Harvard University remains shut down one day after a lone woman wielding a Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic rifle broke through security at the university’s elite, men-only Porcellian Club and shot 14 white male students to death.
The female — of indeterminate age, race, and sexual attractiveness — was described as wearing a torn leather jacket emblazoned with Day-Glo letters that read: I GOT THIS WAY FROM PLAYING VIDEO GAMES. According to a survivor, the woman screamed, “The patriarchy has ruined my life and I will have my revenge!” She then leaped out an open window and remains at large.
Based on the gunwoman’s strident message, the shooting is presumed to be motivated by reports of Internet trolls threatening to rape and/ or murder feminists who criticize “misogynist” video games. Anita Sarkeesian, for instance, had criticized video games such as “God of War” for their portrayal of women “as both sexual playthings and the perpetual victims of male violence.” She was forced to cancel her speaking appearance at Utah State University after receiving an email warning of “the deadliest shooting in American history.”
Snide Lines
“Feminists have ruined my life,” the message read, “and I will have my revenge.” The email was signed “Marc Lepine,” the name of the Canadian man who, in 1989, shot to death 14 women, most of them engineering students, in Montreal, then killed himself.
In a society long inured to rape, sexual harassment, sniper attacks, random shootings, police killings of unarmed civilians, and the occasional presidential assassination attempt, this incident at an elite Ivy League club has proven horrifying beyond belief.
Lawrence Summers, Harvard law professor and President Barack Obama’s former director of the National Economic Council, shook with grief on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360Ëš” as he mourned the “desecration” of the Porcellian Club, formed in 1791 as a haven for wealthy Caucasian males of the best families, from the presidential Roosevelts to the Facebook-challenged Winklevoss twins.
“All those poor, rich, highly-educated, Caucasian lads of the landed gentry, with the penny loafers, the maroon knit ties, the studly Ralph Lauren tweeds — they’re gone,” Mr. Summers sobbed in Mr. Cooper’s arms. “I guess I never realized the sanctity of human life before. Their blue blood dripping down Harvard’s mahogany walls was just as red as any of the Earth’s seven billion nobodies.”
Handed a new handkerchief by Mr. Cooper, Mr. Summers continued, “I hope I won’t offend the ladies here, but if that deranged woman had possessed one-tenth the innate mathematical ability of any one of those Harvard boys, none of this would have happened.”
Reached by phone, the president of the National Rifle Association was inconsolable. “Oh my God,” he shrieked, “I never realized what guns could do. I mean, everybody knew black people could be killed by guns. Also deer. But rich white men? Shocking. I think we should probably just shut that whole gun industry thing down.”
The NRA president refused to give his name or location, saying that he was afraid of being mowed down by dissenting NRA enthusiasts.
Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska and dissenting NRA enthusiast, phoned this reporter to ask for the NRA president’s address. Ms. Palin also shared some of her “lock and load” thoughts on gun control. “Guns don’t kill people, honey,” she said, “feminists kill people. So tell me where that NRA guy is, ‘cause I’m going to blow his nuts off.”
Ms. Palin went on to say that she felt the anonymous woman who shot up the Porcellian Club was unfeminine. “It is outrageous that a woman could have done such a thing,” said Ms. Palin. “If that broad wanted to shoot so much, she should have stayed home and killed her own children. Which is God’s plan for us. Oh, and God wants us women to shoot up lots of abortion clinics, too.”
That women finding fault with “women-hating” video games resulted in the massacre of 14 ruling-class white men portends, for many, the demise of civilization as we know it. Several pundits have come forward to reassure Western culture that it was built on a power that goes far beyond video games.
Lloyd Asskick, commanding general of the Multi-National Endless War on Iraq, was adamant when he stated, “Please do not fuck with my First Amendment right to watch dudes rape and mutilate women, cut their heads off, and stick them into trunks of cars, be it on film, TV, or the Internet. This country depends on the degradation of the weak, the destruction of the helpless, the quiet, everyday torture sessions in the basement. It’s what gives us as Americans the self-esteem we need to take all that to a global level.”
Probable US presidential contender Hilary Clinton concurs: “As a woman, I have faced sexism. But this is also a country where I, as a woman in a 2008 campaign speech, threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. America gave me that right. So you women want your job opportunities, your same-sex marriage, your drivers’ licenses? America gave you those rights, too — and America can take them away. You people of color, you listening? Everybody has to put up with a little humiliation, a little terror. It’s the price we pay for living in a democracy.”
Meanwhile, the gunwoman has been seen heading south on I-95 in a 1995 Toyota. Police and civilian vehicles are quickly closing in, and the woman may soon be apprehended. Because of her wanton, “she asked for it” behavior, and because of crime and punishment tropes in certain popular video games, whatever happens to her will probably not be pretty.
Susie Day is the author of “Snidelines: Talking Trash to Power,” just released by Abingdon Square Publishing.
