Darrell Milton writes to Elliot Rodger about, among other things, why being a 22-year-old virgin is not a big deal.
—
I tried watching Elliot Rodger’s last video this morning. I have been putting it off because I assumed it would be disturbing. And although it goes for about six minutes, I couldn’t get through the whole thing because I think the guy was a loony and his words were making me feel really uncomfortable.
I haven’t written an open letter on my blog before, but I thought this time I would. This is not just to Elliot Rodger, but to all of those young people, both young men AND young women, who feel that their life is over simply because at the age of 22 they are still virgins.
Before I start my letter, here are the opening lines of his video, and it’s the only bit I could watch before turning it off…
“Hi. Elliot Rodger here. Well, this is my last video. It all has to come to this.
Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my retribution against humanity, against all of you.
For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty I have been forced to endure an existence of loneliness and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men but never to me.
I am 22 years old and still a virgin. I have never even been kissed by a girl. I have been through college for two and a half years, more than that, and I am still a virgin. It has been very torturous.
College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure, but in those years I have had to rot in loneliness. It’s not fair…”
There is plenty more of this depressive crap. But that’s all I could stomach. I feel sorry for him, I really do. I don’t know all the variables behind what makes a guy go mental just because he’s still a virgin, but what I have learned in my 40 years is this: How your life is at 22 is not how your life will always be. So I thought I’d write this letter…
***
Dear Elliot,
You should have given it time. You really should have. So you were still a virgin at 22, I know guys who were virgins well into their mid to late twenties and one that I know who lost his virginity after he turned 30. These men are very happy in their life now, all being married, and all having kids (so I guess they had sex, dude).
Leaving high school or going through college still a virgin isn’t a big deal. I’m sorry Hollywood made you think otherwise. Movies like American Pie, Superbad, The Girl Next Door, Sixteen Candles, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Weird Science, and the 1980′s classic Porky’s aren’t based on reality. You DO NOT have to lose your virginity by any set time or period of your life.
I know that you pined after that blonde girl you had a crush on. Mate, I’m sure you’ve heard the expression before, and I’m sorry to go all cliché, but there’s plenty more fish in the sea. As I wrote in a blog post 10 days before your murderous rampage, maybe the perfect person for you, your (to go all Disney) one true love, isn’t living in Santa Barbara. I think you needed to get out of there.
Travel. Meet new people. Back pack through Europe. Meet a nice Norwegian girl who thinks like you, enjoys the same music you like, will share her pickled herring with you, whatever. (Actually, I wonder if you actually knew the things that you liked yourself. I mean besides “hot chicks,” I’m pretty sure your manifesto would have been filled with things you hated rather than things you actually liked).
I’m not going to lie; sex is great. Well, it can be. It can also be a bad experience both for guys and girls. For me, making love is more important. Maybe my mindset is the product of all those women’s magazines I used to read waiting to see the doctor or dentist (or at the mechanic, come to think of it), but having sex with someone you are in love with is the most awesome part of sex. Don’t look for someone to simply fuck. Look for someone to love. That’s what you should have been doing.
You said girls have never been attracted to you? I bet you’re wrong. I bet there were plenty who thought you were a decent guy (back when you were) and that’s all that mattered to them. But maybe these girls didn’t fit your ideal woman. Sure you have to be attracted to someone to some extent, but I am a firm believer in what I call “love goggles.”
Love goggles are like beer goggles only unlike beer goggles, they don’t wear off when you’re sober, they only stop working when you fall out of love. When you find your true love, those love goggles turn into love contacts and they adhere to your eyeballs so that someone society deems average is the most attractive thing on this planet. That’s love mate. That’s what it can do to you.
I know this letter has been written too late for you, but I hope that all the other wannabe Elliot Rodgers out there can read this and learn from your mistake. You didn’t need to go there. You didn’t need to kill innocent people just because things weren’t going your way.
And sure, in cases like this, there are many people who will take to social media and say what I just said but add “You should have just killed yourself, you selfish prick” or something like that. No, that’s wrong. Seek help. Talk to your friends. Talk to your parents. Talk to a professional who can help you. Heck, talk to me. I will listen and I will repeat what I said above as many times as you need to hear it.
