Elliot Rogers, The Killer and The Manifesto

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This is something that i bring up alot to some people very close to me.

"Alot of people who have AS get bullied, but most of the people who are bullied dont have AS"

So yeah, alot of murderers dont have AS.. some do. 99% of us are not ticking timebombs.

Summarry

IMHO opinion Adam Lanza definitely. Besides social issues Severe multiple sensory issues, Rigid extremely detailed special interest (Detailed spreadsheet of every school killing since 1871). And diagnosed at Yale

Rogers seem to understand hierarchies well, relatively little early social issues. Inability to socialize was more unwiliingness rather than lack of ability based on hatred of women and humans period. Rogers was not shy of about his opinions or about discussing his life While Rogers manifesto discussed his therapists Aspergers was not mentioned. Basically his mother thought he was an Aspie, her lawyer blasted it to the media, Psych hired by dad said no. To late, damage done Rogers as Aspie permanently implanted in many peoples minds. And all these months later it is still an ongoing topic. Damm.

Links to all this in earlier threads or maybe earlier in this thread

This dude is kind of relateable though. All he wanted was a beautiful girl and he was upset because he coudn't get a girlfriend and was 22 and a virgin. Seems like many guys if you ask me. I'd be pretty upset too if im 22 and never had a gf. All of us want to find love.

Of course most of us arne't going to murder anyone. I woudn't advise doing it, its never good no matter how pissed off at the world you are.

How realistic are the expectations of people who lack relationship skills (as ER clearly did) and have not even been able to sustain relationships at a friendship level - who are not au fait with the mutuality of any kind of relationship - to get a girlfriend who wants an involved relationship? Relationship skills can be learned, but the idea that seems to prevail in the ER sympathisers is that relationships are a right, an entitlement, however absent the relationship skills are... people who think they have a right to drive motor vehicles without lessons or licences usually cause mayhem because they lack the required skills and don't see why they should bother acquiring them; there's an analogy there, I think...

Just can't relate. I am a 57 year old virgin while yeah it was frustrating especially in my earlier days. Never developed extreme misogyny (sure a few stereotypes/ prejudices due to lack of interaction) or ANY desire to harm them.

This is about the cultural narrative that men are entitled to women. I think it makes no difference what pathology a man might have, or whether or not he's pathological. Men (generally speaking) have been raised up by a society that implicates the damsel in distress trope, the helpless woman in need of saving, capturing, collecting from the high tower. It's put women in the hapless victim role where we're meant to be appreciative of the males who save us, show interest in us as we lie in our glass coffins in the forest, etc. This has been going on for over 100 years and only stopped being rammed down all of our throats through children's media in recent years.

The difference between those who are pathological and those who aren't is the ability to see male entitlement to women as a trope based in fantasy accounts - the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality on a visceral/formative level. Most of us have the capacity to do that. Mix trope with pathology and you get people like ER.

Something besides ASD was going on with this guy, but I think it's problematic that we want to rid ourselves of him as a fellow autistic. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place, just like many Muslim folks. When 'one of our own' does something heinous and inhuman, we are all held to account and purportedly meant to defend how 'we're not all like that' or 'how this wasn't autism'. That frustrates me, and I imagine it frustrates quite a few other autistics.

We are always effectively othered, and I think the only way to counter that is to ramp up neurodiversity and start demanding that we're seen as humans. Just as men commit mass murder, that doesn't mean all men are prone to mass murder. Just as a Muslim might become a suicide bomber, doesn't mean Islam promotes suicide bombings. Just as one autistic might lash out violently and commit mass murder, doesn't mean there is something in autism that made him do it.

WARNING: Hate language being quoted below! Read at own risk!

This doesn't seem like the trope set that I was raised with. Back then, the general attitude was that if a 14-year old boy could not get a date with a girl his age, then he was either a "ret*d", a "fa***t", or something even worse. This was back when being even suspected of either of these meant that not only were you an outcast, but that you were attacked physically and verbally by virtually everyone you knew, and that girls your age would treat you like something filthy and repulsive.

