Blog post on the epidemic of forced celibacy in males

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I don't know from evil as far as Sodini is concerned. I'm much more inclined to believe it was mental illness rather than something like "evil." What I've said before is that women can sense underlying anger in a man. I agree that years of rejection, his inability to connect with people, isolation, depression, etc., must have led to a great deal of anger - and I think women he approached sensed that in him.

Where I think we diverge is how we characterize the way he dealt with that anger. It's not fair, but other people's actions can spark anger in any of us. People can behave horribly toward us, abuse us, torment us, and create a mountain of righteous anger within us. And even righteous anger is incredibly destructive and toxic to carry around. But here's the ugly truth about anger: each of us is left with the task of figuring out how to deal constructively with it. People who are needlessly and cruelly tormented should get some kind of a pass on dealing with the after effects of their torment - but they don't. Finding a way to let go of that anger - in a way that doesn't hurt or damage others - is an enormous, intensive, difficult task. But what is the alternative? The choice George Sodini made? In all honesty, what statement did he make? "I'm mad." He destroyed the lives of women who had done nothing to him. I don't quite understand how that is tantamount to an exorcism - it didn't "cure" him of anything. An exorcism is supposed to bring peace by casting out demons....all he did was visit anguish on a bunch of innocent strangers. If he'd just wanted to "finish things," he could have chosen suicide.

From my perspective, he was destructive long before he walked into that gym. He destroyed his own chance at happiness by refusing to confront his own relationship failures, and the anger that resulted from those failures. He walked into that gym a destroyer, and he destroyed. So I can have pity for the truly tormented person he was....but no amount of anger, angst, despair, etc., gives one the moral authority to destroy others - ever.

No, no, no. What you seem to be incapable of understanding, @Nostromos, is that some of us have walked in those shoes - and it didn't drive us to anything like the same aspirations. You act as though none of our opinions could possibly be based on hard-won knowledge gained through experience. The truth is that we don't have to give in to the destructive anger we carry around. We always have the choice to get the help required to deal with it. Refusing to deal with it, and instead choosing to take it out on innocent people is not okay - it never will be. How would you feel if one of the women Sodini had killed had been the gf you finally met? Or your mom, sister, mentor, daughter? Would you have so much understanding for him then?

Last edited by HopeGrows on 07 Oct 2010, 11:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Okay, I'm not trying to make you into a saint or anything, @Auntblabby, but having fantasies isn't the same thing as taking action.

@auntblabby Yeah, yeah, you're right. As for the misandrists: for all their surface sophistication and pretense of compassion, they're partially ignorant and/or driven by a bratty little girl inside who's angry about an abusive man in their past, or a man who rejected them. Or just an appallingly asinine, narcissistic belief in their moral superiority, flimsily buttressed by nonsensical theories and distorted truths. Rape is not worse than murder, and if you want equality then sleep with 80% of men instead of 20%.

There is no reasoning with them. Their unguarded Medusa gaze will freeze your blood with its infinite malice. I've seen it. If you're not the alpha of the hour, or don't happen to remind them of him, then you're a ludicrous talking polyp. This is undeveloped female biology given free reign thanks to broken families and a culture that holds sociopathy, promiscuity, and debauchery as virtues. That is their real core and you can't reason with it as it's an emotional, not intellectual, perspective. Focus on improving yourself instead. Their souls are lost to Lilith.

Be more specific.

Dammit, I'm wasting my time in here again...

Last edited by Nostromos on 08 Oct 2010, 12:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

i comprehend this point, but what i don't get is what makes me [and people similar to me] substantially different from mr. sodoni or mr. kaczinski, other than their more optimally-performing brains which afforded them the executive functioning to actually commit evil? i say it is only a matter of degree. IOW just be glad you never knew me then, or now. there were major elements/themes of mr. kaczinski's upbringing and early adulthood which were eerily similar to my own. if i had kaczinski's more optimally-functioning brain i would likely have had all the bits in place to do something like what he did. i could not have exactly duplicated mr. sodoni's acts as those were too f2f for me, as i'd prefer more impersonal interactions in regard to committing evil acts. it is the cowardly way.
in the military i knew a few GIs who snapped and committed mass violence, and by talking to them i discovered that they were not so different from myself, in terms of what made them tick and what drove them to "go off." so what i have been trying to say, is that it is "there but for the grace of god go i" - or many of the rest of us, IMHO. there are a lot of folk similar to me out there, and these two were just the more recent ones who acted out. i would not envy their karmic debt. i believe their victims are in heaven, but not so for the perps, whose souls i pray for, as i would want somebody to care enough about me no matter what, to pray for me. we all have our breaking points, some are just unfortunate to not have any mitigating factors in their lives. i know if somebody like that did evil to somebody important to me, i'd be sorely tempted to be as hateful as a lot of other posters on this forum. but that is not the golden rule.

