#NotAllMen Are Dangerous, But #YesAllWomen Live With That Fear

“Women should not have the right to choose who to mate and breed with. That decision should be made for them by rational men of intelligence. If women continue to have rights, they will only hinder the advancement of the human race…There is no creature more evil and depraved than the human female […] The first strike against women will be to put all of them in concentration camps like the plague they are. At these camps, the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved to death […] A few of them would be spared, however, for the sake of reproduction. These women would be kept and bred in secret labs.” -Elliot Rodger

It wasn’t just an issue of perspective, a chip on the shoulder or a bad experience or two in life that drove 22-year-old, Elliot Rodger, to go on a rampage through Isla Vista, the UCSB college community in Santa Barbara, on Friday, May23. Rodger had killed several students before taking his own life because he believed in something that is actually quite prevalent in today’s society. It was the evil blind hatred of women that fueled Rodger’s rage, and this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

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Tormented 15-year-old Felicia Garcia jumped to death in front of train after bullying over sex with football players 

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Three Women Are Murdered by Their Husbands, Boyfriends Every Day in America

Women are harassed, put down, tortured, raped and murdered everyday by boys stuck in the “friend zone” because they don’t want to allow women the choice of who they want to go out with and date. If a woman says no to these boys, she is considered by them to be a prude, a tease, a bitch and deserves whatever ill will is coming toward her, and it isn’t right.

Now, I want to take the time to say this: Not all men harass women, but all women are harassed by men.

Before the rampage, Elliot Rodger authored a manifesto and posted several YouTube videos riddled with with hatred toward women and misogynistic language, and every comment made by members of the media seemed to speak only about how troubled and unstable he was. They mentioned that he was mentally ill and how terrifying it is to not know why or when someone is going to snap, without attributing his committed atrocities as acts of terrorism. To the media, and to the majority of the public, he is just a troubled boy who was frustrated that he couldn’t get a date, and that’s what scares me. It’s that our patriarchal society condones this type of thinking.

Everything Elliot Rodger said in his video is nothing I haven’t seen tweeted or written about online in comment threads. What came after this act of violence, and the comments from boys who have seemed to agree with Rodger’s actions, was a very moving trend on Twitter illuminating the same misogynistic vomit spewed from boys ratifying Rodger’s hatred of women. For days after the rampage, women  began flooding their responses on Twitter using the hashtag #YesAllWomen hoping to open a dialogue and make a change to what is being allowed to take place everyday, and all over the world, in today’s society.

Yes, all women have been harassed. Yes, all women have been judged by our looks, not our merit. Yes, all women have been around men who have discounted, denied and demeaned us. -Petula Dvorak, of The Washington Post

It’s true that #NotAllMen are like Elliot Rodger, but there are millions of other men out there who share the same disgusting view of women that he did, and women deal with this everyday. People turn a blind eye to this ill behavior and sigh that, “boys will be boys,” while women are the ones who are taught how not to get raped instead of boys being taught not to rape women. It both frightens and saddens me that this is all still an issue in 2014, and that when I go out in the world, I both fear and have to keep an eye out for these boys who hate and want to hurt women. My one wish, however, is for all of this to change.

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