Explosion in Oslo

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

No threads here yet?
It looks like a very big explosion, one fatality reported so far. May be terrorism but bbc saying that is speculation.

[AnansiGirl]

sakura, there's a thread running on the feminist board that you might find interesting.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1266563-Re-the-Norwegian-deaths

[Empusa]

Sakura I imagine there are other issues at play here other than what he has tucked in his underwear.

Women are just as capable of committing murder.

Saying his gender is the main reason for his crime shows a refusal to take into account all the other reasons (some of which he has explicitly stated).

The reason he is being described as "rambling and incoherent" is probably more to do with people not wanting to accept he is "of sound mind" and wanting to write him off as mad. Makes it easier to understand.

[TartyDoris]

Is the killer nurse a killer because she's a woman?

I imagine most people driven to kill have issues with the opposite sex. People in fulfilling relationships don't tend to be driven to murder.

[QuintessentialShadow]

Sakura, I dont think laughing at his penis is any where near justice.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

Sakura.... is stating the obvious that men are more involved in violent crimes than women. The prison population is mostly male. The death row inmates in America are mostly male. It's not enough, however, to point out the correllation and claim this as some kind of causality. Clearly, not all men are violent criminals - in fact the vast majority are peaceful and law-abiding. So understanding what it is that triggers such abhorrent behaviour will be far more useful to the creation a better society than inaccurate generalisations.

BTW... the irony won't be lost on you that this crime has happened precisely because the murderer chose to demonise certain parts of his own society. If you demonise men as if they were a homogenous group, you are no better than he is.

[NotADudeExactly]

The reason he is being described as "rambling and incoherent" is probably more to do with people not wanting to accept he is "of sound mind" and wanting to write him off as mad. Makes it easier to understand.

This!

Can we please acknowledge that, within his own, completely twisted ideological framework what Breivik did actually makes sense?

Can we please acknowledge that some of this man's views are not actually that rare? You only need to open certain newspapers to read how Muslims are inherently different and incompatible with our culture. Ideas similar to those of Brevik have been published by the likes of Melanie Phillips, Daniel Pipes, Pamela Geller etc. all over the place. Politicians such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands or certain exponents of the People's Party in Switzerland have made a whole political career out of spewing islamophobic bile not entirely dissimilar from the contents of the Brevik manifesto. And movements such as the EDL are thriving!

I am by no means claiming that the individual named are potential mass murderers. What I am saying is that the ideology that seems to have been driving this man is not as far removed from the political mainstream as we would now probably like to be thinking. We must not be labelling this man and his ideas "other" and dissociate ourselves from them without a degree of critical self-examination.

So can we please not ignore the ideological issues here by just declaring this man insane?