I’m on my way out, but I want to briefly tackle this.
We’ve woken up here in the UK to news that a British man, Elliot Rodger, has killed seven people in Santa Barbara. I haven’t seen the YouTube videos, but by all accounts he was unhappy that he was still a virgin after two and a half years at university and this was a contributing reason for him finally snapping.
This really troubles me because it just demonstrates the pressure that is put on young men in todays world. Feminism isn’t just about making things better for women, it’s about breaking down gender stereotypes and combating the behaviours that they help to enforce.
You see, this patriarchal stereotype of the dominant man, it doesn’t just prevent us women from doing and having things that we want, it also stops men like Elliot Rodger from having the kind of life that doesn’t fit into that stereotype. There is absolutely no reason why a man should feel like he has to score with a woman in order to prove himself or some other such shit. There should be no shame in not having had sex. There should be no disappointment.
But this patriarchal model where men dominate women and if they don’t then they’re failures – it needs to be removed from society. It cannot allowed to continue to propagate as a myth. Men shouldn’t be forced to feel like they have to live up to and fulfil this stereotype.
