I haven't been hanging around here much lately, but as I was reading this article about the Isla Vista killings I came across a reference to this Daily Kos diary which linked the killings to the Men's Right Movement. I was surprised by the reference because I had just finished reading all 140 pages of the alleged killer's Manifesto and I hadn't noticed any such link. Because maybe I'm one of the relatively few people with the inclination to actually read the full length of the document, I thought maybe I'd shed a bit of light on how men's rights might fit inti the bigger context of the event.
Let me say right off the bat that attempting to explain his horrific actions is not in any way an attempt to justify them. If it doesn't go without saying that killing six innocent people in cold blood is an act to be condemned in the strongest terms possible no matter what set of circumstances led to it, then please let me say it: killing six innocent people in cold blood is an act to be condemned in the strongest terms possible no matter what set of circumstances let to it.
It's also probably worth addressing the criticism that it's either pointless or counterproductive to take seriously the musings of one of these mass killers. I might tend to agree, except that we seem to have already crossed that bridge. I also think that in this particular case, Rodger did us the favor of leaving a pretty extensive view into his state of mind in committing this atrocity, and so maybe in promoting a more widespread accurate understanding of what led him to it maybe we can help prevent other similar things from happening in the future.
I'll also preface this with the statement that I'll address the manifesto in terms of how it reflects his subjective state of mind, not the objective truth. There is no way of me knowing what is true and what is not in his writings, but we know it is the truth of how he saw things. I will mention however that everything in the manifesto has so far been corroborated by the facts currently known.
Men's Rights
There aren't any direct mentions of the men's rights movement/issue, and he doesn't cite it as the source of any of his thinking. Given that he repeatedly complains about the degree to which his father's custody rights negatively impacted him, I would think he'd also be relatively unsympathetic to what I understand to be the biggest goal/complaint of that movement. I gather from the aforementioned diary that his sense that he somehow "deserved" or was "entitled" to the affections of women reflects his exposure to men's rights. I think that's probably misplaced. This isn't a person who'd been on dates and then got frustrated because "chicks wouldn't give it up". We're talking about someone who doesn't report having any social interactions with girls/women whatsoever. No dates, no kisses, no spurned advances, no getting turned down for a dance or a date. In 140 pages there is just nothing. Zilch. I guess if men's rights is just a stand in for misogyny in general, then, yes, you could say he was a part of it. This guy developed an extreme hatred of women, of humanity in general, but specifically women. He speaks almost uniformly highly of his mother and grandmother, particularly the role they played in his early life, but his perceived humiliation at the hands of girls and women ends up completely dominating any positive feelings that might have lingered past puberty. Some of the most insane passages in his tract (out of many) involve him fantasizing about becoming a "divine ruler" who would banish first sex and then women from human society.
Family Problems
He had a troubled family life but well within the norm of 21st Century America. His parents divorced when he was 7, he never got along with his father's new wife (who starred recently in the French version of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills true story), and his relationship with his father suffered as a result. But again, that's not particularly unusual. By and large he enjoyed caring responsible parents.
Asperger's
He doesn't mention this directly but the family's attorney confirmed that he had been diagnosed with it some years earlier. Asperger's is described in the press report as a "highly-functional form of autism characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication." Of course, there isn't a link between Asperger's and violence of any kind, much less mass murder, but when you read his account of his life, it's obvious that he is struggling with extremely "significant difficulties in social interaction". He expresses deepening extreme frustration with his inability to get a girlfriend, but there are no accounts of him even starting down that path by even so much as talking to a girl/woman for whom he has feelings. He attributes his problems to girls/women not finding him attractive, but even if he's not going to be getting work as a stunt double for Brad Pitt anytime soon, he's also not exactly the Elephant Man. Guys with far fewer genetic assets than himself manage to at least find themselves in conversatiins with members of the opposite sex by the age of 22. Something else was certainly going on there, preventing him from engaging in even the most basic of social interactions.
