i wish
controlled by guns
I don’t know why there’s not more discussion about the connection between entitlement and mass shootings. “Something went wrong in my life, something didn’t go the way I wanted it to, I deserve everything to go my way, and when it doesn’t, other people deserve to pay for what I didn’t get.” It’s sickening and it’s in the way men are raised and treated. To those men – the quiet majority – who do not exert their entitlement-from-birth to throw acid in the faces of women who’ve rejected them, ruin the lives of wives who leave them, or gun down random strangers who somehow owe them because life is unkind – I salute you. We need you. Speak up.
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I have come across women with a sense of entitlement too. It seems to be very common in the younger generation. Who bought this arsehole his BMW? He pretty certainly didn’t work to get it! No doubt his parents indulged his every whim. And when the girls wouldn’t fuck him, he decides to throw the biggest tantrum ever.
Sure, but men greatly outnumber women where a sense of entitlement leads to murder. The statistics are shameful and blame can’t be shifted to women or the young. All good men should speak up. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/18/my-wife-was-murdered-by-a-monster-but-most-perpetrators-of-violence-are-normal-guys
True, Steve. Well said, Stephanie. Look at our bloated & inflated lifestyle – “us” as in people who have refrigerators, throw food away, drive cars, own more than four pairs of shoes. We are all over-entitled and the whole mass of it is causing destruction & death. But men seem to be the ones who transmute their entitlement into direct murder of spouses, ex spouses, if the spouse is unreachable then their children, and strangers.
I don’t think it’s entitlement, I think it’s powerlessness, with accompanying tendency to punish someone even further down the food chain, or more helpless (which in these cases just means people without guns). Definitely a lack of empathy/ability to see from others’ viewpoints in these mass killings, whether that’s pathological or societal. I don’t think most of the kids doing this stuff come from an entitled state, but from a very messed up one. Theres definitely something wrong with the way these boys are brought up, but it would seem to be a very different mindset than an entitled view of the world–more an embittered outsider view, fuelled by everyday and entertainment violence.
No gender has a monopoly on a sense of entitlement or beastliness to other humans but if it’s more prevalent in one gender then it’s a fair thing to look at how the different genders develop in our society to get an understanding of what’s going on. Let’s not confuse that with blame or exoneration of anyone based on their gender. You can also get some clues, I believe, when you try to live differently. Personally it’s a culture of passive consumption that is mostly responsible. But for passive consumption to work best you have to have people thinking that they magically deserve all the things and experiences that money can buy. Oh, that and believing that the sense of alienation you get from passive consumption can be remedied by more passive consumption. Try bucking that system and you begin to appreciate what’s keeping it in place. Get involved in your community and there are all sorts of vested interests that keep telling you to get out of the way. I think these poor people find themselves caught in a race to fulfillment in which they can’t possibly compete but also can’t escape. So they go a bit stupid, break the rules, and try to steal the prize. To me, blaming genders just distracts from this understanding (which I will admit is just my best theory) and keeps the whole alienating system going while we fight it out between ourselves.
ugh, I’m so sick of hearing the NOT ALL MEN and BUT WOMEN TOO arguments in the face of statistics. WE KNOW. STOP DERAILING OUR CONCERNS.
Yes, yes, yes! Thank you, Alexandra. From an article in PolicyMic linked below: “All but one of the mass murders in the U.S. over the last 30 years has been committed by men. The fact that gender is often omitted from the story speaks to how we still see the masculine as the irreproachable and invisible standard. As Michael Kimmel notes in his extensive research on school shootings, if the genders were reversed and most school shootings were committed by women, you’d bet gender would be part of the analysis.
“We often instead shift the conversation to ‘mental illness’ and describe shooters as madmen, while the characteristics they exhibit are often an extension of toxic masculinity ideals that are institutionally reinforced.”
http://www.policymic.com/articles/89905/what-elliot-rodger-said-about-women-reveals-why-we-need-to-stamp-out-misogyny
It really is.
Then again I wonder why hasn’t it happened before. It’s like one of those violent misogynist video games come to life.
mhm.
It’s very disturbing that this is a gender based hate crime ????