Victim of Culture

Hating others for your own shortcomings, and why you’re an idiot if you do

There is not a man alive who hasn’t been rejected by a woman at one point or another.  No, on second thought, there’s not a man alive not named Gene Simmons who hasn’t been rejected by a woman at one point or another.  There, better.  I bring this up because of the health club shooting in Pittsburgh a day ago.

Police statements about a letter left by the man seem to point to a man bitter towards women for rejecting him (one assumes romantically, and not for jobs or something odd).  He took out this aggression by walking into an aerobics class and opening fire on a room full of women.  In other words, he probably was not the type to deal with rejection well.

But no one deals with rejection well.  In fact, if the least you do is lock yourself inside a closet for a week while easting Hostess Cupcakes that’s a pretty good reaction.  But hating those that reject you?

In my life I have been rejected for jobs, dates, and probably some other random category that I can’t currently think of.  I would say credit card, but that would be a lie (though I know plenty of people with good credit who have been for whatever reason).  Okay, so I am familiar with rejection.  Again, short of being Gene Simmons everyone is.  But it has never led to hatred from me.  Sure, I had feelings of disappointment and regret, perhaps even of envy, but hatred?

When I didn’t make the middle school basketball team I didn’t hate the students who did.  Envy them?  Perhaps, but not hate.  All too often, however, I see rejection lead to hatred, and not just among disturbed individuals such as this man in Pittsburgh.  I’ve seen it in everything from loss of dinky jobs nobody should care about, to people bitter about not being the right one for an attractive match.  As a man, I am perhaps most often disturbed when I see it in other men towards women.  Not because women deserve some special protection, but because it’s such a frivolous waste of energy.

Hate all women because one rejects you?  Allow yourself to devolve into a ranting string of gender slurs because of one woman’s negative reaction to your advances?  Breed genuine contempt towards half the population because you didn’t get exactly what you wanted?  Get over yourself.  Women can be mean, cruel creatures at times.  They can be petty, childish, and spiteful.  They can be all sorts of fun synonyms to string together, but at the end of the day they are as human as men, and therefore as graceful and flawed.  Expecting anything more or less is simply, well, idiotic.

The man who did this is a monster.  But too many men allow themselves to be monsters in training–spouting rhetoric that is highly disturbing and just a little bit frightening in the face of such an incident.  Your penis may have been emasculated by the cute girl who rejected you, but a gun is not just a bigger penis that will impress her.  Please retake freshman biology.

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