OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
June 2, 2014
Volume 24 Number 11
June 2, 2014
ISSN: 1094-9453
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MY TURN
n Marie Lo
The violence of
white masculinity
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ven though my daughter is only five years
old, she already thinks that being “pink” is
prettier than being “tan” or “brown.”
Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to
protect her from the cultural codes that shape our
society’s definitions of race and beauty. These
messages are inescapable, and everywhere we go,
whether we are at the grocery store, in our car
listening to the radio, or playing at the park, we are
inculcated in this vocabulary of racial and gendered
hierarchies.
The mass murders in Isla Vista last month put
into stark relief what happens when those
hierarchies are interpreted through the lens of
hatred, alienation, and mental illness.
In his 141-page autobiography and manifesto, the
killer, Elliot Rodger, detailed his hatred of white
women for what he perceived as their rejection of
him and their preference for men he considers
inferior to him, in particular, men of color.
Though the target of his rage and hate was
women, especially blonde white women, his racist
attitudes about men of color and his envy of white
men were inseparable from the cultural norms of
white masculinity, which he — as part Asian and
part white — felt he fell short of.
Before going on a shooting rampage that injured
many and killed Veronika Weiss, Katherine
Cooper, and Christopher Michaels-Martinez, and
eventually taking his own life, he stabbed and killed
his roommates, George Chen, Cheng Yuan “James”
Hong, and Weihan “David” Wang, describing them
as nerds who had nothing to offer him.
As Emil Guillermo noted in a blog post on the
website of the Asian American Legal Defense and
Education Fund, even at age nine, Rodger was
already acutely aware of his difference, and
attributed his inability to fit in with the fact that he
was not “fully white.” Guillermo cites the following
passage from Rodger’s manifesto:
I am half White, half Asian, and this made me
different from the normal fully-white kids that I was
trying to fit in with. I envied the cool kids, and I
wanted to be one of them. … I had to make every
effort to rectify this. I had to adapt.
My first act was to ask my parents to allow me to
bleach my hair blonde. I always envied and admired
blonde-haired people, they always seemed so much
more beautiful.
Not only is beauty and desirability epitomized by
whiteness and blonde hair, but being “fully white” is
synonymous with being normal.
E
The irony, notes Noah Berlatsky in his piece,
“Elliot Rodger and Poisonous Ideals of
Masculinity,” is not that Elliot Rodger is a
“deviant,” but that his feelings of isolation,
inadequacy, and self-hatred are actually
commonplace. Few men, if any, are actually able to
live up to the impossible standards of masculinity.
But, if whites have difficulty, then it is doubly hard
for Asian-American men who have to overcome
stereotypes that characterize them as the
antithesis of masculinity.
Earlier this year, NPR’s “Code Switch” series
featured a piece by Noah Cho titled, “How I Learned
to Feel Undesirable.” In it, he described how the
lack of positive media images of Asian-American
men led to his low self-esteem. Cho is also biracial
like Rodger, and clearly Rodger is not alone in
internalizing social messages that lead to
self-hatred. That Rodger grew up in Los Angeles
and was from a family with strong connections to
the film industry meant he lived in the epicenter
and source of these media representations.
Elsewhere they may be escapable; in Hollywood
they are suffocating.
Gun lobbyists and activists argue that it is not
guns who kill people, but people who kill people.
They point to violent video games and our media,
which are saturated with depictions of violence.
Though I am for stricter gun-safety laws, I couldn’t
agree more about our culture of violence. We also
need to include racial and gender violence in our
accounting of our culture of violence. We need to
address the damage done to our children’s psyches
as they grow up in a society structured by racism
and sexism. There is a through-line in the violence
Rodger experienced, internalized, and then
expressed in a murderous hateful rage.
This is not a zero sum situation in which taking
responsibility for our cultural ideology denies
someone like Rodger culpability or responsibility.
Throughout his manifesto, he repeatedly described
himself as a victim who needed to exact retribution
on a society that victimized him. But Rodger was
also suffering from mental-health issues, for which
he had been seeing a therapist.
The killer’s actions are murderously insane
because he interpreted cultural codes literally and
narrowly — that to be white entitled him to women,
money, and belonging. And short of being white,
rich, and desirable, he had nothing to live for, and he
decided to take what he couldn’t have away from
others.
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.