The right to sexual fulfilment: a privileged gunman, misogyny and social comparisons

Theorists, philosophers and advocates have, in recent years, argued over the notion that there may be conceived a "human right to have sex". The idea of a right to sexual expression is an important one in acknowledging the emotional, physical and affection needs of persons with intellectual and physical disabilities or the very elderly including those in nursing homes. A number of excellent organisations have been established to help, for example, persons with disabilities to access sexual experience by making connections with sex workers and educating sex workers in the sometimes complex situations that may arise with more unique clients.

But what of Rodger's claims to a right to sexual fulfilment?

What distinguishes Rodger from other persons who, for different circumstances, might find it difficult to achieve a sexual or emotional connection with another person is that it was almost certainly a matter of time. Not unattractive, not infirm - just awkward and lacking in confidence. Perhaps impatient and ignorant of the fact that sexual activity will be part of his life in due course.

At twenty-two, he is not the only young person in a first-world country who has not yet had a sexual experience. He rotted in loneliness not because he had not yet had sex, but because there are sometimes unrealistic and over-heightened expectations that one should have had sex by twenty-two.

In other words, he was unaware that there was nothing wrong with not being sexually fulfilled, and blamed his peers and the women around him for what he saw as an oppressive circumstance.

It might pay to turn attention to the cultural formations that present such urgency for a first sexual experience. This is not new - a vast proportion of 1980s teen comedy genre of films had narratives that centred explicitly on young men seeking a sexual experience with women "at all costs", among these films such as the Porky's trilogy (1982, 1983 and 1985).

More recently, Sex and the City (1998-2004), although a rich text with complex, multiple narratives, included an ostensible theme in which middle-class women viewed access to "good sex" as a right, one to be sought now, sometimes at the cost of other pursuits.

Even more recently, and although a very-nuanced and sometimes-philosophic text, The Inbetweeners (2008-2010) likewise depicts young men's obsession with getting a shag, getting a girlfriend, getting romantically noticed as the priority of social activity, one of the reasons for being alive, and the primary element in social achievement.

Pointing to the cultural formation of "sexual urgency" for young men (and the fact that this is sometimes explicitly regarded as improper for women) is not in any way to suggest that there is anything wrong with sex, in any formation, with any number of partners, hedonistic or vanilla, at any time - of course within the proviso that it is safe, consensual and without unwanted violence. Sex is good, and the fewer hang-ups about sex there are the better the social circumstances for many people.

Nor is this to put forward an argument that people should 'wait' - whether that is for a steady partner, for marriage, until of 'appropriate age', for a more loving sexual encounter, until one is in a relationship or any other reason.

Rather, the issue is whether or not the social pressure to have sex and feel that one is sexually satisfied can, as has perhaps been the case with Elliot Rodger, drive someone into a mad, murderous and self-hating rage. It is not the waiting, it is not the rejection, but the fact that Rodger felt less of a human being, that he was being excluded from something that he felt everyone else had accessed, that in relation to other people he was somehow less 'normal', and is therefore a monster (and thus do a monstrous thing).

Encouraging greater awareness of the problems of social pressure to be sexually fulfilled involves making people aware that they are not somehow inadequate or inferior if they are not (1) getting any, (2) wishing to get any, (3) getting some but not feeling it is as enjoyable as they feel it should be. Sex is great to be having; for some people not having sex is just as good. And not having it right now should not result in social inadequacy, self-hatred, feeling abnormal, hating the world (and hating the women who aren't giving it to him).