It's been said that the smartest men ask the most important questions. And given recent tragedy, I feel many questions are in desperate need of hard scrutiny. I would like to start by clarifying that I am not here to attack the MRM, advocates of men's rights, or any partition of a group related to it.

I am here to talk with gravity about the act, and draw out the questions that we, as men, feel we should be asking of both ourselves and our affiliates. I am not here to justify what you've read the angriest of angry women say about "all men". Or influence your views on the feminist "agenda" or legislature. In total honesty, I have absolutely no vivid idea about the legal pursuits of either group outside the most general of things. I ask all participants in this discourse leave those suspicions and thoughts at the door.

Elliot Rogers was beyond any shadow of a doubt mentally unstable. As, I feel, are most individuals brought to acts of extreme violence. Mental instability does not require a doctor's note, or a medical history. It only requires your mental-emotional state become sufficiently toxic or disquieted to let you feel and consider things your ordinarily working mental and emotional compasses would steer you away from doing. Any number of factors can contribute to such a breakdown. Be these factors fierce and traumatic, or slow, "rotting" and "torturous." Elliot explicitly states his volatility began "since puberty". And afflicted him for "eight years."

As men on this earth, we are powerful creatures. We are beautiful creatures. We are intelligent creatures. But we are also creatures capable of great and horrendous things. Of willful ignorance, of bias, of complacence and complicities, prejudices and spite, egomaniacal obsessions and malefic cruelty. Just as we are also capable of undying love, intense duty to greater causes, profound wisdom, exhaustive devotion to those we care for, and most importantly, the strength and temerity of character to take honest looks at ourselves and use that information—even when it makes us deeply uncomfortable and vulnerable, stripping us of our immediate pride or head-strength—to rebuild ourselves as something better. Something we really can be confident about. Into someone again.

If we believe we are, or can be these latter creatures, capable of these transformations and their necessary acknowledgements, then we must regard ourselves and our peers. And in that regard, we will be made both vulnerable and uncomfortable. As it requires us to admit what we have not done, or don't do enough of, or never even thought to consider.

Of myself and other men, I ask this: what effort have we made to remove the mission critical objective of sex from our culture? Or the minds of our pubescent youth? To what extent do we feel the MRM, you, or I harbor conversation in the interest of legitimate wisdom about what sex should mean to us as males? Of how much of us it should define? Of how little? What emphasis in our messages, in their frequency and totality, do we influence men to believe it's OK to be a virgin? That we are not defined by our sexual prowess, pursuits, or experiences behind closed doors? How often do we impress upon young men that sex is neither an entitlement or a right of passage? On ourselves? On each other? How many of our internal conversations, as men, pertain to these things? How much of our discourse and the wisdom we wish to leave behind helps young men and those of us present understand the value of our own lives, of other people's, of women's? How much of our culture teaches us that one woman's sexual choices and differing tastes are every bit as sacred and important as our own? And that these differences are not somehow a disadvantage? Impress upon us the atrocity of doing damage to others? How many of these questions are taken for granted? Regarded simply as being known and understood, and emphatically pressed on the minds of men and young men, when they really aren't? When they feel differently or slighted because they aren't experiencing things other males do? Or aren't getting sex from women?

To what extent do we acknowledge there are men out there, more than we might care to acknowledge, who share in Elliot's situation and resentment of it, when in fact, they should not? And their attitude should be entirely different? To what extent do we just assume that young men are not derisive to each other about their sexual exploits or lack thereof, do not treat women as sexual objects and conquests? That we never have? That we don't? That it might be more widespread we think? And women are not just exaggerating? To what extent have we managed to look past the anger exhibited by women and feminists alike over some of these things, and as wise creatures, understood they too, in their seemingly overt hostility, are acting naturally given the possibilities lingering uncomfortably at the core of these questions? How often do we consider the impact of things we say among male friends, while drinking, and during both of these periods through our youth and that occur regularly among younger men too?

These questions are not accusations. I want to know how everyone honestly feels about these things when we look past our own biases, and start looking at things that make us uncomfortable. Personal growth is never comfortable. We have all sat quietly while our loved ones vented and seethed in their times of pain, understanding they don't mean everything they say the way it's been said. Or in many cases, written. . .

But how sacred, and how sacred really, do we consider our involvement? To what lengths have most of us who claim dismissal or hatred of one group or another gone through lengths to empathize with them? How bias will you be when you answer yourself? What philosophical and moral values do we really support? And how are we translating it socially?

Think about it. There are a lot of statements flying around right now that are based in logic, rudimentary cause, effect, and quantification. Lets consider the narrative of the human soul. As creatures capable of transformation and strength, we owe this to ourselves.