The Foundational Manifesto

The manifesto and videos created by the Santa Barbara perpetrator present his lack of sexual access to women on-demand as not just individual grievance but an injustice, a frame that is found in both leftist and rightist social movement-building.¹ Prior research on mass shooters finds that a sense of entitlement to take “revenge against those who have wronged you” transmutes grievances into violence. Perpetrators need to believe their actions are justified and legitimate. They believe in their own superiority and feel “humiliated by their presumed inferiors,” as when the Santa Barbara perpetrator complains he is treated like a mouse when he is a god.² He claims to be the “true victim,” that women and humanity “struck first” in “the war” by denying the pleasure to which he felt entitled. He frames not having sexual access to women as an “injustice,” a “crime” perpetrated against him, emphasizing that his attack is “retribution.” References to himself as a “magnificent gentleman” and “supreme gentleman” underscore his self-image as the hero of the story.

His decision to target a sorority as a symbol of the most sexually desirable and unattainable women (i.e., white, blonde, and attractive) particularly demonstrates the terroristic intent in the 2014 attack. The perpetrator researched which sorority had “the most beautiful girls,” to represent “the kind of girls I’ve always desired but was never able to have because they all look down on me.” The manifesto states the desire to inspire terror in women: “I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts.” Unable to gain access to the selected target on the day of his attack, the perpetrator opened fire on nearby pedestrians.

Dehumanization of women, in multiple forms, is central to the misogynist incel community, and a pervasive aspect of the Santa Barbara manifesto. This should raise significant concern, as research by the Dangerous Speech Project finds that dehumanization is a hallmark of dangerous speech that paves the way for ideological extremist violence by stripping away inhibitions for carrying out violence and removing victims from moral consideration.³

Core to male sexual entitlement is a dehumanizing view of women as objects to serve men; this instrumentality has been identified as the “defining feature of objectification.” Objectified people are reduced to “things,” to possessions to be owned, to a means to goals.⁴ Sexual objectification, specifically, “reduces women to their appearance, body, or individual body parts. This leads to a perception of women as interchangeable with others possessing the same physical characteristics.”⁵ The Santa Barbara perpetrator refers repeatedly to blondes, depicted as interchangeable and nonunique, as the focus of his desire (demonstrating an obsession with white women). At one point, he describes “giving the female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them.”⁶ The phrasing of expectation that the female gender should provide sexual pleasure evokes objectification and instrumentality. He views women as wronging him by not performing their function (sexual gratification).

The manifesto also approaches women with a mix of animalistic dehumanization and demonization, asserting, “Women are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they need to be treated as such.” The manifesto states that women “think like beasts, and in truth, they are beasts. Women are incapable of having morals or thinking rationally.” ⁷ Animalistic dehumanization stimulates feelings of “contempt and disgust” and is commonly deployed in support of genocide.⁸ The Santa Barbara perpetrator imagines a “pure” world where women are put in concentration camps to be “deliberately starved to death,” using those who survive for “breeding.” (Obsession with purity is another hallmark of dangerous speech.) Demonization amps up dehumanization to the level of a crusade, for instance, calling on incels to “overthrow this oppressive feminist system.” It “creates moral justification to act against a group perceived as inherently [and irredeemably] evil.” ⁹ Violence against the target becomes not only justified but a moral good, even an imperative.

Men the Santa Barbara perpetrator perceives as sexually successful appear as secondary targets in his rhetoric. The perpetrator dehumanizes popular men as pleasure-seeking “brutes,” and refers to both men and women with statements like, “you are animals and I will slaughter you like animals.” Despite being half-Asian himself the perpetrator expresses heightened rage when he sees “inferior” Black, Latino, or “full-blooded” Asian men with white women, and claims, “I deserve it more” as a “descendant of British aristocracy.”¹⁰