The Santa Barbara killings

[silkepus]

Originally Posted by Okiebug61

What really lead up to him becoming this person is an answer we will probably never know.

I think thats a scary thought. There are people who are mentally ill, misogynistic, racist, hateful, have access to guns and dont kill people. And we can improve things in society to change all the things above. But can we ever change those people who are looking for excuses to be violent, if we cant even understand them?

[candy_coated_bitch]

Originally Posted by silkepus

I think thats a scary thought. There are people who are mentally ill, misogynistic, racist, hateful, have access to guns and dont kill people. And we can improve things in society to change all the things above. But can we ever change those people who are looking for excuses to be violent, if we cant even understand them?

But don't we understand them? I mean, I know on some level we can look at this guy like--omg how could a person EVER do this? What has to happen to them to create such a monster? And few people ever snap to the point of committing mass shootings. Yet, more and more and more shootings are happening. They are increasing exponentially and they all seem to have a lot in common.

I think the point of examining the rampant misogyny motivating Rodger is that it reveals EXACTLY how he got to be the way he was. We live in a misogynistic society where mistreatment of women is the order of the day. The #yesallwomen tag shows this. SOOO many women have shared their stories. I don't know one woman who hasn't at the very least been severely harassed by men, and most women I know have experienced severe abuse and violation. And no one cares that much. Sure, on a micro level we care but as a larger society rape culture and sexism are accepted. Misogyny is some ways, I think, the final frontier. People these days think twice about discrimination against lots of different groups of people but for the most part it's completely acceptable to be sexist.

Just as an example--The paycheck fairness act was blocked by senate Republicans. In what universe would it be ok to pay any other group of people differently than others? Well, it wouldn't be ok. And society as a whole just swallows shit like that up because it's just accepted that women are less than. And equal pay just scratches the surface. The acceptance of violence against women just blows my fucking mind. I hear the cis men I know talk sometimes and something will just slip out of their mouths that FLABBERGASTS me. And these are supposed to be the "nice guys". I honestly wonder what the worst one say...

Anyway--which is my roundabout way of making my point: that is how this guy got to be the way he is. In reading his manifesto I could see reflections of attitudes towards women in society at large. It was disturbing to me. Both because his views were extreme--but also because his views were FAMILIAR. They made the hair on my arms stand on end, not because I had never heard such vitriol aimed at women--but because I HAVE. And I have also experienced violence coming from that same place in my personal life.

So is it really such a mystery where a man could come to the conclusion that he was OWED the sexual attentions an affections from women? That he could be outraged when he didn't receive what he wanted? I mean, in our society that's what men are shown. They are entitled to the bodies of women. It's not mysterious to me at all why this guy was angry. It's more mysterious to me that people think this guy's views are so unusual.

We also live in a society that glorifies violence. TOYS glorify violence these days. But from video games to movies to TV to billboards to magazines to the freaking NEWS--we see violence around us constantly. I'm not in the mood to go look for references right now, but it has been shown that people get desensitized to violence the more they see it. So yeah--we're working on a recipe now. 1) The acceptable hatred of women + 2) Rape culture (the minimization of violence towards women) + 3) Living in a society that just further glorifies violence in general.

And let's see, add in: the bigger and bigger history of mass shootings and the ease of obtaining a fire am. Yes, I also call bullshit to the notion that someone will find a way to be violent no matter what so guns don't factor in. It's always easier to kill MORE people with a gun than with another weapon. Then throw in perhaps a dash of mental instability and BAM! you have what happened.

Oh, and plus--Rodger wasn't really taken seriously until it was TOO LATE. His own parents reported his YouTube videos weeks before the shootings happened. Additionally a social worker contacted the police about a week before the shootings. In an article I read (and yes being lazy about citing it) the police described him as polite and kind. So yeah--Also WHAT THE FUCK LAW ENFORCEMENT? I bet if his videos and issues hadn't centered around the hatred of women perhaps this stuff would have been taken more seriously.

I don't misunderstand this guy at all--I understand him more than I really want to frankly.

