparked by narcissistic fury and a sick sense of sexual entitlement. The bloodshed near the University of California, Santa Barbara, is horror enough. But now, some have used the 22yearold’s killings to say it represents the “mainstreaming” of misogyny. At the #yesallwomen hashtag, the idea is that Rodger is not so much an aberration but an example of the misogyny all women experience from our maledominated culture.

Over at the blog of the Independent Women’s Forum, Charlotte Hays notes how absurd this is. Yes, she says, Rodger hated women and vowed to “slaughter every single spoiled, stuckup blond slut I see.” But he also hated men, including the first victims of that terrible night: the two male roommates he knifed to death.

Hays goes on to cite another sensible observer, Heather Wilhelm at the Federalist, who suggests that while sexual assault is unfortunately all too real, there’s something else going on with all these tweets and posts about growing misogyny:

“It’s not about feminism or empowerment, or practical solutions to crime (like, say, concealedcarry laws), and it certainly has nothing to do with a deranged college student killing six people,” she writes. “It’s about taking a tragedy and turning it into ‘I Want To Talk About Me.’ ”

Whatever else he was doing, Elliot Rodger was not taking his signals from society. That’s partly what made him so lethal.

The horror Rodger inflicted raises tough questions about mental illness and gun access. Let’s not cheapen this evil by hijacking its horrors to serve a preset ideology.