Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic School massacre in Germany: 8 out of 9 killed students are girls

I realize that many of you are so tired of me right now that you'd rather I kept away from this folder for a while. Unfortunately, I feel the need to comment on the fact that yesterday there was a school massacre in Winnenden, Germany, and 8 out of the 9 students who were shot were girls.

Is this fact going to be discussed? Are Germany and others willing to see this attack as a product of misogyny? The first reports talked about how the young killer shot 'indiscriminately'. Well, he can hardly have done that, if 8 out of 9 of the students he shot were girls.

I think misogyny is as hidden in our society as it is pervasive. It is like the air we breathe. It is everywhere, but it is as normal and hard to see as the air that surrounds us.

If 8 out of 9 of the students who were killed had been immigrants, or if they had been, say, Arabs, Jews or Africans, there would have been no way that this fact wouldn't have been discussed. Racism would have become a hot topic in schools everywhere. What can be done to combat racism? How can we prevent racism to poison youngsters and turn them into killing machines?

But in this case, most of the victims were girls, even though the number of male and female students in the classrooms was about the same. Is that going to be seen as significant? Is it going to make people discuss the sexism of our societies and the violence against women? Is it going to prompt schools to talk about the responsibility of everybody, including males, to respect others, including females?

I doubt it. If previous cases like this one are any indication, the response from society will just be to shake its collective head, to pronounce the young man mentally ill, and to move on as if nothing has happened. Until the next time girls are massacred. And then, the next time, the response will be the same again.

Ann

EDIT: As some of you may have noted, I have edited this post. In my previous post I claimed that 14 out or 15 victims were female, but that claim has not been confirmed. It now seems clear that 8 out of 9 of the killed students were girls, which is shocking, but not quite as bad as if 14 out of 15 victims had been female. Because I have edited my post, some of the responses to it may seem exaggerated. But those responses made sense as responses to my original post.

Where exactly do you get your news from, Ann?

What I've read in the Dutch newspapers is that "shockinly, many victims were female" and "shooter possibly suffered from broken heart" and "police investigates involvement of love." So I do not believe the fact that it were mostly girls that were killed is being overseen. It's noticed, police investigates and media reports on it.

So besides my finding yet another post on this irritating, I also think your facts aren't all that up-to-date.

But I was shocked by yet another incident like this. Shootings at school are horrible, no matter which gender gets killed. Poor kids and family.

Saskia

As far as I read it, there were two men killed. Three, including the shooter. The German media so far didn't talk too much about the gender of the victims, but German internet pages do.

Considering the fact that the guy shot more than a hundred times, it might not have been his intention to kill mostly women.

Three of his female victims were teachers, at least one of them about my age. Thinking about how many teachers in Germany are female, especially the young teachers, I wouldn't overestimate the fact that the three killed teachers were female.

You may be right, Ann. This guy might have hated women and thus killed them. But first and foremost he killed people and that's what makes this act of violence and hate so unbelievable.

Well, we've had a lot of shootings in the States lately. As far as I can tell, it's about even between male and female victims. Does that make us better here? I don't think so. Blind rampage with guns is bad no matter what.

Artemis

Saskia, I may have been too quick here. The latest news I have found doesn't say that all but one of the killer's victim's were female. It may have been an unsubstantiated rumor. If the German police give us information to the contrary, I will of course change the heading of this thread.

Ann

Check this out, it's an English-language article in a German paper .

Fair warning, the link crashed my IE twice before I disabled my Flash player, so here's a quote:

That was in the first paragraph.

Interesting to me is that, further down the page, they mention that he's of Albanian origin. Whether this had anything to do with it or not, I do not know, but... it occurs to me that Albania is primarily a Muslim country. (I've got friends from church who are planning to go there as missionaries)

PJ

I should mention that the newspaper you mentioned, ChiefPam, is definitely not the "Daily Planet" kind of newspaper. More like Metropolis star, meaning that they're not known for always checking all the facts before writing an article.

Bakasi, I did kind of get that vibe from it, yeah But Ann said:

And I wanted to let her know that it had been.

PJ

It´s not the gunman who is of Albanian origin, but one of his victims. The name of the gunman is Tim Kretschmer, that´s actually very much a German name.

And the newspaper is definitely not the best source you can get. It´s pure tabloid, and contains, according to a German band mainly "fear, hate, tits and the weather report".

The BBC news has just reported that the gunman "apparently targeted women" as he went on his rampaage.

Ann, no need to apologise for posts of this sort, uncomforatbale as they may be. It does appear that more victims of these 'shooters' are female than male. But why that is appears complicated. Some times it's clear that that was the shooter's intent (the Montreal Ecole Polytechnique shootings). But not always by any means - sometimes it may have something to do with how women react in these situations compared to men.

The question, given the horror and the tragedy, is always worth asking. I think, too, we must bear witness rather than turn away from these killings, regardless of the gender of the viticms.

Maybe the day will come when there are no more incidents of this sort.

carol

Cornelia, yes I see now that I was misreading the Albanian part. I'm going to blame it on IE messing up -- there were a few parts where I couldn't read the words behind the big "please install flash player" boxes. Thanks for setting me straight!

