On Thursday, the First International Conference on Men’s Issues took place near Detroit, Michigan. Featured speaker and A Voice for Men contributor, Warren Farrell, was allotted the most time. He spoke for about 20 minutes. Immediately following his remarks, he retreated to a “workshop” upstairs with a handful of attendees. While I remained to hear the other presenters with the rest of the reporters, ANIMAL’s Aymann Ismail went upstairs and filmed Farrell. A question came up about suicidal mass murderers and unsurprisingly, the impassioned men’s rights activist identified three main causes — mental health issues, access to guns and, naturally, moms.
There seems to be a number of things. First of all, a history of mental health problems usually has been identified. Second, is they identify as being very lonely, people see them as being very lonely people, people see them as being isolated.
They’re likely to be brought up in divorce situations, usually with their mom, like with Adam Lanza, in Connecticut he was living with his mom and alienated from his dad. And Elliot Rodgers in Santa Barbara, I saw the papers where the father as wanting to be involved equally with him, but the mother wanted the money not his involvement.
And of course the availability of guns, you know people say “guns don’t kill people” but people who are available are more likely to use those guns to kill people.
Another attendee, who said he read all 140 pages of Elliot Rodgers’ writing, noted that his father had kicked Rodgers out of the house, at which point Farrell merely re-emphasized that the father may not have had “equal time” with the son, shifting the blame back to the mother. (Video: Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork)
