There has been a school massacre in Finland, quite close to Sweden. Ten students were killed by a 22-year-old man. The shooting happened on Tuesday morning, but it wasn't until Wednesday night that authorities released information about the gender of the victims. It turns out that eight of the ten victims were girls.
What does that prove? Well, not that all school shootings always produce an excess of female victims, because that is simply not true. I don't think there were more female than male victims at Virgina Tech, and I'm sure that there were not more female than male victims at Columbine. Rather the opposite.
However, I will insist that most school massacres produce an excess of female victims. And yet I never see that discussed in the media as a problem in itself.
Imagine that most school massacres produced an excess of victims belonging to certain ethnic groups. Imagine that even though the perpetrator was almost always a Caucasian, the majority of his victims were blacks, Hispanics or Jews. I think that that would have been regarded as a problem in itself, and I think it would have been seen as a sign of troubling racism in our societies. And I can't believe that this "racial skew" of the victims of school massacres wouldn't have been widely discussed in the media.
But I have never really seen the media try to explain why most school shooters mostly kill girls. Perhaps this fact isn't regarded as important? Or perhaps it is seen as a fact of life? Boys will be boys, right? And boys will establish their superiority over girls by, occasionally, using some force against them. So if a guy is totally off his rocker, maybe it is normal that he will go overboard in his demostration of his superiority over girls. Maybe his aggression against girls is just normal? Maybe the problem isn't that he is killing girls? Maybe the problem is just that he is killing?
So reporters and editors produce articles and documentaries about teen depressions and inadequate parenting and unsafe schools and subcultures on the internet and dangerous music and the pros and cons of existing gun laws. When they have discussed all that, there is little if any energy left to discuss the gender of the victims. And maybe that is not something to discuss in the first place.
Is it?
Ann
