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Recently a 22-year-old man killed his roommates, then shot and murdered a number of women, and wounded others, because he felt he’d been rejected sexually and was furious that he was still a virgin. He called it his “war on women.”

According to LA Times, in a video he made before the attacks (now removed from YouTube) he said: “”I’m 22 years old and still a virgin, never even kissed a girl. And through college, 2 1/2 years, more than that actually, I’m still a virgin. It has been very torturous,” he said. “The popular kids, you never accepted me and now you will all pay for it. Girls, all I ever wanted was to love you, be loved by you. I wanted a girlfriend. I wanted sex, love, affection, adoration.”

Wow. Scary.

It’s like the Montreal Massacre. A man killing women for being women. For not giving them what he wanted. Another tear through our society, our souls. This horrifies me. It should horrify you, too. Men are not automatically owed sex or praise or anything else by women just because they are men. But our culture encourages and promotes the sexualization and objectification of women and girls–and the dominance and “superiority” of men. Still. To this day.

Most women have experienced some form of sexual assault in their lives–many from men they know. At least 1 in 3 girls have been sexually abused or raped, and I think that is a very conservative estimate, given how frightening and hard it is to talk about, and how often people don’t believe a child when they speak out.

Yes, boys are sexually abused, too. But what we’re talking about right now is the misogyny–the hatred of women–that is steeped into our society, so that most young women can’t walk down a street without being harassed, or fearing sexual assault. Where women are expected to put out. Where women are still blamed for rape, and where rapists are still let free and not punished for their crimes. Where girls and women are still considered second class.

If you’re on social media, especially Twitter, you may have seen #YesAllWomen trending. It’s in response to these recent murders, and also to the hatred and violence against women that is such a part of our culture. Gina Dening wrote about this beautifully: “Because every woman has a story about being a victim. Every woman has a story of a time when she needed to decide between fight and flight.” Read her post. It says SO much more–so perfectly.

I also really appreciated and loved Chuck Wendig’s post Not All Men, But Still Too Many Men on how men saying “not all men” are missing the point, and that our society is built on violence against women. We KNOW not all men are rapists or bullies or murderers or child molesters. But for so many women, we have to face or have had to face threats from men all our lives.

I did. I experienced daily and nightly rape by my father, other family members, and his friends. He used me in child porn and child prostitution to gain money and prestige among his friends and among the cult he and my mother were a part of. Rape, abuse, and torture were my normal growing up–for most of my life. I lived in fear and terror. And yet I always fought it.

I argued with my high school sociology teacher, telling her and the class that women were not ever to blame for rape, not even if they walked down a dark alley alone or wore skimpy clothes. I was verbally shot down by my teacher. I fought back against my abusers, always–but also tried to stay alive. I didn’t think I would survive and become an adult–but I’m glad I did. It’s gotten a lot better.

But I still am not comfortable in my body. I still am afraid out on the streets after dark. I still experience harassment as a woman and a lesbian. I am still affected in so many ways by the rape and abuse and objectification I experienced as a child and teen and even later.

So I am thrilled to see #YesAllWomen trending–thrilled to see women speaking out about the violence and harassment they experience, thrilled to see men and women listening, and many responding positively. I believe so strongly in the healing power of bringing painful things to light, of talking about them, and of working to create change. I believe we can make positive change together…even if it takes a very long time. And I still hope for a day when the hatred will end.

It’s what I work towards through my books. Through speaking out on social media. Through the way I live my life. And it’s what I hope you’ll work towards, too. Greater compassion. Equality. An end to the violence and hate. All of us being able to live without fear.

I know. It sounds like a dream far too big, impossible, to happen. But I still hope for it. I have to. I hope you will, too. And I hope you’ll also speak out.

Other YA authors are tweeting and writing about #YesAllWomen:

And Kim Baccelia has written about it in her post

There are also many articles about #YesAllWomen in the media, including:
Time

buzzfeed

and many others.

And you can search for the latest #YesAllWomen hashtags on Twitter.

Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, whose primary skill is spewing hate speech without moving his lips, has brought his shtick to animation with an hour-length animated special called "Achmed Saves America."

It’s easy to understand misogynist Republican men if you view them in the context of the animal kingdom. Males, from fruit flies to men, have an anatomical limitation. They cannot produce eggs, and if they’re mammals like us, they cannot get pregnant or give birth. Their only contribution to reproduction is sperm. And sperm must leave a male’s body in order to fertilize an egg. This means that in the act of mating, males lose control of their most precious biological possession, their sperm. Once sperm leave a male’s body, they are under the control of the female. She can eject them, kill them, block them or allow them to fertilize her eggs. Females are scary creatures!

Among waterfowl, where rape is common, females have evolved vaginas with dead-end sacs, a kind of internal burial ground for an unwanted male’s sperm.
The only way males can try to control their sperm investment is by controlling the recipients—females! And males—insects to humans—do anything and everything they can to exert control and subvert female choice. (Of course there are many wonderful liberated men who think with their brains instead of the instrument below their belt, but those who want to make women’s bodies property of the state are not among them.)

Subversion tactics are seen most clearly in insects. Female insects mate with several males and store sperm in their sperm-storage chamber. Scientists have discovered that female choice goes on internally in the female’s reproductive tract. It is within the changing climate of this internal environment that hidden or “cryptic” female choice takes place, perhaps at the level of the ovum itself, in determining which sperm of which male, if any, will be allowed to penetrate the egg’s membrane to achieve fertilization. Such internal female choice may be going on in women, too!

So males across species engage in sperm competition and mate guarding to ensure that only their sperm fertilize their mate’s eggs and sire her offspring. Among insects, some bizarre tactics for ensuring confidence of paternity have evolved.

One tactic is the copulatory plug, a gluey substance secreted by the male to block the female’s genital opening, preventing a rival’s sperm from getting inside. The male damselfly has a kind of scooper on the end of his penis that he uses to scoop out previously deposited sperm before mating with a female. Some male fruit flies inject toxic semen, which thwarts rivals but also hastens the female’s death.

Men don’t use genital glue or sperm scoopers but they do use religion, laws and politics to achieve the same end – controlling women’s reproductive biology. The use of mutilating genital surgery in some 28 countries of Africa and the Middle East wounds about three million young girls every year. The current profusion of ultrasound and “personhood” bills being passed by Republican male legislators across the U.S. are the human equivalent of insects’ copulatory plugs. These men are probably no more aware they are acting out such a primitive biological scenario than are insect males. They are caught up in a form of mass hysteria reminiscent of medieval witch hunts and persecution of women. Indeed, the attempt to vilify Planned Parenthood is similar to medieval persecution of women who gave advice on preventing births.

If the current misogynist movement led by Republican men were not so dangerous and harmful to women and our entire society, it would make an interesting anthropological field study. It’s unprecedented in U.S. history, to see males, primarily in one major political party, using the legal process and available medical technology to turn back the clock, prevent access to, and even ban medical advances that benefit men as well as women. Yes, many women accept their subjugation and support these efforts. But would they if they understood that from a biological perspective, these men are acting as brainless as beetles? With this difference: Male insects are ou