I don’t believe this guy had any real interest in a girlfriend; I think he had a very very deep relationship with his own rage. I do think a substantial portion of popular culture works to cross the wires of the pleasures of sex with the pleasures of rage (vide: mean, hateful porn) (vide: the pick-up artist/ “game” subculture) (vide: the weird saturation of all mainstream detective shows with sexeee mutilated female corpses).

And, obviously, sexual paranoia about race employs the same triggers: naughty sexy negroes! so horneeee! so angreeee!

Like, all that “date younger women” literature he was into isn’t really “find a girl” lit; it’s “feed your loathing” / “here’s a poke in the eye to all women!” lit: the men who buy it now full well it will creep out under-30s and hurt the feelings of over-30s. That’s the point, full stop.

Anyway, I would like to see an analysis that recognizes he wasn’t a man without a relationship: he had one really, really, really consuming partner.

That doesn’t mean I want the conversation to follow the pattern, “oh, let’s not talk about sex or race! Let’s talk about this one person’s personal hang-ups”. I more mean, let’s talk about the fact that sexism and racism trigger rage, and rage can feel *awesome*, and people are really reluctant to give up their sources of pleasure. I think one thing that gets in the way is the idea is “oh, but sexism and racism are negative. No one really wants negative energy in their lives, therefore no-one is really deep down sexist or racist”.

That’s wrong; it’s worth exploring what people get out of sexism and racism when it’s obviously not social power (if America were less sexist and racist, imagine the social safety net we’d all enjoy!). It’s toe-curling jollies, that’s the scary truth.

Sodini’s fears of a powerful black man zeroed right in on this question of black man-white woman sexual liaisons. Maybe the only thing worse to Sodini than his inability to control white women was the fact that black men can (or will) be able to control them? (That’s my pop psychologizing.) I’m not suggesting this as a “race trumps gender” kind of thing, but it is interesting to me that Sodini’s sexualized gynocide was pretty specifically racialized as well. So not only has the media ignored some of the points you raise, Historiann, but also the fact that sex and violence go hand in hand with race in American culture.

Just as feminists have strived not to separate “date rape” from “real” (stranger) rape, so I think we need to see all violence against women as one end of the spectrum of men’s sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, attention, and time, etc.