[Dude]

This kid was antisocial. Enter killing video games.
They get numb to killing and lose themselves.
They have no sense of reality and are very much
in their own head. That's not healthy even for grow ups.
Parents have a constant baby sitter now and the kid gets
50 points for killing a hooker. They get numb to the gore
and the idea of killing.
Enter the internet. A perfect venue for the narcissistic.
His sense of entitlement and grandiose narcissism grew
unchecked. A privileged brat who was not getting
his needs met. He wrote such detailed crap about his
growing up as if he was already famous. I think he
then decided this was the only way to become famous.
What is sickening is that girls are coming out of the woodwork
in support of him regardless of his violence. What does that say.
Kids are killing their parents , classmates and random strangers.
Any kid can get sick enough in the head to act out if no one is
paying attention. Grandma knew how "very disturbed" this kid/man was.
Why didn't his father? Why did his mom coddle him when he threw
temper tantrums? It's easier to buy him that video game , pay for his school ,
Apartment and BMW to keep the peace?
22 and never had a job. Got everything he wanted
except to be the alpha male--- insert puke here

[imperfect_cupcake]

It's doesn't surprise me at all.
Having faced cis men's anger so many times because I "give off an intense sexual vibe" that they "have no control over" - I've been called a witch, a slut, an amazon ( ), a feminist cunt ( ), raped, stalked, assaulted, etc blah blah blah blah blah. Cis Men get very *very* angry and nervous when you have power over something they want - your own sexuality. Your ability to reproduce. Most men's rape fantasies, and I've heard hundreds of them, involve forcing pregnancy as part of it.

They like owning women because owning ourselves means we can choose not to have anything to do with them and the delicacy of the cis male ego is incredible. It's like a permenant state of being angry with the power mommy had.

I don't see anything suprising. Sex workers, the women who don't fuck for free and thus make it known they aren't owned in the slightest, are usually the most justify able targets for sexual murders. And the police and general public don't give a shit. They are prostitutes. They don't matter cause they take something that is supposed to be sacred (what the church told us only give to our husbands, vaginas are special and jewl like and can become spoiled and sullied if touched by too many and not within the sacred vows of love cause once someone loves you, they own your vagina. Apparently) and prozzies don't follow that model so they are dirt. And ok to kill. There is a hierarchy of acceptance of what kind of woman is ok to kill. Or, rather, it doesn't matter cause they were disposable to other men anyway. And up themselves.

I made the mistake today of reading news comments. And each news item had a depressing majority of very sexist and racist views on them. I see nothing new going on. Every time women are slaughtered, there is a surg of concern and then there is a sigh and then a helpless shrug.

I would like it if things changed, but personally, until things stop running according to the conservative free market, we will all be used like toilet paper and pick on those we think are lower than us. And try to gain the approval of those we believe are one up from us.

[Femmadian]

Originally Posted by honeybarbara

It's doesn't surprise me at all.
Having faced cis men's anger so many times because I "give off an intense sexual vibe" that they "have no control over" - I've been called a witch, a slut, an amazon ( ), a feminist cunt ( ), raped, stalked, assaulted, etc blah blah blah blah blah. Cis Men get very *very* angry and nervous when you have power over something they want - your own sexuality. Your ability to reproduce. Most men's rape fantasies, and I've heard hundreds of them, involve forcing pregnancy as part of it.

They like owning women because owning ourselves means we can choose not to have anything to do with them and the delicacy of the cis male ego is incredible. It's like a permenant state of being angry with the power mommy had.

I don't see anything suprising. Sex workers, the women who don't fuck for free and thus make it known they aren't owned in the slightest, are usually the most justify able targets for sexual murders. And the police and general public don't give a shit. They are prostitutes. They don't matter cause they take something that is supposed to be sacred (what the church told us only give to our husbands, vaginas are special and jewl like and can become spoiled and sullied if touched by too many and not within the sacred vows of love cause once someone loves you, they own your vagina. Apparently) and prozzies don't follow that model so they are dirt. And ok to kill. There is a hierarchy of acceptance of what kind of woman is ok to kill. Or, rather, it doesn't matter cause they were disposable to other men anyway. And up themselves.

