We need to talk about Elliot Rodger
On the 23rd of May 2004, a young 22-year-old boy woke up and, that afternoon in his apartment stabbed his roommate George Chen 94 times, his second roommate Cheng Hong 25 times, and a third visitor Weihang Wan 15 times. Following this, he took his laptop, entered his BMW 328i coupe, and drove to Starbucks to purchase a coffee before, later that evening, driving to Alpha Phi sorority house at The University of California Santa Barbara with intentions of slaughtering everyone in the building. Failing to gain entry, he opened fire at three passing sorority sisters, killing two. He then re-entered his BMW, drove up Pardall Road and fired into an empty coffee shop as well as a Delhi, killing another student. After ramming several other pedestrians along Isla Vista police finally caught up to him and proceeded to exchange fire with the 22-year-old. They managed to shoot into the passenger's side and wound him in the hip. The night, which would come to be known as the Isla Vista Massacre, ended with the 22-year-old taking his own life with a bullet to the head.Infelizmente, tiroteios em massa dessa natureza não são particularmente raros. No entanto, ao contrário da maioria dos atiradores em massa, o jovem de 22 anos, cujo nome é Elliot Rodger, tinha um canal no Youtube (que ainda está no ar) junto com um manifesto de 142 páginas detalhando exatamente por que ele escolheu cometer esse crime hediondo que ele cunhou o "Dia da Retribuição".
In his own words: “I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts. I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender”. Today, I will be looking at the body issues described by Elliot Rodger in his manifesto – namely his height, race, and masculinity. For each of the three body issues I'll be analyzing the poor – and eventually deadly – ways Elliot Rodger chose to deal with them which all involve a lust for power in order to reassert his masculinity. Due to the fact that Elliot Rodger had a history of mental illness prior it may be a futile task to try to find sense in his actions. However, I still think the fact that his mental illness manifested in such extreme misogyny is indicative of the society he grew up in and thus makes him a worthy subject of study.
Height
One of the insecurities that constantly come up in Elliot's manifesto is his height. It's spoken of so intensely that it borders on obsession. From a young age Elliot believes that he is smaller than the rest of his peers and, as a result, often feels inferior, intimidated, disempowered and dominated by everyone around him. One of the shining examples from the manifesto that mark the beginnings of Elliot's height anxiety is when he visits Universal Studios and is too short to board the amusement rides: Elliot writes: “The ride that I was so excited to enjoy at the theme park was forbidden to me. I immediately fell into a crying tantrum, and my mother had to comfort me. Being denied entry on a simple amusement park ride due to my height may seem like only a small injustice, but it was big for me at time. Little did I know, this injustice was very small indeed compared to all the things I'll be denied in the future because of my height.”
From this incident we see the seeds of his insecurities being sown. What was in actual fact a simple safety measurement put in place for practical reasons, Elliot Rodger interpreted as society telling him that because of his height he would be cordoned off from some of the joys of life. The feelings of inferiority that arise from this complex are revealed in another incident that occurs when young Elliot goes on camp is bullied by a taller girl. Surprisingly, Rodger is quite a descriptive writer is able to express his feelings quite eloquently. When speaking on the incident, he writes: “It made me feel like an insignificant, unworthy little mouse. I felt so small and vulnerable.”
It's clear that his height was a notable source of anxiety. One of the ways this manifests in his life is through an intense jealousy for men taller than him who were successful with women. In Elliot's own words: “Jealousy and envy… those are two feelings that would dominate my entire life and bring me immense pain.”. Elliot's younger brother Jazz becomes one of the biggest targets of Elliot's jealousy. When he speaks about his brother, Elliot rodger says “I realized how much different my brother Jazz was from me at that age. While I was shy, short, and physically weak; Jazz was tall for his age and very social. He had no problem going up to other boys at the playground and making instant friends. I began to form a bitter envy towards him, though I hid it really well. My little brother had all the potential to grow up to be a popular kid and live the life I was never able to live. I cursed the world for granting my little brother Jazz so many more advantages than me.”. His jealousy grows so intense that in Elliot Rodger's initial plan for the Day of Retribution, he had intended to first drive to his stepmother's house and kill Jazz because he couldn't bear to have his brother grow up and surpass him. Luckily, things didn't go as planned, Elliot never went to his stepmother's house and Jazz was spared.
Elliot's jealousy isn't completely unexpected.
Elliot seems to cope with the inferiority complex arising from his height anxiety by embracing an extreme narcissism as a defensive mechanism. He puts on a façade of an extremely confident individual, calls himself the “supreme gentleman” and convinces himself that he is a god amongst men. However, what strikes me as the most confusing detail is that Elliot Rodger was actually 5'9 or 175cm. The average height for an American male is 5'10 making him a negligible one inch below the average. This leads me to suspect that a lot of the perceived heightism he experienced might have been in his own head.
Race
Unfortunately, height is one of Elliot's more benign insecurities. The second body issue that surfaces in his manifesto is his race. With a Caucasian father and Asian mother Elliot Rodger was mixed race, something he was far from happy about. He believed that due to his mixed-race status, he was being rejected by his peers. As Elliot Rodger says: “On top of this was the feeling that I was different because I am of mixed race. I am half White, half Asian, and this made me different from the normal fully-white kids that I was trying to fit in with.