There’s nothing wrong with being a 22-year-old virgin. But there’s plenty wrong with being a 22-year-old murderous arsehole.
Yours Sincerely,
Darrell
Like The Good Men Project on Facebook
–Photo: AP / Flowers are placed through a bullet hole on a window of IV Deli Mart in Isla Vista, California, Saturday, May 24, 2014, following a deadly shooting rampage.
About Darrell Milton
Yes, but…
I read Elliot Rodger’s manifesto. He was a spoiled brat whose entitled attitude toward life was fostered by his parents – so much so that he believed he deserved all the sex he wasn’t getting and assumed everybody else was, even though he seems to have never really made any attempt to get to know any women as human beings. While I agree that there are plenty of 22-year-old (and older) virgins out there and while from my perspective of being more than twice that age it makes no sense to presume that what you’re experiencing now will continue for the rest of your life, I do not think we can just take Rodger’s statement that not getting laid is why he did this. Mass murder is not the result of sexual frustration (regardless of sex or gender). That is just the excuse he used to commit violence against others, not really different from the excuses proffered by rapists and batterers to blame their victims for their crimes.
Yes, but, I agree with you. It was an excuse, that’s all, and in the event that someone else thinks it’s a good excuse, I thought I’d tell them otherwise.
Elliot Rodgers was a gender psychopath. Hurrah for an article written having read just the first paragraph. If you’d gone on, you’d have read that he believed women were sluts that owed him sex as we are a facility for fucking, not real human people. Its a common theme in male media, and the fact that Elliot could find so many men to talk to on line that shared his world view that we belong in concentration camps, to be killed with just a few kept for breeding is what he went on to say and what he said all over the internet, along with thousands of men like him that hang out on MRA sites. Its why two ex partners felt entitled to hit me when I called them out for either lying to me or cheating me financially, and why my father stuck up for them rather than me. Its why my 6 year old daughter has just had to move schools having been sexually assaulted by 6 boys in four months of attacks that the headmaster dismissed as rough play. Since when do you touch a girls genitals deliberately, despite the fact she has said no four times, and that be play? Or smash her head into a wall? The first thing that needs to happen when discussing sexist psychopaths is that men need to own the sexism, and until they do that, then all the rest is a sham.
That story about your daughter is horrifying. I’m SO sorry she had to go through that and good for you for pulling her out when her story was ignored. You are right to make a big deal about it – it’s so scary.
Hope your new school is working out much better and that she feels safe!
Unfortunately these are the things you don’t hear on TV or from your peers at 22. It’s a letter that should be passed on to all those going through puberty.
Or a reality that ought to come from one’s parents maybe
Since when do teenagers listen to their parents about sex and relationships?
They don’t. But they listen to randoms on the internet. Hey, I could be a random on the internet…
Exactly Rob. I’ll be showing it to my own sons when the time is right.
Thanks for your response Luke. I’m not sure it’s curriculum reading by any means, but definitely something we should teach angry young men/boys with his mindset.
I’d be more likely to agree if it hadn’t been for that last line.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a 22-year-old virgin. But there’s plenty wrong with being a 22-year-old murderous arsehole.”
What pubescent is going to heed the words of someone calling them an arsehole?
Sorry Darrell, but you lost me when you called him ‘mate’.
Does anyone really think this kid and his actions are the result of not getting laid? I don’t mean to be dismissive, I know how important sex is, but come on. This kid was a misogynist and a psychopath – not one or the other, but both – and let’s just state the obvious: the girls were RIGHT. Right to ignore him, right to avoid him, right to think he was a weird creep.
I just find the idea that ‘he’d have been fine if he’d given it more time’, absolutely … gobsmacking. Getting laid wouldn’t have fixed this guy; he would’ve found another reason to be angry. Someone like this has no chance of living a normal life, and dealing with all the usual ups and downs, wins and losses, successes and failures.
