Unless you've been living in a missile silo the last few days, you've likely heard about how one Elliot Rodgers spent his Friday night on May 27 (spoiler: he killed six people). And you've likely read his 140-page wall of text or seen his videos, or at least heard about their content. And I'm sure you've likely heard everyone who has uttered a single word about this tragedy use six dead people as props for a useless gun control debate (because California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the entire country and that obviously didn't stop this guy) before they've even been embalmed. Or worse yet, as props for a debate on mental health, because clearly a guy who murders six people in cold blood has got to be nuts.
Well, this isn't a rehash of any of that, so pay the fuck attention.
Elliot Rodgers was not crazy. Elliot Rodgers was pure fucking evil. Do not contribute to the stigma that those with mental illness face by confusing the two. Because it's entirely possible to be a violent, dangerous person and still be perfectly sane. As in you are perfectly aware of reality and perfectly aware that what you're doing is wrong, you just don't give a shit.
Rodgers made the motivation for his killing spree more than obvious. He didn't think the people he killed were demons or space aliens or government spies. He didn't think there was some vast global conspiracy out to get him. He planned his killing spree as revenge on others who had what he did not, or who didn't give him what he thought he deserved. He hated women for not finding him attractive. He hated men for being attractive when he wasn't.
That doesn't make him mentally ill. That makes him vindictive, self-absorbed, and violently petty. It speaks not to a sickness of the mind, but to a sickness of the society that taught him to be vindictive, self-absorbed, and violently petty. It speaks to a toxic culture of privilege and entitlement that, when unchecked, produces those with the inability to empathize with others, or to care about anything but their own wants and desires.
Rodgers was rich, the son of an assistant Hollywood director behind a very lucrative film franchise (The Hunger Games). And if you have the stomach to read his rambling manifesto, it becomes apparent that he didn't hear the word "no" a lot as a child, at least in regard to material possessions. So when he got to high school and college and started getting the word "no" from women who didn't want to date him and men who didn't want to hang around with him, he eventually heard it one too many times and decided he'd had enough.
Because to Elliot Rodgers, there was no difference between people and possessions. A girlfriend was no different than a sportscar. That's why he didn't want just any woman to find him attractive. He wanted a hot blonde sorority girl. She would be as much of a status symbol as a pair of Armani shoes and nothing more.
No doubt you've heard many feminist blogs talk about the issue of misogyny in Rodgers' motives. And yes, to a point they're right. He was raised to see women as objects and trophies, and hated them when they defied his will by rejecting him; he took it as an insult to his entire being that they didn't act like the characters in his father's movies and throw themselves at him because he's The Hero.
But his pathology went beyond simple sexism and rape culture. Hollywood is also the epicenter of toxic human consumerism, where people are used and thrown away daily like condoms in a nightclub restroom. Thus, Rodgers rejected the idea that human life has value beyond amusing and entertaining him. If you could not (or would not) pump a neverending supply of air into his bloated ego, he had no use for you. Why shouldn't he kill you if you pissed him off?
We might be quick to call him delusional or a sociopath, but we would be wrong. Because to do so is to remove his agency. And with it, his responsibility for what he did.
And worse yet, when we dismiss people like Elliot Rodgers as "crazy", we inadvertently tar all the mentally ill with that same brush. We punish everyone else for the sins of this waste of oxygen. We reinforce the idea that mental illness inherently causes violent behavior, when the opposite is true; the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence, not perpetrators.
And all this tarring strengthens the stigma that mental illness already has and makes those who do experience these problems, from depression to schizophrenia, less likely to seek help. Because doing so is admitting you have a problem in the first place. Admitting you're "crazy." Admitting you're a time bomb. Admitting you are all of the things that we associate with Elliot Rodgers.
So please, the next time you see someone refer to Rodgers or anyone like him as "a nutcase", do kindly correct them. Take that brush away from them and call people like Rodgers out for what they are: products of a toxic culture that devalues people -- all people -- into playthings and tools of amusement, taken to its extreme logical conclusion.
Elliot Rodgers wasn't crazy. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew it was wrong. He knew why.
He didn't give a shit.
No comments:
Post a Comment