Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Gender ratio of victims of latest school massacre

Clearly I was wrong about a couple of things, Terry. For example, it turned out not to be true that most school shooters mostly shoot girls. Although I don't have the strength to look through the list once again and check it, the impression I was left with after doing the list was that a majority of the American school shooters mostly or predominantly killed males. These school shooters generally killed a small number of male students, one or two, or the school's prinicpal. The reason why I was not aware of this comparatively large number of "male-killing" school shooters is probably that the number of their victims is comparatively small, or it turns out that the killer knew his victim and had a bone to pick with him. Therefore the cases don't come across as that sensational, and they don't receive that much publicity. Anyway, whatever the reason, I was wrong when I said that most school shooters mostly kill girls.

However, I was not wrong when I said that girls receive a much larger proportion of the violence of schools shootings than they receive of deadly violence in general. I don't have the energy to look it up, but I'm pretty sure that only 20% or less of all murders produce female victims. Most murder victims are male. Also, as one study proved that I found, between 1994 and 1997 boys were more than twice as likely as girls to be killed by school-related acts of violence.

Two things have happened. An equal number of boys and girls are now killed by school shootings. But the girls are far more likely than boys to fall victims to killers who single them out because of their gender. Given the fact that most 'boy-killing' school shooters kill just one or two persons, it does not at all seem likely that these shool shooters are deliberately trying to kill as many boys as possible. So far that kind of school shooter does not seem to exist, the one that really singles out boys and wants to kill as many of them as possible. But the kind of killer that singles out girls and wants to kill as many of them as possible is certainly around.

Terry, you are suggesting that these girl-killing men are crazy. Yes, that is possible. Does that mean that we don't have to talk about what they do? Should we just shrug when they kill? Should we treat their killings as an act of a malicious god, like when lightning strikes? At least people put up lightning-conductors to protect themselves from lightning. Should we say that it is enough to protect schools from school shootings by trying to make sure that fights between boys don't get out of hand? Or should we just install metal detectors and make sure that teachers are armed? What then if a man who wants to kill little girls gets himself a job as a teacher?

Should we say that it is uninteresting that there are mass murderers of girls out there? Are they uninteresting, not worth investigating, not worth talking about, because they are crazy?



Ann

P.S. Everybody knows about Columbine, where nine males and four females were killed, all in all thirteen people. How many know about École Polytechnique in Montreal, where fourteen people, all females, were killed?

You are putting words in my mouth, Ann. Please don't do that. It doesn't become someone of your erudition and intelligence.

I never said that any murder victim was less important than any other. I never suggested that we should dismiss, ignore, or otherwise fail to pay attention to school shootings. But let me give you some statistics.

According to this FBI website, there were 14,990 murder victims in the US in 2006. Of these, 11,793 were male, 3,156 were female, and 41 whose gender was unknown or unclear. This means that 78.9% of US murder victims were male in 2006.

According to this FBI site, there were 14,831 murder victims in the US in 2007. Of these, 11,618 were male, 3,177 were female, and 36 were of unknown or unclear gender. This means that 78.5% of US murder victims were male in 2007.

You have given us 101 total school shooting victims in your calculations, Ann, spread out over several years, showing an approximate 49.55-40.5% male-to-female ratio. While it may seem callous to reduce the suffering of any group of victims to mere numbers, I have to respond that you do not have a statistically significant sample to determine a trend. Working with the numbers alone, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that school shootings deliberately target females either along with or over males. These numbers do not support your claim of "femicide."

This does not mean that I think we should ignore the problem of school shootings. I simply don't find a trend in the numbers to support your contention that women (or girls) are targeted by these nuts. The typical medium to large school population in the US will contain approximately 51%-49% female-to-male ratio, depending on the grade level, location (urban vs. rural or suburban), affluence of the school district, primary employers near the district, and other sociological factors. You simply don't have any proof that your assertion is valid.

