Incels threaten when refusing to hear 'no' turns lethal
But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sharply rebuked reporters who attempted to blame President Trump's tone, including his branding news media as "enemy of the people."
"The only person responsible for carrying out these heinous acts were the individuals who carried them out," she said. Quite right. But words matter, especially to those of us who don't want to see more mayhem from more maniacs.
It was also hard to avoid noticing that, among past offenses, Beierle was arrested for committing a rude act of the sort that President Trump was recorded on the famous "Access Hollywood" tapes as saying was OK for celebrity men to do: grabbing women by their private parts.
In December 2012, Beierle was charged with battery after a woman accused him of grabbing her buttocks at a dining hall on Florida State University's campus in Tallahassee, according to news reports.
He also was charged with battery again in June 2016 for groping a woman at a swimming pool without her permission. In both cases the charges were later dismissed, according to police.
Again, it is easy to mock the twisted attitude of men who apparently are so socially awkward that they feel driven to attacks and even kill women -- and anyone else who happens to get in their way. But mockery, sadly, is what apparently drove them to commit their fatal acts.
There has been considerable academic debate about what can be done about what appears to be a spreading social pathology. What's important here is not the incel movement, as much as it inspires provocative commentary, as the incel attitude.
Sex adviser Dan Savage, among others, has proposed without tongue in cheek that the incel phenomenon offers an argument for loosening our laws toward professional sex workers -- or speeding up development of sex robots. I am sure that more science fiction movies already are in production around that theme.
But in the real world now, we need to think seriously about the lessons we are teaching young men. What makes some of them feel so entitled to women's company that they dehumanize the women who, in their minds, refuse to let them have it?
That's a task for us older and presumably wiser men to pursue. Even President Trump should support that.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
