What life-long lessons about sexuality
brought this young man to the notion that he was entitled to casual sex? On
what basis did he decide sex was something to which he was entitled but of
which by a great injustice deprived?
by John
Tyburski
Copyright © I Need Politics, Tony Alexiou. All rights
reserved.
After every
mass murder episode, the flurry of responses always includes a demand that we
not discuss the incident specifics nor mention the name of the perpetrator.
This attitude grows stronger with each mass public homicide, and I saw the strongest
espousing of it ever this week with the latest spotlight case involving Elliott
Rodger in Santa Barbara, California. The general hypothesis that drives this
sentiment is that the mass killer ostensibly seeks attention and gets it
through media coverage of his violence. Therefore, we must deprive the killer
of the attention he seeks, although it is difficult to comprehend how much a
dead killer can revel in his crime. I do not subscribe to this notion, and I
find the hypothesis behind it lacking in insight. No, we must discuss these
events in an effort to understand them and to learn what motivates the killers.
We must maintain an ongoing national conversation that explores all plausible
causes and influences in this kind of violence. Otherwise, we have absolutely
no hope of preventing mass murders in the future. But this is only my minor
point. Here, I propose the notion that a key determinant in Elliott Rodger’s
killing spree was immersion in a sexually promiscuous society. Let us ask
today: Is the violence perpetrated by Elliott Rodger an unintended consequence
of the sexual revolution? Will we see more like him?
I will only
briefly recap the Elliott Rodger killing spree; extensive information is
available elsewhere. Rodger,
who was attending the University of California in Santa Barbara, was a very
lonely, troubled young man at the lower edge of Los Angeles affluence. According
to his published videos and writings, his number one obsession was the
seemingly unattainable intimate sexual relationship with a woman—any woman. On
May 23, Rodger posted a video on Youtube titled “Elliott Rodger’s Retribution”
and on that same day murdered his three male roommates by stabbing them to
death. That evening, around 9:30 p.m., Rodger shot and killed two young women
and a young man and later died during a police chase, presumably from a
self-inflicted gunshot wound. Thus ended another murderous spree perpetrated by
a young American man who from the outside did not seem to have such a bad life.
What went
wrong for Elliott Rodger? In order to find out, we need to avoid vague
abstractions and the usual scapegoats and talk about Elliott Rodger the person.
Every act of violence has common threads as well as unique specifics. We have
to talk about Rodger the person, if we think we have any chance of preventing another
Rodger from killing in the future. Certainly, the motivation for Rodger to kill
his three roommates and three others at a nearby sorority was multifactorial.
However, one common thread is revealed in his 137-page “manifesto.” Wrote
Rodger, "All of those beautiful
girls I've desired so much in my life, but can never have because they despise
and loathe me, I will destroy." Chilling words by a killer who also had it
in for men who scored with those beautiful girls: "I will kill them all
and make them suffer, just as they have made me suffer," Rodger added.
"It is only fair." Lengthy details of Rodger’s struggle in this
regard are available elsewhere. One
thing is very clear. This guy wanted casual sex and was angry that he could not
get it.
And this
gets me to my main point. What life-long lessons about sexuality brought this
young man to the notion that he was entitled to casual sex? On what basis did
he decide sex was something to which he was entitled but of which by a great
injustice deprived? It certainly was not an oft-ridiculed conservative idea
that sex is intended to be enjoyed by married couples in the security of a
life-long commitment. We are talking about sex outside the life-long commitment
and boundaries of marriage, about recreational sex, the kind of sex brought
into our society by the sexual revolution of the 1960s. We are talking about
the sex that is built on the premise that intercourse between two (or more) consenting adults cannot possibly
hurt anyone else. By killing six people and himself, Elliott Rodger challenged
this premise. Rodger showed us what happens when the message is, “Hey, sex is
great fun so do it whenever you want!” but the reality is, “You are not
sexually appealing.” Rodger showed us what happens when recreational sex is
commonplace for some and unattainable for others. Rodger is arguably an
unintended consequence of the sexual revolution. I ask that we consider the
role that a sexually promiscuous society plays in widening the gap between
socially accepted and even celebrated members and their unattractive
counterparts. I find it difficult to resist the conclusion that a society in
which sex is not portrayed as a recreational activity but as something
wonderful between two married adults will raise far fewer Elliott Rodgers.
Since we obviously have the opposite, all we need to do to find out is wait
while we distract ourselves with the usual vague explanations.
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