On March 12, the hubby and I watched "Worldfocus," an English-language news program from Germany on one of our public broadcasting stations. The top story, with extended coverage, was of the double-digit fatalities in a shooting spree by a 17-year-old boy. The first fatal scene was the boy's high school, where all but one of his 11 victims were women and girls. He added five more murders during his escape, then killed himself.
The hubby and I were struck that the anchorman made a point of the gender of the school victims, but that the rest of the broadcast trot out the "usual suspects" of motive--violent video games and loner status, though some students interviewed by police said he was quiet and others said he was popular. I made a promise to myself to see what the follow-up to the story would reveal.
In the days that followed the breaking story, more about the gunboy was revealed--he had average to below-average grades, took antidepressants, was unhappy, may have warned about the attacks in an internet chat room, may NOT have warned about the attacks in an internet chat room. Many stories I read entirely erased the gender of his victims--both female and male. One cached story from the San Francisco Gate talked about targeting women, but when I clicked through to the story, the gender-specific statement had disappeared. All that was left was a bare-bones story that seemed have been taken from the preliminary breaking news of the tragedy.
The most I could find on the gender angle was this , from an Asian online news source called The Straits Time:
"German police are trying to establish why a teenage gunman appeared to be targeting women and girls as investigators pick over the scene of yesterday's school shooting in one of the country's richest regions.
"'What strikes us is that most of the victims at school were female,' police spokesman Klaus Hinderer was quoted by Bloomberg News after the murder of 15 people in Winnenden, near Stuttgart. 'That could be a hint as to why he did it.' All but one of the victims of the 17-year- old While Germany was left in shock, the precedents are plentiful. The trace runs from the Scottish town of Dunblane via Columbine, Colorado, to Finland and then southern Alabama, where a gunman shot dead at least 10 people just hours before the events in Winnenden.
"'I fear the events in Alabama lit the fuse that turned this tragic youngster's violent fantasies into fact,' Christian Pfeiffer, director of the Criminal Research Institute of Lower Saxony in Hanover, said in an interview with Bloomberg. ...Perpetrators know that they'll gain an instant global stage for their actions and this guy followed the script with tragic accuracy: donned in black, armed to the teeth, dying in a blaze of bullets,' said Mr. Pfeiffer."
This, the only story I could find that leads with the gender of the school victims, spins itself away from this question to lump all school shootings together and suggest, among other things, that the killer wanted attention.
I have a question: why is the German government treating this mass slaughter as a hate crime? This is a mixed-gender high school, yet nobody seems to want to discuss the "hate that dare not speak its name." Why aren't media outlets probing the gender angle the way they surely would if there had been 11 black students killed in a mixed-race high school?
I don't know why this boy went on a killing rampage, and certainly there may be more than one factor involved. But why has gender been "disappeared" from the story? I think we should question our media purveyors until we get some answers.
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Did you mean "why isn't the German government treating this mass slaughter as a hate crime?"
I don't think the comparison to a racially-based killing is accurate. If the German guy only killed people of a certain race, he would be implying support for the eradication or enslavement of that race. I don't think that murdering a group of women carries the same message. Sexists generally don't hate women like racists hate people of other races, they just don't respect women as equals.
I really don't think the depressed fifteen-year-old killed the women because of a women-hating agenda. Perhaps they wouldn't go out with him though?
Would you think it was a hate crime if he only killed men, sparing the women (and children)?
Sexists generally don't hate women like racists hate people of other races, they just don't respect women as equals.
No, but misogynists do.
I really don't think the depressed fifteen-year-old killed the women because of a women-hating agenda. Perhaps they wouldn't go out with him though?
... do you not see how that would be problematic?
Would you think it was a hate crime if he only killed men, sparing the women (and children)?
I would certainly think it was worth discussing, yes.
I don't think I've ever come across someone who truly hates women. I avoided the word misogynist because I don't know of anyone who fits its literal definition. The worst men use women for sex, child-raising, or as a punching bag. They would not like it if women were to suddenly disappear, in the way that many racists would feel better if all PoC died.
I do see it as problematic that the killer targeted girls. I agree, it's worth discussing. But it's not the same as, say, him killing only they gay students.
I don't think I personally know any misogynists, but I can conceive of them existing. For extreme examples, think of the priests and other righteous men who burned hundreds women at the stake as witches.
