An Acerbic Young Writer Takes Aim at the Identity Era

As the years go by and the rejections pile up, his strident feminism curdles into reactionary bile. He joins an online message board, “Narrow Shoulders/Open Minds,” where men who have experienced similar rejection stoke one another’s grievances. In a bracingly articulate grand synthesis, he declares to his comrades that women “have failed feminism.” Allowing that “no woman in particular is to blame,” he nonetheless goes on to argue that “in general, a preponderance of women harbor the very sorts of double standards feminism sought to eliminate, and indulge a narcissistic victim complex by which they tolerate and even seek out aggro misogyny in their romantic partners, while relying on men of conscience” — i.e., men like him — “to handle the emotional scutwork.” Then he dons a mask, enters a restaurant and guns down the patrons in cold blood.