I made the mistake today of reading news comments. And each news item had a depressing majority of very sexist and racist views on them. I see nothing new going on. Every time women are slaughtered, there is a surg of concern and then there is a sigh and then a helpless shrug.

I would like it if things changed, but personally, until things stop running according to the conservative free market, we will all be used like toilet paper and pick on those we think are lower than us. And try to gain the approval of those we believe are one up from us.

THIS. THIS. THIS.

ALL OF THIS.

I've been following this whole thing and the reactions to it as much as I can before I start feeling vomit-y and need to take a break from it in the interest of self-care. I'm frankly surprised that the mainstream media is actually talking about this in terms of gender, sex, misogyny, etc., but I too think that it will be short lived in the end (but hope springs eternal).

[Heavy sarcasm and potentially trigger-y, rant-y, exasperated feminist-y content to follow]

I actually have seen the sentiment that Kobi mentioned about this being about sexual frustration and the implication that if he had had access to sex workers then this could have been prevented.... because apparently we as a society think it's okay to dump misogynist, violent shitbags on sex workers as clients and we as a society are okay with sacrificing the so-called "fallen" (barf) woman to protect the "good" woman ("good" and "fallen" as defined by the boys in blue who refused to take the killer's own mother's complaints seriously... naturally).

Remember, ladies: if you step out of bounds of the society we've constructed for you, you instantly become disposable.

...to say nothing of the idea that the solution to male entitlement is to appease and give them the thing they (violently) feel they're entitled to...

I don't care if he had mental health issues. I really don't give an everloving fuck. They tried the same distancing and diversion tactics with Scott Roeder when he murdered Dr. Tiller. This both stigmatizes those struggling with mental health issues and serves to distract from the real message. Men who kill for their cause, the control and subjugation of women, are only reacting to the environment they live in. They live in a society which tells them that women's bodies do not belong to women. They live in a climate that tells them women are rewards to be won for good behaviour and proper displays of dominance. They live in a society which tells them they own everything in the world by virtue of their being men, that they are indeed entitled to it. The society then tells them that the way to get what they want is to dominate, subjugate, conquer, and kill. When faced with a woman they can't own? Well, it's only natural that they do what they've been taught to do from day one... And with a lifetime of practice, they know exactly what to do...

[Exeunt {justifiably} rage-y feminist, stage left]

[silkepus]

Originally Posted by candy_coated_bitch

I don't misunderstand this guy at all--I understand him more than I really want to frankly.

I agree with everything you said, my comment was more a response to okieblue that if we cant understand them, we cant ever change it.

I think saying we cant look at why because we just will never understand feels like throwing your hands up in the air and say I give up. I think there will probably always be unpredictable events that we cant stop short term. But we can prevent a lot by the society we build together. There is a reason why these things happen more often in some places than others and by some people way more than others.

And like you and honeybarbara said, there is NOTHING he said that has not been said a million times before. The things he believed about women is the same thing men everywhere think about women.

[silkepus]

Also something that I find almost funny. These guys often refer to themselves as alfa males, and yet they are so fragile that even the slightest rejetion or just disintrest by women is enough to force them into a cloak of whining, self-pity and ego anger.

[Martina]

This is a pretty awesome article in The Daily Beast by Arthur Chu.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds

This is maybe the second half of it --

I’ve heard and seen the stories that those of you who followed the #YesAllWomen hashtag on Twitter have seen—women getting groped at cons, women getting vicious insults flung at them online, women getting stalked by creeps in college and told they should be “flattered.” I’ve heard Elliot Rodger’s voice before. I was expecting his manifesto to be incomprehensible madness—hoping for it to be—but it wasn’t. It’s a standard frustrated angry geeky guy manifesto, except for the part about mass murder.

I’ve heard it from acquaintances, I’ve heard it from friends. I’ve heard it come out of my own mouth, in moments of anger and weakness.

It’s the same motivation that makes a guy in college stalk a girl, leave her unsolicited gifts and finally when she tells him to quit it makes him leave an angry post about her “shallowness” and “cruelty” on Facebook. It’s the same motivation that makes guys rant about “fake cosplay girls” at cons and how much he hates them for their vain, “teasing” ways. The one that makes a guy suffering career or personal problems turn on his wife because it’s her job to “support” him by patching up all the holes in his life. The one that makes a wealthy entrepreneur hit his girlfriend 117 times, on camera, for her infidelity, and then after getting off with a misdemeanor charge still put up a blog post casting himself as the victim.