(For a fictional and slightly silly example, but I can't not think of it because I just watched it, see Caleb in season 7 of Buffy, or Billy in that one episode of Angel.)
There are lots of men out there who truly hate women - I'm surprised you haven't come across one in person. But surely you read the papers - there are serial killers and serial rapists, who explicitly target women victims, and it goes without saying (or at least it SHOULD) that they truly hate women.
I think a hate crime is a hate crime so long as the motivation is discrimination or bias against a certain segment of the population (i.e. gays, blacks, jews, etc.) If this person singled out these people because of their gender then it certainly has everything required in order to be considered a hate crime.
The thing that bothers me with your comment, is the implication that bias against gender, hatred against women, is somehow less worse than hatred against other groups of people:
"I don't think the comparison to a racially-based killing is accurate. Sexists generally don't hate women like racists hate people of other races, they just don't respect women as equals."
First of all, it's not fair to make comparisons about which type of discrimination is worse (aka oppression olympics)...secondly, anyone that is motivated enough to kill someone based on their gender, isn't simply "not respecting women as equals", they are doing it out of hatred, and it's most definitely equivalent (not worse or better than), but equivalent to someone whose motivation for killing is race, religion, sexual orientation, etc...because the motivation for all these crimes is the same: HATE.
It's really disturbing to me that you would somehow put women in a separate category...as if sexism is just some mild form of discrimination that can't even be compared to other forms of discrimination and hate. Maybe the term sexism to describe hatred/violence towards women is a poor choice. Perhaps the term "sexism" doesn't encompass the proper degree of hate towards women, perhaps misogyny is a better word? Either way, I think what you say in your post couldn't be more wrong, ALL discrimination is EQUALLY hurtful and harmful. And I shouldn't have to remind you that plenty of women are killed, maimed, beaten, etc. every single day because of another person's hatred toward women. And hate crimes most definitely, and tragically, happen because of gender.
If these women were killed simply because they were women, than that is the most basic definition of a hate crime (bias-motivated crime). I just can't believe you could think that bias and violence against women (hate-crimes) can't even be compared to other types of bias because of the fact that the motivation is gender, as opposed to race, sexual orientation, religion, etc. I just don't understand that reasoning...Or is it just that women are targeted so frequently that it has simply become normalized in our society?
Hate is hate. There's no difference between hating women or hating a racial group.
The feeling of hatred is the same.
I've often wondered why it is that people don't think of the murder of women BECAUSE they are women - femicides - as a hate crime. I think it is because they have become so numbed to the fact of a world where women are targeted on a regular basis. It's 'normal' for men to hate and disrespect women.
I live in Scotland, and I did see a front page headline, GERMAN SCHOOL SHOOTER TARGETED GIRLS. The article, from what I could read from the front cover through the plastic screen, was full of speculation about why he might've had a grudge against women. They seemed to think it was because he couldn't get a girlfriend. Whilst this might be partly true, it utterly removes any responsiblity of the society, which is why these things aren't classified as hate crimes. If they were, society would have to acknowledge its responsibility and the fact that these things are often so much more deep-down than we like to think, and rooted in history and a deeply ingrained ideology.
I don't think it's very common to go crazy and kill 11 people. It is common for men to kill the woman they were in a relationship with. There's a huge difference.
It's one thing to note that he targeted women, but it's another to classify this a hate crime, unless other evidence of his hate appears.
What other evidence do you need?
Thank you for writing this! I am in germany and have been wondering the same.
Actually, it is hardly mentioned at all, that the victims were almost all female. All they talk about here, as to "why", seems to be violent computer games. Which of course is nonsense for starters, but obviously also easier to swallow for the right wing media (which is almost all media here, sadly) and more along their agenda than acknowledging misogyny.
Thanks for this post. Like the Amish school shooting, I would have no idea the killer targeted girls if feminists hadn't addressed this glaring fact. That alone says so much.
Marilyn Ferdinand,
I agree with you that this is a hate crime - the killer obviously targeted women.
But I have to call bullshit (and pull the cord on the racial privilege alarm) about this statement:
You said "Why aren't media outlets probing the gender angle the way they surely would if there had been 11 black students killed in a mixed-race high school?"
You are trotting out the old tired argument that there is no more racism, and sexism is the only form of discrimination left.
That's just not true.
All over Eastern Europe - particularly in Russia, but in Germany as well, there has been widespread violence against people of color.