PJ

More news on the German teenager from the LA Times:
This story doesn't note the gender of the victims but just calls them "people".

Artemis

As far as I know - and I've had to endure more reports on the shooting than I care to count - there were 16 or 17 people killed. (I once heard that, about 24 (or so) hours after the shooting, another critically injured victim succumbed to his or her injuries.)

One of the victims was the gunman himself. Early reports speculated whether he had been shot by the police or whether he committed suicide when he realized that he wouldn't be able to escape.

He killed three teachers, all of them female. As was pointed out before now, most teachers in Germany are female, so that fact alone doesn't necessarily mean anything. One newspaper I read claimed that one of the teachers was shot in the back while she tried to escape while ushering her class out in front of her.

Tim K. also killed 9 students, 8 of which were girls. Since his motive isn't clear yet, this discrepancy lead to speculation. Many of the victims were shot in the head, which does not look to me like he was shooting randomly. It seems he executioned them (mafia-style).

While on the run, he also killed someone working at the nearby psych hospital. One report I heard claimed said worker was a woman, too. Others weren't specific or hinted at a male gender.

Later, Tim hijacked a car. He did not kill the (male) driver, for whatever reason there was.

Later, when he traded shots with the police, two more innocents were killed. The reports I've heard/watched/read so far were rather obtuse about that. I don't know anything about these peoples' gender. Neither do I know whose bullets killed them. Tim's? The police's? Directly or as a ricochet?

Btw, Ann, I was wondering when you would start a topic about this. (I guess you are notorious.)

About the link: I agree with bakasi that you shouldn't put too much stock into that particular newspaper. Yellow press at its finest. (Some people here claim that "Bild knows everything" - no matter if it really happened or not.)

I also thought I read on...CNN? that one of the teachers stepped in front of her students to take a bullet. And I'm just speechless. We do have real live heroes out there, and I hope we can all be selfless when it really counts.

God bless
JD

And that is one of the things that drives me crazy - I mean the fact that when an overwhelming majority of females are killed in massacres like this one, the media will sometimes only report that a certain number of 'people' were killed. Last year - at least I think it was last year - a school massacre not unlike the one in Germany happened in Kauhajoki, Finland. For what felt like days and days, the media stubbornly refused to report the gender of the nine students and the one teacher that had been killed. The reason for the silence may have been that the police did not release any information about this, but of course there must have been people in Kauhajoki who knew the victims, but again no one said anything. It was quickly reported, however, that one of the victims was a young man who was regarded as the shooter's best friend. But what about the other eight students? I scoured the internet for facts about them, but this seemed to be one of those cases where the police were determined not to report the victims' gender. Then a few serious and probably reliable newspapers reported, in the briefest possible manner, that the victims had been one male teacher, one male student and eight female students. And then nothing more was said about it! Nothing! Newspapers kept speculating about what it meant that the shooter had killed his best friend, but no one - no one! - commented on the fact that all the other killed students were female.

Do you realize that the ratio of male and female student victims was the same in Kauhajoki and in Winnenden? In both cases, nine students were killed, and out of them eight were females. The big, huge difference is that in Germany the skewed gender ratio was acknowledged, and it was seen as really troubling. In Finland no one said a thing. Indeed, when a Swedish newspaper wrote about the shooting in Winnenden and compared it with Kauhajoki, it commented on the fact that so many of the victims in Winnenden were female. But it said nothing about the fact that the gender ratio of the student victims in Winnenden and Kauhajoki was the same! Because, no doubt, this Swedish newspaper didn't realize what the gender ratio of the victims in Kauhajoki had been! By refusing to discuss or comment on it, Finnish police and Finnish media succeeded in making the massacre of girls in Kauhajoki 'disappear'. Of course the girls themselves remain dead as doornails. But practically no one knows that all but one of the killed students in Kauhajoki were girls, so no one needs to give it a thought. Not only the girls themselves were killed, but the acknowledgement and realization of how these girls were victimized was killed, too.

In Germany the media have been upfront about the killer's targeting of girls. That means that Germany has been given a chance to mourn the victims as dead girls. I commend German media for acknowledging the loss of girls like this. Perhaps, if these things will be discussed more openly, societies will feel obliged to try to increase their efforts to curb men's violence against women.

Ann

Although I don't know statistics, I'm certainly aware that there have been several school shootings where female victims were specifically targeted. And I admit that I don't know of any similar instances for male victims. Although I have theories as to some of the possible reasons - and certainly some have been referred to in other threads on this same topic - I don't have any answers or solutions. It is definitely a problem.

However, Ann, in my opinion, your concern about female victims causes you to lose sight of the big picture. You just wrote:

But for me, the big picture is that children are dying. Innocent children who, simply by being in school, are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yes, I abhor violence against women. I also abhor violence perpetrated against men. I don't condone wife beatings OR husband beatings. And here, I think it's horrible that it's happened AT ALL. These are innocent children. This sort of thing should not be happening at all. I don't think it any worse - or better - to find out that most of the victims were girls. We are supposed to protect our children. When we send our children to school every day and let them out of our watchful eye, we expect them to be safe. There are way too many instances where a parent has done this everyday, normal activity - sending their child off to school - and not having their child come home.