Truly – society’s only hope for people like him is to identify them and lock them away somewhere before they do any real harm.
You are possibly right. But in his last video he made a big deal of it so I made a big of that. Maybe he might have equated sex with love (it’s common). Maybe the love of a good woman might have settled him down. Who knows? He didn’t give it more time. If he had, we’d have six less dead innocent people, and another who might have had the motivation to put those guns away.
And “mate” in Australian vernacular is almost as versatile as the word “fuck” because depending on how we say it, and who we say it to, and the context in which it’s used, that’s how it should be taken. Here I meant it in the pejorative sense. There is no way I am considering him a mate. Although my tone won’t play out well here in writing, may-ate said low and with a downward inflection shows your intended respondent that you don’t approve of their actions without saying another word.
Maaaate – I know – I’m Australian too
I took your tone to be sympathetic so maybe the sarcasm was lost in translation … I still think a ‘come on, mate!’ tone is more then he deserves, even posthumously …
Do you really think he could’ve been ‘saved by the love of a good woman’? Really?? Heck of a lot of pressure to put on the woman, don’t you think??
I don’t think we should make too much of what he made a big deal of in his last video. I don’t mean to be glib – but a sick and angry man like that could’ve blown up at the man who made his cheese sandwich, and screamed about how hard it is to get a good sandwich, and why it’s so unfair that everyone else seems to get good sandwiches except him … do you see what I mean?
Not to downplay his misogyny at all – not at ALL – but I don’t see the two (misogyny and psychopathy) as mutually exclusive. I think his current lack of female attention in his life made women his target (and his personality disorder ensured that would be the case) … but later, it would have been his boss at work, or some celebrity he fixated on, or a neighbour he didn’t like, or whatever …
I guess what I’m saying is, to me, the problem was with him and his outlook, not his circumstances – and he wouldn’t likely change, even if his circumstances improved.
x
I watched his videos. I read his manifesto. That was psychopathy not “needing the love of a good woman.”
I have the same psychiatric diagnosis as Elliot Rodger and was in a similar situation in my adolescence. And I’ve never murdered anybody.
http://veryrarelystable.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-reply-to-elliot-rodger.html
Thank you for not murdering anyone Daniel. I appreciate it and so does everyone who you haven’t murdered. I read your piece. Very powerful, especially coming from such a personal place.
High five for being in the right place at the right time being yourself and enjoying something you like only to have a young lady also enjoying the same thing appreciate your common interest. That’s what Elliot should have been focusing his time on, having an interest that some young lady could enjoy with him.
Hating on women is not really something many, if any women would enjoy.
Yeah, pussy is magic, it would of cured him of being a psychopath right?
Thank you for writing this. I am 28 and still a “virgin.” I use quotes because the whole concept of someone who has had “sex” (whatever that means) being fundamentally different than someone who has not is a bunch of crap.
I never let being a virgin bother me. I never thought it was a problem. I never thought people could tell. One day, a few years ago, I was suddenly asked if I was a virgin and if I had ever had a girlfriend. People can be cruel. From that moment, I became obsessed with the concept of virginity and worried constantly about whether people could tell, and that I was “behind” my peers. It was horrible. Luckily, I have worked hard on improving my self-image and focusing on my education and career so that someday, I will have earned the right to lose my virginity to someone who loves me.
We do need to breed the judgement of those who are older than, let’s say 19 and still virgin out of our culture. I know people who at 25 haven’t been to Disneyland. Fancy that, someone who hasn’t been to the happiest place on Earth.
Well, that’s me. I will admit it. Go on laugh at me. I dare you. Meh, I really don’t care…
Why is a nice Norwegian girl a good match for a soon-to-be mass murderer?
Okay, let me explain. In a private Facebook group full of parents from around the world (mostly the US and Canada though) there’s a mother who is from Norway and she shares similar taste in music to me and we have been discussing old school 1980s thrash metal (I know, it’s random).