In Russia, 500 people of color were killed last year - and that's only counting killings that the Russian Federal Security Bureau (the old KGB) admits were racially motivated.
But you wouldn't know about that unless you're a news junkie like me, because the European press have buried those race killing stories for years.
So if that shooter had targeted Blacks (or Turks, Germany's most hated racial minority) I'm sure the German media would have buried it.
Beyond that, as far as treating this killing as a hate crime, I'm not even sure if the Federal Republic of Germany, or the State of Baden-Wurtemberg even HAVE American-style bias crime statutes (most European jurisdictions don't).
I agree with you about the misogyny - please don't muddy the waters with White privilege, because I want to be on the same side as you on this.
Yes, I did mean why isn't. I emailed Feministing to change it because you can't alter your own posts, but they never did it.
Nettle Syrup - Right on to everything you said.
Gregory - You are reading things into my post that I never said. Did I say racism has been eliminated? No I did not. I said that if the crime had been against a racial or ethnic group, I believed the media would have been all over it in many countries of the world, including Germany, which does have hate-crimes statutes (see page 15 on in this document: http://www.crime-prevention-intl.org/publications/pub_3_1.pdf). Do I think hate crimes of other stripes are buried. Yes, of course they are. But not usually when there are 11 victims in a mass shooting, and particularly when the question was raised in early reporting and then disappeared. Crimes against a single woman or ethnic minority just get brushed under the rug in favor of the ones that are "outrageous," like pretty blonde women or children.
You seem to think that we have to choose - we can oppose racist violence, or sexist violence, but not both.
Why is that?
And yes, it is an example of White privilege when you hold that the lives of 11 White women are more important than the lives of 500 immigrants of color.
Those were ALL bias crime murders.
They were ALL whitewashed out of the media coverage.
So why can't we oppose ALL bias crimes - instead of playing Oppression Olympics?
Marylin,
the angle is being investigated, but I think the category 'hate crime' seems a little inappropriate in this case. Of course, no one really knows at this point of time (there is even disagreement between the authorities, the parents, and the psychological institutions that the boy was treated about the extent of his treatment - as this is an important variable in the probable case of charge against the shooter's father for leaving the gun unattended), but I suppose if the boy hated women he hated them to extent most teenage boys hate teenage girls - like you hate someone you love who turns you down - usually you still love them. One motive that seems to reappear in news reports is his feeling of being disrespected.
And feeling disrespected by teenage girls is certainly a feeling experienced by quite a lot of young men. Doesn't make this a hate-crime, in my opinion.
I think the idea that women are obligated to respect you so much that they deserve to die if they disrespect you counts as misogyny.
Johnny,
It's actually pretty simple - let me explain.
Lots of teenage boys get dissed by girls in high school - the boys who come back to school with a rifle and murder those girls (along with every other girl..and female teacher...they encounter in the hall) have committed a bias crime.
Wrong Johnny,
This is obviously a hate crime. When you target girls and women to be shot and killed, that is sexism. Your mind will clear if you imaging the exact same thing happening to black. Imagine a school with black and white students and teachers and a white student searching for people with black skin and then shooting them. That is a hate crime and when the same thing happens to women, it is hate.
Also, your issue about respect is messed up because you don't define it. Often sexist men believe that women should submit to them. They don't ask the same kind of submission from other men. So if women don't treat a sexist man as superior, the sexist man becomes angry. It could be that the teenager was angry at girls and women because they didn't bow down to him.
A lot of men (husbands, boyfriends, etc.) kill women who do not bow down to them. That's a large part of the problem of violence against girls and women.
Johnny - Are you a man? Would you recognize the latent hate against women in patriarchy? We're talking systemic, institutional hate that boys are brought up with. Hate isn't just about killing; it's about denying women their civil rights. Why are gay/lesbian, black, and other oppressed groups allowed to claim hate crimes, and women not? Aren't we discriminated against in everything from pay, to the right to vote, to the right keep our own names after marriage, to the right to make decisions about our own bodies? Hate against women is pervasive, but I guess that's too strong a word for some people to stomach. Sorry, if the shoe fits.
Marilyn,
I realize that we live in a society that is assigning rights and duties partly based on gender, and that this distribution is not always fair, and more unfair to women than to men. I feel uncomfortable using words like 'patriarchy' in a context where they are not clearly defined and the definitions are accepted by every discussant. Like feminism, patriarchy can have 237 different meanings for 237 different people.
