Mental Illness & A Need to Fit In

In case you were wondering about the origins of the recently trending #YesAllWomen hashtag on Twitter, it was begun in reaction to the Santa Barbara tragedy in which 22-year-old Elliot Rodger went on a shooting rampage killing 7 people to exact 'retribution' (as he mentioned in a YouTube video before doing it) on all the women who'd rejected him over the course of his life. The tragedy brings into limelight the fact that a sense of entitlement to women's bodies is a harsh global reality.

The hashtag was spawned from another hashtag on the social network – #NotAllMen – which was accompanied by rants dismissing the issue of violence against women and misogyny in society, completely ignoring the fact that not all men have criminal tendencies towards women but all women do face violence in some form or another over the course of their lives.

Ignoring the elephant in the room

While the media is having a field day with the story, presenting the facts as they see fit to sell the most content coming out of their stables, the elephant in the room has been easily overlooked – Rodger was mentally ill. And why isn't this being emphasized? Because one man's mental illness is not an entire society's problem, but the moment it affects them in some way (Read: hate crimes. In this case, hatred against women) everyone sits up and takes note. 

Had he gotten the help he needed, 7 lives would have been saved. And his family realized he needed mental help. Rodger’s mother, Li Chin has described Elliot as a “high-functioning autistic child” ever since he was 8 years old. Cathleen Bloeser, whose son knew Elliot from elementary school, said he was an “emotionally troubled” boy who would go over to their house and just hide. This is not saying that mentally ill people go around killing people. Sociopaths fall on a spectrum of non-violent to extremely violent. It's still upto the individual to decide his plan of action. Read about his life here.

Add to that the normal issue faced by teens to fit in with the crowd of people their own age. High school is a difficult terrain to navigate the world over, and you will be ridiculed for the silliest reason. In this case, it was his inability to get women to date or devirginize him. He grew up in an environment that measured his worth as a man based on how many women he "scored", i.e. an environment which conditioned him to believe that it was normal (and even necessary) to view women as objects to be won over. 

While he clearly hated women, his hatred for all of mankind can't be ignored either, putting him into the category of misanthropists. Men and women were his target on his self-described "day of retribution".