Female school shooter?

[Signalbox]

Female school shooter. The alleged attacker has been named. Natalie Rupnow also goes by the name Samantha.

Madison’s chief of police was asked about comments online that suggest the shooter may have been trans.

“I don’t know whether Natalie was transgender or not,” Barnes said at a news conference tonight.

“I don’t think that whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may have wanted to identify,” he said. “And I wish people would kind of leave their own personal biases out of this.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/live-blog/rcna184404

From other sources, all those four factors appear to have been present in this case.

There were also oblique references to what some have taken to refer to CSA as well.

Personally, I think this girl is likely nearer someone like Brenda Spencer than other female shooters.

People no longer believe the media due to their reluctance to be truthful about the real sex of the offender.

Yes, this. It's a problem.

@Marblesbackagain this is an unpleasant personal attack that says more about you than it does about me. I’ve asked for your post to be removed.

'Non trans men'!? That would be men then.

Why did you read the thread? Is someone forcing you? There are plenty of other things you could be reading instead?

And therefore risk assessment. Obscuring the sex of the class who commit most of the violent crime will directly impact risk assessment.

Fundamentalist Christians can be homophobic. This can cause someone to become trans. In fact the parents may push a feminine, possibly one day gay little boy into it.

I don’t think that whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may have wanted to identify,” he said. “And I wish people would kind of leave their own personal biases out of this

It's so frustrating that so many of the people objecting to people asking if the shooter was trans think it's about people being anti-trans, or caring whether the shooter was trans specifically, when in most cases, it's about trying to translate the media reporting into the actual facts of the case.

If the shooter is reported as female and trans, then anyone who doesn't subscribe to gender identity ideology can understand the case as "reported female + trans = biologically male", but if they aren't trans, they can interpret female = female as gender identity actually isn't relevant in this instance, but there's no way to know which without finding out the trans part of the equation.

It's merely a consequence of the way gender identity is typically reported as if it were the person's sex that people understandably want to check what female actually means to the person reporting the news, especially when violent crimes perpetrated by females are so rare.

If the fact the perpetrator was "female" is of sufficient relevance to report, then it's reasonable for the public to request clarification as to the specific meaning of the word female in this context.

We live in a world where female might mean female or it might mean male, which is what prompts so many people to ask for clarification and bring up transgenderism - not because people are anti-trans but because just stating "female" isn't sufficiently clear any more.

She namedropped RadFemHitler which is a misandrist / femcel account more than far right I think.

But seems as much about mental illness as anything else.

Her manifesto and other details were posted by this X account:

x.com/slatzism/status/1868795614491800032?s=46

A Columbine copy-cat. Wow.

I think I would understand the comment about the shooters sex not mattering as the reaction of someone looking at a pretty horrific incident, where it's over and they are not trying to find some person on the lam or in hiding.

Being faced with that I can see how it might seem to be a poorly placed question. That's not to say I don't think it's important, and I totally agree that reading about it, it's one of the first things I thought of.

But it seems like a shitty thing to be asked directly after dealing with the aftermath.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1868795614491800032.html for those not on twix.

I had so many blissful days of existence upon this fine earth until the day I discovered there's a Twatter account named RadFemHitler.

Because of course there fucking is.

Not read further yet, but this is an absolutely disgusting question.

How vile can you be?

Although on further investigation it appears she was wrongly accused and wasn’t actually name dropped!:

knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/radfem-hitler

Yes, it looks like fake news that people have fallen for.

Just like the fake news that she was trans then I suppose.

Turns out she was just another misanthropic neo-nazi fangirl.

No news outlet reported that the shooter was trans. Some people questioned the accuracy of the reporting of her as female for reasons I have already explained. Questioning the accuracy of a report isn't "fake news".

"Just another" implies that women routinely shoot schoolchildren. We don't. Which is one of the reasons why accurate reporting of sex in these cases matters.

Just like the fake news that she was trans then I suppose.

Well yes, there are always rumours of everything flying around, but it looks like this one that she was influenced by this woman (who I have never heard of) was a deliberately fabricated screenshot.

Just another" implies that women routinely shoot schoolchildren. We don't. Which is one of the reasons why accurate reporting of sex in these cases matters.

Exactly. A minuscule proportion of these shootings are carried out by women.

We have loads of disaffected 20 year old males here and yet no school shootings. Taking away the means is a lot more effective than trying to address the underlying motivation. But the US will never do either so the point is moot.

I think the reason the trans rumour was flying around is that she had one name but was called by another, because it's usually a male crime & because newspapers now report incorrectly. All of which make it perfectly understandable to ask the question.

She wasn't a woman. She was a vulnerable girl who had become radicalised by a poisonous far-right ideology.

They're getting girls to the 'murder' stage frighteningly young these days on both sides of the Atlantic.

I don't think it is reasonable to hear that a girl has committed a crime and instantly start asking if she is transgender.

There are so few transgender people in society that whether someone is trans or not never even crosses my mind when hearing about a person doing something or meeting a person unless it is visibly obvious.

I've only met three trans people in my entire life, one I knew before they transitioned so knew them anyway, one was obvious upon meeting them so didn't need to ask and one had already transitioned when I met her and she was so feminine I had no idea she was born male and would never have known if she hadn't told me. So that's precisely once in my entire life it would have been relevant to wonder if someone was transgender.

I think it is clear that this speculation comes froms a place of wanting this crime to fit a narrative.

Because her name was one thing, and she was called by a completely different name, not a nickname.