…So why do so many women — and men — call Trump a misogynist?
Because he has so often described women in sexual terms. Because, as the charge goes, he “objectifies” women.
Now, before responding to that, it is worth noting that this clearly disturbs college-educated women and men far more than it does those who did not attend college, which either means the college-educated are wiser on this matter, or the non-college-educated are wiser.
As in most matters, my position is that college makes most people less wise. You have to go to college to think that men who see women they find attractive as sex objects hate women. Throughout history, women understood that men sexually objectify women, that this is male nature and has nothing — repeat, nothing — to do with hatred. Only the well-educated equate sexual objectification with hatred.
If sexually objectifying women makes men haters of women, then gay men hate men, because gay men sexually objectify men exactly the same way heterosexual men objectify women.
If you have a problem with this — and I can understand why people do — you need to take it up with God or Charles Darwin. But this is how male sexual nature works: It objectifies the object of its sexual attraction — male or female.
The good news is that every healthy male is capable of both respecting women and sexually objectifying them. Even Donald Trump.
Dennis Prager brings up an issue of secularism in regards to Elliot Rodgers and the many generalities already being discussed about misogyny, spoiled, male-nature, mental illness, gun-control, the NRA, and the like. But no one generalizes about one of the most restraining aspects in our culture. Religion.
This comes via Truth Revolt: Rutgers Professor: Killing Spree Result of White Privilege
Salon.com contributing writer Brittney Cooper, who also teaches Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, has figured out what caused Elliot Rodger to go on his rampage: white privilege. Absent from the article is any acknowledgment that the shooter was half-Asian.
“Welp. Another young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem,” she begins. “How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills?”
She then states, “Black men are not rolling onto college campuses and into movie theaters on a regular basis to shoot large amounts of people. Usually, the young men who do that are white, male, heterosexual, and middle-class.”
Cooper offers an analysis of Rodger’s video and 140-page note and says that his behavior is definitively attributed to white privilege:
And make no mistake: from my standpoint as an arm chair therapist — having read transcripts of Rodger’s videos — his anger is about his failure to be able to access all the markers of white male heterosexual middle class privilege. He goes on and on about his status as a virgin, his inability to find a date since middle school, his anger and resentment about being rejected by blonde, sorority women. In fact, he claims he will “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see.” As Jessica Valenti so thoroughly demonstrates: “misogyny kills.” I am struck by the extent to which Rodger believed he was entitled to have what he deemed the prettiest girls, he was entitled to women’s bodies, and when society denied him these “entitlements” he thought it should become the public’s problem. He thought that his happiness was worth the slaughter of multiple people.
As notedby the Daily Caller, there are several examples that dispel Cooper’s narrative that mass shootings are done exclusively by white men:
Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 in last year’s Navy Yard shootings in Washington, D.C., was black.
And the largest university campus mass murder in U.S. history was carried out by Seung-Hi Cho, who was Asian. He killed 32 at Virginia Tech University in 2007.
In 2004, Chai Vang, an immigrant from Laos, killed six hunters in the woods of Wisconsin.
Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 at Fort Hood in 2009, was Palestinian.
Breitbart has more on the woman mentioned by Miss Cooper:
It would be quite wrong to attribute the Isla Vista killings to the work of a lone madman, a U.S. feminist author argues today in the pages of the UK Guardian.
The real reason, says Jessica Valenti, is much simpler: “misogyny kills.”
According to Santa Barbara County sheriff Bill Brown, the murders were clearly the work of a deranged individual, as evidenced by the killer Elliot Rodger’s YouTube videos and also by his “141 page rambling… combination of an autobiography and a diary.”
Brown said: “The fact that he had been and was continuing to be seen by a number of healthcare professionals makes it very, very apparent that he was very mentally disturbed when he made that document.”
However, Valenti—an American blogger and feminist author of books including He’s A Stud, She’s A Slut—has ruled out mental illness as the cause of the killings.
According to his family, Rodger was seeking psychiatric treatment. But to dismiss this as a case of a lone “madman” would be a mistake.
It not only stigmatizes the mentally ill—who are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it—but glosses over the role that misogyny and gun culture play (and just how foreseeable violence like this is) in a sexist society. After all, while it is unclear what role Rodger’s reportedly poor mental health played in the alleged crime, the role of misogyny is obvious.
She goes on:
Rodger was reportedly involved with the online men’s rights movement: allegedly active on one forum and said to have been following several men’s rights channels on YouTube. The language Rodger used in his videos against women – like referring to himself as an “alpha male” – is common rhetoric in such circles. These communities are so virulently misogynist that the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks hate groups, has been watching their movements for years. Yet, as the artist Molly Crabapple pointed out on Twitter: “White terrorism is always blamed on guns, mental health—never poisonous ideology.”
Most women are not convinced of the above arguments… that is, unless they went to graduate school and spent $30,000 a year to be brainwashed. For instance, the Independent Women’s Forum, after quoting Jessica Valenti profusely, says “What can you say about something as unhinged as this?”
IWF quotes psychologist Dr. Helen Smith, who writes about the feminist take on the Rodger rampage over at PJ Media, she writes:
Just like the left created the myth of that nice, 12-year-old Honor Student, Trayvon Martin, an innocent who was brutally gunned down by a trigger-happy White Supremacist on his way home after buying some Skittles to further… well, essentially to further the same agenda.
Mythologies require archetypes, not real, actual people. It is highly inconvenient to the left that Mr. Rodger subscribed to a left-wing YouTube Channel and that three of his victims were men….
…As many people have pointed out, Rodger killed more men than women, including himself. Of course, the men he killed don’t count; the main story here is that women were targeted and it makes for a more sympathetic story. Also, writers like Hess above can use the killings to really stick it to Pick-Up Artist types that she sees as deserving of blame. It’s all political fodder.
Judgy Bitch makes the best interpretation I have seen thus far:
The fact is that Elliot’s outburst does indeed highlight an issue of central importance to the MHRM – the inadequate, almost non-existent treatment of mental health problems for young men. Socially, our treatment seems to be to wait until the tortured young man puts a bullet in his own head, and just pray that he doesn’t take innocent victims with him.
As a strategy for health, it’s not working very well.
Compare that to how we respond to women who are mentally fragile after giving birth. We screen for Post Partum Depression and throw money and resources into keeping both the women and their children safe, because if we don’t do that, a lot of babies will end up dead. Women struggle with mental issues, too, and take it out on the innocent. But rather than ignore those women and hope for the best, we create programs designed to identify and help them.
Perhaps it is the feminists and their supporters who block funding and education going to boys’ and men’s issues that are to blame. Case in point? Warren Farrell tried to give a talk in Toronto about suicide in young men and other topics and was accosted by nasty feminists who did not want him to speak.
As a psychologist who has worked with men and boys for over 20 years, I can say that our society is devoid of programs and help for mental health issues for men or we try to give help that is not helpful….