Nan, I totally agree with you and Terry that these people are mentally unbalanced. I don't think anyone can dispute that. And with every one of them, their motivations would have been slightly different. There's a whole list on wikipedia ( School shootings ), and I have no idea how accurate or how complete this list is. Of the incidents that I remember off the top of my head:
1. some of the killers just attacked blindly, not caring who their victims were;
2. some were after very specific individuals. The killers may or may not have been concerned when others got in the way.

And there are at least two cases - the Ecole Polytechnique shooting and the Amish shooting - where females were specifically targeted. There may be others - I don't know.

Statistically we can't say that these two cases alone would indicate a trend towards females as desired victims of school shootings, as Ann was concerned about. But I do have to admit that I don't know of any cases where males were singled out, simply because they were males and for no other reason. So although I don't share Ann's concerns that this is a growing trend, one can't forget that these two cases do in fact exist.

Kathy

"No generalization is worth a damn -- including this one." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes (or possibly Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw or Douglas MacArthur. There seems to be some dispute as to the exact source.)

Nan

Terry, I wasn't talking about the United States specifically. What prompted me to post was the latest school shooting in Finland. That shooter went from classroom to classroom, opened doors and looked inside, until he found one which he liked. In there, he killed eight female students, on male student, and one male teacher. He also critically wounded another female student. Did he target females? We can't find out, because the killer committed suicide. But the gender ratio of his victims, plus the fact that he didn't walk into the first classroom he could find, suggests to me that he did, although admittedly he wasn't above shooting two males, too.

In Sweden in 1991 and 1992, we had a sniper who targeted immigrants. He killed one immigrant and wounded nine, leaving some of the wounded disabled for life. This caused an incredible uproar. I, too, realize that a sniper is different from a school shooter because he 'isn't done' when he has shot and killed once. Instead, in this sniper's case, he came back again and again. What horrified people was not so much that he was a sniper, but particularly that he targeted immigrants. This was seen as a terrifying sign of racism and intolerance in our society. Politicians urged schools to take action to stop intolerance and racism in Sweden, books were written, TV documentaries were made - all because of one sniper who targeted immigrants. (The fact that the sniper turned out to have immigrant roots himself and was certainly not blond prompted many people to ask if this was another sign of racism in Sweden, that the sniper had learnt self-hate in Sweden and had to make others who had darker hair and skin than himself pay for his own sense of 'racial inferiority'.



John Ausonius, who targeted immigrants and killed one. He had Sweden in an uproar.

The thing is that one person who targeted immigrants was seen as an extremely serious problem for all of society, a problem which wasn't solved just because the killer had been caught. Instead, everybody had to come together to do whatever they could to make sure that immigrants were not singled out and targeted again.

My question is: Is it never a problem when women or girls are targeted? Can we just say that so many men are also killed, so why should we talk about the girls?

I feel that I'm repeating myself. I will seriously try not to post here again. Please understand, however, that I have not been saying that boys and men are not killed at school shootings, or that parents shouldn't grieve equally for their sons and daughters.

Ann

I see what you're saying, Ann, but it seems to me that the problem is a natural outcome of humans existing in 2 genders. This may sound stupid, but, statistically, wouldn't it be likely that a few of the killers would be targeting people who were different than they are? And since most (all?) of the mass killers are male, wouldn't that automatically mean that a few of them would see females as "other"? I have to admit that I'm assuming that even psychotics and sociopaths don't usually try to eliminate ones they consider like themselves (and I realize from the immigrant case that that may not be true, anyway).

But if most of the shooters were female, I would certainly expect that a few of them would perceive males as the enemy and go after them. The difference is that our shooters only seem to be males. So if they are going to target a particular gender, it seems more likely that they would choose the opposite one rather than their own. If they went after their own gender, wouldn't that mean they were having to admit that part of the problem was in themselves? I guess that's why it seems more likely to me that someone who would be crazy enough to kill innocent people would choose someone different than themselves.