This form of self-hate due to race can be seen as a form of internalized racism which can be defined as “an individual's conscious and unconscious acceptance of a racial hierarchy in which whites are consistently ranked above People of Colour”. One of the ways this internalized racism is expressed is through an idolization of the white race. Throughout the manifesto, he expresses a fetishization of whiteness, especially tall, blonde white females who are often the subject of his sexual fantasies.
He tends to cope with this internalised racism not by empowering himself but by denigrating others. He tends to find races he believes to be lower than him on the social hierarchy and imposes on them the same discrimination and prejudice he feels he has been subjected to. One of the most disturbing times this occurs is when, in college, Elliot hears a black student talk about how he lost his virginity to a blonde white girl at age 13. Elliot snaps, runs to his room and cries before calling his mother and crying to her on the phone. He expresses his extreme racism when he says: “How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have s*x with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I've had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice!”
A similar incident occurs when Elliot Rodger goes out to a restaurant with his father and finds a Mexican man with white blonde female. The sight alone of an interracial relationship infuriates him and he is further enraged by the fact that he believes that he, as a half-white male, was worthier of the blonde. When expressing his frustrations, Elliot says: How could an inferior Mexican guy be able to date a white blonde girl, while I was still suffering as a lonely virgin? I was ashamed to be in such an inferior position in front my father. When I saw the two of them kissing, I could barely contain my rage. I stood up in anger, and I was about to walk up to them and pour my glass of soda all over their heads. I probably would have, if father wasn't there. I was seething with envious rage, and my father was there to watch it all. It was so humiliating. I wasn't the son I wanted to present to my father. I should be the one with the hot blonde girl, making my father proud. Instead, my father had to watch me suffer in a pathetic position.”
Masculinity
The third anxiety that Elliot Rodger mentions is his masculinity which I believe may have been at the centre of all his other issues. Everything else he mentions from his height to his virginity seem to offend him because they draw away from his masculinity. He often compares himself to his male peers and feels as though he doesn't size up to them. He also sees girls rejecting him as an attack on his masculinity. To Elliot, s*x and having a girlfriend were rites of passage into manhood and failing to achieve those things while his peers did inspired feeling of inferiority within him. In the ninth grade Elliot hears his friend talking about losing his virginity and upon hearing this he says: “I felt so inferior to him, and I hated him.”
In Elliot's mental landscape masculinity becomes a constant competition and failing to acquire the tokens of masculinity was a sign of failure and something to be ashamed of. Thus, because of his virginity, Elliot believed that other men didn't view him as a peer. Elaborating on this idea, Elliot says: “I had to suffer the shame of other boys respecting me less because I didn't get any girls. Everyone knew I was a virgin. Everyone knew how undesirable I was to girls, and I hated everyone just for knowing it. I want people to think that girls adore me. I want to feel worthy.”. The unfortunate thing is that Elliot's anxiety may not be completely unfounded. Throughout his manifesto examples can be found of Elliot being mocked by his male peers which points to the fact Elliot may very well have been genuinely persecuted for not living up to societal standards of masculinity.
Interestingly, Elliot makes up for his emasculation by aggressively performing masculinity in other ways mainly through the desire for the acquisition and control of resources. Shopping for clothing becomes a therapeutic habit for Elliot as he believes buying expensive clothing will make women like him better. Of course relating to others is much more complex than that and as a result Elliot's plans to get a girlfriend by wearing expensive clothing fails. He also develops a weird obsession with the lottery, going so far as to travel to other states when the jackpot was big enough. Again, he believes that by becoming rich he will be respected and girls will like him more.
Due to his constant social failure and perceived emasculation, Elliot Rodger grows an obsession with power which ultimately leads to the Isla Vista Mass Shooting. From the manifesto it becomes evident that Elliot's motivation for the mass shooting was to make himself feel heard and feel powerful and the only way he believed he could do that was through an act of terror. As the manifesto proceeds and the perceived rejections pile on, the character of Elliot grows much darker, much more interested in controlling others and the misogyny and violent fantasies grow more frequent.
It is my belief that Elliot's masculinity issues and subsequent desire for power were key pieces in why he wanted to enact the “Day of Retribution”. All the previously mentioned incidents Elliot viewed as society conspiring against him and deeming him unworthy. Thus, his attack was a way of reasserting himself and proving he was a powerful person. Elliot Rodger himself says that much in his manifesto. In perhaps his most lucid explanation for his motivations, he writes: Women's rejection of me was a declaration of war. They insulted me by deeming me inferior of their love and s*x. They hate me, and I will return that hatred one-thousand fold. I will inflict suffering on everyone in Isla Vista, just like they have made me suffer. In the past, I have always been at their mercy, and I was given none. On the Day of Retribution, everyone will be at my mercy, and in turn I will show them no mercy at all. My Retribution will be so devastating that it will shake the very foundations of the world.”
In conclusion, what Elliot had planned for the day of retribution was far worse than what had actually happened and his plan reads like a maniac's fantasy for power. He originally intended to sever the heads of his victims and roll them on the street so that everyone would respect him as a god. How Elliot Rodger's mental illnesses manifested tell us a lot about the narratives that society had made available to him for his ideas weren't born in an isolated mind but one which was, like all other minds, entrenched in the paradigms of the times. From this tragedy, we learn that ideas of women being pawns in the game of masculinity are still very much alive. We also learn that leaving these problems unaddressed and unresolved can have deadly consequences.
Goodbye!