There are certainly regions in this world in which I would be less hesitant to apply the concept of "systemic hate against women", but Germany isn't one of those places. You are free to think that the boy was inspired by his 'hate' for women and that this possible hatred was more a consequence of 'systemic indoctrination' rather than by individual psychological defects and particular difficulties to deal with the rejection and probably sexual frustration and feelings of powerlessness with respect to teenage girls that, I suppose, almost every teenage boy has to suffer through. I don't see any systemic element in this terrible crime. And even if he resented women that doesn't make this a 'hate crime' in my opinion.
Webster's definition of patriarchy is: control by men of a disproportionately large share of power
Basically, patriarchy is when men have more overall power in society than women.
*headdesk*
Come on guys. If he targeted women because they disrespected him or because they wouldn't go out with him, it is a hate crime. A woman turns you down and you kill her? On what planet is that not misogynist?
Good grief.
The only reason people can say it is not a hate crime is because violence against women has been normalized, which is the point Marilyn was trying to make.
Thank you, Sabriel. That is exactly what I was trying to say. I do NOT accept that there are 237 different meanings for words just because there may be 237 people thinking about the word. Making everything "relative" is exactly what people do to avoid the hard truths.
What, Johnny, would you define as a hate crime?
Marilyn,
well, if you read a bit about feminist epistemology then you'll realize that this kind of 237 different standpoints (standpoint epistemology) is actually one of the cornerstones of academic feminist thought (a wobbly cornerstone, as you say, and I agree with that, nonetheless a cornerstone).
The shooter killed also one boy in the school, as far as I know, and three grown men on the run. He mostly killed teenage girls and three female teachers, but not exclusively, and he did not shoot the men in self-defense.
For me, as long as I am quite convinced that the shooter may just as well have become a perfect boyfriend had he taken his pills, I don't see how his 'hate' is really directed against women as such. It is probably directed against their perceived sexual power and their disrespect for him. He doesn't reject women, he wants to be accepted by them.
It's like a student who wanted to be accepted by his black peers because he liked their music, but they turned him down, so he started to resent them and that may look quite racist even though he still secretly wants to be like them.
Can this kind of rejection turn into anger and violence? Sure. But I don't think this qualifies as a hate crime. Someone killing women because they're women (ascriptive) would commit a 'hate crime', someone killing women because he was rejected would, in my opinion, not commit a 'hate crime'.
In one case, the hatred is rooted in the victim's ascriptive markers, not in generalized behavioral assumptions towards the shooter.
Hope this makes it clearer... a crime commited due to "unrequited love" may be quite hateful. But I'd still say, it's not a 'hate crime'.
Johnny,
Please explain why you feel the need to be an apologist/lawyer for a misogynist spree killer?
That's kind of odd to me - why is it so important to you that this murderer not be accused of a bias crime - even though it's clear that he targeted women.
I'm also very disturbed by your defense of a hypothetical racist spree killer who killed Blacks because he liked our culture but felt snubbed.
Why do you feel the need to defend bias crimes and bias criminals?
Gregory, I'm not defending, I'm classifying, and I was asked to. The crime is terrible whether it's labelled 'hate crime' or not. A hate crime murder victim is just as dead as a non-hate-crime murder victim.
I'd agree with your term 'bias crime' as that would include my definition.
Is there any evidence that the women and girls murdered were specific objects of the killer's "unrequited love"?
Perhaps, like so many teenagers of all genders and cultures, this young man felt awkward around, and rejected and disrespected by people he felt sexual attraction for. Maybe he had sincere, affectionate feelings for some girls at this school that were rebuffed and ridiculed. It's entirely likely that those kinds of experiences influenced his decision to murder a bunch of people, that kind of thing can really help with a psychotic break (and is something we need to help kids deal with before they want to actually kill people).
But, if he didn't walk into that school with a list of girls who'd turned him down for a date to the big dance whom he intended to kill, if he actually, as it seems from the coverage I've read, killed people who happened to be in his vicinity, then this isn't a crime of spurned passion, a case of violent returns for "unrequited love".
If he internalized all that disappointment with certain girls in such a way to make the murder of any random girls reasonable or cathartic to him, then it stops being about that painful experience, and starts being about the hate that he turned his rejection into. It's a hatred for women, and a hate crime against them.