Race
The media probably won't touch the racial subtext of this story with a ten foot pole, but it's inescapable when you read the manifesto. Rodger is Eurasian, but he exclusively desires tall, blonde girls and women. He is envious and jealous of the white surfer/jock type guys who he sees constantly and effortlessly enjoying the affections of these girls, but he really most seethes with anger when he sees a black, "full-blooded" Asian, or Mexican guy with one of them. Meanwhile, not once does he ever mention desiring or admiring the beauty of an Asian girl/women, or any other woman of color. It's a very toxic stew of racism and self-hatred. He certainly didn't do himself any favors in this respect by moving to Isla Vista, which is probably has the densest concentration of exactly what frustrated him most in Earth. In this I do assign some blame to his parents -- they don't seem to have ever made any effort to introduce him to any environments where he might gain a positive view of his Asian (Chinese) heritage, or even just a more urbane, cosmopolitan environment, despite that he lived most of his life barely 10 miles away from the largest concentration of Chinese people and the second largest city in the U.S. His whole world was defined by and limited to the affluent, predominantly white West San Fernando Valley suburbs where he grew up and Isla Vista.
Gaming
Again, obviously millions of people enjoy computer games as a healthy diversion, but it's also obvious that for Rodger it was not. Early in high school, he began to obsessively play World of Warcraft, and ended up spending most of his days and nights immersed in its virtual world rather than developing his academic and social skills in the "real world". I'm sure it didn't help him with his inability to attract a girlfriend. Whether the violence in the game had anything to do with the atrocity is I suppose anyone's guess.
Materialism
Rodgers was intensely materialistic. He lived very much on the edge between poverty and plenty. His mom following the divorce lived for a time in what Rodger deemed the "low-class" Canoga Park neighborhood, while his father had some ups and downs, but mostly lived nicely in a large house in the hills near Calabasas. He had no money of his own, but living where he did, he often found himself in the company of people worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He coveted wealth and constantly expressed disdain for those lacked it. Unfortunately for him the only plan that he could formulate to obtain the wealth he so desperately coveted was to play the lottery, even if he had to drive to Arizona to buy a ticket to the larger Powerball lottery. He wasted hundreds maybe thousands of dollars in the process. When his mother improved her financial status somewhat and bought him a late model BMW he was surprised that it didn't improve his luck with women.
Bullying
Rodger reports several significant incidents of verbal and physical bullying. He reports having to withdraw from Taft High School after being physically assaulted nearly continuously for the week he attended school there. He reports a number of other specific and influential incidents verbal bullying, including by girls. He reports being physically weak and easily intimidated physically. Again, plenty of people are bullied who don't resort to mass murder, but the link between bullying and these kinds of incidents has been talked about extensively.
Heightism
Rodger reports being shorter than everyone in some of his classes, "including the girls", and seems to have really struggled with the issue throughout his life.
Gun Control
On the one hand, most of his victims were either stabbed or run over, so you could say the gun issue was insignificant. On the other hand, he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would have found a way to obtain guns illegally, so maybe the availability of legal guns did play a role. Regardless, it's certainly one more argument for tightening up the relationship between law enforcement, mental health, and gun permitting.
Mental Health System Failure
Rodger reports a number of interactions with mental health professionals, as well as other social service agencies. His parents called the police to report that they were concerned, and the police actually showed up at his house barely a month ago . . . after he had ended up there following a beating he received at a fraternity house that resulted in his having been seriously injured and which he was found to have instigated. Is there not some database even within that department that would raise a red flag based on those facts?
Politics
Rodger doesn't mention any particular political movements or issues, but he does articulate a fascist personal philosophy, whereby as mentioned above he believes that a divine ruler such as himself should take over the government backed by thousands of "fanatical" follower/soldiers and then ban sex and confine women to concentration camps, killing most and using the rest strictly for breeding via artificial insemination.
Those are the factors that I think were involved in this horrific event. As you can see, i think "men's rights" probably played a relatively insignificant role, but I welcome a good discussion of other ways of looking at it in the comments.
10:22 AM PT: I think I forgot my own qualifying statements in the introduction by the time I got to the last paragraph. I don't know the true role that men's rights may or may not have had in this event. My purpose was to report on what I learned from having read the manifesto and from what I can tell, the manifesto itself does not provide much evidence for a significant role for men's rights.