For me, at least, this is a more worrisome issue. Thank God that my child hasn't been a victim, nor do I personally know anyone who has suffered such a grievous loss in this way. Percentage-wise, I don't know what the numbers are. And I don't know how to stop it. I can scream stronger gun control, but certainly that alone isn't enough. I can scream that we have to more quickly identify the possible warning signs that the shooters may exhibit before going on the rampage, but that is probably next to impossible.

Children are dying. Sometimes it's school-related violence, sometimes it's gangs. Often it's illness. More often it's hunger.

Children. Boys and girls. Girls and boys. That's what bothers me the most.

Kathy

These are three young men who were murdered in 1964:

[img]http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/net/20041221/capt.b229898aa066659dc0aa46d5c94866dc[/img]

You can describe them as three civil rights workers who were kidnapped and killed in 1964. Or you can say that it doesn't matter that they were civil rights workers, and all young murder victims are to be mourned whether they are civil rights workers or not.

This is a somewhat older man who was murdered:



You can describe him as a homosexual man who was murdered. Or you can say that it doesn't matter that he was homosexual, and all human beings who are murdered are to be mourned, and this man was a human being.



These people are Jews who are being marched from the Jewish ghetto in Warzaw to a concentration camp, where they will be killed. You can say, if you want to, that it doesn't matter that they were Jews, and the interesting thing is that eight million people were killed at the concentration camps.



These four girls were killed at the Jonesboro massacre. You can say that it doesn't matter that they were girls, and the important thing is that they were children.

You can say all these things. You can, if you want to, refuse to describe people as anything else than people or children. I agree that it is of the utmost importance to acknowledge - really acknowledge - that all people are, well, people.

But sometimes you just understand more if you are more specific. Because some people are killed because they are a certain kind of people.

Ann

Ann, I agree with you that sometimes people are killed for the sole reason that they are a certain kind of people. There's incontrovertible evidence that sometimes Jews are targeted, sometimes Christians, sometimes black people, sometimes Muslims, sometimes prostitutes, sometimes civil rights workers, sometimes boys, sometimes gay men - or gay boys. And, yes, sometimes women. And we must recognise that - you're right there too. If we turned a blind eye to the fact that particular groups get targeted, we'd be turning a blind eye to hate and prejudice and failing to put in place protections against hate crimes.

I don't think anyone here would disagree with you about that simple fact. I think the reason that you get a certain reaction to some of your posts is that 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.

Yes, there are parts of the world where the treatment of women is awful and inhumane. There are, and have been, parts of the world where treatments of other less-powerful groups is equally awful and inhumane. I think what most of us are saying is that discrimination against any group - whether that discrimination results in oppression, slavery or even murder - is equally bad. The targeted slaughter of women is no worse than the targeted slaughter of blacks or gays or Jews.

(And, as an aside, I remember having an ultimately fruitless email debate with an American academic, when I was still working in a British university, who staunchly argued that discrimination on grounds of race is morally worse than discrimination on grounds of gender. *headdesk*).

Recently, I've been made aware of one consequence of the focus of attention and resources on one group of - I hate to use the term 'victims', as it implies a helpless state, but let's use it just for this example - victims of sexual assault. The majority of resources for treatment, consciousness-raising, shelter and so on goes to women victims/survivors, and as a result little or nothing is available for male sexual abuse victims/survivors. One of the consequences of this concentration of resources has been that society as a whole, or the sexual abuse 'helping community' in particular, has almost been able to deny that there is even a problem affecting men. Male victims/survivors can find almost no-one to listen to them. They call helplines, only to find the phone slammed down the instant the person on the other end realises they're talking to a man. Women campaigners against sexual violence call all men abusers and refuse to acknowledge that men can also be abused. Sexual assault units are geared to deal with women, and men who are themselves victims can feel unwanted and that they're viewed with hostility and mistrust by the very people who should be trying to help them... because the overall focus is that those who fall victim to sexual abuse are women.

This is an exaggerated comparison, of course (though it's true and I've been told this by a male abuse survivor and activist), but I mention it only to make the point that if we focus on one group of victims we run the risk of diminishing the experience, or even existence, of other groups of victims. Of course it matters when women appear to be singled out to be murdered. The point is that it matters equally when some other group is singled out. No one of Neimoller's targeted groups in his famous quote matters less than any other, just as in my favourite Donne meditation he says any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

I wish women as a group were never the targets of killers. I wish the same about gays, blacks, men, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Rastafarians and any distinctive group you could name - because any targeting of any specific group is appalling and hateful and deserves our attention.


Wendy

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.
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

FWIW, I don't think Ann is necessarily saying that she only cares about the deaths of girls or women. My take is that she thinks that deaths of girls, while equally important (and tragic) as the deaths of boys, is less-noticed by the world in general, or by large swathes of it. To try to counter that (perceived) disparity, she puts *more* emphasis on the female side. For those of us who don't share that perception, it's redundant (and sometimes annoying ) but I think that's what's going on.

Ann, of course, is more than able to speak for herself, so she'll correct me if I'm wrong.

PJ