misogyny is explanation enough
Sep. 29th, 2006 11:33 amThe other day in Bailey, Colorado, Duane Morrison walked into a classroom, fired a shot into the floor, and had the students stand and line up. He told the boys to leave, and kept the girls in the room with him.
( may be triggery )
Sheriff Fred Wegener says, "I don't know why he wanted to do this."
But, you know, i think he really does know why. I think we all know why. He's just not allowed to say it.
It's safe to say that he did it because he hated women. I mean, beyond saying that to kidnap or kill someone could be called an expression of hatred.
Police report that he made no demands other than, "Go away." He did not expect to walk out of there alive. One could fairly argue, from the news reports alone, that he was committing suicide by cop. He was down and out and apparently had no family. He had, as we say colloquially, "no reason to live."
Instead of simply shooting himself, though, he decided to cause terror and traumatize a few girls first.
But, conventional wisdom will say, surely hatred of women is not enough in itself for someone to do this? So police are going to search for a "motive." If they don't find a suicide note, they'll say instead that his reason will remain a "mystery," and the crime will go down in posterity as an "unexplained tragedy." If they do find a suicide note, maybe it will say something about an ex-wife or his mother or some other woman who wronged him, and they will latch on to that as the "motive."
They will do ANYTHING to avoid having to write, simply, "He hated women and wanted to die, so he raped several and killed one before killing himself." To me, that alone, in itself, makes perfect sense. It is explanation enough.
If he had come in and singled out black students, or Jewish students, or Muslim students, then we would understand hatred to be enough. But not when it comes to women.
Society prefers to probe for some minute detail in a criminal's life, or to call such cases a "mystery," than to face looking at the "big picture" here, which is that the violence which is implicit in misogyny can at any moment, even when we think we are safe in our homes with our husbands or boyfriends, or when we think we are safe at work or at school, turn into explicit violence. It is something that women are never allowed to forget. If police started to declare misogyny to be enough, then we'd have to start having a national debate about it, we'd have to examine the size and scope of sexism in our culture. Is it because too many men hate women that we don't want to believe sexism could be enough, in itself, to cause this?
ETA: Apparently police are now reporting that a suicide note has surfaced. Let's see what comes out of this... maybe i will be proven wrong, but i think the odds are with my prediction above.
( may be triggery )
Sheriff Fred Wegener says, "I don't know why he wanted to do this."
But, you know, i think he really does know why. I think we all know why. He's just not allowed to say it.
It's safe to say that he did it because he hated women. I mean, beyond saying that to kidnap or kill someone could be called an expression of hatred.
Police report that he made no demands other than, "Go away." He did not expect to walk out of there alive. One could fairly argue, from the news reports alone, that he was committing suicide by cop. He was down and out and apparently had no family. He had, as we say colloquially, "no reason to live."
Instead of simply shooting himself, though, he decided to cause terror and traumatize a few girls first.
But, conventional wisdom will say, surely hatred of women is not enough in itself for someone to do this? So police are going to search for a "motive." If they don't find a suicide note, they'll say instead that his reason will remain a "mystery," and the crime will go down in posterity as an "unexplained tragedy." If they do find a suicide note, maybe it will say something about an ex-wife or his mother or some other woman who wronged him, and they will latch on to that as the "motive."
They will do ANYTHING to avoid having to write, simply, "He hated women and wanted to die, so he raped several and killed one before killing himself." To me, that alone, in itself, makes perfect sense. It is explanation enough.
If he had come in and singled out black students, or Jewish students, or Muslim students, then we would understand hatred to be enough. But not when it comes to women.
Society prefers to probe for some minute detail in a criminal's life, or to call such cases a "mystery," than to face looking at the "big picture" here, which is that the violence which is implicit in misogyny can at any moment, even when we think we are safe in our homes with our husbands or boyfriends, or when we think we are safe at work or at school, turn into explicit violence. It is something that women are never allowed to forget. If police started to declare misogyny to be enough, then we'd have to start having a national debate about it, we'd have to examine the size and scope of sexism in our culture. Is it because too many men hate women that we don't want to believe sexism could be enough, in itself, to cause this?
ETA: Apparently police are now reporting that a suicide note has surfaced. Let's see what comes out of this... maybe i will be proven wrong, but i think the odds are with my prediction above.