On Wednesday, an Idaho high school went under lockdown while the police investigated and arrested a 15-year-old boy for threatening to “kill all the girls” because he harassed the cheerleading team for nude photos and nobody, shocker of shockers, wanted to give him any. In a conversation over social media, he said he had a 12 gauge and a 9 millimeter and that he “hopes everyone writes a good will because [he’s] coming on Friday at 9:30 first period, [he’s] gonna start shooting from B hall down C hall.” This comes right after the Umpqua Community College shooter, Chris Harper-Mercer, ranted about not having a girlfriend in his manifesto.
I wish so deeply I could say I’m surprised but I’m not. Nothing about this story shocks me. The timing is no surprise, given the popularity of copycats of these types of crimes (indeed, the Oregon shooting itself was a copycat of the Elliot Rodgers shooting last year). That this 15-year-old kid wanted to kill a whole lot of people because the cheerleaders wouldn’t give in to his fucked up demands is the latest in a long tradition of vile basement dwellers spewing their misogynist vitriol on the Internet and validating their sick worldviews in others like themselves. 4chan, one of the most popular sites amongst the ilk of Harper-Mercer and this 15-year-old, is a particularly dark corner of this “community.”
Between the sporadic bursts of violent misogyny, there is an ever-simmering undercurrent of white, cis male entitlement that manifests itself in a variety of ways. The “Good Girl Gina” meme, popularized by the “nerd” trolls on Reddit, is a perfect icon for this: the avatar of the perfect woman, Good Girl Gina plays video games with her boyfriend, cooks bacon for her boyfriend, gives her boyfriend blow jobs and anal sex at a moment’s request, and basically does whatever the boyfriend wants. This is of the winners and I didn’t even have to cherry-pick this one:
I’ve talked to a lot of guys who moan that women are typically not as interested in casual sex as men and often both men and women write it off as simply different biological wiring of our brains. Which is bullshit. There are a myriad of reasons why women typically don’t engage in casual sex as much: they bear the bulk of the consequences of sex, i.e. unintended pregnancy, STDs/STIs (which are generally easier for the receiving partner to catch), women generally have a harder time reaching orgasm (an issue that has its own laundry list of reasons), and sexual assault. Women would be far more eager to have casual sex with men if they didn’t have to worry about men shooting them for not giving them exactly what they want, what they are so obviously entitled to have.
Images via Highland High School, Meme Generator
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