I was merely giving her a shout out because in one of my last blog posts that I wrote when I was working in Germany a couple weeks ago I gave a shout out to a Croatian woman I met there. Both stories shared a common theme that the love of your life might be living in some other country. Mine was born 4 hours away from where I was born and raised and living in another part of Sydney outside of my own social circle and community. It could have been any country that I picked and the good people of Norway have no correlation to this mass murderer and this was by no means anything to do with that loony from Norway who killed.
I was merely letting Elliot and any other young men with blinders on know to look outside that little town you’re in and you might find your true love a million miles away.
False promises that things will change in some undefined future help no one. Lying to people and telling them that life stops being unfair at some point is something that even someone with all of Elliot’s mental problems can see right through.
Yes, you were right to note that the standards he’s holding up as normal are a media generated falsehood, and that in all likelihood his peers were lying about their sex lives out of their own shame at failing to live up to that fantasy standard. Where you went wrong was in trying to reassure him that there was sex to be had out there. THERE ISN’T.
The fact of the matter is that no one is entitled to sex. Sex isn’t something you can earn. He is absolutely right that the distribution of sexual pleasure in the world is unfair and capricious. Stop lying to him about facts he’s already figured out. (I’m using your rhetorical device of treating him as though he is alive as a standin for others with similar issues.)
The fact that sex isn’t something you earn is a weight to be lifted off men and boys. Sex isn’t something you earn, so not getting sex isn’t a judgement about whether you have or haven’t lived up to any particular standard.
Good men are left involuntarily celibate, and aweful men are having so much sex they’re getting bored of it. Whether a woman wants to have sex with you has NOTHING to do with your worth as a human being. Women are not qualified to judge your worth as a human being in the first place.
I’m in my early thirties, still a virgin, and expect to be celibate for the rest of my life. Anyone who thinks less of me because of that is a horrible person, and thus certainly unworthy to stand in judgement over me to begin with.
Life isn’t fair. Life doesn’t become fair. You can’t actually make this aspect of life (distribution of sexual pleasure) fair without trampling on important human rights. But you can recognize that because this aspect isn’t fair, anyone who’d judge your worth based on an unfair metric is a jackass not worth listening to.
Have sex, don’t have sex. It’s all good. No one should judge you for that, and no one should be judged by the amount of sex or sexual partners they have had.
It’s hard to escape sex though. It’s everywhere and it’s getting more prevalent. Most are becoming desensitised to this, but some aren’t.
Did I lie to him about there being sex to be had? No, I disagree with you there. I worked with a guy who by his own accord informed my that to get women and to have lots of sex all one needs to do is lower their standards, after all, that’s exactly what he’s asking the women he’s hooking up with the do. I guess it works both ways then.
I don’t agree with his lifestyle, one in which he doesn’t want a relationship but he does want lots of sex. Apparently that’s important to some men. And it would seem, it’s also true for some women.
If there was a lie I told, it wasn’t that direct. In fact it wasn’t one that I actually wrote, rather it was something that I omitted, and for many it is based on a cliché many men not only know, but are living. Once that sex goes from simply the act of making love to the act of procreating, that’s pretty much the end of your rampant sex life.
But hey, with procreation sex you get kids in the end as a reward, so that’s pretty cool. And eventually all that time that you were wishing that you could be having sex will be filled up with soccer training, ballet, music lessons and swim school.
“Sex isn’t something you can earn.”
Tell that to women who set themselves up as prizes to be won.
Traditional romance is about earning sex.
Yeah I think reaching out to these guys is a key point in trying to prevent stuff like this from happening. Just for reference here’s one I did the other day: http://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/reaching-elliot/
I don’t think you needed to call the reader of the letter an arsehole at the end but overall good effort.
Thanks for your comment Danny.
It was hard. I wanted to sympathise with him but not be seen as an Elliot Rodgers sympathiser. I wanted to use the word pity somewhere, but it didn’t feel right.
But I think that for the most part, without praising him at all for his actions I did show a certain level of restrain, and that showed the calm voice I was using to talk to him man-to-man without it being an aggressive argument.
