RFFU, Penny is 27 and has no kids. But I don't think you need to have kids to realise that there is something deeply wrong with making 7-year-old girls into sexual objects. Her function as a 'tame feminist' in the liberal-left media is to point out instances of sexism and misogyny while simultaneously denying the structural and systemic roots of same and shutting down women with a more radical analysis.
Many liberal feminists do this, but Penny goes the extra mile by attacking women who criticise the sex industry in explicitly misogynist terms, regularly calling them prudes and implying that their objections to the commodification of women and girls as sexual objects for men's use is grounded in their own frigidity rather than a cogent political analysis. She is lauded and rewarded by male lefties for her willingness to do this, and, as others have pointed out, her career is now basically invested in this stance.
I also don't think the piece linked to here is very enlightening. The more I think about her framing of the Rodger murders as 'misogynist extremism', the more inaccurate it seems.
Violent extremism always attracts the lost, the broken, young men full of rage at the hand they’ve been dealt. Violent extremism entices those who long to lash out at a system they believe has cheated them, but lack they courage to think for themselves, beyond the easy answers they are offered by pedlars of hate.
Here she is explicitly characterising 'misogynist extremism' as a separate ideology, whereas IMO while Rodger's actions were extreme, his beliefs were not - they were entirely of a piece with the commodification, objectification and plain misogyny in the general culture. All kinds of men, young and old, refer to women as 'stupid sluts' and think we 'owe' them time, attention and sex. You don't need to join up with a fringe extremist group to imbibe these views.
I think the Karen Ingala Smith article WhentheRed linked to offers the best analysis of Rodger's actions, because it explicitly connects his motivations with the less spectacular, much less public, murder of women by men intimately known to them, but which are driven by the same male entitlement to women's space, bodies and lives, as she puts it. The constant stream of domestic murders of women and children by their male intimates offers a closer political parallel with the Rodger massacre than do Neo-Nazi fascist groups, IMO.
kareningalasmith.com/2014/05/26/well-id-rather-see-you-dead-little-girl-than-to-be-with-another-man-male-entitlement-to-womens-spaces-bodies-and-lives-2/
Addendum: I should say that in stating that male violence against women is usually intimate in nature, this doesn't mean that I don't think it has a controlling effect on women as a group, or, moreover, that this effect is not intentional, both on the part of the men who commit the violence and those who excuse it. Men of all cultures use violence to control women as a group, specifically to ensure that we remain available for sexual and reproductive use on their terms, and 'isolated' cases of women being punished for disobedience are meant to serve as a warning to all women. I also think that most men value this control, on some level, even if they say they abhor violence. That's why it's so difficult for feminists to make any headway in reducing it, why so many men get away with VAW with impunity, and why so many furiously deny the political aspect of VAW.
Further addendum: A complicating factor here, and one that Penny mentions, is the rise of MRA groups. I suppose her argument is (partly) that these groups are analogous to far-right racist organisations in that they have an explicitly political, organised anti-feminist agenda, and their ideology encourages members to target any women in public space rather than just those they know in private (per the constant anonymous abuse high-profile women like Penny have to deal with). I agree that this is very concerning, and it is also obviously a direct response to feminist victories over the past 40 years, especially WRT making it possible for women to escape abusive or just unhappy marriages with their children. Perhaps if this is just the start of a wave of MRAs targeting women publicly for violence, the analogy with fascist groups will be more accurate. But I still think Rodger's actions are best understood within the context of generalised male entitlement to women.
Even further addendum: Sorry about the long rant. I've been thinking about this a lot today.