How white male entitlement leads to violence against women
What you need to know:
- Kate Manne, in her instructive book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, articulates how lonely white men who are sex-starved have resorted to violently targeting women as a result of their entitlement.
- She explains how white privilege instigates white men to snap with horrific violent eruptions when denied sex, affection, romance and love from women.
White patriarchy has been sustained by subliminal programming that has existed for decades and is inscribed into the minds of communities from childhood. When children expect presents at Christmas, tales of Santa Claus, an old white man, are recounted. During the telling of romantic stories, the imagery of Cupid, a white baby, is invoked. Pictures of Jesus and his white-resembling disciples are displayed in houses of worship during biblical narrations. White males are similarly miseducated to believe that every advancement emerged from the Caucasian race.
These activities develop a fundamental subconscious impact and permeate the mind of a society that is artfully programmed, brainwashed and indoctrinated into believing that whites are behind every revolutionary invention. Further instilling this conviction, the word "white" has 34 positive connotations attached to it in the English dictionary, while "black" has 380 negative synonyms.
White males have for centuries enjoyed social positions of leadership, authority, influence, prestige and elevated status. They have systemically been uplifted by a power structure that established a white superiority complex. Due to their assured privilege, white men have a proprietary sense towards women. When this sense is challenged, thwarted or threatened, it becomes the trigger for misogyny and, in a multitude of incidents, results in violence, aggression and sexual transgressions.
Kate Manne is an Australian-born white professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies at Cornell University in Finger Lakes, Ithaca, New York State. In her instructive book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, she articulates how aggrieved and lonely white men who are sex-deprived because of involuntary celibacy have resorted to violently targeting women as a result of their entitlement. She explains how white privilege instigates white men to snap with horrific violent eruptions when denied sex, affection, romance and love from women.
Kate Manne's book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny.
Since 2018, there has been a proliferation of incel (involuntary celibate) online communities that treat white attackers of women as patriotic saints. These are white individuals convinced that they are being deprived of sex, love, admiration and affection by women and who attack, sexually assault, rape and kill women in retaliation.
On May 23, 2014, a 22-year-old Caucasian male named Elliot Rodger uploaded a disturbing video on YouTube. He then drove to the University of California, Santa Barbara, on Memorial Day and violently knocked on the door of a sorority house. Fortunately, none of the women opened. Elliot subsequently shot three women outside, killing two and severely wounding one, before turning the gun on himself. He left behind a 137-page manifesto titled My Twisted World, in which he detailed his resentment towards women for not desiring him.
His words of entitlement crystallised how he was deeply aggrieved and indicated that he had a profound sense that the world owed him a “hot blonde woman” who would turn up at his doorstep, willing to have sex with him. He did not perceive himself as a criminal but believed he was enforcing justice and retribution for what was owed to him.
Kate states that Rodger's sense of entitlement was an indication of misogynistic violence that has always been denied and instead portrayed in the press as mental illness. Even though extensive mental evaluations had been conducted on Rodger and a plethora of other entitled misogynist attackers, no sign of mental illness was detected. Between 2011 and 2019, 55 per cent of mass shootings in the US were perpetrated by white men, with 24 per cent specifically targeting women.
One of the most atrocious cases of entitled white sexual violence involved Daniel Holtzclaw, an Oklahoma City police officer who used official police databases to run background checks on vulnerable black women before sexually assaulting them between June 2013 and December 2014. He targeted 14 women between the ages of 17 and 57, subjecting them to rape, sexual battery and forced oral sodomy.
He ensured his victims were vulnerable black women who had pending warrants of arrest and previous convictions. One of his victims, Jannie Ligons, reported him, sparking an investigation. Holtzclaw was sentenced to 263 years in prison for 18 counts of sexual assault.
His motive for targeting black women was that he had been denied entry into the NFL, the professional American football league, which has witnessed an increase in black female employment. When men are entitled, they may retaliate with a sense of not only legal impunity but also moral pretension. They routinely wreak brute havoc on women who fail to uphold their end of history's sexist gendered bargain.
Read: ‘Women’s bodies are the battlefield’: Survivors recount digital misogyny during femicide protests
Record numbers of female progress have ensured more educated, successful and empowered women are able to achieve positions of seniority and leadership. They have found their voices by recounting their stories in unapologetic and unashamed ways through the #MeToo movement.
Kate states that it is not despite that advocacy, but precisely because of it, that we are concurrently witnessing an anti-feminist backlash in which patriarchal voices are being entrenched and are re-establishing the status quo. There is an influx of violence against women by white males who instinctively react with a violent misogynist ideology. Entitled white men do not appreciate it when women make progress, refuse to stay in their lane and decline to submissively comply with inequality.
The author recommends that educators teach young white boys that they are not entitled to sex from women. Intimate partner violence, sexual violence and incel ideology should all be addressed in the educational system. Instead of just teaching the rudiments of sex, white boys should be educated on what misogynistic and coercive sexual practices are. One such practice is the alarming rise of strangulation by men upon women during sexual encounters, a dangerous act that impedes cognitive blood flow and is rooted in misogynistic domination of women.
The writer is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre @jeffbigbrother.
