Group Identities and Comparisons: Elliot Rodger and 'Nice Guys'
So, let's say you're espousing pride in some sort of group identity. Could be anything: polyamory, communal living, lefthanded people, people who like to retain their underarm hairs, whatever.
It's pretty much inevitable that somebody, sooner or later, is going to react to that with "Oh, so, you people... you folks are like Embarrassing Example X, that's what you're talking about, right?"
Every group has one. If you're trying to promote the idea of polyamory, someone's going to ask if you mean something akin to the early Mormons, and so forth. If you're organizing unpopular kids who get bullied, someone's going to mention Klebold and Harris.
The thing is, the comparison wouldn't be made if there weren't some kind of overlap between what you're trying to talk about and what they're familiar with.
In my case, I found myself wincing when I read some of the descriptions of mass murderer Elliot Rodger: an angry man who was very uncomfortable with taking sexual initiative, and especially angry that male sexual experience was reserved mainly for guys who did. A guy who persisted in seeing this as an external problem, not as a personal problem of his own.
I can't tell you to what extent it's a spurious connection. I don't know all that much about the guy. I've probably read less of what was written about him than the average person, to tell you the truth. But I will say this: to whatever extent there are lots of people with experiences like mine up through my early 20s, that's a fertile soil for bitter anger; and in the absence of a shared identity and a shared understanding of this as a social-political issue, bitter anger tends to seek someone to blame.
It's part of what this is about. No, I'm not saying my book will prevent people like me from growing up to become mass murderers; that would be unduly melodramatic and has no more substantiation than someone equating me and what I'm trying to talk about with Elliot Rodger.
Another Embarrassing Example X that I may be compared to is the so-called "Nice Guys". I think the original send-up of "Nice Guys" was done on the website "Heartless Bitches International" 15-some-odd years ago; the gist of it was that there exist some self-described "nice guys" who are not directly sexually forward but whose motivation for being "nice" to girls is that they anticipate or expect sex as a sort of reward for being nice guys. Perhaps more to the point, they self-identify as "nice guys" usually in the course of complaining that they are underappreciated, that those evil women have the despicable tendency to prefer mean guys who treat them horribly, and that therefore they (the nice guys) should immediately STOP being nice and treat women like shit since that's obviously what they prefer.
I do have a different point of departure than these archetypal fellows: I may be angry about how things are set up but I have no intention of changing my behavior; if we're going to call it "being nice", well, it's not something I'm doing for someone else. And although, yeah, my analysis of the overall situation contains a lot of parallels to what these guys have collectively complained about, it's not women's fault. Women have explained in detail exactly what social prompts and punishments and expectations and so forth have channeled them into those very behaviors and choices, and THEY (the women) were making those explanations as complaints THEMSELVES. But yes, undeniably, on some level and in some sense of the word, it's about the same underlying phenomenon.
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It's pretty much inevitable that somebody, sooner or later, is going to react to that with "Oh, so, you people... you folks are like Embarrassing Example X, that's what you're talking about, right?"
Every group has one. If you're trying to promote the idea of polyamory, someone's going to ask if you mean something akin to the early Mormons, and so forth. If you're organizing unpopular kids who get bullied, someone's going to mention Klebold and Harris.
The thing is, the comparison wouldn't be made if there weren't some kind of overlap between what you're trying to talk about and what they're familiar with.
In my case, I found myself wincing when I read some of the descriptions of mass murderer Elliot Rodger: an angry man who was very uncomfortable with taking sexual initiative, and especially angry that male sexual experience was reserved mainly for guys who did. A guy who persisted in seeing this as an external problem, not as a personal problem of his own.
I can't tell you to what extent it's a spurious connection. I don't know all that much about the guy. I've probably read less of what was written about him than the average person, to tell you the truth. But I will say this: to whatever extent there are lots of people with experiences like mine up through my early 20s, that's a fertile soil for bitter anger; and in the absence of a shared identity and a shared understanding of this as a social-political issue, bitter anger tends to seek someone to blame.
It's part of what this is about. No, I'm not saying my book will prevent people like me from growing up to become mass murderers; that would be unduly melodramatic and has no more substantiation than someone equating me and what I'm trying to talk about with Elliot Rodger.
Another Embarrassing Example X that I may be compared to is the so-called "Nice Guys". I think the original send-up of "Nice Guys" was done on the website "Heartless Bitches International" 15-some-odd years ago; the gist of it was that there exist some self-described "nice guys" who are not directly sexually forward but whose motivation for being "nice" to girls is that they anticipate or expect sex as a sort of reward for being nice guys. Perhaps more to the point, they self-identify as "nice guys" usually in the course of complaining that they are underappreciated, that those evil women have the despicable tendency to prefer mean guys who treat them horribly, and that therefore they (the nice guys) should immediately STOP being nice and treat women like shit since that's obviously what they prefer.
I do have a different point of departure than these archetypal fellows: I may be angry about how things are set up but I have no intention of changing my behavior; if we're going to call it "being nice", well, it's not something I'm doing for someone else. And although, yeah, my analysis of the overall situation contains a lot of parallels to what these guys have collectively complained about, it's not women's fault. Women have explained in detail exactly what social prompts and punishments and expectations and so forth have channeled them into those very behaviors and choices, and THEY (the women) were making those explanations as complaints THEMSELVES. But yes, undeniably, on some level and in some sense of the word, it's about the same underlying phenomenon.
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