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"But nothing is more disruptive to domestic order than an unattached heterosexual male." (A.O. Scott in a review of the film The Kids Are All Right)
I haven't dug too deeply into the story of Elliott Rodger and his misogynist beliefs and recent killing spree, because I find it all too distressing. However, I've seen enough to know that Rodgers was a virgin and a frequenter of internet forums dedicated to the right of men to be sexually serviced by women. I had no idea such sites existed, although, as nauseating as the views expressed are, I guess it doesn't really surprise me. The thing is, none of the men I know ever expresses these kinds of ideas, which is no doubt a reflection both of my social circle and of the unacceptability of such views in polite company.
The closest I've ever come to someone who thinks like that was a guy I knew who was still a virgin in his late 30s and who may still be a virgin, for all I know. I lost contact with him a decade or so ago. He was a good looking guy and fairly gregarious, but he did have some emotional problems, including a terrible temper and deep self-esteem issues. It's not completely clear to me why he was still a virgin, but he himself would say it was because he didn't want sex without love and had been unable to find the love he needed in order to agree to sex. During the period I knew him he *almost* had sex with a mutual friend of ours one night after a party when she drove him home and they started making out in her car and one thing almost led to the next. However, even in that drunken, excited state he was able to stop himself, and that was possibly for the best, all things considered. There was another woman with whom he became good friends and with whom he fell in love, but although she went out with him a few times, mostly because she needed someone to talk to about her own emotional struggles, she never reciprocated the love and so there it ended.
This guy and I got into one argument about feminism that I recall, in which he took the position that women have all the power in society. It didn't matter to him that women make less money then men, have far fewer positions of power in government and corporate hierarchies than men, are subject to more physical abuse and rape than men, have a recent history of not being able to own property or vote, etc, etc. To his mind women can withhold love and sex from men, and therefore they have all the power. The end. Our understandings of what social power is were so alien to each other that it was impossible to even have much of a conversation about it, so we exchanged views rather heatedly and then moved on to other topics. Probably he didn't bring up his beliefs much because in our social circle his beliefs were, shall we say, not widely shared. I found them completely bizarre, in fact, but I could see how they grew out of his personal sense of powerlessness to get what he longed for in terms of a romantic relationship.
Still, while he wasn't a violent person and didn't express any hatred of women, I was appalled at the sense of victimhood in his beliefs. I guess that's the part I have a hard time understanding in all this. I'm not actually all that different from him in my attitudes toward sex and love, although I was willing to try sex without love a couple of times before I decided it wasn't for me. Probably because I'm less emotionally troubled than he, I've also had a chance to get into sexual relationships with a few more or less mutually-affectionate women, although none of them lasted very long. But for most of my life I've gone without a sexual partner because what I've really been looking for is love (if not, as some have accused, adoration) and have created all kinds of barriers around the process due to any number of fears and confusions and hypersensitivities, not to mention my basic passivity and probably deep down an anxious reluctance to be subsumed in another. The thing I don't understand, however, is how anyone can be in that position and think the difficulties are caused by women or by anyone but themselves. Is it just that I'm such a control freak that I always believe that the things that are or are not happening to me are my own fault? Maybe so. I've certainly been rebuffed by women who weren't interested in me despite my best efforts to interest them, and I guess I've considered that my failure rather than the fault of the women. I've tended to see myself as a failure at love rather than to see women as a powerful cabal who are denying me my needs and rights. I guess I'd rather feel like a failure than feel like a victim.
Then again, I'm not an alpha male by any stretch of the imagination and have never aspired to be one. I lack aggressiveness and gumption, and I probably embrace failure all too easily. Even my emotional confusion is more or less passive and reserved. We all flounder in our own ways, I suppose, and my floundering has been certainly less destructive and perhaps slightly less self-defeating than some, but that's pretty much from sheer chance, not from virtue. I'm no evangelist, so it's not like I'm not going to advocate that lonely men should embrace a sense of failure over a sense of victimhood. I'm wandering without purpose yet again, for whatever it might be worth. Two cents, perhaps?
