Hmmm... As horrific as the two shooting incidents were. As clearly they were directed at female students, I don't think there are any political lessons here -- except for the fact that's it's way too easy for the mentally ill to get guns.
Yes, in both the Colorado and Pennsylvania cases, the gunmen singled out girls. But I don't think there is any political solution to the type of sexual mental illness involved.
If you look a little farther, the third really big news story of the past week and a half was about sexual preditation against young men.
So, if there's a bigger message here, I don't think it's about violence against women. I think it may be about our society's relationship to sexual feelings in general being out of whack. Foley has a disorder (not that he's gay -- that he's attracted to teenagers, and didn't seem to have the ability to control his impulses for the good of his career). The gunmen in Colorado and Pennsylvania both had impulse control and sexual hangups.
I don't want to minimize the prevalence of violence against women in modern society. I just don't think the Amish and Colorado school shootings were indications of that. They were both horrible tragedies that happened because two seriously, mentally ill men didn't get the help they needed before they exploded.
I think it's nothing more than a coincidence that they happened within a week of one another.
So, if there's a bigger message here, I don't think it's about violence against women.
I'm not sure I agree. Why have we never seen a similar attack on young men or young boys, perpetrated by either gender? I don't think a set of salacious IM messages really corresponds to binding ten girls hand and foot, whipping out the Vaseline to lube them up, then shooting them in the head execution-style. We're not talking the same sort of impulse control. (I'm also not sure what happened to "rape is a crime of violence, not a crime of sexual passion" in the past few years... now assaulting and shooting schoolgirls is a misplaced sexual urge?)
The Colorado and Pennsylvania shootings came because two men were seriously, I mean really seriously mentally ill. They weren't reacting to any societal pressures. They were reacting to the fucked up insides of their own heads.
Change society as much as you want, but there are still going to be fucked up homicidal maniacs who will kill people.
You can't tell me that no sociopathic killer has ever victimized little boys rather than little girls.
No, I don't believe none have, but I do think it's skewed towards women. Can you name a shooting spree of just males? All-women shooting sprees go back decades; they're barely even uncommon, in the genre of school shooting sprees.
Nor do I believe that the fucked-up insides of someone's head are unaffected by social pressures. Social pressures direct and give outlet to a lot of mental illness, both acceptable and unacceptable outlet. I don't think mental illness makes people magically inexplicable, and suddenly not a product of their society. The high teen suicide rate in Japan is caused by mental illness, but it's also a product of the society. People find outlets related to the views and pressures of the society they grew up in. McVeigh probably would have killed people anyway, but the way he chose was very strongly influenced by the social movements and pressures around him. Fixations on a crime don't come from nowhere.
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Yes, in both the Colorado and Pennsylvania cases, the gunmen singled out girls. But I don't think there is any political solution to the type of sexual mental illness involved.
If you look a little farther, the third really big news story of the past week and a half was about sexual preditation against young men.
So, if there's a bigger message here, I don't think it's about violence against women. I think it may be about our society's relationship to sexual feelings in general being out of whack. Foley has a disorder (not that he's gay -- that he's attracted to teenagers, and didn't seem to have the ability to control his impulses for the good of his career). The gunmen in Colorado and Pennsylvania both had impulse control and sexual hangups.
I don't want to minimize the prevalence of violence against women in modern society. I just don't think the Amish and Colorado school shootings were indications of that. They were both horrible tragedies that happened because two seriously, mentally ill men didn't get the help they needed before they exploded.
I think it's nothing more than a coincidence that they happened within a week of one another.
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I'm not sure I agree. Why have we never seen a similar attack on young men or young boys, perpetrated by either gender? I don't think a set of salacious IM messages really corresponds to binding ten girls hand and foot, whipping out the Vaseline to lube them up, then shooting them in the head execution-style. We're not talking the same sort of impulse control. (I'm also not sure what happened to "rape is a crime of violence, not a crime of sexual passion" in the past few years... now assaulting and shooting schoolgirls is a misplaced sexual urge?)
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Change society as much as you want, but there are still going to be fucked up homicidal maniacs who will kill people.
You can't tell me that no sociopathic killer has ever victimized little boys rather than little girls.
From:
no subject
Nor do I believe that the fucked-up insides of someone's head are unaffected by social pressures. Social pressures direct and give outlet to a lot of mental illness, both acceptable and unacceptable outlet. I don't think mental illness makes people magically inexplicable, and suddenly not a product of their society. The high teen suicide rate in Japan is caused by mental illness, but it's also a product of the society. People find outlets related to the views and pressures of the society they grew up in. McVeigh probably would have killed people anyway, but the way he chose was very strongly influenced by the social movements and pressures around him. Fixations on a crime don't come from nowhere.