Isla Vista/UCSB Killings

I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where 6 students were recently slain by Elliot Rodger (the LA Times has excellent coverage of the facts).  As a note, Mr. Rodger was a Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) student living near UCSB.  He apparently had misogynistic thoughts, was bitter about his interactions with women, and may have had other psychological issues.  Many ideas need to be mentioned and discussed in this case, and I will address some of them.

In a case such as this, we as a society will attempt to assign blame somewhere.  Clearly, our system designed to prevent incidents such as this has failed somewhere (probably in multiple places).  In the US, we are reluctant to blame the lack of gun laws, and instead focus on the fact that the individual was disturbed.  This is the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, where guns are a tool that everyone needs, with unrestricted access, and when used properly no problem will arise.  (This ignores the fact that guns have one purpose - to seriously hurt other individuals, including use as a hunting tool.)  Requiring people to register their guns and pass background checks does not hinder individual freedom or violate the Second Amendment - any responsible person can still purchase a gun.  However, registration and checks on registration can help indicate underlying problems.  Mr. Rodger legally purchased and registered three semiautomatic weapons over the course of about a year.  There is really only one reason an individual will stockpile such weaponry - to go on a mass murder spree.  The fact that Mr. Rodger registered three semiautomatic rifles should have set off flags to law enforcement that something was wrong.  While the police did visit him a few weeks before the incident, it was apparently in response to disturbing posts on the internet, not in response to the guns.  Could better gun restriction enforcement have prevented this?  Almost certainly.  Did it?  No.  Is this a problem?  Yes, and it needs to change.

Mr. Rodger essentially blames women's rights - the fact that women would not choose to have sex with him - for this murder spree.  This is a more difficult problem to address, and requires a look at the cultural values and expectations that led to this attitude.  Clearly Mr. Rodger had certain expectations for his life that were not met, the most obvious one being loss of virginity by age 22, but also the expectation that college women would just have sex with him because, well, he's not a bad guy and he's there.  These expectations are culturally biased. Movies of college parties portray random people having sex with no problems and women rarely refuse (in such movies, e.g. American Pie, almost everyone ends up getting some eventually and stories are told from the male viewpoint).  Male virgin shaming (such as Mr. Rodger apparently received) bolsters this attitude that sex is something that men should just get if they ask nicely enough and are persistent.  However, women in our society have sexual rights, such as the right to refuse sex and choose sexual partners, and this fact can be in opposition to the male cultural standards and expectations.  This is apparently what put Mr. Rodger over the edge - women's ability to refuse him his "right" to sex despite being a "nice guy."  (Mr. Rodger also must have had other psychological difficulties, as not everyone in his situation goes on killing rampages.  I am not a psychologist and have not interacted with Mr. Rodger, so I cannot make any statements about his mental state.  However, while he may have benefited from therapy, there seems to be little indication that he was truly psychotic or in need of psychoactive drugs.)  The underlying theme here is the rapid evolution of women's rights coupled with a much slower change in male cultural behavior, as well as male resentment of the fact that the culture needs to change. 

Does an enhancement of women's rights represent a decrease in men's "rights," as some attitudes suggest?  Most certainly not.  An increase in women's rights and sexual freedoms will only increase overall quality of life - certainly for women, but also for men, as labor can be shared more equally and educated, aware women are better companions.  Yes, this can be intimidating for some men who expect their male privilege to continue into a modern society, who might look at the past as the good ol' days where women kept their place and couldn't say no (Mr. Rodger's manifesto included a part about keeping women in concentration camps strictly for breeding purposes, which is an extreme extension the "keeping women in their place" idea).  Hopefully we can move past this.  This will require some changes in culture, such as changes in films that glorify male sexual conquests, changes in workplace norms and a reinforced education system.