Hell Hath No Fury Like a Male Loser Scorned

‘Hate is infectious’: how the 1989 mass shooting of 14 women echoes today: In Canada, 6 December is now a national day of remembrance and action on violence against women. The massacre at Montreal’s Polytechnique school, fueled by misogyny, is not a horrifying memory confined to a bygone era – rather it seems like a foretelling of things to come.

Two weeks ago, a young woman in Chicago was killed by a man after she ignored his catcalls. Last November, a man whose hatred of women was well-documented online shot six women at a hot yoga studio, killing two. And seven months earlier, a man named Alek Minassian drove a van on to a Toronto sidewalk and killed 10 people, eight of them women.

The sexually frustrated young man behind the van’s wheel – a self-described incel, or “involuntary celibate” – saw his act as retribution against women who had starved him of the affection he felt he was rightfully owed. Minassian said he was inspired by Elliot Rodger, an incel and wannabe pickup artist who shot 20 people in 2014.

The pseudonymous “Liz” (a volunteer researcher on hate groups in Canada who “outs” extremists – and who uses a fake name because of the volume of violent threats her alter ego receives) says misogyny is a powerful undercurrent in all alt-right-wrong and white "supremacist" online groups.

“Where do you really start to discuss the intersection between misogyny and hate groups, when they are really one and the same?” asked Liz, adding that hatred of women often serves as a base upon which to build other forms of hate.