This reminded me of something not really relevant, but interesting. The movie Frozen is claimed to have been inspired by The Ice Queen by Hans Christian Anderson. The original book had a boy named Kai as the damsel in distress being saved by Gerda.
Disney greatly distorts all of the tales they produce in a misogynistic way. While Frozen has been praised by feminists for not having the cliche Disney tropes. But really, it would seem that Disney isn't comfortable with reversing the damsel in distress trope.
Honestly, I think that Disney movies have an overall negative effect on youth.

My speculation is that whatever was happening in that head of his was getting to be too much for him and I think he knew he was going to have to kill himself at some point, but decided to "take down" as many women with him before it came to that which is a truly disturbing mental state to be in.

His "defense" is that it is everyone else's fault, but his own. That's the reason for his manifesto, to show us all how it's not his fault.

As I read his manifesto, I could not help but think of Dandy from American Horror Story. Forgive the reference for those who do not watch the show, but seriously...an impetuous and narcissistic toddler in a grown man's body.

Even if he was diagnosed, I'd doubt he'd mention Asperger's in his manifesto. In his eyes admitting to a "disability" is like admitting to his half Malaysian ethnicity. He only liked bringing up his Caucasian background because he believed being white made him more superior. Even if he did have Asperger's, I doubt he'd want to believe he had it because to him "disabled people" are worse than racial minorities.

I'm talking about the social standards for 'normals' in society, not autistics, (ed)The operative word in your retelling of your experiences is 'get'. 'Could not get a date'. You have to 'get' a girl to be thought of as worthy, 'get' a woman to be thought of as useful, etc. I think we've all been raised with these ideas (raised socially, not necessarily in our own families but through media representations, etc.) that we need to 'get' another human being to be considered valid human beings. Because gosh, if you can't 'get' someone then you're useless, etc.

Like Protogenoi pointed out upthread, we've socially (and misogynistically) skewed things into males as acquirers and women as the acquired, males as the champions and females as the championed. Females have been taught to wait to be acquired, males have been taught to go and acquire. Any derivation from these norms renders us outcast.

Fortunately these things are changing in our society and it is becoming easier to spot the misogynist in his natural habitat, and more and more of us are working towards ending these things as a society. I don't believe ER was anymore a victim of these tropes than anybody else. He was pathological, though, and his manifesto played out how the pathology intersected with the social narrative.

Your explanation of the Hans Christian Anderson story was very interesting and telling, hey! I completely agree about the Disney films having a negative impact on youth. I think the social ideals that are presented in media may affect autistic children on an even stronger level, as many of us seem to tend towards mimicry in an attempt to 'appear normal' from a very young age.

ER was playing out his own screwed up idea of the 'ultimate gentleman' likely from the input he got about what it means to be 'gentlemanly' from media, but most women found him creepy and stayed away from him. He became his own self-fulfilling prophecy.

I see a lot of similar thought patterns in males who resent feminism and spend a lot of time posting about how much they hate feminists and feminism online. There's this bizarre and creepy fixation on loneliness combined with the hatred of women's liberation which really does translate into a hatred of women. What woman would be truly attracted to that? And because most women find that dysfunctional and creepy, the male is rejected; he blames his rejection on feminism and the pattern continues.

(edited for typo)

His kill count was not that great.

It seems he was likely on the spectrum, but this feature above does not seem ASD to me, but is likely indicative of another disorder more in the ballpark of psychopathy or narcissism.

I agree he had some kind of severe pathology going on that was completely outside the bounds of AS. He managed to pass a welfare check in a way that feels very NPD to me. Having the capacity to do that and come across as a respectable young man (or whatever it was the officer who checked on him said at the time) would take some serious sociopathy. Most autistics aren't that capable of keeping it together in the face of authority pressuring us for information, I don't think. I get nervous around cops (and other authority figures) when I haven't done anything wrong and don't plan to.