Looking at his mannerisms I think he just came across as shy, unconfident and unsure of himself - not good mating material.


His statement was revenge 'here is what you got for the hurt you caused me', and the demons he exorcised were Women.


What if he didn't know why his ability to form relationships failed? If he was having that level of trouble having friends and girlfriends he probably didn't have the insight into people and social relationships to see what was going wrong, which is hardly a moral failing on his part. He could have had undiagnosed Autism for all we know.

@Auntblabby, what makes you different from those you describe is that you find the the taking of a human life to be distasteful. Whatever you give credit to for that, whether its luck or God or morality or disability, etc., you apparently don't view murdering/maiming innocent strangers as a viable means of expressing your rage, angst, etc.

i am thinking the chasm here is uncrossable.

HopeGrows and billsmithglendale, from my perspective both of you clearly understand the issue in its entirety.

in my opinion, i think one problem is that not everybody is at the point in their lives where they can take responsibility for their own well-being. i believe it is honestly easier for some people to retain their bitterness and externalize the blame than it would be to take full responsibility for their own thoughts and actions. it seem to me that people might feel that as long as the source of the problem is external, they can hold onto the idea that the world should change - and not them.

billsmithglendale, you have come out the other side, and HopeGrows you have implied something similar. i would not go into details here, but there was a point in my life where i experienced an intervention of sorts, although i do not feel safe enough here to offer more details than that. suffice it to say that i have felt the rage and the urge to act on it, and the intervention changed my path.

but my problems were not the fault of the bullies, or society, or my family, or the men who rejected and mocked me, or whatever. they exacerbated to the problem, and may have been precipitating factors in my downward spiral, but ultimately the problem was inside myself. therapy seriously helped me to learn to take control of my own mental well-being.

this is where i see the divide - not everybody here is willing to take responsibility - they want to find a reason in women, or in society, or somewhere else. i don't see how that can be reconciled with words.

@Nostromos, it's difficult to respond to you at all when you just start talking smack. Remember when I said women can sense rage in a man? The level of anger you've expressed here is really impossible to hide.

To the accusations of misandry, I haven't seen a woman express those sentiments in this thread (although I haven't read every single page). I have seen women strongly disapprove of a mass murderer who happened to be male. I don't see how that equates to expressing a hatred of men.

Have you ever heard of Aileen Wuornos? She is purported to be the first confirmed female serial killer here in the States. By all accounts, she endured a horrific childhood, which including being regularly raped and beaten starting at the age of 8. Her adulthood was no better. She worked as a street prostitute, and was often raped, beaten and abused.

She eventually began robbing and murdering her tricks, and killed several men before she was caught. Do I think what she did was okay? Not a chance. To those who suggest that her victims weren't exactly the pillars of the community, or "had it coming" because they picked up a prostitute, I'd remind them that the penalty for engaging in prostitution in our society isn't death.

Was she driven and twisted by rage? Was she a misandrist? Very likely she was. Was her rage righteous? Seems like it. Did that give her the right to use other people as a conduit to express her rage? HELL NO. Its not okay when a woman does violence to innocents, its not okay when a man does violence to innocents. If that makes me "morally superior" - I can live with that.


Considering your rant here, I'm not too inclined to discuss details of my personal history with you. Suffice it to say I know what its like to be bullied relentlessly, and I know what its like to feel profoundly unwanted.

