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

PRIVILEGE, SEX AND DEATH

When police arrived at his premises, Elliot Rodger was dead due to a presumed self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In some ways, Elliot Rodger's video follows a particular kind of suicide script and might be read as a suicide note. Indeed, many of the vlogs (video logs) he uploaded to his YouTube account are notes articulating his belief he has been unfairly treated by the world, his hatred of the world, his sense that he does not belong in the world.

If his YouTube videos are to be taken at face value, then his rampage murder-suicide can be read as being the result of his feelings of inadequacy in comparison with his peers - or, at least, his impression of how much his peers are having and enjoying sexual activity.

At first, thinking about Rodger as feeling inadequate and inferior is rather strange. He was an upper-middle-class young man, university-educated, a parent involved in a high-profile Hollywood production role, and driving around California in a BMW. He was attractive, had an interest in aesthetic beauty, introspective, personable if a little awkward, articulate if probably a little shy. In contrast to the majority of the population, nevertheless, he was very privileged.

Putting his case down to privilege-gone-wrong or grand self-entitlement of the well-to-do is, however, too simple. For himself, he was not privileged because the one area in which he compared himself with others was sexual achievement. His sense of a deep contrast between his own and his peers' sexual experience, regardless of all other aspects of privilege, was clearly damaging, leading ultimately to the deaths of his victims and his own self-afflicted death.

One way of understanding some suicides is through the notion of 'relative misery', whereby a subject feels that his or her life, happiness or resources have fallen short of those available to similar other people. This approach is used to explain why suicide rates sometimes continue to remain the same or increase even during periods of overall wealth, success or happiness across a nation or large population group. When those in one's socio-economic category, peer group or those who are socially comparable appear to be "doing better" than one is oneself, then one's sense of misery is heightened, aspirations are frustrated and suicide can be an available avenue for escaping the emotional pain that has become intolerable.

In Rodger's case, the intensity of his anger is perhaps the product of violent emotions caused by the 'relative misery' of perceiving his peers as sexually and romantically successful, while he lagged behind. He may have been very privileged relative to many other people in his country, but his relative comparison centred not on his wealthy background or elite lifestyle but on sexual fulfilment. The social pressure to feel "sexually normal" by losing his virginity and being noticed by the objects of his desire presents itself in him as intolerably painful inadequacy.

The anger produced by this painful social comparison found its outlet, of course, not merely in suicide but in adopting heightened misogynistic attitudes in order to find someone to blame for the pain.

In a culture that has moved towards re-framing sexual pleasure and experience through a right 'at all costs' to immediate sexual fulfilment, and in the context of contemporary society's intense social comparisons, this tragic outcome is not really a surprise. And one we will see again if we don't begin to address the social factors that create inadequacies where none should exist.

While Elliot Rodger is, of course, wholly accountable for his horrendous violence against women, the answer is not merely to condemn him, celebrate his own death and move on.

Rather, it points to the very urgent need to start investigating some of the social norms around sexual fulfilment, around misogyny, around social comparisons and the affliction of pressures to be 'normal'.