To the man whose only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail. To Jessica Valenti everything is about, caused by and the product of, misogyny. There’s a certain logical problem with this world view. The misogyny she’s complaining of is rare.
The massacre at Santa Fe high school last week that left 10 people dead – most of them students – seems to have something in common with so many other mass shootings that happen in the US: misogyny. The shooter, , targeted her daughter as the first victim because she rejected his continued harassing advances.
How many more tragedies have to happen before we recognize that misogyny kills? The longer we ignore the toxic masculinity that underlies so many of these crimes, the more violence we’re enabling.
Misogyny causes mass shootings does it? OK, let’s run with that.
There’re some 330 million people in the US. Say 100 million adult males. There are what, 15 to 20 such males each year who go shooting up the populace driven by that misogyny. Misogyny is rare therefore, isn’t it?
To any reasonable statistical rounding the 100 million adult males in the US go about being fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, and none of them do go off being nutters driven by that misogyny. That insistence that mass shootings are the product of the misogyny shows how rare that misogyny is really, doesn’t it? If it were all as persistent as she claims there’d be rather more such incidents, no?
Not that I expect Ms. Valenti to accept this logic. If she does there’s no explanation for the rest of reality that pisses her off so much.
Schoolyard massacres are not really massive or frequent, either in absolute terms that Tim measures, or in historical context. (The latest one was clearly a copycat episode, with plenty of warning signs.) I suggested on March 11 that they are a natural result of a school system, coercively funded and politically managed, that stresses having an effect on others rather than learning and self-betterment (https://www.continentaltelegraph.com/world/usa/the-colonies-garbage-in-massacres-out/). Sheriff David Clarke today connects the Texas shooting to the collapse of society’s traditional standards of conduct (https://townhall.com/columnists/sheriffdavidclarke%28ret%29/2018/05/22/liberalisms-impact-on-abhorrent-behavior-n2483022). Indeed, wearing a T-shirt to school proclaiming that one is BORN TO KILL is unremarkable in America… Read more »
They’re psychopaths. Boring, but that’s the answer. OK, a few are kids who got bullied but most are just mental cases.
You want to know why it happens so much in the USA? Massive wall-to-wall coverage of the events turning shooters into celebrities. Lots of people like fame, but won’t go that far. Psychopaths don’t care about the violence.
They are psychopaths that is true; but then there are lots of psychopaths out in the real world that are high-functioning and who don’t go around killing people. If psychopathy is similar to autism – where there is a spectrum from “not” to “definitely” then I’m reasonably high up the scale; I truly do not understand, and haven’t really experienced, emotion, for example. But I don’t go around killing people; so there is must be something else that drives these psychopaths to kill, and others to just go into management where we are highly regarded for our ability to make… Read more »
Bloke, all of that is true, though “psychopath” is a circular definition rather than an explanation.
JamesInNZ, I am convinced that people continually evaluate the odds that a given course of action will be successful. Variations in individual motives are less noteworthy than variations in what one gets the impression one is likely to get away with. This is important as the US lefties try to assemble a coalition of misbehavers, notably including border-jumpers (excuse me, “Dreamers”).
Not that I think that this is a particularly good answer either, but ISTM that rather than misogyny being a major cause, it is a feeling of emasculation that is more important. And continued rejection is not going to help much. Quite how we del with this, however, is an altogether more difficult question.
So it is not misogyny but the countermeasures; just as there is virtually no remaining dislike for either brown skin or deviant sex at home, but a whole lot of resentment of legislatively granted special rights, quotas, and guarantees against “disparate impact.” The solution to this is straightforward, but it requires government to stop passing stupid laws in order to pander.
Not that I think that this is a particularly good answer either, but ISTM that rather than misogyny being a major cause, it is a feeling of emasculation that is more important. And continued rejection is not going to help much. Quite how we del with this, however, is an altogether more difficult question.