Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: sad
  • Music: Halestorm, "Freak Like Me."

So very tired of the uphill battle.

I spent much of the weekend looking in horror at the news, and at Twitter, and at everything else. A man murdered seven people and injured thirteen others before killing himself, explicitly because he couldn't get women to have sex with him. That's horrifying. That's upsetting and disgusting and wrong.

And then the people started saying "we'll never know why he did it," and I sort of lost my shit and had to go away for a few days.

He actually SAYS, IN SO MANY WORDS, that this is because he hates women. Because women will not give him the sex he so clearly deserves. Because "inferior men" are getting the women he should have. Because women have too much control (IE, the ability to say "no, I do not want to have sex with you"), and so the appropriate response is killing them to death.

But we'll never know why he did it.

A lot of people have said very good, sensible, logical things. Things that point out the power imbalance and the assumptions based on his apparent whiteness (he was half-Malaysian and half-Caucasian) and the fact that if someone shoots basically any other group of people on the planet, we're damn fast to accept that they did it because of hatred, but that when a man shoots a bunch of women, we'll look for any excuse but misogyny. I have not been able to say anything good, or sensible, or logical. Maybe I'll be able to in a week or two. But right now...

Right now, I look at the mounting number of incidents where "she wouldn't have the sex with me" has been used as an excuse for murder, and I'm just tired. That's all. I'm tired of the entitlement, and I'm tired of the assumptions, and I'm tired of the "not ALL men" response whenever someone says "misogyny kills."

I'm tired. No cookies today.
Tags: cranky blonde is cranky, depression, state of the blonde
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  • 96 comments

rhoda_rants

May 29 2014, 16:31:15 UTC 3 years ago

Zombie Cake? Multiple options, looks like.

We are all tired. The "not ALL men" thing reeks of "Meeee, Meeeee, look at MEEEEEE" and more insidiously "I'm a nice guy, you should have the sex with MEEEE."

To which the response has been a completely reasonable, "Fuck OFF this isn't about YOU." Because seriously. We KNOW that. Good men exist. This is not news. We are talking about the ones who perpetuate this sort of shit. There's no need to remind us that not all men kill women. WE KNOW. The issue is that men still need a reminder that ALL women experience some form of misogyny. All of them.

ankewehner

May 29 2014, 16:35:26 UTC 3 years ago

I really liked one rebuttal for the "Not all men" kind of reasoning. I wish I knew who posted it first.

"Imagine a bowl of M&Ms. 10% of them are poisoned. Go ahead, eat a handful. Not all of them are poisoned."

pbrim

May 29 2014, 17:22:09 UTC 3 years ago

Can you believe that some people are responding to that with "That's your problem -- If you start going with men by the handful, you've got to expect some of them are going to be poison. Take some responsibility! You only need one, and you need to pick him carefully!"

Of course that ignores the fact that there are "handfuls" of men in your classroom/workplace, on the bus with you, in the grocery store with you, passing you on the street, etc.

ankewehner

May 29 2014, 17:41:51 UTC 3 years ago

-_-

I've seen guys point to the massacre and go, "see, girls? Keep that in mind before you say no to a guy next time, or it might happen to you", and worse, so I'm inclined to believe pretty much everything in that vein.

Women just can't win. If we pick carefully, we a) are sexist for not thinking every man might be a rapist and b) we're responsible for mass shootings by "sexually frustrated" guys. If we don't, we're sluts, and/or it's our fault if the guy we end up with is abusive.

I wonder if looking for a girlfriend is safer.

rhoda_rants

May 29 2014, 18:18:50 UTC 3 years ago

I wonder if looking for a girlfriend is safer.
Heh. Y'know, I thought about making a joke like, "That's why you reach for the Skittles instead!" but it felt like perpetuating another myth I'm not wild about. Still. . .

ldyerzsie

June 5 2014, 18:16:22 UTC 3 years ago

The problem I have is that NO ONE said "no" to him. HE NEVER ACTUALLY ASKED.

People who LIKED him said he was so reserved as to be off-putting.

He EXPECTED hot women to just rip off their clothes and throw themselves at him. And he couldn't understand why they wouldn't behave in that manner.

In short, the real world did not meet up to his expectations.

Deleted comment

dornbeast

May 29 2014, 18:46:35 UTC 3 years ago

I just realized, the kicker is that the poison isn't the type you eat.

It's contact poison. So if you come in contact with the wrong M&M, you're in trouble.

And it spreads to the other M&Ms.

ckd

May 29 2014, 20:51:35 UTC 3 years ago Edited:  May 29 2014, 20:51:58 UTC

Plate of cookies. Some of them are fine, some of them were made with laxatives instead of chocolate chips, a couple of them are laced with cyanide, and another two are visibly moldy...while the rest of the cookies are saying "just eat around the mold! It's no big deal!"

tylik

May 29 2014, 23:10:36 UTC 3 years ago

What's a little mold? Those are Nice Cookies. What are you, shallow?

harmfulguy

May 29 2014, 19:54:07 UTC 3 years ago Edited:  May 29 2014, 20:07:16 UTC

Pretty sure the M&M's thing originated with The Frogman.