From UCSB Shooting to Sydney Mall Stabbing: The Violence of Misogyny

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, if misogyny often goes unrecognized, it can certainly be deadly, just as we saw on April 13th in Sydney, Australia, where a man killed six people at a busy shopping mall, five of them women. And while police say the attacker may have targeted women, our next guest says there’s no doubt about that. Kate Manne is an associate professor at Cornell University and author of the book “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny.” She tells Michel Martin why we must all reckon with this dangerous ideology.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Professor Kate Manne, thank you so much for joining us.

KATE MANNE, AUTHOR, “DOWN GIRL: THE LOGIC OF MISOGYNY” AND PROFESSOR, FEMINIST, GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES, CORNELL UNIVERSITY: Thanks so much for having me.

MARTIN: So, I want to mention that you are a scholar, a college professor, you teach at Cornell, but you are also from Australia. So, I just wanted to start by asking what went through your mind when you heard about that terrible attack at that Sydney shopping mall?

MANNE: It was just such harrowing events. And I, of course, thought about the people who were just out buying a new pair of jeans, trying to buy an outfit for a wedding, a loaded baked potato, and then were just confronted with this horrific violence in the form of this knife attack. And one mother died after trying to protect her baby daughter, who fortunately pulled through. But it is a horrific tragedy. And my heart just goes out to all of the families affected.

MARTIN: Initially in the news reports, you know, one did not know whether there was a motivation, whether there were any words spoken. And then it emerges that — from the police chief, a police commissioner, who said that, it’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that seems to be an area of interest that the offender had focused on women and avoided the men. And when you heard that, what went through your mind?

MANNE: Yes, I was, of course, like everyone, as these events unfolded, not sure are even making a guess or speculation about the motivations, but that did confirm that that seems to be a misogynistic massacre. We know that five of the people of the six who died were women, and that he also attacked women who were wounded disproportionately. And that together with the context that was helpfully provided by the killer, Joel Cauchy’s father, Andrew, in the aftermath, suggested that this was one of the attacks that we have sadly been seeing not uncommonly around the world that stems from a place of misogynistic resentment. His father said that his son was frustrated out of his brain, that he didn’t have social skills and wanted a girlfriend, and he suggested that the attack was motivated by this sense of resentment at not having the social and sexual services of women.

MARTIN: One of the things, I think, was interesting to note is that the authorities said that they — there was no indication that ideology was a motive or rather that this was a terrorist attack. But if you consider that a particular group of people were targeted for their identity, right, if you take the notion that, you know, terrorism is not just directed at the bystanders to send a message, but terrorism is also directed to sort of punish a group of people for being who they are, right, then it would seem like it would be terrorism. I’m just wondering why it is that, you know, we very rarely hear that. Why is it that these kinds of things are rarely framed in that way as terrorism directed at women?

MANNE: Yes, absolutely. That comment of police that it didn’t appear to be motivated by ideology is so striking because, in fact, patriarchal ideology is so deep rooted that we don’t even notice it’s everyday adherence and policing and enforcement. And the ideology is roughly that a man, particularly a racially privileged man, a white man like Joel Cauchi deserves to have a girlfriend and deserves sexual and social companionship. And that if that doesn’t work out, then he’s not merely disappointed, he is aggrieved. He has a sense of entitlement to have that kind of relationship and he feels entitled to lash out violently when that doesn’t come to fruition in what I believe is absolutely an act of terrorism. It creates terror in girls and women and rightly so that we may be targeted because of our gender. So, I think there is a kind of racist reluctance to call something terrorism when it comes from a white man who feels entitled to women, but we are very quick to label something terrorism when it comes from a brown skinned Muslim perpetrator. And in fact, in the immediate aftermath of these horrible events, there were various Australian commentators who assumed that this was an act of Islamic terrorism, which was completely false. In fact, the one Muslim person who was involved in this incident was the brave, courageous security guard who was also the only man involved for us to hear who was one of the murdered victims when he tried to intervene in this misogynistic attack and lost his life as a result of that.

