The first time I was introduced to the way misogyny permeates our society was in the summer before my third year of college.  It was part of a training program in which we discussed as many forms and issues of oppression as we could possibly fit into a week.  While many, MANY of these sessions stuck with me, this was the one that perhaps left the most emotional impression.

The session went like this.  They separated the men and the women into separate rooms.  The women sat around and talked about the various phrases and sentences we've heard in our lifetimes from men: comments about our bodies, about our sexuality, about our abilities, etc.  In this private group with just women, we empathized and we understood.  We were even occasionally light hearted about the phrases we've heard.  Then, we picked a handful of phrases that we wanted the men to hear.  We were each assigned one or two of these phrases and we whispered it in the ears of the men.  That was harder than I had expected.  Admitting these phrases had hurt or even saying the same hurtful phrases out loud to somebody else was a lot harder than it had seemed in that room of all women.  Afterward a discussion ensued among the women about all the various violence and fear we had encountered and buried.  The men had pointedly been instructed that for once to just listen to what the women had to say.

I haven't read the #YesAllWomen twitter feed.  I know what it will say because I live it every single day of my life. That twitter feed is a concise digital form of one woman who during that discussion admitted that she had believed for much of her life that every woman was meant to be raped at some point because of all the hateful catcalls and objectifying comments that had been shouted to her her whole life.  That twitter feed is a watered down version of my sister shedding tears after a walk along the lake in which once again another group of young men driving by in a car felt it appropriate to shout something about her body.  That twitter feed is my unwillingness to run outside by myself at night no matter where I am in the training plan or how much I need the run.  


I haven't read the twitter feed because I sobbed uncontrollably the last time I heard all those stories at once. 

Albert Chu writes eloquently about the storyline that our society feeds us: nerdy young men work hard, make lots of money and they will win hot attractive women.  And this is a storyline that is harmful not just to women but also to men.  It tells men repeatedly that "redemption" for years of bullying or having been laughed at happens when you show up at your high school reunion with that hot blonde supermodel on your arm (oh, and a sports car because the hot blonde and sports car are essentially equivalent for the purposes of the storyline).  It's a storyline that feeds the misogyny that is ever present and ever pervasive in our culture.

Elliot Rodger is on the extreme end of our society.  Not every man who believes they deserve sex or attention from women just by virtue of being a man will buy a gun and go on a shooting rampage, but we'd be remiss to not consider the culture that fed his personal narrative.  We'd be remiss to not examine his motivations and we'd be remiss to think that a culture which promotes this kind of entitlement might not help build a narrative in the minds of these extremists.