Patriarchy is what was wrong with Rodger Elliot

27 May 2014 - 13:20 By Bruce Gorton
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In the US over the weekend another mass shooting occurred, killing seven people.

The first thing we need to deal with on this is gun control probably wouldn’t have done anything about this.

There was nothing obvious, prior to the shooting, which could have been picked up to disqualify Elliot Rodger from owning a gun apart from his posts online, and free speech would probably have prevented any laws based on gun rights restrictions based on someone holding objectionable views.

Nor can we really say he was mentally ill, he was undiagnosed and Asperger’s syndrome isn’t associated with violence.

I think we need to look elsewhere for our problems.

Think about rampage killings for a second – can you think of any that were committed by women?

Women have largely the same access to guns as men, they suffer from the same poor mental healthcare system as men, and yet if you go through the list of US rampage killers on Wikipedia – I don’t see any women on it.

Maybe I am mistaken here, but the common factor appears to be that all of these rampages were committed by men.

I think the issue is patriarchy – and the way it harms everyone.

With men we are raised to believe that we must solve problems – and how do we solve them? Violently.

Iron Man is a genius inventor who punches crime. Batman is a genius detective who punches crime. Captain America strives for truth, justice and the American way… of punching crime.

Is it any wonder that under GW Bush the debate around the Iraq war was whether to invade or do nothing – as if no other options ever existed? To too many people, no other options really do exist.

And I am not blaming comic books here – these just reflect larger cultural values enshrining violence and vengeance. We are raised to believe real men solve their problems with their fists, so that is what goes into our popular media portraying idealised men.

Aggression is not always a bad thing, nor is violence, but we need other ways of dealing with our problems to begin to get a fair portrayal. We need to be able to imagine manliness in a way that isn’t about punching our problems away.

Rodger was the perfect patriarchal male in his outlook.

He believed his self worth was tied to his sex life, and that as a 22-year-old virgin he was being denied what he deserved as a college student.

He couldn’t get what he wanted by force, so he sought vengeance for what he saw as the world’s injustice, so levelled against him by the blonde women he so wanted and so clearly deserved as a college student with a BMW.

That vengeance wasn’t just against the women though – he didn’t even really consider them to be animals, just objects to be owned. That vengeance was against the men who stole the sex objects he felt he deserved away from him.

And he sought his vengeance with a gun, a knife and a car.

When feminists talk about how we need to address sexism in various parts of our culture, what they mean is that we do not want any more perfect patriarchal males.

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