MARTIN: When the father of the killer expressed these thoughts, he said he wanted a girlfriend and he has no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain, some people thought that he was blaming the victim — victims, but I felt that he was just describing what he saw, and I just wonder — I thought that was helpful information to know that he — that that was what was in his mind.

MANNE: I admit that when I initially saw the remarks taken out of context, I worried that it was an example of what I call himpathy, where sympathy is extended to a male perpetrator of violence and misogyny over his female victims. But when I saw the entire interview of this grieving father, my reaction was very different. I think he was just trying to explain, not excuse or justify his son’s actions. I think he was horrified by what his son did. His statement had a recognizably both (ph) and form. He said, I am loving a monster. And to you he’s a monster, to me, he’s a sick boy. He’s a very sick boy. Believe me, he’s a sick boy. And that is not inaccurate. Joel Cauchi was a diagnosed schizophrenic who had recently, according to his family, discontinued medication, and he was living in a way that was largely itinerant. He was on the fringes of society. We don’t have to sympathize with him whatsoever to recognize that when it comes to a particular question, why did this man, who was aggrieved and lonely, snap on this day, then we can invoke the fact that he had a particular kind of mental illness that unlike most kinds of mental illness does result in an increased rate of violence. But I think we can recognize that when it comes to that question of why he targeted girls and women and why it is invariably a Joel rather than a Jane, a man rather than a woman, who has this kind of horrifically violent eruption after romantic or sexual disappointment, then we can recognize that his father’s explanation is, again, helpful that he was motivated by the sense of entitlement to women’s labor and to be ministered to and cared for by women.

MARTIN: The word that many people use to describe this is somebody who is an incel or an involuntary celibate. Do you think we’re seeing more incidents like this or do you think that we’re just more willing to acknowledge it?

MANNE: I think we are seeing a rise in these incidents and a rise in incel ideology. What has happened since the crimes of Elliot Rodger in May 2014 is there has been a proliferation of these incel communities online, which have often treated Elliot Rodger as a kind of patron saint of the movement.

MARTIN: So, say more about that, who was he, what happened if you would.

MANNE: Yes. He was a 22-year-old man who felt that he was being deprived of sex, love, admiration, and affection from women. He had a long so-called manifesto, really more of a memoir, if you ask me, in which he recounted these disappointments. And he also had a number of YouTube videos, the last of which was entitled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution”, where he uploaded this video to YouTube immediately before driving to UCSB on Memorial Day weekend, May 2014, and knocking loudly at the door of a sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara. And luckily, the women inside decided not to answer the door, because the knocking sounded unusually loud and aggressive. And that saved their lives, because he had a loaded gun in hand and was planning to eviscerate all of them. He then turned and shot at three young women, also UCSB students, walking outside around the corner, killing two and wounding one of them severely, and then he went on a random — seemingly random drive by shooting spree and also ended up killing another young man. He had previously stabbed to death his three roommates and that was immediately before uploading the YouTube video and he then shot himself as authorities closed in on him on that day. So, those horrific acts were one of these early striking examples of, to me, very clear misogynistic violence. Although it was often denied in the press that this was a misogyny, it was said instead that this was mental illness, even though in this particular case, there was rather little evidence that Rodger, despite extensive psychological evaluation, it doesn’t seem that he was mentally ill. It seems he was aggrieved and entitled and had this sense that the world owed him a, as he put it, hot blonde woman who would turn up on his doorstep, ready and willing to date him and have sex with him. And when he was denied this, he didn’t perceive himself as a criminal, he thought he was enforcing justice. He thought he was enacting revenge, retribution, because the world had not given him what he thought he was owed.

MARTIN: Some people feel like there’s kind of a worldwide movement of trying to sort of reclaim male dominance. Like, for example — like in South Korea, for example, there’s like a whole political movement to kind of fight feminism, right? The argument that there are like political parties and political leaders whose main organizing principle is that. And I’m just wondering, do you see something worldwide? And if so, what is it?