Last edited by HopeGrows on 08 Oct 2010, 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Btw, just a quick take on Sodini being good vs. evil (and I did follow the case immediately after the event) -- Mind you, I'm normally very extreme about crime and punishment, to the point that I think most criminals should probably be killed:

I don't think he started out evil. I think he was sick for a long time, and that his neurotic behavior worsened over time (because apparently in his 20s and 30s he was able to get dates and girlfriends) and started scaring away people. It created a vicious circle or feedback loop -- the worse he got, the more people didn't want to be around him, which he reacted to by withdrawing more and becoming unstable. Eventually he turned psychotic.

The point he became evil probably happened in the year or two prior to the event. As soon as he went from self-loathing to planning the deaths of others, he crossed the line from a "victim" to a perpetrator. Nothing indicates those women in that aerobics class had anything to do with his issues or problems, yet he singled out these random women for collective "punishment." This is the point where he clearly was evil -- there's no justification for terrorist acts against innocents, regardless of mindset.

So let this be a general guideline to anyone here defending him -- if you ever feel like doing something he did, do the world a favor and just kill yourself instead. None of us are responsible for your problems, and no one needs to be punished. If you need help, find help, but there are no guarantees in life, and no one owes you a living, their cooch, or their time.

@Hyperlexian, you speak the truth.

There is no substitute for accepting responsibilty for healing one's own life. Even those who are lucky enough to encounter individuals with an abundance of compassion and willingness to help will not see a change unless they themselves become willing to do whatever it takes to heal.

More truth, @billsmithglendale.

i was a virgin till 22. went through 4 years in the military, 17 to 21, went to vietnam ( you wante my sister), i was a rare bird, not having had sex. many funny stories about that!

sex never meant a great deal to me. my childhood was one in a billion, that may have had something to do with it. never knowing love, given or taken, in any form, was a factor, i'm sure.

from 22 to 39, had a few sexual encounters. most were enjoyable.

at 39 was murdered by a drunk driver. too many injuries for sex to occur after some recovery.

now, many years later, sex is a distant memory. like most things, you get used to being celibate/unable/unwilling to have sex. even after taking testosterone injections. my life has always been f...ed up so perhaps my perspective is different from those who are actual humans.

having sex or a 458 ferrari? i would always chose the 458.

Personal responsibility as mentioned in most posts above is a wonderful thing I think.

But consider - lower socio-economic areas have higher crime stats. Those people committing the crimes are not taking responsibility for themselves, we can agree on that.
If we create jobs and wealth in that area then crime will come down. Have we just helped those people no longer committing crimes to avoid the burden of being responsible for themselves?

Thats a philosophical argument perhaps. The pragmatic argument is that jobs and wealth creation lower crime. To me seems that seems the difference of opinion we are having.
You are saying under all circumstances a person is ultimately responsbile for themselves. I'm saying thats nice and I agree but it doesn't always work like that.

To set the record straight I think what Sodini did is abhorrent and completely unjustifiable. But I can also understand the road to nihilism.

Hyperlexian and Hopegrows I would be very interested in your thoughts on how you would prevent this tragedy, and I would like you answers please if you could.

Thank you.

i am not positive of what the question is, but i think that your question points to certain groups being predetermined towards a certain life of crime, and i don't agree that it is that simple. i think people turn turn to crime because of circumstances, so if those circumstances never happen, then we will never know what those people would have or could have done. a person can't take responsibility for something that will not happen.

but many people live in low-income areas and don't commit crimes, so i think it is worth knowing why they choose to steer their own paths away from crime.

Okay, I can accept that he came across as shy and quiet, but lots of ladies like shy and quiet guys. Seriously, peruse this forum, and you'll find posts from lots of extroverted NT women describing the shy Aspie man they're carrying a torch for. I have to believe that there was more than shyness working against Sodini.


But the women he killed were not the women that had rejected him. They were innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And they were just women trying to burn off some calories, not demons.


I'm quite certain he didn't know why he was failing at forming relationships, and I think it's possible he was autistic, as you've suggested. That he had the problem was not a moral failing - it could have just been luck of the draw. But he had the resources to address the problem - and that's where he made a choice - to avoid addressing a problem so profound that it ruined his life. That decision wound up destroying a lot of innocent lives - all in the service of his anger. That, IMO, is his moral failing.