And now that motivation has led to six people dead and thirteen more injured, in broad daylight, with the killer leaving a 140-page rant and several YouTube videos describing exactly why he did it. No he-said-she-said, no muffled sounds through the dorm ceiling, no “Maybe he has other issues.” The fruits of our culture’s ingrained misogyny laid bare for all to see.

And yet. When this story broke, the initial mainstream coverage only talked about “mental illness,” not misogyny, a line that people are now fervently exhorting us to stick to even after the manifesto’s contents were revealed. Yet another high-profile tech CEO resignation ensued when the co-founder of Rap Genius decided Rodger’s manifesto was a hilarious joke.

People found one of the girls Rodger was obsessed with and began questioning if her “bullying” may have somehow triggered his rage. And, worst of all, he has fan pages on Facebook that still haven’t been taken down, filled with angry frustrated men singing his praises and seriously suggesting that the onus is on women to offer sex to men to keep them from going on rampages.

So, a question, to my fellow male nerds:

What the fuck is wrong with us?

How much longer are we going to be in denial that there’s a thing called “rape culture” and we ought to do something about it?

No, not the straw man that all men are constantly plotting rape, but that we live in an entitlement culture where guys think they need to be having sex with girls in order to be happy and fulfilled. That in a culture that constantly celebrates the narrative of guys trying hard, overcoming challenges, concocting clever ruses and automatically getting a woman thrown at them as a prize as a result, there will always be some guy who crosses the line into committing a violent crime to get what he “deserves,” or get vengeance for being denied it.

To paraphrase the great John Oliver, listen up, fellow self-pitying nerd boys—we are not the victims here. We are not the underdogs. We are not the ones who have our ownership over our bodies and our emotions stepped on constantly by other people’s entitlement. We’re not the ones where one out of six of us will have someone violently attempt to take control of our bodies in our lifetimes.

We are not Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds, we are not Steve Urkel from Family Matters, we are not Preston Myers from Can’t Hardly Wait, we are not Seth Rogen in every movie Seth Rogen has ever been in, we are not fucking Mario racing to the castle to beat Bowser because we know there’s a princess in there waiting for us.

We are not the lovable nerdy protagonist who’s lovable because he’s the protagonist. We’re not guaranteed to get laid by the hot chick of our dreams as long as we work hard enough at it. There isn’t a team of writers or a studio audience pulling for us to triumph by “getting the girl” in the end. And when our clever ruses and schemes to “get girls” fail, it’s not because the girls are too stupid or too bitchy or too shallow to play by those unwritten rules we’ve absorbed.

It’s because other people’s bodies and other people’s love are not something that can be taken nor even something that can be earned—they can be given freely, by choice, or not.

We need to get that. Really, really grok that, if our half of the species ever going to be worth a damn. Not getting that means that there will always be some percent of us who will be rapists, and abusers, and killers. And it means that the rest of us will always, on some fundamental level, be stupid and wrong when it comes to trying to understand the women we claim to love.

What did Elliot Rodger need? He didn’t need to get laid. None of us nerdy frustrated guys need to get laid. When I was an asshole with rants full of self-pity and entitlement, getting laid would not have helped me.

He needed to grow up.

We all do.

[candy_coated_bitch]

Thanks for the article, Martina. This is really the main thing that gets me with this shooting:

"And now that motivation has led to six people dead and thirteen more injured, in broad daylight, with the killer leaving a 140-page rant and several YouTube videos describing exactly why he did it. No he-said-she-said, no muffled sounds through the dorm ceiling, no “Maybe he has other issues.” The fruits of our culture’s ingrained misogyny laid bare for all to see."

This. We know EXACTLY why he did what he did. It's not a fucking mystery. There have been a lot of school shootings and never has the killer made YouTube videos about why their victims deserve to be killed. In this case, it is targeted directly towards women. This is explicitly stated by the killer in his manifesto. He wrote a fucking 140 page manifesto!!!! It blows my mind that people are trying to make this into something else. It's surreal. STILL, we are looking for other reasons as to why this happened.

