Wendy, thank you for your most eloquent post. You expressed very clearly at least some of what I was thinking - that violence or hate targeting any group, based on whatever reasons, is wrong.
I think part of my concern with things that you've written, Ann (or maybe it's just the way that I've interpreted them), echoes with what Wendy said.
...you appear to - whether you mean to or not - give the impression that you think girls or women being killed is a worse crime than anyone else being killed.
Certainly whenever I hear first reports of a school shooting, I
never wonder - was it boys who were shot at, or just girls? I wonder where it was, how did it happen, how many have been injured, how many have died. I wonder if there were warning signs about the shooters that people could/should have seen, I wonder whether it should have been harder for the shooter to get a weapon. For me, the sex of the victims in these cases doesn't matter. I am appalled at those who target females; I would be EQUALLY appalled if a shooting occurred tomorrow and only boys were killed because they had been targeted. Maybe this is why I can't understand why your sense of outrage seems to be greatest for girls.
From your reply to my post, I wanted to clarify a couple of things that I don't feel pertained to the point you were trying to make. I assume that you brought up each of those illustrations and examples as people/groups that have been discriminated against and therefore targeted for violence.
I can't argue with you about the Jews during WW2. I know nothing about the young men in the first picture, so I don't know if they prove your point or not. But as to the other two...
Harvey Milk was gay, and he was killed. But he wasn't killed BECAUSE he was gay. He was killed because a man suffering from depression who had lost his job as a City Supervisor went to San Francisco City Hall and shot both Milk and Mayor Mascone. Mascone was killed first when he was unwilling to give White his job back. White then reloaded and walked down the hall and killed Milk. The two of them had clashed earlier about various political issues. As far as I know, it was not motivated in any way because of Milk's homosexuality. Sad to say, very few seem to have heard of Mascone, yet people know about Milk precisely because he was gay and he was killed, even though his sexual preferences were not the cause of his death.
As far as the Jonesboro victims are concerned, this does not appear to be a case for females being targeted. Yes, the four students who died were female. Other students were injured; I don't know the genders. One of the two shooters pulled the fire alarm, then the two of them opened fire on the students coming out of the building. They shot indiscriminately - the claim is that they wanted to scare people. At the trial, one of the defendants said, "We were not going to shoot at anyone in particular."
Kathy
