Welp, an allegedly mentally ill MRA groupie went and shot up a bunch of women last night because none of them would fuck him. I can’t post his manifesto video here because it makes me nauseous, but for a list of Elliot Rodgers’ self-proclaimed reasons for murdering women, namely because they were not fulfilling their responsibility of having sex with him, you can type any combination of the above or below words and find it easily.

First, the press said he was mentally ill. And he may have been, or at least he was said to be undergoing treatment for a mental health issue. Then Twitter went nuts, because apparently, even though not all mentally ill people are violent, suggesting that one mentally ill person is violent is an insult to the mentally ill.

Then the argument became that white violence is frequently stamped with mental illness (doesn’t happen often with non-white violence, which is true), and that if Elliot Rodgers had been, say, Middle Eastern, the press would have lunged at the terrorist action question.

Then the argument became about the MRA community in general, which is pretty fucking disgusting but I don’t think it’s the entire problem (although it is insidious, especially for dejected lame-o’s like Elliot Rodgers, and probably contributed the most out of any other factor).

Of course not all MRAs or PUAs are murderous psychopaths who act out revenge fantasies on the gender that spurned them. That’s crazy. Plenty of assholes and misogynists live out perfectly non-violent lives wherein the most vile parts of their personalities play out relatively harmlessly in odious subreddit threads. I’d even say that this description fits the majority of people in this community, and I’d also argue that blaming a few shitty YouTube channels and comment trolls for one individual’s killing spree is about as responsible as blaming GTA for a kid gunning down his classmates during lunch (ahem, it is not responsible).

But this doesn’t change the fact that the ideology surrounding this community is harmful, and that very, very many of its members fail to understand the connection between actual violence and the centuries-old subjugation of women. The latter of which is 100% what they’re advocating, by the way. And even though Elliot Rodgers probably did not have the firmest grip on reality, he was also immersed in a culture that espouses the total inferiority of women and reduces them to playthings for the majorly deluded, extremely sexist shit-for-brains who have determined it is their right as males to control them.

These are the same men who speak of the friendzone as though it is an evil female plot to emasculate men and rob them of their divine right to control the universe. Because to them – and this is at the root of their entire fucking existence – it is a woman’s responsibility to fuck them. She is required to do it. And no matter how a woman feels about that, whether or not she wants to fuck anybody at all or is even attracted to them in particular, is irrelevant, because obviously, women are nothing but machines into which a man can put kindness and favors until sex comes out. It is inconceivable to these men that women are not obligated to feel grateful for their sexually motivated attention, because they still can’t wrap their piggy heads around the reality that their sheer virility is not enough to attract most women, and this fact – instead of the expectation that we’re all stuck-up bitches if we decline or just fucking ignore them – and their inability to process it might lie at the heart of their problems.

Elliot Rodgers failed to understand this, quite possibly because the community he’d found told him so, instructed this impressionable, frustrated virgin, that a woman’s will is a man’s to control, and any woman who denies this deserves to be punished. Even if they didn’t order outright murder, they still espouse the philosophy that a woman is not a person, she is a plaything. And it is very hard to feel human compassion for a thing.

Let me be clear, dudes. This is not the way it works. I am not required to have sex with anyone, ever. Not a single woman on the planet is, either. Any belief that we are or that our refusal to do so is somehow tantamount to devious trickery to strip you of your (in the words of Louis C.K.) several hundred years of “unchecked privilege” is identical to the thought process of a rapist.

Let me be clear, women. Any man who suggests that his friendship entitles him to fuck you is operating under the same thought process as a rapist. You should not feel as though you must be “nice” to any man who is hitting on you. You should not feel afraid to simply turn away or tell him to leave you alone. You should never worry that turning down a creepy fucking asshole like Elliot Rodgers will get you killed, but unfortunately, last night proved that it can still happen.

The MRAs will compare themselves to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on their subreddits (yes, seriously) in their pledge to overcome this issue. But you do not have to remain complicit. You can recognize a problem even if they refuse to. You can put any motherfucker on blast if you want. You can report them for stalking, for harassment, or for menacing you. You can protect and defend yourself, no matter what these supreme idiots say.