Elliot Rodger appeared to state his motives for the mass shooting he carried out Friday night in Santa Barbara, California in a series of YouTube videos . In those video monologues, he expressed his deep feelings of loneliness and rejection — as well as his rage toward women who displayed no romantic interest in him despite his expensive clothing, BMW car and polite demeanor, and toward other men who were more successful in relationships with women that he, Rodger, was.
The Elliot Rodger statements have already set off a debate about misogyny — that is, hatred of women — and the role it played in Friday’s mass killing , in which Rodger killed four men, two women and, apparently, himself.
But a psychologist speaking on Fox News Saturday evening said that Elliot Rodger may have gone on the killing rampage because he was secretly gay — and he was angry at women for taking his desired sexual partners, other men, away from him.
The host of the Fox News program Justice With Judge Jeanine , Jeanine Pirro, apparently agreed with the assessment offered by Dr. Robi Ludwig or at least did not offer any counter-argument or contradiction.
Nowhere in his rage-filled writings or video statements does Elliot Rodger express any sexual attraction to members of his own gender or indicate any uncertainty about his sexual orientation. Instead, he expressed extreme frustration that he had never even kissed a girl, much less had sexual relations with one, even though he was already 22 years old.
Nonetheless, Ludwig offered her own diagnosis exclusively to Fox News .
“When I was first listening to him, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s angry with women for rejecting him,’” Ludwig told Pirro. “And then I started to have a different idea: Is this somebody who is trying to fight against his homosexual impulses? Was he angry with women because they were taking away men from him?”
Ludwig is the co-author of the book ‘Till Death Do Us Part: Love, Marriage, and the Mind of the Killer Spouse and, according to her online promotional site, “a regular contributor to the Today Show as well as CNN , Headline News , The Fox News Channel and TruTv .”
She is also host of the TLC network reality show, One Week To Save Your Marriage .
Ludwig never explains in the Fox News interview how she arrived at her remote-control diagnosis of Elliot Rodger as a closeted gay man. She added, however, that she wondered, “Was he angry at the men for not choosing him? This is a kid who was just angry in general and probably felt rejected. He couldn’t connect. He could not feel loved. He couldn’t feel successful. Maybe he didn’t feel like a real man?”
A video of the Fox News segment in which Ludwig offers speculation that Elliot Rodger was gay can be viewed below.