Laurie Penny on misogynist extremism: Let’s call the Isla Vista killings what they were

For some time now, misogynist extremism has been excused, as all acts of terrorism committed by white men are excused, as an aberration, as the work of random loons, not real men at all. Why are we denying the existence of a pattern?

By Laurie Penny

(Photo By A shattered window at the crime scene in Isla Vista. Photo: Getty)

It’s time to call misogynist extremism by its name.

On Friday night, a young man went on a massacre in Santa Barbara that left six other people dead and seven injured. In the hours before the massacre, the suspect, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, had uploaded a video to YouTube titled “Retribution”. In this, and in a 140-page manifesto published online, Rodger claimed that he was going to prove himself the ultimate “alpha male” and take revenge on all the “sluts” who had sexually rejected him: