Women are blamed for male violence

[Shoxfordian]

I read this interesting article:

jezebel.com/dead-girls-and-our-sweet-quiet-boys-1826193367

It's about the recent school shooting in America and how the shooter was actually a "sweet shy boy". It's obviously completely distasteful for his family to have said this given their "sweet" boy just murdered 10 people but the article also talks about how he was rejected by a girl at school. One news report said this rejection was the reason for the shooting. These type of justifications seek to blame girls and women for men's violence towards them.

In domestic abuse cases, the common question is "Why didn't she leave?"putting the emphasis on her to end the relationship not on him to stop being abusive. We don't hear "Why did he do it?"anywhere near as regularly.

I think this is just the tip of a deeply misogynistic iceberg but wanted to see what your thoughts are

The parents sound utterly disconnected with reality. No your son is not a sweet boy.

Weren’t those the parents where the dad didn’t lock his firearm away?

Not sure about firearms but wouldn't be surprised

Yeah their comments are horribly bad taste.

It's all to common, as the links in and at the foot of the piece makes clear, and there was a thread about the same issue on MN very recently.

Spot on OP - since Adam and Eve tradition is blame the women

First rule of misogyny, and a couple of others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/6kkeni/theerulesoffmisogyny/

One off the most undermining aspects of trying to recover from male violence is the continual and unrelenting blaming of the victim(s). One of the keys to recovery is having non-judgemental social support - something very rare.

The family of the victim can sometimes be part of the problem and bystander bully. The family of the victimiser take his side against her (he that can do no wrong). The welfare and counselling services often treat the target of the abuse as "other" i.e. the patient (there's frequently a huge power imbalance in these relationships). They re-victimise by trauma uninformed service delivery and interactions. Financial support is used as a weapon against her - kick her when she's down - why don't you?/s

So collectively, unwittingly sometimes, they all collude to gang-up on the victim, with her perpetrator, by not believing her and making her feel like she is the problem for getting herself into the predicament and causing all the upset and upheaval to the family plus being a drain on society and their coffers. The media chime in with their voice of always supporting the "good, poor man" and whammy - the survivor is overwhelmed by the disowned shame and projection from most of those who surround her.

It adversely affects her recovery, her health and disadvantages her economically and educationally (sometimes one or more of these life long) :(

But she should have known better/ chosen better/ got herself out sooner/ stayed because of the children etc etc /s

I won't go to jezebel, because I won't give them the hits.

However, the men/boys who do this mass murder (either strangers or families) are more often than not, held up to be Nice Guys and This Was So Out Of Character.

For anyone to say the young girl as 'to blame' for this is abhorrent. Misogyny-101 really.

Girls and women. They are people. They have a right to say "no".

Society is also deranged, if they think a girl's refusal to this dude is any justification for him mass-murdering. It's just an excuse, and a very poor one. Well, not an excuse at all really.

This is an article on the National Scot by Shona Craven (Stop telling girls to put men's feelings 1st) the 1st comment in response is jaw dropping & illustrates the same sort of mentality that murderous little creep's father has.

Standard journalism malpractice in the US is to go round looking for people to declare what a great fellow the perp is, to dig around until they can find a woman to blame for provoking the perp, and basically frame the report from a perp advocacy point of view. But only if the perp is male. It is a real saints and sinners journalism stylebook divide that becomes blatantly obvious when they report on a crime where the perp is a woman. Recently they went back years in the perps past to blame an ex girlfriend and doxx her so she had to go into hiding.

I think you make excellent points.

I do think it must have been a HUGE shock for his parents though (no matter their level of responsibility or potential misogynistic views) so I am more than a little sympathetic re them making the comment. It’s more the media aspects; looking for the comments in the first place and then repeating things into the neatly packaged narrative that gets to me.

Gavin de Becker argues this type of reporting; focusing on the perp, praising the perp etc actually is what causes social contagion re this kind crime.

Offred
You mean because the perp gets some status from it? I think that's a bug thing. Isn't Eliot Rogers worshipped by some?

Eliot Rodgers is hailed as a god and saviour by incels. I think the man who murdered women with a van in Canada made a Facebook post in praise of him before he committed the crimes.

Yes, he says in ‘The Gift of Fear’ what motivates this kind of crime is essentially a strong desire to be seen recognised and so if media reports on crimes like this centring the perp as important, speaking positively about the perp, focusing on how strong or scary the perp is then it leads to other people who are both feeling desperate and wanting to be recognised to actually do something similar soon after.

He says there is usually a set period where a few similar crimes happen and he thinks it is the media reporting,which is usually sensational, which acts as the final trigger.

He wants the papers to not publish names of perps, to centre the victims and if they do mention the perp or the actual crime to focus on the facts that indicate the perp was a sad loser that no-one would want to know e.g. he was a 30 year old living in his parent’s basement and there were crusty undies everywhere and he played WoW rather than he had loads of guns and was a bad ass...

He specifically mentions the going around the neighbours looking for the ‘no-one could have seen this coming’ thing too.

The main thrust is that violent crime is highly predictable if we stop thinking, stop absorbing media which tells us ‘no-one could have predicted’ and actively switch off cognition in favour of trusting intuition.

He says black humour always has something important to tell us too re intuition.

It was a good book. There are a few videos on you tube. He has one on school shootings.

So yeah, this is not only horrendously misogynistic reporting, according to De Becker it also increases the risk of further school shootings...

Offred " he was a 30 year old living in his parent’s basement and there were crusty undies everywhere and he played WoW"

I wouldn't want to focus on that either though. It's a bit dangerous to start labeling that way too I think.

Really id like to see less personal reporting, sorry to go off piste for a mo but a friend was murdered and the press situation was horrendous.

But in terms of misogyny, the "man murders family" thing always ends in sympathy for the man. Gah.

What he would ideally suggest is no mention of the perp at all.

So i think that sure, rejection by a girl may have caused the shooter’s depression etc. But this is not to say the girls were the cause. They may have triggered the depression/mental health issues, but in the end, it is the shooter who committed the shooting, and girls rejecting him is the girl’s free will.

@Offred

Gavin de Becker argues this type of reporting; focusing on the perp, praising the perp etc actually is what causes social contagion re this kind crime.

Its recognised that reporting can affect suicide rates so why do we still ignore it when it comes to violence?

The link is archived;
archive.is/Z7GW4

The rejection did not cause the depression, it was the shooter's inability to handle this rejection because of his narcissistic personality.

I’ve always found the rhetoric of school bullying and rejection of boys who don’t fit the mould as an explanation for school shootings was disgusting.

The people excusing it this way forget how many girls are bullied at school, as well as sexually harassed and assaulted at school and ostracised for being outsiders (I’d argue this is much worse for girls, it’s socially acceptable for boys to be loners or weirdos, but not for girls). By the logic of this is a school bullying problem then girls should be carrying out at least half if not most school shootings. But they don’t.

Blaming it on girls is worse, but even just blaming actions of violent male terrorists (because that’s what school shooters are) on anyone else is very disturbing.

Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, this is actually a very old thread - originally posted back in May 2018 - which has been revived by a new joiner...