I haven't dug too deeply into the story of Elliott Rodger and his misogynist beliefs and recent killing spree, because I find it all too distressing. However, I've seen enough to know that Rodgers was a virgin and a frequenter of internet forums dedicated to the right of men to be sexually serviced by women. I had no idea such sites existed, although, as nauseating as the views expressed are, I guess it doesn't really surprise me. The thing is, none of the men I know ever expresses these kinds of ideas, which is no doubt a reflection both of my social circle and of the unacceptability of such views in polite company.
The closest I've ever come to someone who thinks like that was a guy I knew who was still a virgin in his late 30s and who may still be a virgin, for all I know. I lost contact with him a decade or so ago. He was a good looking guy and fairly gregarious, but he did have some emotional problems, including a terrible temper and deep self-esteem issues. It's not completely clear to me why he was still a virgin, but he himself would say it was because he didn't want sex without love and had been unable to find the love he needed in order to agree to sex. During the period I knew him he *almost* had sex with a mutual friend of ours one night after a party when she drove him home and they started making out in her car and one thing almost led to the next. However, even in that drunken, excited state he was able to stop himself, and that was possibly for the best, all things considered. There was another woman with whom he became good friends and with whom he fell in love, but although she went out with him a few times, mostly because she needed someone to talk to about her own emotional struggles, she never reciprocated the love and so there it ended.
This guy and I got into one argument about feminism that I recall, in which he took the position that women have all the power in society. It didn't matter to him that women make less money then men, have far fewer positions of power in government and corporate hierarchies than men, are subject to more physical abuse and rape than men, have a recent history of not being able to own property or vote, etc, etc. To his mind women can withhold love and sex from men, and therefore they have all the power. The end. Our understandings of what social power is were so alien to each other that it was impossible to even have much of a conversation about it, so we exchanged views rather heatedly and then moved on to other topics. Probably he didn't bring up his beliefs much because in our social circle his beliefs were, shall we say, not widely shared. I found them completely bizarre, in fact, but I could see how they grew out of his personal sense of powerlessness to get what he longed for in terms of a romantic relationship.
Still, while he wasn't a violent person and didn't express any hatred of women, I was appalled at the sense of victimhood in his beliefs. I guess that's the part I have a hard time understanding in all this. I'm not actually all that different from him in my attitudes toward sex and love, although I was willing to try sex without love a couple of times before I decided it wasn't for me. Probably because I'm less emotionally troubled than he, I've also had a chance to get into sexual relationships with a few more or less mutually-affectionate women, although none of them lasted very long. But for most of my life I've gone without a sexual partner because what I've really been looking for is love (if not, as some have accused, adoration) and have created all kinds of barriers around the process due to any number of fears and confusions and hypersensitivities, not to mention my basic passivity and probably deep down an anxious reluctance to be subsumed in another. The thing I don't understand, however, is how anyone can be in that position and think the difficulties are caused by women or by anyone but themselves. Is it just that I'm such a control freak that I always believe that the things that are or are not happening to me are my own fault? Maybe so. I've certainly been rebuffed by women who weren't interested in me despite my best efforts to interest them, and I guess I've considered that my failure rather than the fault of the women. I've tended to see myself as a failure at love rather than to see women as a powerful cabal who are denying me my needs and rights. I guess I'd rather feel like a failure than feel like a victim.
Then again, I'm not an alpha male by any stretch of the imagination and have never aspired to be one. I lack aggressiveness and gumption, and I probably embrace failure all too easily. Even my emotional confusion is more or less passive and reserved. We all flounder in our own ways, I suppose, and my floundering has been certainly less destructive and perhaps slightly less self-defeating than some, but that's pretty much from sheer chance, not from virtue. I'm no evangelist, so it's not like I'm not going to advocate that lonely men should embrace a sense of failure over a sense of victimhood. I'm wandering without purpose yet again, for whatever it might be worth. Two cents, perhaps?
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