The UC Shootings and Social Media

I'm assuming if you're reading this, you've already heard about the UC Santa Barbara shooting this weekend. If you haven't, here's one link to the story: http://abcnews.go.com/US/killed-mass-murder-shooting-uc-santa-barbara/story?id=23853918

I heard about it two nights ago as I was scrolling through tumblr (as one does instead of sleeping). My dashboard was full of posts about how this is solely a feminist issue and how women everywhere are now terrified of getting shot because men can't handle rejection. I take issue with this.

What I don't like about social media is that people tend to present the most radical position. Then HUGE angry arguments break out over who is right and people stop listening to each other. Tumblr was divided into 3 Camps. Camp A: Feminist only. They claimed that Rodger killed those women because society trains men to believe that they are entitled to women sexually as if they are prizes for having a penis. Camp B: Psychologists only. According to them, mental illness is to blame specifically Aspergers, likely combined with a conduct disorder. Camp C (a statistically null camp) was (mostly) men who only appeared in youtube comments to express their solidarity with Rodgers. They sympathize with the pain of rejection and threaten women to not reject men. For obvious reasons, I will not be defending Camp C though they do play an important role in the discussion.

There is no way the shootings were ONLY because Rodger was a misogynist or ONLY because he may have been mentally ill. I read this transcript of Rodger's suicide video: http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/24/us/elliot-rodger-video-transcript/. Give it a look, his views of women have certainly been molded by our patriarchal society that teaches men to use women. If you're not going to read the whole thing, here's a sample: "You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime, because... I don't know what you don't see in me. " Obviously not the words of the respectful "gentleman" he claims to be 3 lines later. Because tumblr and google exist, I'm not going to take more time to explain why this is definitely a feminist issue that deserves attention as such.

However it is undeniably also an issue of disability and mental illness. Every man gets rejected by someone at some point in his life. Not every man shoots up a school. When someone is "mentally healthy" they do not chose to murder 7 people and then take their own life. That is not a statistically typical reaction to rejection (though it does happen frequently enough that we need to take it seriously). I'm not a psychologist and I did not know Rodger on a personal clinical level, but after reading his suicide transcript, I would venture to guess that he was not emotionally well. And not in a typical, "everyday disappointment" kind of way, but in an antisocial personality disorder kind of way. Thankfully, we are finally starting to give mental illnesses like depression and anxiety validation and understanding. Antisocial personality disorder and other conduct disorders deserve this same visibility. This is a really ugly side of psychological problems. I think we ignore them because they're less common and so uncomfortable to think about. By acknowledging that this Rodger probably suffered from a conduct disorder we are NOT justifying his actions or ignoring the other social factors (such as feminism) at play. Rather, we are looking at the whole picture instead of oversimplifying a complex situation.

Though less of a diagnostic factor, social media has overwhelmingly ignored Rodger's asperger's syndrome diagnosis. A year ago Rodger's parents reported that he was being harassed in school and was pushed off a balcony, potentially by his peers in an act of bullying. His suicide video is all about how the kids he goes to school with are cruel to him. Asperger's is more of a secondary factor, but could this not have been prevented if people  understood more about autism and other diagnosis that severely effect social functioning? I am not saying that Rodger's classmates are at fault or that their deaths are justified. But if we can place blame on the social ill that is the patriarchy, can we not also place some blame our society's ignorance of people with autism spectrum disorders?

Also, gun control. No one is talking about gun control. I'm not going to because I want to focus on the social issues and frankly I haven't researched it enough to form an educated opinion. But again, we are ignoring so many factors in this case.

It upsets me that people are so eager to pick a side and ignore the big picture. Seven people were killed, many more were injured, and one committed suicide. This is far more complex than a battle  between whether this is a feminist or ablest issue. To simplify it to a battle between politics means we are not respecting the situation seriously enough to look at the grey areas that no one is comfortable discussing.

This IS a feminist issue, this IS an issue of mental health awareness, and this IS an issue of gun control. Among countless other factors that I'm not going to go into detail about.

With that said, I would love to hear your thoughts if you disagree with my point of view on this whole thing. But please, lets make it a discussion rather than an accusation.

Kait