Just Grow Bulletproof Skin

Jenn and WIMN's Voices:

News reports about the worst school shooting in American history are mostly ignoring — as per usual — the gendered nature of the crime.

When the New York Times reported the story on Monday, the fact that “the gunman had been looking for his girlfriend” was tossed in as a one-phrase aside.

Jill at Feministe was the first (that I saw) to note that “While I’m sure this will be reported as ‘another crazy guy shoots up a school,’ it’s worth noting the theme of misogyny that permeates so many of these shootings,” such as the killings of girls during the Amish school shooting in October, 2006, the Platte Canyon high school shooting in September, 2006 (in which several girls were sexually assaulted and their female teacher shot in the head) and the Montreal Massacre of 1989 (in which a man opened fire after telling a group of female students, “You’re women, you’re going to be engineers. You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists.”).

To that list I’d also add the 1998 Jonesboro school shooting, which no one seems to remember — perhaps because it was only girls and women who were killed, unlike the co-ed victims of the much-covered, never-forgotten Columbine shooting — see the bottom of this post for the text of an article I wrote about the case in 1998 for Sojourner: The Women’s Forum.

As it stands, CNN and other news outlets are starting to report that the Virginia Tech murderer, Cho Seung-Hui, had stalked women on the campus, that a female teacher had suggested him for counseling, thinking he might be emotionally disturbed or violent… and that campus police hadn’t acted quickly enough to prevent Cho’s second round of shootings because they believed it was just “a domestic” case. (Just?!)

“Just a domestic case” — that’s the same dismissive reaction that has all too often accompanied major — even fatal — violence against women in this country.

First, a quick slap at Markos: it's just this kind of dismissal that pissed me off about his "grow a thicker skin" comment about Kathy Sierra.  That wasn't domestic, but he represented the same lack of urgency about violence and threats against women that brought up a lot of shit for me.

Second, longtime readers will remember that I broke my (ex)wife's nose and cheek a couple years ago.  Yes, an accident.  No, nothing kinky.  When she went to the emergency room, she was asked at least 9 times whether she had a safe place to go home to, etc.  I can't tell you how much I appreciate that--you don't fuck around with that shit.

Third, uh...well, I guess I'm just so sad and sick that authorities didn't respond quickly because they thought this was just a domestic spat that, you know, involved bullets.  Bad enough their attitude is so damned insensitive to whatever the tragedy might have been limited to if it were only some enraged man punishing a woman for some imagined transgressions--by dismissing the gravity of such a thing, they enabled an even larger tragedy.

But I suppose we should really lay the blame on the victims because, you know, they didn't attack the attacker and hell, we all know the women were probably asking for it anyway.

ntodd