MANNE: Yes, we are absolutely seeing a rise in anti-feminist leaders worldwide who are basically capitalizing on the fact that between men and women, particularly what we see this when it comes to young men versus young women, there is a real disparity in attitudes towards feminism. And we see this in the U.S. context too where almost half of young Democratic men in a recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2022 showed that nearly half of Democratic men believed, when they were young, that feminism was a backward step and that it was a mistake and a negative for society. And that is in marked contrast to women’s attitudes where young women, it was less than a quarter who said that. And we also see that these attitudes are very common — more common, unsurprisingly, in young Republican men and to some extent, women.

MARTIN: Why do you say unsurprisingly?

MANNE: Well, I do think that anti-feminism and conservatism are in lockstep, partly because conservative ideology is often invested in patriarchal roles and expectations being maintained, particularly for people who are also invested in white supremacy and racist ideals and values being promulgated and maintained in society. We’re seeing a lot of feminist social progress. We’re seeing women educated in record numbers, and women being able to achieve positions of power and prestige and leadership and having a voice in new ways, we’re seeing women tell their stories as in the MeToo movement in ways that are unapologetic and unashamed. But it’s not in spite of that, but I think precisely because of that we also simultaneously see anti-feminist backlash where patriarchal forces are trying to re-entrench and re-establish the status quo, and that you often see people who are influenced by those social forces being caught in the grip of misogynist ideologies, and also those misogynistic ideologies being used and exploited to elect certain people who are anti-feminist positions of power worldwide.

MARTIN: What do you think would make a difference?

MANNE: So, I think we have to go right to the root of it and really start with education. Parents and educators need to be teaching people in general, children in general, but young boys in particular, that they are not entitled to social and sexual services from girls and women, and that they need to be obligated to other people and reciprocating forms of care that we all owe to each other, but not because of our gender, rather, just because we’re decent human beings. I think we need to address intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and also forms of incel ideology in our education systems. And I think that there is a real call for not just teaching the nuts and bolts of sex, but also what coercive and misogynistic sexual practices look like. One example of this is there has been an alarming rise as a recent “New York Times” report by Peggy Orenstein showed in the rates of strangulation by men upon women during sexual encounters, and that is not a safe practice from the perspective of brain health. So, we need to be teaching young people that this is not a sexual practice that is safe. And it is one that is rooted in a form of domination and control that is deeply misogynistic. I think that some of the answers also have to do with having better mental health care available for victims recovering from these kinds of assaults and traumas and even just the everyday weathering that we suffer as the result of street harassment. And also, yes, potential perpetrators also need access to better mental health care in America and Australia alike.

MARTIN: How do you talk about this with your students?

MANNE: So, I like to begin our discussions of this horrifying kind of event by analyzing Elliot Rodger. And one of the reasons why I think that is a useful example is that it crystallizes a lot of the ideological drivers of this kind of action and also makes it clear that it can be a case where there are real denials of what has happened in terms of the misogyny that obviously motivated an Elliott Rodger in the popular press, in the discourse, in ways that point to people’s reluctance to acknowledge and censure female victims. So, one of the things that we look at is the responses to the Isla Vista shootings and the ways that many people in the popular press said, this isn’t misogyny, it’s mental illness. He wasn’t really a misogynist because he loved his mother, and various ways of minimizing the misogyny that unfolded and cost two women their lives that day. So, analyzing those kinds of statements is a good exercise in critical thinking, because it makes the point that many people who perpetuate misogyny do love their mothers, they even love beautiful girlfriends, loving wives, good secretaries, et cetera. What they don’t love is when women have ideas beyond their station or don’t stay in their lane, or don’t deliver the goods to which a misogynist feels entitled.

MARTIN: Professor Kate Manne, thank you so much for talking with us.

MANNE: Thanks so much for having me, Michel. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure.