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

Wendy, I absolutely agree with you. Some groups of people are not seen as even potential victims, and I'm sure you are right that male victims of sexual assault may find it hopeless to find help anywhere. Because they are men, society 'assumes' that they can't be the victims of such things. Of course this is a horrible example of discrimination.

Kathy, I have to thank Pam for explaining what I mean. Pam is exactly right. I don't mean, believe me, that it isn't every bit as horrible for the mother and father of a son to lose their child at a school massacre as it is for the mother and father of a daughter to lose their child at a school massacre. And I don't mean, either, that it isn't every bit as bad for society to lose boys at school shootings as it is to lose girls at school shootings.

But the problem is, the way I see it, that society doesn't acknowledge that girls can be targets at school shootings because of their gender alone. I think it is extremely rare for boys to be victims at school shootings only because of their gender. There are definitely cases where the majority of victims at shool shootings are boys, but in those cases, I personally think that the the killer's choice of victims has more to do with his need to get back at other kids who have taunted him than it shows the killer's hatred of people of his own gender. If an aggressive girl attacks other girls, I definitely see it that way, at least until I get more evidence - I'm going to assume that she attacks the other girls because she perceives them as her rivals, and they have probably taunted her, or she thinks they have. It is a case of settling things with your peers.

Let's get back to Wendy's example. When it comes to victims of sexual assault, society is so sure that those victims are women that it has no resources left for the victims that don't fit that description. When it comes to this particular crime, society assumes that the victims are always female.

The situation is exactly the opposite when it comes to school shootings. No, I don't mean that society assumes that the victims of school shootings are male. Certainly not. No, but instead society assumes that victims of school shootings don't have a gender. And sometimes, I agree, they don't. Sometimes it seems obvious that the victims aren't targeted in the first place, and then gender doesn't play a role. In other cases, a male shooter seems to be getting back at other boys, who are probably his rivals or people that he knows and has a bone to pick with. It is a way for the shooter to of settle things with his peers.

But sometimes, as in the Jonesboro attack, the Amish school, the Kauhajoki shootings and the Winnenden shootings, girls have been particularly targeted. (There are other such cases too: a case in Japan caused the deaths of many girls and one boy, and at a school shooting in England or Scotland, eleven of the the sixteen dead children were girls, the most seriously injured of the survivors was a girl and the only uninjured child was a boy.)

What I find so absolutely frustrating about the denial of the targeting of girls in school shootings is that this denial goes hand in glove with the unsufficient recognition of the fact that women and girls are, sorry, more often specially targeted and victimized than boys and men. For example, when I grew up I knew that the special circumstances of girls were always seen as a bit less interesting than the special circumstances of boys. Unlike girls, boys were 'normal'. If there was going to be an illustration of the general concept of a child, the illustrator would draw a boy. When I was a child, the collection-box at the Pentecostalist church that my relatives belonged to was shaped like a little African boy, who bowed his head in thanks when you put a coin in the box. (I hasten to add that my relatives treated their daughters with exactly the same love as they treated their sons.)

When I grew up, however, I learned that the coins I put in that collection-box might have done more good if they had gone to girls instead of to the generic boy who bowed his head in thanks for them, and who might have got the lion's share of them, too. Often aid organisations in Africa have given most of their money to men, because they believed that the men would take the money home to their families. Later it has been found that many men use the money they receive this way to buy things for themselves, and the girls and women have been left wanting. I once read about a mysterious crippling disease that seemed to affect almost exclusively women an girls in a part of Africa. Researchers later found that the disease was caused by a combination of a lack of nutrition and a case of poisoning: when there was a shortage of food, the really edible food went to the males, and the females had to eat a kind of vegetables that were partly poisonous. And speaking about women's health: Now that HIV has become so dominant in Africa, girls succumb to aids far more often than boys. That is because girls are married off at a much younger age than boys, and their husbands are under no obligation to be faithful. Some help programs from the west have tried to stop the spreading of aids by teaching those who would listen - that is, the women - that they should stay faithful to their spouses. As if that would help, when it is a perfectly normal thing in this part of the world for married men to go to prostitutes. (Add to that the men will absolutely not use condoms, mostly because of their own dislike of it, partly because of various local superstitions about it and partly because a Catholic bishop in Africa teaches that condoms cause aids. Much better to have sex with an HIV-infected protstitue without a condom then, right?) Also, at many African schools, male teachers demand sex from their female students, otherwise the girls will not get their grades. Unsurprisingly, women have shorter life spans than men in men in most poor countries, and six out of ten children who don't go to school in the world are girls.

The plights of girls and women are not sufficiently recognized in relation to how much they do suffer. I don't mean to imply that the suffering of men isn't terrible. I'm just saying that there is a subconscious association between the English word 'man' as in 'a male person' and 'man' as in 'a human being'. A normal human being is a male person, just as the generic African child was a little boy in the Pentecostalist church of my childhood. Therefore, when society considers how to help people at home and abroad, women are often thought of as a 'special interest group', whereas men are so easily seen as the normal representatives of most people. And who do you want to help first, the normal people or the special interest groups? I'm not saying that society isn't helping girls and women, because it is. But I think that society's response is often inadequate. And I hate it when society won't admit that women are the special targets of a crime. The way I see it, school shootings that target girls are hate crimes, and the girls are targeted because they are girls.

Ann

I have to second Wendy's post. Over the years, the admins have heard many complaints about these threads of yours, Ann, and no one has ever disagreed with you on your main point.

What irritates many people here is the way that you present your pov.

For example - I've been greatly puzzled over the past few days as to why you've been so selective in your reporting of the German shooting. "8 out of 9 students killed were female." But the gunman didn't kill 9 people. He killed 15. You've airbrushed a chunk of his victims out of the tragedy as though they didn't exist. I have no idea why you've done that - except that, of course, 8 out of 9 sounds much more sensational than 8 out of 15. But I find it disrespectful to those victims you've chosen to ignore. It certainly gives the strong impression that you think they don't matter. You don't need to concentrate on them - but they deserve at least to be included in the total victim count.

Secondly, this:

In the past, the first time you used the case of Thomas Hamilton, here in Dunblane, Scotland, to prove your theory that gunman in such cases target female victims, I provided you with incontrovertible evidence that Hamilton did not. Eye witnesses in the classroom stated quite clearly in court under oath that he stepped into the room and immediately began firing indiscriminately. (I've since seen a documentary on the case in which one of the teachers who survived makes that point even more strongly.)

Yet, even though Hamilton doesn't fit into your target group and you know that, you have continued to use this example to prove your point in other threads and now this one. I find that deeply offensive. There are clearly enough examples of female victimisation in the world without having to invent any or distort cases which have no relevance to your theory.

Perhaps if you were more willing to accept corrections to your 'facts' when they are wrong and not trim or ignore data or victims to cram tragedies like this into your theory, rather than finding genuine examples of it, you might find more people willing to listen to your pov.

No one is arguing with you that such incidents exist. We're all as capable as you are of seeing what goes on in the world around us. But your habit of distortion to prove it weakens your case considerably in the eyes of many here and just irks rather than provokes empathy with your point.

Just a thought. This is an Off Topic folder and so long as you keep to the rules of the mbs - which you have as far as I know - then you're entitled to bring up any topic you like. Which is what we've always told those wanting you shut down. Your threads are always well-signposted in the headers, so those upset by them can ignore and read elsewhere.

But if, as you've stated recently, your intent isn't to upset, anger or rile other members up but to engage us in supporting you in your cause to highlight and protest such incidents, how you present your case and engage us and keeping a tight rein on your research are things you might want to consider when you present your next thread.

LabRat

To the point Wendy made about how violence against males tends to be ignored and swept under the rug or how so many help programs are dedicated towards women and ignoring men, here's a fairly old book that I read many years ago written by Warren Farrell, a former board member of the National Organization for Women (NOW). The book is titled, "The Myth of Male Power," documenting societal bias against helping men and for ignoring many crimes against men and how men are considered the disposable sex.

The Myth of Male Power

I'm just bringing this up because Wendy mentioned this topic and that the book had made quite an impression on me a few years back. I'm not in any way saying crimes against males are any worse than crimes against females, and they're not, but I'd thought I'd just interject something from a different perspective.

Well, Labby, out of the 15 victims of the shooter (not counting himself), I know the gender of 12 of them. I don't know anything specific about the 3 remaining victims, apart fromt he fact that they were not connected to the school, but I can tell you this about the gender of the remaining 12: 11 out of these 12 were female, three teachers and 8 students.

Actually, I think you have to give Ann credit for editing the teachers out since most teachers here are female. But the ratio of the students is near to fifty-fifty (although at the kind of school the shooting happened, there is a slight majority of girls). If you go for a random shooting of 9 students, getting a gender ratio of 8:1 (with equal distribution of both genders) has a probability of about 1:57 (actually, 9:512, if you want to know for sure). Since there are several cases like this one, not counting the one in Scotland for obvious reasons, I think it's unlikely enough to 'just happen', much less repeatedly.

A problem I do see, though, is within the classroom. In many German schools, the door is near to the front of the classroom. And guess what, most students sitting in the front row are girls.

Another difference between boys and girls I see (which might be a misconception) is in the way they react to danger. Girls usually scream, often in an annoyingly high voice. Boys are more likely to simply (re-)act in a way to preserve their lives. I know that, in many ways, I react more like the standard male, so let me tell you what I'd do if a shooter entered my classroom (if I were a student): I'd throw myself to the ground and try to be as inconspicuous as possible!

But what would I do as a teacher? Hope that my class and I get some warning (like shots ringing out) so I could do something. Like lock the door. Or, if the classroom is on the first floor, evacuate through the windows (unless they're facing the schoolyard). Otherwise, I'd have my students lie flat on their bellies directly beneath the windows (so they can't be seen through them, much less shot). Would I evacuate? I don't think so because it'd be too dangerous.