Florida shooting-likely Incel attack.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/04/us/talla ... 1541390717

(CNN)The man suspected of shooting two women at a Tallahassee, Florida, yoga studio had been accused of harassing women in the area, according to police, and reportedly made misogynistic remarks on YouTube videos.

In one instance, he was accused of slapping, grabbing and shaking a 19-year-old woman's backside at a Tallahassee apartment complex's swimming pool, but the case was not prosecuted.
Scott Paul Beierle, 40, posed as a customer when he walked into Hot Yoga Tallahassee on Friday evening and fired a handgun without warning, police said.
The yoga students fought back, police said, but two women were killed and five people were wounded. The gunman had fatally shot himself by the time officers arrived, Tallahassee Police Chief Michael DeLeo said.
Play Video
Mayor Gillum addresses Tallahassee shooting 01:44
Authorities say it's not clear why he carried out the attack. Investigators have not discovered any links so far between the gunman and the victims or the yoga studio, DeLeo said. On Saturday, police searched Beierle's home in Deltona and his electronic devices for clues.
Beierle, who was staying at a local hotel before the attack, was visiting the city but was no stranger to Florida's capital. He graduated from Florida State University and police said he had been "the subject of prior calls for service in the Tallahassee area related to harassment of young women."
In videos posted to YouTube in 2014, the man decried interracial relationships, slammed women who wouldn't date him and identified with "involuntary celibates," or "incels," according to The New York Times. CNN has not verified the man in the videos is the gunman.
Past arrests
A search of Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Leon County Circuit Court clerk records shows that FSU campus police arrested Beierle in 2012 on a battery charge and in 2014 on a trespassing charge. Tallahassee police arrested him in 2016, again on a battery charge.
Records from the first two cases were not immediately available, but the clerk's office said the charge in the 2012 case was dropped, and the 2014 case was disposed of via "other pretrial intervention." A spokesman for the city of Tallahassee said he had no information on the campus arrests.
In a June 1, 2016, case, Tallahassee police responded to the clubhouse of an apartment complex swimming pool where a woman, 19, told an officer that a tenant at the complex had touched her butt, according to a police report.
The teen was at the pool alone sunbathing when the tenant, later identified a Beierle, sat down next to her and told her she had a "nice butt," the report says.
"She thanked him and he offered to put sunscreen on it. She told him no thank you, she did not need it," the report says.
He then asked for her name, she obliged and Beierle "then slapped her butt, and grabbed it then shook it" before hastily exiting the pool area, according to the report.
The victim initially did not want to press charges, the report says, but changed her mind the next day. As detailed in a second police report, the responding officer returned to the complex to view surveillance video, which backed up the victim's allegations.
Beierle was charged with battery. A Leon County clerk record indicates the case was dismissed in May 2017.
Gunman made misogynistic rants, reports say
In the videos, Beierle recounted instances in which he was rejected by women, The Times reported.
"Made one date, didn't show up," he said of one woman. "Made another date, didn't show up. Kept making excuses. Ah, I could've ripped her head off."
Police said people fought the man who walked into a Tallahassee, Florida, yoga studio and opened fire.
Police said people fought the man who walked into a Tallahassee, Florida, yoga studio and opened fire.
"I don't think a female can ever understand the societal pressure that's put on an adolescent male to unburden himself of this stigma that society's put on him," he said. "This virginity burden."
The videos had titles like, "Plight of the Adolescent Male" and "Dangers of Diversity."
According to the newspaper, Beierle was sympathetic toward Elliot Rodger, who killed six people and wounded 14 others in 2014 near the University of California, Santa Barbara. Rodger had written a manifesto in which he lamented his virginity, which he blamed on the "cruelness of women."
Beierle said that as an adolescent he could relate to "this endless wasteland that breeds this longing and this frustration," The Times reported.
If the man in the video is Beierle, it wouldn't be the first time this year an act of violence was perpetrated by someone who hailed Rodger.
According to police, minutes before Alek Minassian killed 10 people in a Toronto van rampage, he posted a Facebook message, saying, "All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!" Minassian also stated his desire to "overthrow" all the "Chads and Stacys," incel vernacular for good-looking men and women.
Matthew Rodin, left, and Susan Turner comfort Melissa Hutchinson who rendered aid to some of the victims.
Matthew Rodin, left, and Susan Turner comfort Melissa Hutchinson who rendered aid to some of the victims.
The incel movement is made up almost wholly of men who "can't have sex despite wanting to" and feel as if they're unfairly denied sex because they're unattractive or awkward, according to incels.me.
"In practice this goes beyond simply having sex and enters the realm of having no possibility of finding a partner, either to get validation, love, or acceptance from," the site states.
Doctor 'touched countless lives'
Tallahassee yogis as well as the health care and college communities are mourning the two women killed in Friday's shooting: Maura Binkley, 21, and Nancy Van Vessem, 61.
"Although this shooting happened off campus, it has deeply touched the Florida State University family with two deaths and several injuries. To lose a faculty member and a student and have others injured in this senseless and violent way is absolutely devastating," Florida State President John Thrasher said in a statement Saturday.
On Sunday evening, FSU students and faculty came together for a vigil honoring Van Vessem and Binkley.
The crowd gathered on Langford Green on Sunday evening and held up battery-powered tea candles that flickered under an overcast sky as a small choir sang, "Hymn to the Garnet and Gold."
Maura Binkley and Nancy Van Vessem.
Maura Binkley and Nancy Van Vessem.
Binkley "knew how to work with people in a positive way," her father, Jeff Binkley, told CNN.
"She just radiated love for everybody. You could see her life shines through just about everybody she met. That's consolation to us."
After the Parkland shooting in February, Binkley stood up against gun violence and went to the Florida Capitol to support the Parkland students as they lobbied for change.
"And she became a victim," Jeff Binkley said. "It's a cruel irony. A cruel irony."
The young woman grew up in the Atlanta area and was attending Florida State University, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority.
After spending the summer studying in Germany, Binkley was back for what would have been her last year in school. She planned to graduate in May with a double major in English and German, according to her family.
"It's an attack on good. It's an attack on peace. It's an attack on love," her father said of the shooting. "It's an attack on the positive elements and values of life."
Play Video
Multiple victims in yoga studio shooting 01:09
Van Vessem was a veteran physician who "touched countless lives."
A faculty member at Florida State, she was the chief medical director for Florida's Capital Health Plan, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
She was in charge of coordinating third- and fourth-year clerkship rotations in internal medicine at the school's medical school, according to the Florida State College of Medicine's website.
In a Facebook tribute, Big Bend Hospice in Tallahassee described her as "a friend and a champion for end-of-life care."
At Sunday's vigil, Thrasher said Van Vessem's daughter said there had never been someone "more selfless, more loving, supportive and fabulous" than her mother.
CNN's Samira Said, Meridith Edwards, Dianne Gallagher, Dakin Andone, Artemis Moshtaghian, Patrick Cornell and Gianluca Mezzafiore contributed to this report.

Looks like another sorry sack of shit who thought he was entitled to sex and that women should die if he couldn't get it. No doubt never considering that maybe there was a good fucking reason why women didn't want to sleep with him.

We really need to start consistently classifying Incel shit as domestic terrorism/hate crimes, because it is both ideologically motivated and targeting a specific demographic group (women).

[U.P. Cinnabar]

His odious habit of grabbing womem's asses, then singing about it definitely would've been a turn off.

[Zaune]

This is what happens when boys grow up having it hammered into their heads that not having sex is a failure on their part, and that a girl not being into in them is a personal attack. The ones with enough good looks and superficial charm to make a good first impression get a string of girlfriends who they invariably go on to treat like crap, and the rest go off to stew in their own resentment and blame society instead of asking themselves what they could be doing differently.

[The Romulan Republic]

Thousands (if not tens of thousands) of years of cultural training that womens' primary value is as the sexual objects of men (and that paradoxically sex is something shameful and that this is the fault of women). Training which is all the more effective because it appeals to some of our most base and primal instincts. Training on which so many of the conventions on which human society is built are directly or indirectly based. That's a hard thing to fight. I don't share these fuckers' violent hatred of women, but I've said and done things that I knew were sexist, and that made me cringe afterwards, even though my conscience and my rational mind knew better. I'm not trying to defend it, and I'm sure as hell not trying to defend Incel terrorists, but its so deeply ingrained in humanity that it is very hard to ever get away from.

The single greatest horror in human history is far and away, without a doubt, the millennia-long campaign of subjugation and sexual slavery waged against women.

You know, there are times when I think it is a miracle that I didn't end up like these people. I mean, I'm a middle class white guy, I've spent a lot of my life adult life out of work, had very little in the way of romantic/sexual success with women. I've got more than enough resentments and insecurities and anger. I even went through the "politically incorrect" phase in my youth, though not to the extent some do. I fit the profile for an Alt. Reichist/MRA/Incel type well enough I suppose, and it would be so easy to blame a scapegoat for all of my problems.

If I look at this in terms of personal experience, three main things, I think, kept me from doing so. One is the values that I was brought up with. My family weren't hardline progressives growing up, but they sure as hell weren't Trumper types. I had in some respects a very sheltered childhood, but I was exposed to other cultures at an early age. I was taught that people of other backgrounds were still people, still worthy of respect, and I was taught that racism and sexism were wrong (in particular, I think I got my belief in more-or-less open borders very much from my mother). I think being a dual citizen, and not being brought up in a particular church (beyond "vaguely moderate Christian family background") really helped in that respect too- its hard to be a nationalist or tribalist when you've been a citizen of two countries all your life, or to be a fundamentalist when you've not been brought up in a single faith and see no proof that any one is completely right.

Two is that I tend to be a very analytical and self-doubting person, and I have put too much thought into why my political positions make sense to easily discard them. This is part of what motivated me as a teenager to switch from against gay marriage to for it- I knew enough to know that there was no good argument against it other than tradition, "its icky", or religion. I also knew enough to know that tradition and "its icky" were not logical reasons for opposing it. And I was already committed to secularism, which ruled out religion. I think I realized that the only way I could consistently oppose gay marriage is if I gave up a belief that was more important to me. It was only later, when I had matured and gotten to know more gay people, that that sense of "its icky/weird/wrong" faded. But I had already realized by then that opposing gay marriage was incompatible with supporting reason and secularism.

The third reason is that reactionary bigotry is ultimately rooted in fear, and while I recognize a cowardly streak in my own personality, frankly, my fears tend to push me away from, not towards, the far Right. Even as a straight white man I am way, way more scared of what the fascists might do to me (and the world) than of what brown people or women might do to me. I don't, by and large, worry about minorities someday breaking down my door and killing me. I do worry about fascists doing it. And I'm honestly more scarred by the possibility of being arrested for my political views someday, than of being arrested on a false rape or harassment allegation. Fear may not be the most noble or safe motivator, but its a damn powerful one.

I don't bring this up to drone endlessly on about myself, but in the hopes that it can shed some light on what does or does not motivate someone to go down a particular ideological path.

Edit: Because of course women and minorities aren't a deadly threat to white men. They don't have the bulk of the power in our society. White men, by and large, still do. What is threatening to the Right is the idea that the group with power might actually have to share. They have such a profound sense of entitlement that they consider "We get everything" the natural state of affairs, and anything other than that a case of persecution against them. Which is part of why they're so reliant on conspiracy theorism- in order to twist reality to make those who have less power appear as a deadly threat to those who have more- something which should otherwise be self-evidently absurd.

Granted, there are poor white men who don't have much power, but that has nothing to do with women and minorities taking anything from them. It has everything to do with rich oligarchs fucking them over, but said oligarchs have played a very effective game of divide and conquer, pitting poor white men against women and minorities to keep them from uniting against those who are oppressing them all. Which is part of how we get a situation where "anti-establishment" can somehow be defined in such a way that it excludes Clinton but includes a rich old white businessman who inherited his money from Daddy Klansman.