The fact that more than several women in this thread have stated that there was nothing new under the sun in what Rodger said makes me wonder if that's the exact problem with people (mostly men) being in complete denial of what this crime was really about. Maybe it's BECAUSE his manifesto and videos contained what we already know about our society's attitudes towards women. I feel like that thin veil that cis men shroud themselves in is in danger of being pulled away. The line between what the shooter did and what other men do every single day is very thin, I'd venture to say.

Women are raped, beaten, harassed, stalked, bought and sold (without their consent), and violated in a myriad of ways EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. How is it a stretch from that to some guy busting out and shooting women because he felt he was not given what he was due (i.e. access to women's bodies)? Yeah--the shooting is more dramatic and visible, but it feels like more of the same to me. Like the author of the article pointed out--the motivations behind it are the same. I think THAT's why people, mostly men, do not want to talk about the motivations behind this act of violence. Because if we examine it, if we really admit that misogyny and rape culture are the motivations behind this killing--it forces us to admit the extent to which those things exist. The extent to which these things are ingrained in our society. Men would have to stop clutching their veils and stop trying to separate themselves from the truth. And really--men in general as a group do not WANT to see. Why would they? It's a terrible realization. Why would any man want to admit they are complicit in perpetuating rape culture in any way? The sad truth is they don't want to see it. Especially the ones with mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, women friends. How could they POSSIBLY have anything to do with misogyny if they "love" women, right?

Right now I am just so disgusted. I feel like this guy only really did what our culture tells him to do: If women don't give you what you want you are entitled to your rage and entitled to take what you want with force. He did it in a large, overblown way. But we know why he did.

I feel like I am repeating myself at this point, so I am just going to stop.

[okieblu]

Originally Posted by silkepus

I agree with everything you said, my comment was more a response to okieblue that if we cant understand them, we cant ever change it.

I think saying we cant look at why because we just will never understand feels like throwing your hands up in the air and say I give up. I think there will probably always be unpredictable events that we cant stop short term. But we can prevent a lot by the society we build together. There is a reason why these things happen more often in some places than others and by some people way more than others.

And like you and honeybarbara said, there is NOTHING he said that has not been said a million times before. The things he believed about women is the same thing men everywhere think about women.

Uh, you got the wrong okie. I haven't posted in this thread, at all, until just now. Didn't even know about this latest shooting until just now. That was okiebug61.

[silkepus]

Originally Posted by okieblu

Uh, you got the wrong okie. I haven't posted in this thread, at all, until just now. Didn't even know about this latest shooting until just now. That was okiebug61.

Oops sorry.

[Kobi]

A website popular with the online Pick-up Artist community responded to Elliott Rodger’s murderous Santa Barbara rampage, saying it could have been avoided if Rodger had ‘game,’ like they profess to possess, before concluding that “more people will die” unless society provides men with more “sexual options.”

The Return of Kings article, written by ‘Roosh,’ goes to elaborate lengths to explain that the PUA-hate community that Rodger was a part of held him back from learning the “masculine” art of seduction – which they call “game” – and, combined with the “American media, the blogosphere, men’s rights activists, and progressive organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Rodger was encouraged to hate and ultimately murder women.

“All these groups are complicit for creating a cultural environment that allowed this massacre to occur, ” Roosh wrote. “It is them (sic) who must accept responsibility for these seven deaths and make the moral change to their ideologies in order to prevent such an act from happening again.”

Stating that Rodger was “undoubtedly mentally unstable and required professional supervision,” Roosh concludes from watching Rodger’s YouTube videos that he displayed “an above-average intelligence and the propensity to connect with individuals in certain cases.”

He adds, “I’ve personally interacted with men who functioned lower than him, but were later able to successfully meet average-looking women and achieve intimacy with them.”

Roosh goes on to say, “We live in a society where being shy, normal, or a little awkward is duly punished by entitled American women who have been encouraged to pursue exciting and fun casual sex in their prime with sexy and hot men as a way of ‘experimentation.’”

