BY EMILY MALONE
(Photo: Derek Bridges via flickr)
Trigger warning: violence against women.
Late Friday night in California, Elliot Rodger, 22, shot dead six people, wounded a further 13, then turned his gun on himself.
Publications around the world were quick to report that Rodger was mentally ill. He was diagnosed with high-functioning Aspergers as a child, and his family confirmed that he was receiving psychiatric support.
What many media outlets neglected was that this man’s actions stemmed from a noxious culture of entitlement and misogyny. The silence of this one sentence excuses his actions as the result of a deranged, troubled young man, instead of addressing the deep-rooted societal problems of male privilege.