Is Hate a Mental Illness?
Is “misogyny” [the hatred of women] listed in the DSM V? Elliot Rodger’s murderous rampage last week in Santa Barbara was horrific. Seven dead and thirteen injured. But his YouTube message and Manifesto served to multiply the horror. Scary as it is, he did leave us with insight into the mind of a young man who hated women.
Is “misogyny” [the hatred of women] listed in the DSM V? Elliot Rodger’s murderous rampage last week in Santa Barbara was horrific. Seven dead and thirteen injured. But his YouTube message and Manifesto served to multiply the horror. Scary as it is, he did leave us with insight into the mind of a young man who hated women. Alert: his YouTube video is disturbing and you may not want to view it, but if you do, it is available online. Sometimes it is important to stare evil in the face. This is not the raving of a madman but the carefully reasoned justification for turning his guns on women whom he hated because they weren’t having sex with him.
Rodger describes himself as “a supreme gentleman, a true alpha male” and he doesn’t understand why girls didn’t want him. He said, “ I wanted sex, love and adoration from girls...If I can’t have you, I will destroy you...I will punish you.” He speaks in the voice of male entitlement and with a somewhat pathetic plea for sympathy. If only women had found him attractive, had had sex with him, none of this would have happened.
When I heard the news about the shootings in Santa Barbara, I immediately thought of the Montreal Massacre: December 6, 1989. Twenty five years ago, Marc Lepine went to Ecole Polytechnique, separated the women engineering students from the men and opened fire, killing 14 women. He yelled, “I hate feminists.” He blamed women for his personal failures.
I also thought of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the face by terrorists because she campaigned for education for girls. It is all gender based violence, violence directed at women simply because they are women and they are making their own choices.
It would be easy to write Elliot Rodger off as another crazy person who was able to get access to guns and ammunition. But this would be a mistake. Elliot Rodger, Marc Lepine, and even the Taliban terrorists all ascribe to the same ideology about women: “If I can’t control you, then I will punish you.”
The war on women is not only a cold war but sometimes a hot war. Everyday women die because of this hot war. This is not an aberration; it is the dominant narrative of our culture. If you don’t subscribe to this narrative, then stand up and speak out. Speak out to the young men in your families, on your sports teams, in your youth groups. Use this tragedy to start a conversation. It’s important.
Rev. Dr. Marie M. Fortune
www.faithtrustinstitute.org
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misogyny
In 12 step programs, at least the ones I attend, there is a cautionary note that we read before each meeting. It tells us that, "It is okay to say you feel triggered by a particular group - race, religion, gender, ethnicity - because they remind you of your perpetrator or qualifier, but anger needs to be expressed at particular individuals, not whole groups of people."
Presumably, the Higher Power would help one overcome this tendency to over-generalize and demonize - combined with one's own efforts to correct "stinkin' thinkin.'"
I had a wonderful Hindu philosopher-teacher once, who said that anyone who isn't grounded in a sense of being dearly loved by our Creator - and who doesn't love everyone else, too - is delusional, out of touch with reality. He knew that this would mean huge numbers of people are delusional, but he said it anyway. But it seems to me that people who actually succumb to such hatred and act it out are the craziest of us all.
Does the FaithTrust Institute ever spearhead movements to make misogyny a hate crime? I wish I knew where to begin!