An email sent to a news outlet in NZ re: Canadian Shooter

[2021x]

I sent this email to a news outlet in NZ when reporting the recent Canadian shooter.

I would be keen to know how many people feel that I am being unreasonable.

I’m writing to seek clarification on Stuff’s editorial guidelines regarding the use of female pronouns to describe a male assailant.

I became confused when reading this article: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360937660/canada-shooting-who-was-shooter-suspect-jesse-van-rootselaar. The use of “her” pronouns, alongside a photo of a male person and references to the shooter’s mother, made it difficult to understand who the “her” in those paragraphs was referring to. Female school shooters are extremely rare and therefore, the pronoun choice stood out and created uncertainty about the factual details of the case.

My understanding is that news reporting should prioritise clarity and factual accuracy- especially for such a tragic event. Using female pronouns to describe someone who is male may suggest an ideological or political framing, which raises concerns for me about impartiality in reporting at Stuff.

I’m aware that raising questions about pronoun usage can sometimes lead to assumptions about a person’s views, resulting in my concerns being dismissed as bigoted rather than considered on their merits. My intention is not to be inflammatory, but to understand why a political stance appears to have been taken in a situation where a neutral approach—such as using the individual’s name or simply “the shooter”—could have avoided confusion and not detracted from the article.

I would appreciate clarification on the editorial reasoning behind this choice.

What an eminently sensible and balanced email. I hope they respond with the same courtesy and common sense but we know they won’t. If they prioritise the shooter’s feelings over and above the truth when reporting his sickening crimes they’re not going to bat an eyelid at telling you where to go. It’s disgusting - how do so many criminal men get so much support even when their crimes are not disputed? I send all love and strength to the families.

Doesn’t seem like you were actually confused about the circumstances of the case though, you’ve demonstrated through your email that you perfectly understood that the pronouns being used were those preferred by the pictured shooter - so why create artificial “confusion” to try to illustrate your point?

How does the use of female pronouns to describe someone suggest political or ideological framing? And how does that suggest impartiality? Surely impartiality means equal treatment and fairness which is being displayed in an article where someone is described with reference to their preferred pronouns?

Thank you I did write the email but tweaked it with AI. The gender/sex conversation has been less prominent in NZ and its difficult to get the balance right. Most people I know are more supportive of sex being recognised over gender idenitiy but are scared of the concequences of saying that.

Its a good question. The use of pronouns denotes a person sex, not their identity. A person can change their pronouns for their own usuage but cannot force another person to do the same. Supporting one persons ideology over anothers demonstrates political preference.

I was confused when they referred to the shooter as "her" when the only female in the article is the shooters mother. I had to read it a couple of times to understand they were referring to the shooter.

They literally explain in the article early on that the shooter identifies as female but was born male - did you not read that bit when you became “confused”?

I also definitely don’t think that referring to someone using pronouns based on their gender identity rather than biological sex in any way prefers their ideology to shoot people in a school to other ideologies….

Hey look I am trying to keep this conversation civil and with reduced level of judgment.

I am asking about why the view that gender can be fluid between the sexes (as oppose to being fluid within sex) is being unnecessairly priortised in an article about a shooting in a national news outlet.

For such a tiny percentage of the population trans people do appear to commit an awful lot of violent and sexual crime. Why is this ideology associated with so much violence - the first similar thread below on mumsnet is about Trans terror group Bash Back!

Well I agree that it is reported more as a point of interest. I am unsure about whether that is actually reflected in reality.

What I would observe is that men commit the majority of violent crime, and it has been reported that that doesn't change when they transition.

For example in this case... it would be unusual for the shooter to be female which is a point of interest but actually it is the same profile of most other schools shooters male, white, socialises mostly online.

Sadly I agree - I think there will be some genuine dysphoric people who just want to leave their lives peacefully and emulate the opposite sex as far as they can. Yet for others the objection from women when they enter our single sex spaces seems to be the main point of what they’re doing. They like to offend, to be offensive and enjoy the aggression and spouting hate, misogyny and threats if anyone dares speak up. All those photos in the loos and the Hate TERF t shirts, death threats and angry shouting - they’re just revealing themselves aren’t they. So I do object to this idea of let’s give these violent criminals what they want even whilst reporting on how vile they are. No actually, let’s call them male rapists/murderers and dump them in the sea - why the snivelling sympathy for such sick bastards?! Baffling.

Some interesting statistics here on male patterns of offending.
https://sex-matters.org/posts/prisons/evidence-and-data-on-transwomens-offending-rates/

Yes I was opened minded in the beginning because I thought they were supported and screened by the medical professionals who would challange their beliefs about themself and transitioning was the last resort.

Sadly my experience with TransWomen in single sex spaces (including a gym changing room) has changed my mind that it is a workable solution.

I do acknowledge that there are some people out there that have such self loathing that medical intevention is necessary but those do not seem to be the people that woudl even consider entering a female space because they have the ability to empathise with the female experience.

I guess my question is: why should we respect the pronoun choices of a mass murderer who is now also dead? Literally what is the point?

Yeah, my “hot take” is that if you commit certain crimes (murder, rape, CSA) you forfeit your right to choose your pronouns. I’m cool with respecting the pronouns of law abiding folks who are just trying to live their lives, but I don’t understand various media outlets are tying themselves in knots trying to describe this individual. If they really don’t want to misgender then what’s wrong with “trans woman”?

I feel like there are many, many more useful things you could be doing with your time than getting het up and writing letters about something so unimportant.

Thank you for your comment.

It is important for me as a female to be able to tell who is male and who isn't.

Why? What difference does it make to your life?

She’s dead, so you don’t need to be able to tell as you will never encounter her. Unless you’re forward planning for the afterlife?

Good question.

The biggest threat to a womans safety is any man she is alone in a room with.

1. Women are much more likely to experience violence from men, then they are from women.
2. Women also live in a society where they have approximately 50% of the upper body strength that a male. This means they have the same strength as a 12 year old boy. this mean when attacked by a man, women are unable to defend themselves.As most of the violence that women experience is sexually motivated it takes place in private spaces and without any witnesses.
3. In addition to the above, most women exist in a society where for a majority of civilisation the decision makers have overwhelmingly been male. This has meant that womens needs have always been an afterthought... sort of tagged on to the end when laws have been put into place.

In summary women exist in a world where they are more likely to be attacked by a man, less able to fight their attacker off than a man would be able to and live in a society shaped over 1000s of years influenced purely by mens experience.

Therefore all women learn at around the age for 12-15 how to risk assess any situation in which they may find themselves alone with a room with a man. That is why it is essential for the safety of women that there is clear communication in society about who is male. A major news outlet showing their preference for the politics of trans-people is a red flag to me that I cannot trust that news outlet for accurate reporting on something that effects my everyday life.

So do you think that when crime details are collected, it’s right for this crime to count as being committed by a female murderer?

It is diagusting to me to see how weirdly fixated Mumsnetters are on the fact that the shooter is trans. It seems almost obsessive. Is this a UK thing (and MAGA thing) or a Mumsnet thing? It’s all over the news here in Canada, the shooter’s mother is from my home province, everyone is talking about it here…but we are trying to figure out the actual root causes of what happened instead of just dogpiling on trans people.

We have very few shootings in Canada so trust me when I say that this is big news here. If you’re interested in learning about some context that may actually be relevant, look up where the town is on Google Maps so you understand how small and very remote it is. (It’s not considered a remote town by Canadian standards, but but there is nowhere in Britain that would be this isolated except the Skerries perhaps.) The closest big city would be Edmonton, and that’s more than 7 hours away, partly on a gravel highway.There is no public transit within the town, you see the the same people day in, day out, everyone knows your business. Very little to do for teenagers, and unless they have a car, no way to even go to a nearby small town for a change of scenery. No trains or busses. Very few services, and very hard for teenagers who feel that they don’t fit in to make friends. Combine the isolation, boredom, existing mental health issues, lack of services that with the fact that hunting is a thing there so you could find a rifle without much trouble, and there you go. We’ve had previous shootings in similarly remote parts of the country too, but for the record, those were all straight, cisgendered males.

We need better access to medical and mental health services in remote parts of Canada.

I am not sure about other threads but this is a thread about acurate reporting through a national news network.

If this was Pink News or any other publication aligned with ideology of transgenderism I wouldn't have cared about their editorial guidelines.

But it is essnetial for national news organisationas to be held to a higher standard of impartiality. In this case they are prioritising gender ideology over reporting the facts.

People who believe in transgender ideology i.e. gender is diverse accross the sexs as appose to being confined by sex, should do so with the knowledge that that belief that the societal changes that they are demanding (sometimes with violence) cause detriment to the safety and dignity of women.

My take on this was why they used an old photo of the shooter as a young boy and not an up to date one of him as a trans woman ?

This would be interesting to know. Maybe they are the only ones on the internet.

And this is why it is important to correctly identify the perpetrators of such crimes. If we know who did it, we can begin to explore the why...
Is it that the cocktail of drugs they have taken, sometimes for years, leads to these acts?
Or did they have MH issues which lead to them identifying as trans in the first place, which then worsened to the point they want to commit random mass murder?

HE is dead. And therefore can't possibly have any preferred pronouns.
So why not accurately call him a he?