He then explains that when women have “passed their physical prime” they then select a “nice guy” with whom to settle down, with the understanding that he is “expected to keep his mouth shut when a trickle flow of informational torture reveals that his bride-to-be has experienced more than a dozen different penises in her vagina, anus, and mouth—the same mouth that is supposed to kiss his future children good night.”

Roosh points out that “beta men” like Rodger are constrained by collegiate “anti-male” rape codes, and the American media which has maligned the “manosphere,” where betas might learn “game” and therby improve their chances with desirable women.

He asserts that Rodger’s hatred of women was encouraged at PUAhate.com “…. where he was able to meet other virgins and mentally unstable men to provide him with comfort while encouraging his budding hatred not just against women for serving him rejections—something that pro-game advocates accept as normal—but also society as a whole for not giving him what he believed he deserved.”

“If Rodger came to me, he would have been received actionable and effective advice, ” Roosh explains. “He would have been exposed to material detailing how socially corrupt American society has become, and how being a beta male provider—his principal strategy in trying to get laid—is no longer useful in achieving intimacy with women who now see men as entertaining clowns that should provide them with excitement, drama, and tension.”

Admitting that he was once “no different than Rodger,” Roosh continued, “Seven people are dead because society has decided that shy and awkward men like Elliot Rodger do not deserve a girlfriend and that there is absolutely no way to improve his loneliness and loserdom through learning game or any other social behavior. At the same time men like him are ostracized, there is no legal means for him to solicit prostitution (in California) to release his biological and very pressing urge for fornication.”

Roosh recommends that society change its ways, warning: “More people will die unless you give men sexual options.”

“Until you give men like Rodger a way to have sex, either by encouraging him to learn game, seek out a Thai wife, or engage in legalized prostitution—three things that the American media and cultural elite venomously attack, it’s inevitable for another massacre to occur. Even game itself, as useful as it is on a individual level, is a band-aid fix upon a culture which has stopped rewarding nice guys while encouraging female whoring to benefit only the top 10% of alpha males, all in the name of societal progress.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/2...ect=no&oswrr=1

[Okiebug61]

Originally Posted by silkepus

I think thats a scary thought. There are people who are mentally ill, misogynistic, racist, hateful, have access to guns and dont kill people. And we can improve things in society to change all the things above. But can we ever change those people who are looking for excuses to be violent, if we cant even understand them?

I don't know that anyone can change another person. I know we can provide resources to help those that want to change. I am all for public programs that provide help.

[Kobi]

The 25-year-old gunman entered the crowded classroom early that morning, armed with a rifle and a hunting knife. Before the 60 students could really register what was happening, he’d ordered the men to leave, then opened fire on the women, shouting, “You’re all a bunch of feminists, and I hate feminists!” By the time he turned the gun on himself, he’d left 14 dead and 10 more injured.

This wasn’t the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2014, but rather the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal 25 years earlier. The shooter wasn’t Elliot Rodger, who felt spurned romantically by women, but Marc Lepine, who had been rejected from the engineering school and believed women had taken his rightful place. “I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker,” Lepine’s suicide note read.

Over the past weeks and months, the national conversation has regularly and urgently turned to violence against women — violence in classrooms, in dorm rooms, in the U.S., and around the world. There was the kidnapping of nearly 300 Nigerian girls from their school, the announcement that 55 American colleges were under investigation for mishandling allegations of sexual assault, and the rampage in Isla Vista by a shooter who left behind a misogynist manifesto.

With each new outrage, the online world has lit up with the same dual-threaded response. First, a wondering about how things have gone so terribly wrong. As Richard Martinez said at the memorial service for the UCSB victims, including his 20-year-old son Christopher: “How many more people are going to have to die in this situation before the problem gets solved? Any of us who grew up in the '50s, '60s know that life doesn’t have to be like this,” he said, speaking of gun violence in general. “Why should it be like this for you people who are young now?”

