Toronto Star columnist, Heather Mallick, turned the case of a young man with what appears to be mental health issues into the story of raging misogyny. Little did I know that I am hated just for being female. It's almost a relief. I can think of other reasons, but it seems to pale in the reflection of misogyny. Her uninformed rant is nothing less than left wing ideology gone awry.
According to Mallick, people with Asperger's tend to misinterpret that which is around them. So Mallick has decided that Rodger, the young man who went on a killing rampage, had focused on a group of women at a party because of his desire to have sex with a beautiful blonde and tried to push girls off a cliff when rebuffed. That his leg was broken by the men who stopped him seems to be irrelevant to his focus. He killed because of the women not because of the men who broke his leg.
Mallick is busy using the tragedy of poorly managed mental health to push her men-hate-women agenda. She does it at the same time she demeans women. In her world she pictures the women that Rodger sought as "draped by the pool, always on display." To her it's misogynistic for women not to work outside the home. The desire to be a girlfriend or wife, some kind of "domestic role" is beneath her contempt. She manages to attack women who might actually choose "domestic life," raising a family, with the same brush as those with mental illness. Is she subtly suggesting these women are mentally ill? I don't know which fallacy brings me more tears, or despair.
I just read "My Life With Asperger's" by John Elder Robinson, written December 17, 2012. He wrote: "It's not a "lack of feeling" disorder. In fact, most clinicians who work with people on the autism spectrum will tell you autistic people tend to care deeply for people in their lives, and have a sweetness; a childlike gentleness – something totally at odds with what you'd expect in a cold blooded killer." Studies show that "autistic people are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators."
Eric Butter of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who treats autism, including Asperger's said "Research suggests people with autism do have a higher rate of aggressive behavior — outbursts, shoving or pushing or angry shouting — than the general population. .. These types of tragedies have occurred at the hands of individuals with many different types of personalities and psychological profiles."
In other words there is Asperger's and there is autism, both of which can be characterized by poor social skills, repetitive behavior or interests and problems communicating. And then there are those who also deal with some mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Which would explain Rodger's "obsessive" desire to be liked by young women. As if he were different from any other young man in that desire. Mallick further muddies the water by disparaging those who live well with Asperger's, autism and mental illness by blaming the parents. Where is Freud when you need him?
It's Mallick who suffers from an obsession. And she has projected that obsession on to a young man whose parents tried to provide all the help he required-including self-help books given by the father-whom she mocks as clueless- a clue to her view of men. I must ask how much she knows about caring for one with a mental illness. About providing them with therapists and books to help them learn about themselves? And according to the story, these parents watched over him, worried about him and called for help. And what happened? The police diagnosed him and chose not to listen to the concerns of family and left him alone.
Asperger's and misogyny do not go together. How sad that too often we look for simplistic answers to difficult questions, but even more worrisome is the leaps in logic made by people like Heather Mallick-respected columnists-turning a tragedy that seems to have been triggered by errors in the manner in which we treat people with mental illness into a moment of feminist propaganda. There seems to be no taboo against belittling or demeaning mental illness and then we wonder why there is a stigma.
The young men and women who died did not die from misogyny any more than Amanda Todd died from bullying. They died from our inability to provide appropriate treatment for mental health disorders.
