Sociopathy is just a scientific term for evil. It's too convenient to label bad people as mentally ill. What drove this young man was hate not mental illness. I understand why the non-mentally ill would like to exclude this violence from their potential, but we don't need to pathologize hate and murder. Hate is a normal human emotion. And hate is the motivator for most homicides. I see no reason why we need to separate hate that leads to an individual murder from hate that leads to mass murder.
He was motivated by hate. Even when mental illness is present there is no reason to attribute hate and violence to mental illness. For example, when some one has a mental illness but do not harbor hatred in their hearts, they won't commit a crime like this. So, we can say that this crime cannot exist without hatred.
Think of a man who kills his wife because she cheated on him. While one can find psychological distress in such a situation, we need not attribute that to mental illness so much as jealousy. This young man was seething with hatred towards women he couldn't get and seething with jealousy towards men who could get women. Since there wasn't one woman to target his hatred or jealousy towards, he set out to kill as many women as he could. We might find disturbance of the mind, but no more disturbance of the mind that we would find in the jealous husband. This isn't mental illness as we might understand as a syndrome.
Yes, what he did was "crazy," but the definition of mental illness isn't crazy. The definition of mental illness isn't evil. Mental illness should more rightly be seen as a syndrome that includes a series of mental dysfunctions, not a mere state of a disturbed mind. Your mind might be disturbed by this incident, but that is not enough to qualify you as mentally ill, is it? A person grieving the death of a loved one may be disturbed, but mental illness is much greater than that.
Rodger was evaluated for possible need for psychiatric care. Authorities found no reason to have him committed.
I am also sick of hearing about "missed warning signs," as though there is or can be some scientific criteria for predicting when someone is about to commit mass murder. Psychiatrist and psychic may be spelled similarly but they aren't the same thing. We don't need a pre-crime regimen to prevent possible future crimes. We don't need to make it easier to lock people up.
What we need to do is something very difficult and it is much more challenging but much more practical than predicting who will commit a crime. The current discussion on mental illness as a root cause may be missing the point, but it is politically convenient to both the left and the right. To the right emphasizing mental illness allows them to deflect from the gun issue - it isn't the easy access to guns that is the problem, it is a mental health issue. To the left, it is about how even mentally ill people have easy access to guns and therefore we need tougher gun laws.
Both views further the stigma around mental illness and demonize people with mental illness. I am a victim of mental illness stigma. I can say easily that were it not for mental illness stigma, I would be a practicing lawyer today. Instead, I internalized that stigma, and my life blew up in my face because I didn't seek help at an opportune time.
The real issue is harder to confront, and that is the deep misogyny that we allow to fester in this society. There are those who politically and even financially benefit from misogyny. While some say that the accusation of a war on women in our politics is craven political posturing, the reality is that there is a war on women. There are those who legitimize misogyny in their politics in the same way they validate racism or homophobia, but that behavior is not responded to at the same visceral level. It is much more acceptable today to use sexist slurs against women from more blatant language like "bitch" to more subtle trolling about women being pushy or bossy, than it is to use racist or homophobic language. I have a moral obligation here to acknowledge that I have been guilty of this exact behavior, even if I "meant nothing by it." In doing so, I legitimized the craven hatred of the Elliot Rodgers' of the world. I can't take it back, but I as a man can and must resolve to change that in me, and work to change that in other men. I am sorry, I haven't been vigilant before now. It is not acceptable, even in jest.
In looking at Elliot Rodger's words, I see in him the male entitlement and blame-shifting that has created an environment where 25% of all women will be sexually assaulted, expect to be sexually assaulted, and one where women have explained to them that they are to blame for being victimized.
Rodger thought women owed him something - particularly sex. This attitude is at the core of rape culture, and this attitude of male entitlement drives misogynistic violence from rape to domestic violence to mass murders like these. Most mass murderers specifically target women, as women are the first victims shot in these episodes. School shooters are usually angered at girls who rejected them, and girls the shooters target usually have rejected or had some conflict with the shooter.
Evaluating and attacking misogyny is much harder than locking people up who may be showing "warning signs" or "red flags" that may or may not exist and only are really observed after the fact. But as more evidence is revealed that shows that mass murders are a product of male grievance and entitlement, and not merely an artifact of mental illness, we need to look at the festering misogyny in our society and not just its fringe forms in the so-called men's right movement.
The real warning signs, the real red flags, are the casual acts of sexism that is accepted as part of male culture -- gay and straight -- that go rewarded or ignored. While Elliot Rodger may have had some mental illness, it did not present as misogynistic rage in isolation. We, and by we I mean all men, have played a role in this. And I understand it is not enough if I don't act sexist. It is not enough if you don't act sexist. We must also be willing to be gender shamed and stand up against sexism and rape culture, and male entitlement both before and after anyone uses sexism as a social prop.