But I was angry. He needed to have some of that poured upon him. And although like your own piece it is very much address to the next Elliot Rodger, it IS definitely address to him. And he needs to know that I think he was an arsehole.
It was hard. I wanted to sympathise with him but not be seen as an Elliot Rodgers sympathiser. I wanted to use the word pity somewhere, but it didn’t feel right.
I think that’s a problem in and of itself. It should be possible to sympathize with a guy who was frustrated without sympathizing with that guy’s actions. But considering how quick people are to accuse you of supporting him (which oddly enough I keep hearing MRAs celebrating his actions but every time I ask for a link I get nothing) I don’t blame you for being worried about being seen that way.
But I was angry. He needed to have some of that poured upon him. And although like your own piece it is very much address to the next Elliot Rodger, it IS definitely address to him. And he needs to know that I think he was an arsehole.
Fair enough. To me knowing he was wrong is more important that getting in an insult. A guy in that position is probably used to people unloading insults on him so throwing another log on the stack probably won’t do much good (but it will probably make people feel good to get in an insulting comment like that though).
No MRA supports his actions.
Sexual pleasure doesn’t require a partner. Masturbation needs to be more openly talked about and accepted as a perfectly acceptable alternative to sex with one or more partners.
I think it’s not so much the lack of sexual pleasure, since anyone can supply that to themselves, but in many cases the main issue is how one appears to other men.Only other men can participate in making it not a big deal and not a test of manhood. Every man can choose to stop talking and joking about virginity as if it’s a failing.
If you are deeply resentful of women for not giving you sex and you think of it as something you deserve to get from them, that attitude is being communicated to them in a number of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. It turn that women were smart to avoid being alone with this man. They were quite perceptive.
What attracts most of us (people of all genders) is someone who is secure in themselves and happy with their lives, filled with a variety of interests that they can share. If you are lonely and feeling like a loser, therapy can help you uncover the obstacles to happiness that you are not aware of. With some hard work you can become the kind of person that people want to spend time with.
I’d like to dispute the “one true love” myth our culture pushes on us. On a planet of billions of people there are likely to be many you could be compatible with assuming you’ve addressed any emotional problems you may have. If you buy into “one true love” that means yours might be on the other side of the planet. You might never meet. Knowing there are many people you could be compatible with allows you to simply meet a large number and somewhere you will find someone you click with. I think it’s easiest when you are out doing things you enjoy or meaningful volunteer work. Please don’t approach busy women on the street. Please do take our no seriously and move on.
“I think it’s not so much the lack of sexual pleasure, since anyone can supply that to themselves, but in many cases the main issue is how one appears to other men.”
Ooh, this is SO true. Is there anything that Elliott said or did that gave the slightest hint that he was looking for love, and friendship, and partnership? Nooooo … EVERYTHING he wrote and spoke about was about having – *possessing* – the stereotypical hot girl, because that’s what he felt he was entitled to. Primary functions, to satisfy his needs, make other men envious and to sit nicely alongside fancy car.
Ugh, it just repulses me even thinking about it. He didn’t turn into a psychopath because women avoided him; women avoided him *because* he was a psychopath.
It also explains his very intense anger towards men of color who he saw with white women he felt he should have. It was all about status. Small wonder women didn’t respond to him as a “nice guy.”
This is more in response to once of the comments than to the article: No, getting a nice woman would NOT have made this murderous POS any less of a murderous POS. She (and possibly her family) would have been his first murder victims. Because his virginity was just a smoke screen for the real problem: that he believed the universe revolved around him. It was selfishness and entitlement, pure and simple.
Upon reading more about him, you’d know that he was mad at his mother for not marrying a rich guy so that he (Elliot) could live a more luxurious life. He would get angry at random women for not giving him their attention just because. The one time a woman did smile at him, he was happy at first but then hated her too because he decided that she was the type who would never get with him. He even threw coffee at strangers because of his entitlement (pre-emptively punishing them for not being his).
What he really needed was to grow up and learn about something called empathy.
Empathy can’t be learned. This kid clearly had an abusive background frankly. I consider this a child abuse/neglect issue, not a gender one