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.
