What’s particularly irritating about the narrative surrounding these shootings is the idea that the shooter went crazy because he was lonely and women rejected him. The NYTimes story has quotes about how he was a good-looking guy who should therefore have been able to find someone to have sex with him. A really repulsive take, via Jezebel, can be found here, at a blog where the author espouses the theory that “The Game” can save lives. For the unfamiliar — and if you are unfamiliar, I envy you — “The Game” is a douchebag pick-up manual for dudes who want to go from “frustrated chumps” to ******* womanizers. I’m familiar with it mostly through having come across a few “pick-up artists” in my day — usually easy to spot by their habit of “negging,” which basically means that they say something vaguely insulting, because chicks like that. You can get a pretty good sense of how these dudes view women when you read this guy’s Female Market Value Test. I almost feel bad linking this guy’s blog because he’s so pathetic, but maybe all the page-views will boost his ad sales and help him afford a new Ed Hardy t-shirt. Anyway, dude says that “The Game” could have saved lives — because if only George Sodini had gotten laid, he wouldn’t have shot up a gym and murdered three women.
Well… no. Sodini was clearly an unbalanced and aggressive man who fixated on women and blamed them for his problems. The same cultural misogyny that enabled Sodini to blame women for his own social ineptitude and aggression also underwrites “The Game,” and informs people like Roissey’s interactions with women. It glorifies male dominance and relies on male entitlement. And, notably, it relies on there being a class of less-dominant men to serve as contrast to the alpha males — it’s not exactly looking out for the whole of the Brotherhood.
Hating women comes in a variety of forms. Sodini’s was certainly one extreme, but perhaps people like Roissey and other “pick-up artists” who hold dehumanzing views of women — and, equally troubling, glorify a shallow caricature of masculinity — would do well to look in the mirror and see how their actions also contribute to a larger culture of misogyny.
