Sex and Death

Via Yglesias, an article attempting to delve into the soul of Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho. Writer Wesley Yang writes:

[Cho's is] not an ugly face, exactly; it's not a badly made face. It's just a face that has nothing to do with the desires of women in this country. It's a face belonging to a person who, if he were emailing you, or sending you instant messages, and you were a normal, happy, healthy American girl at an upper second-tier American university--and that's what Cho was doing in the fall of 2005, emaling and writing instant messages to girls--you would consider reporting it to campus security. Which is what they did, the girls who were contacted by Cho.

The implication being, of course, that Cho was pissed off because girls wouldn't have sex with him, and that maybe they wouldn't have sex with him because he was Asian.

Dana Goldstein reads this and gets mad. She writes:

[Y]ou can't help but take away from the essay that, if only one kind girl had taken the trouble to love Cho, to relieve him of his virginity, 32 people would be alive today....Nor should women as a class be taken to task for not loving a man who, it seems, was almost completely incapable of healthy human interactions.

I don't really think Yang is suggesting that women should provide sex as a public good to ensure the mental health of angry young men. He's just saying that it's a cruel world out there, and cruelty begets more cruelty in the form of people like Cho. I have no doubt that Cho's anger was, on some level, mostly about being rejected by girls. Of course that doesn't mean girls as a class are guilty, and I don't think that's what Yang is trying to say.

The thing is, though, the world really isn't as cruel as all that. I'm sure if Cho had come out of his angry shell long enough to actually talk to some girls and make some friends, he'd have found out that he wasn't so radioactive after all. If you don't believe me read this article, and note the part where a Virginia Tech girl leaves a note on Cho's grave signed "With all my love, Laura." The truth is, it may seem like a cruel world to an introvert, but once you get out there and interact with people, you'll find that it's easy to make friends, it's easy to find love, even if you're 10 times uglier than Seung-Hui Cho. Even if you wear a swimsuit like Borat with chest hair to match. Even if you're a hydrocephalic Twa Pigmy with both your hands replaced by hooks and a bad case of violent uncontrollable flatulence.

Well, OK, you get what I'm saying.