I live in Montreal, where the Polytechnique shooting occurred on December 6, 1989. To make a short story: the shooter, Marc Lepine, killed 14 women and injured 14 more. He blamed women for being turned down by the school's engineering program.

Every year on December 6, Montreal remembers those young women, in the hope that such crime would never happen again.

But now, it seems to have happened all over again, with the Pennsylvania shooting. However, as pointed out, the biggest difference is that the media has downplayed the important detail about the Pennsylvania victims being all girls. I agree that if it were race-related, it wouldn't pass unnoticed. But since these are "just" girls, who cares, right? *shakes head*

How about this: You scrape up all his brains off the wall with a spatula, and re-assemble them and put them back into his head, which you must dig up at the local cemetery. Then you force the body to attend gender sensitivity classes, and make it work with underprivileged kids. You could tape its eyelids open and make it watch documentaries on Darfur. That will show it!

In the vast majority of these heinous crimes, the perpetrator commits suicide. The only person who should be punished for a crime is the perpetrator, and anyone who assisted. So why does it matter how the crime is defined if there's no one left to punish?

Instead, we are all punished by having to waste time in discussions like these.

"Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews. There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection."

So, if we could just determine which group is being targeted we could stop it? I wish it were that easy. The country did recoil in horror, there is a mobilized effort to eradicate this kind of violence, there are calls for action and reflection. Its just plain horrible and whether he chose his victims because they were girls or because one of their toes was longer than another makes no difference. Any sane person's reaction is just out and out horror.

I wouldn't feel any more or less despair if he had chosen his victims randomly or for any other reason. Its a kind of hair splitting to complain that on top of all the other things clearly "wrong" with the kind of person who would do this, he is also a mysogynist.

In Montreal, the shooter thought women kept him out of an engineering program. He resented them because of what he percieved as an unfairness of affirmative action. Thus, his ideas were fed by reactionary types who decry such affirmative action. His act was political in as much as it was a protest of these kinds of policies. It could be argued that education of the public at large about the origins and justifications of such policies and their actual impact on people's chances in life would have helped. Also one can blame reactionary "thinkers" who profit by pushing forth the myth that white guys lose in todays society, mostly due to affirmative action.

In Pennsylvania?

It is hard to see what in society leads to generalized hatred of young Amish schoolgirls. I know of no popular media type, even on talk radio, who foments resentment against this group. I have not heard that the shooter was motivated by any social wrong that he thought he had suffered. To my knowlege, he was not a heavy consumer of internet porn, much less porn targeted at pedophiles (which porn is not only illegal, but universally despised and very zealously prosecuted). There is no social message out there that says its ok to hate these girls, much less act out against them. Also, there is no social message that you can do this sort of thing and get away with it or get any sympathy from the public whatsoever. On the contrary, the sexual exploitation and/or murder of children is pretty much the only thing you can do which will absolutely prevent you from ever getting sympathy from anyone ever again.

Society does permit the sexualization of some underage girls in movies and on tv. Women are objectified. Still, it remains to be answered, "how do these broader phenomena relate to the damaged and disturbed psyche of this monster?" It is arguable that they do not. I think that is why many commentators shy away from the gender angle.

This incident doesn't offer up any ready made solutions. People are disinclined to raise issues that they can't immdiately start pontificating on. The gender aspect of the Pennsylvania shootings is therefore very uncomfortable. Someday this incident, and other girl-centric mass murders may be written up in a respectable journal of abnormal psychology. Until then, very little light will be shed on what happens in the minds of such criminals. I predict that when the issues are studied, very few easy soulutions will be offered.

I too was creeped out by the killer's selection of only girls as victims, just as I was days earlier by the guy in a Colorado high school that specifically took only girls hostage. And yes, all school violence is creepy and totally upsetting, but still... I don't know what it means, but surely it means something.

But that doesn't really mitigate the original point, which I think is a good one. Our society is so saturated in violence, hatred and abuse of women that nobody even notices anymore. I will never forget at one of those award shows when Snoop Dogg (and I do not mean to only point the finger at gangsta rap - it comes from all angles and from women as well as men) showed up with two women on dog leashes and everyone thought it was funny and oh-so-edgy. Um, he is a black man in America and he thinks its funny to put *shackles* on someone? Oh, wait, it was only women. And they CHOSE it, so it must be ok. And everyone just chuckled and shrugged. "That crazy Snoop Dogg!"

Sure, its not murder and not in the same realm, but it is evidence of the type of thing that we tolerate when it is done to women, but would be demonized if done to any other group.