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

caoilfhionn

May 29 2014, 17:53:12 UTC 3 years ago

So very with you. I was trying to explain it to my (generally clueful) guy, and he just doesn't grok. Doesn't understand what it's like when every media outlet and social media site is full of this one horrible thing that the world is trying to write off as just one disturbed person, and I follow a link to watch some happy people dancing and the links in the sidebars are 2/3 horrible incidents of violence against women that US media hasn't even mentioned. And I am editing a story that treats violence and control as sexy and desirable without really thinking it through, and it's squicking me out, especially now. So tired.

Rest is good. Defending space is good. I don't have cats of my own, but I think I'll borrow a couple this weekend. And there is chocolate beer and scotch that tastes like bog bodies. And I will make something lovely and put it into the world as some small counter to the exhaustion, I think.

Hang in there.

rhoda_rants

May 30 2014, 01:40:28 UTC 3 years ago

I'm glad people like you and gehayi are working at the pre-print level to do something about this. I've been troubled by the Dangerous, Controlling and Violent = Sexy trend for a good long while. In fact I just did a whole meta post on the subject, which I originally started before the whole spree killing / #YesAllWomen thing, so it turned out being more timely than I thought. It's mainly me gushing about Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, but also wondering why more "romantic" heroes aren't just, y'know. Decent human beings. (I'm also eager for book recs, from anymore more well-read in the genre than me.)