A second, entwined, response to the cascade of recent events has been to proclaim that perhaps this time things will finally change. Maybe the spotlight on the kidnappings in Chibok, or the report of the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, or the six dead in Isla Vista will do what so many other incidents have not. As Sophia Kercher, a UCSB alum, wrote in Salon, of another infamous day on that campus — the day in 2001 when a freshman named David Attias ran down a swath of pedestrians with his black Saab, also out of a frustration with women: "There are so many that we have started to tune them out. It’s natural to try and forget; biologically our brains repress hurtful memories. But perhaps a tide has turned. Perhaps we will not forget this one."

These two reactions raise two sets of questions. First, are things different now? Are men more violent, women more vulnerable, society more likely to accept both those things? Is Martinez right? Are these horrors that were unimaginable in some better, safer, more civil past?

The stories of Lepine and Attias — and the murders of 13 women by the Boston Strangler in the early '60s, and eight nurses by Richard Speck in 1966, and, for that matter, the rampage of Jack the Ripper in the 1880s — suggest not. The nationwide Take Back the Night marches of the 1970s and '80s make it clear that campus sexual assault is not a symptom of this decade. And it goes almost without saying that women and girls have been vulnerable in Nigeria and around the world for generations.

“I certainly don’t think that the kind of violence or the amount of violence or the particular nature of violence is all that different from what we have seen before, and over and over again,” says Geneva Overholser, who, as editor of the Des Moines Register, challenged the practice of withholding rape victims' names in 1989, because, she said, it magnified the stigma. On her watch the Register won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for a series on the effect of a rape on one — named — woman. “Violence against women has, alas, been constant and recurring and drearily predictable.”

Yes, Overholser and other women of earlier eras say, this indeed looks to them like yet another “moment” in the history of violence against women. There have been many moments — times when events align with zeitgeist and focus public attention. These, too, are predictable. Each generation rediscovers the outrage when it becomes personal, when a tragedy is so atrocious as to awaken it anew. Generalities are thrown around, about how society has sunk to a new low and how the cause can be found in the particulars of the times, but it feels brand new. "This latest attack has started a national conversation on violence ... from a new generation of women," Joetta L. Carr, a professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Western Michigan University, who wrote the "Campus Violence White Paper" for the American College Health Association in 2005, said in an email interview.

But while the coalescing events of recent weeks and months may not be new, they are different, agree those who have been confronting the violence against women for decades. Mostly that is because the cultural backdrop has changed. Some of the differences are ones that seem to amp up the violence — more violent video games, more guns — while others have worked to dial it down. Incidents of domestic abuse and battering have decreased 64 percent between 1994, after the Violence Against Women Act was passed, and 2004, notes Esta Soler, president of Futures Without Violence, and one of the early advocates for that legislation.

That in turn has allowed the spotlight to move to college campuses, agrees Bonnie Campbell, appointed to lead the first Office on Violence Against Women by President Bill Clinton that was created by the VAWA. “As progress is made in one area, it allows us to focus attention on others,” she says.

Also different in 2014 is the reach of and response to catalyzing news. The “December 6 Massacre” in Montreal was covered heavily in parts of Canada, but not many other places, and certainly not the way it would be in today’s 24/7 news cycle. The women on the Ecole Polytechnique campus, in fact the women of Montreal as a whole, responded to the attacks by turning inward, says Melissa Blais, a sociology graduate student at the University of Quebec in Montreal, who has written extensively about the killings. Leaders of Canada’s burgeoning feminist movement, she has said, “chose to be silent to avoid further attack.” There were certainly no national vigils, and obviously no hashtags. No #yesallwomen. No #bringbackourgirls. No #notonemore.

Which leads to the second question: Will all this difference bring real change? Most of the leaders interviewed for this article thought not, at least not in the dramatic “finally THIS will be the one” declarations that follow these events. “Change happens, but it is incremental,” says Campbell. “We’ve been down all these roads before. Maybe we learn a little each time.”

Some, though, hold out hope. “I do think miracles happen,” says Overholser. “Lord knows we all knew that sexual harassment was commonplace, then came Anita Hill and it did become a tipping point.” Look at Stonewall and its transformation of the gay rights movement, she says, or the way the O.J. Simpson trial paved the way for the passage of VAWA in the first place.

“There can be tipping points,” she says. “Maybe this will turn out that way.”

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