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The Forum > Article Comments > The right to sexual fulfilment: a privileged gunman, misogyny and social comparisons > Comments

The right to sexual fulfilment: a privileged gunman, misogyny and social comparisons : Comments

By Rob Cover, published 26/5/2014

By any measure the Santa Barbara shooter was privileged, but apparently privilege isn't enough.

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We think of psychopaths as killers, alien, outside society. But, says the scientist who has spent his life studying them, you could have one for a colleague, a friend – or a spouse...

There are a few things we take for granted in social interactions with people. We presume that we see the world in roughly the same way, that we all know certain basic facts, that words mean the same things to you as they do to me. And we assume that we have pretty similar ideas of right and wrong.

But for a small – but not that small – subset of the population, things are very different. These people lack remorse and empathy and feel emotion only shallowly. In extreme cases, they might not care whether you live or die. These people are called psychopaths. Some of them are violent criminals, murderers. But by no means all.

Professor Robert Hare is a criminal psychologist, and the creator of the PCL-R, a psychological assessment used to determine whether someone is a psychopath. For decades, he has studied people with psychopathy, and worked with them, in prisons and elsewhere. “It stuns me, as much as it did when I started 40 years ago, that it is possible to have people who are so emotionally disconnected that they can function as if other people are objects to be manipulated and destroyed without any concern,” he says.

Our understanding of the brain is still in its infancy, and it’s not so many decades since psychological disorders were seen as character failings. Slowly we are learning to think of mental illnesses as illnesses, like kidney disease or liver failure, and developmental disorders, such as autism, in a similar way. Psychopathy challenges this view. “A high-scoring psychopath views the world in a very different way,” says Hare. “It’s like colour-blind people trying to understand the colour red, but in this case ‘red’ is other people’s emotions.”

Indy...The wiring of each individual is a separate case.

Kat
Posted by ORIGINS OF MAN, Tuesday, 27 May 2014 7:07:30 PM
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Kat,
Elliot Rodger wasn't a psychopath,by his own account he's more a hysterical, hyper sensitive personality type and very much saw himself as the object, the person who was acted upon by people he saw as heartless,psychopathic predators.
Psychopaths are impulsive, fearless, superficially charming and cunning, Rodger was (as far as we know) timid, shy, introverted, clumsy and socially inept. The psychopath also typically has no trouble attracting and seducing sexual partners because he's a flatterer and tells people what they want to hear.
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Tuesday, 27 May 2014 7:39:06 PM
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Jay.....given our brain is still in its infancy, there's not much I can add:).....I think fact is a great base line...what do you think?

Kat
Posted by ORIGINS OF MAN, Tuesday, 27 May 2014 8:05:18 PM
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AJPhilips: The author does not need defending since he has not really said anything.

What is the point of continually stating the obvious? Misogynist attitudes exist in society and some people take their attitudes to the extreme and become violent. You do not need to be an academic to observe these two things. What purpose does it serve the good of society to keep making such statements? After such events we are routinely reminded that one in three women are subjected to violence from their male partners. We have been told this over and over again – what purpose does it serve?

Presumably most of us want such violence to come to an end but simply stating that it exists contributes nothing toward that end. This article does little more than that. Some men hold poor attitudes toward women, sex and a sense of ownership or entitlement. This can lead to violence. Where is their evidence that anyone is really interested in finding out where these attitudes come from? An attitude is not just a bunch of ideas which can simply be turned around by someone showing how these ideas are erroneous. Attitudes are as much about feelings as anything else. Why do men have these feelings towards women which lead them to become violent? What is the genesis of these feelings? What has occurred in their upbringing to make them feel the way they do? What has occurred in their relationships with the women in their life – in particular their mother – that has made them want to hurt their innocent partners or random passersby?

Wanting to constantly draw attention to the results rather than to causes may be a smoke screen to avoid facing those causes for fear of implication in the results. If you are genuinely interested in solving the problem then you will be prepared to look everywhere for the possible causes even if it means you have to face some very unpleasant facts about yourself.

Men should own their own attitudes and behaviour but maybe some women need to own some of the causes.
Posted by phanto, Tuesday, 27 May 2014 8:38:34 PM
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AJ, my entire argument is based upon science and extensive research. Your opinion is based upon your perception that "progressive" people always oppose the idea of entertainment industry censorship, so you oppose entertainment media censorship as a culturally conditioned reflex. The media has you thoroughly house trained like a Manchurian Candidate", and you don't even know it.

If you claim that the media has no impact on human behaviour, stop and listen real hard. You will her the advertising executives at Mojo and Saatchi & Saatchi laughing their heads off. The entertainment media can hardly claim that the images produced and the messages transmitted by them has no influence on their audiences behaviour, when it is largely sponsored by an the advertising industry which claims the exact opposite.

The effectiveness of movies to influence audiences behaviour is the primary reason why movies today are saturated with "product placement" adds. The advertisers know that young people are so desperate to model themselves on their on screen hero's, and that they will purchase any product that they connect with their heroes.

"Rambo" knifes containing survivalist gear only became a popular item after the release of the "Rambo" movies. Clint Eastwood's .44 Magnum was invented by Elmer Keith and it was once considered too big to be practical. But this firearm became immensely popular after the release of the "Dirty Harry" movies. And if people purchase items to model themselves on the role model hero's, even you probably have the wit to figure out that they will also model their behaviour on their role model heroes as well.

In the USA, ALL of the prestigious medical and mental health associations have testified in the US Congress that media violence has a causal link to violent human behaviour. They use words like "There is absolutely no doubt" and "the scientific debate is over" (American Psychological Association). The AMA testified that the link between the media and real life violence "has been proven by science, over and over again.
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 27 May 2014 8:48:55 PM
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Phanto, I see your points.

LEGO,

<<...my entire argument is based upon science and extensive research.>>

Awesome. Please link me to some of it then. I’m always fascinated to read this stuff. Preferably something that doesn’t contain the problems that I specified before, though. The Bobo doll experiment is a study that immediately comes to mind, and although it had it’s usefulness, it suffers from the same problems I noted and is, therefore, not very useful in this instance.

<<Your opinion is based upon your perception that "progressive" people always oppose the idea of entertainment industry censorship, so you oppose entertainment media censorship as a culturally conditioned reflex.>>

How do you know this? I’ve cited many studies that support my point. You would, at least, need to discredit those first before you could make such an assumption.

<<The media has you thoroughly house trained like a Manchurian Candidate", and you don't even know it.>>

How can that be when my sources didn’t come from the media?

<<If you claim that the media has no impact on human behaviour...>>

On the contrary, I pointed to several ways in which the media influences human behaviour. I even pointed out to you once how the media had influenced your skewed perception of crime rates (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#275124).

<<The entertainment media can hardly claim that the images produced and the messages transmitted by them has no influence on their audiences behaviour, when it is largely sponsored by an the advertising industry which claims the exact opposite.>>

Sure, but the question is what are people taking away from violent movies and why? I've already provided adequate reason to believe that it's not that violence is acceptable, and you have done nothing to counter that.

<<The effectiveness of movies to influence audiences behaviour is the primary reason why movies today are saturated with "product placement" adds.>>

No, that’s more to do with the effectiveness of advertising, marketers spotting new opportunities and film production companies welcoming the additional funding. The benefit that films bring to advertising is the ability to tie the trendiness of characters, etc. to their product.
Posted by AJ Philips, Tuesday, 27 May 2014 9:35:25 PM
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