Kendieatsbabies,
"If he internalized all that disappointment with certain girls in such a way to make the murder of any random girls reasonable or cathartic to him, then it stops being about that painful experience, and starts being about the hate that he turned his rejection into. It's a hatred for women, and a hate crime against them."
I'd agree with your analysis, and yet I wouldn't denote this kind of aggression as hatred. Maybe that's all semantics, and maybe that's because I feel that hatred isn't something that I feel could have easily been avoided by him "being lucky" or taking his pills, but something that has become an ingrained part of someone's personality and cannot be affected by anything anyone within the hated group can or cannot do.
Beautifully put.
Actually, he killed one boy and 11 girls and women:
Germany school shooting: Gunman 'targeted girls', By Gordon Rayner, Allan Hall and John Bingham, 12 Mar 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/4976093/Germany-school-shooting-Gunman-targeted-girls.html
Three women teachers risked their lives to defend students and at least one of them died shielding a student with her body. Maybe the boy was also killed because he got in the way of the killer's targeted victims.
A clarification about the death toll:
There are various accounts of the injured but according to Times Online:
Victims
8 of 9 students are girls
2 of three teachers were women
7 girl students in hospital with serious injuries
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5890223.ece
This does not say if any of the bystanders killed were women. Also, the Guardian says all three murdered teachers were women:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/11/germany-school-shooting
Students killed in German school shooting
11 March 2009
It is safe to say that the gunman shot at 15 girl students and one boy student. And that he shot mostly women teachers.
Though there are many definitions for the term, I agree that it was a "hate crime." But I do not think it was necessarily a hate crime intended to be expressed towards females. If he was truly trying to express his anger towards the female sex for "not dating him" or such, the number of female victims would not have been 11 out of 15 it would have been 15 out of 15.
This young man was a troubled kid. Maybe he did have a bad experience with the opposite sex, but hasn't everybody? Another point which can be made is that he knew he had done something wrong by killing the women and men because he killed himself after doing so. If he was sincere that all females don't deserve to live he wouldn't have been ashamed of killing them, therefore he wouldn't have killed himself. Remember that it was not only females that he killed; therefore his anger was attributed to other sources.
If bad experiences set you off to this extent, then there is more then just a prejudice thought in you. I believe that is what the press is trying to portray. Before you get to the core of a problem you have to peel away the layers. After all, if he wouldn't have had these "problems" other then a hate for females, he wouldn't have killed so many people, he would have just lived with his prejudism. Not all "women-hating" people with unjust/bias beliefs go on a killing rampage.
-Respectfully Submitted
Respectfully, College Feminist, he could have committed a hate crime and still killed other people; the two are not mutually exclusive. You scenario is just that, a scenario.
As for our professorial commenter, you haven't defined a hate crime to me. "Classifying" is not what I asked you to do. And, frankly, you're entirely unpersuasive in that you have tried to get to the root of why a boy would kill so many girls by creating this rejection/unrequited love scenario when, in fact, boys are taught gender bias from a very early age. It is "the thing itself," not a reaction to a male-bias dating situation.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that this boy was depressed or developed a psychosis. The first explosion of violence was directed almost exclusively toward females. Why? Was it possible that his acculturation made it easier to off a dozen women? During his flight, he actually let one man go. There was certainly something different in the character of those murders - perhaps it was fear of apprehension or paranoia as a part of his psychosis. I submit he didn't give thought to his first set of victims - they were girls and women. In the second instance, some selection criteria seemed to be in place.
This still begs the question of why the media backed completely off the gender issue by not giving the genders of any of the victims. What are they afraid off?
[0+] Nancy Kallitechnis said:
Excellent post! The same thing happened during the Amish schoolgirl mass murder:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/02/amish.shooting/index.html
The Amish massacre was a hate crime against girls and women, yet the media refused to report it as a hate crime. The killer separated the boys from the girls and then shot and killed several girls. I read several news articles about it and none said the man was sexist, printed a statement from feminist groups, or called it a hate crime.
The media is extremely male-dominated which is the main reason why they go out of their way to hide sexism. They report about it sometimes, but not enough that is required considering the enormous damage it has on society and when they report it they do it in such a way as to put as much blame on women and girls as possible and try to take away as much blame from men as possible. Overall, they are viciously sexist and their false portrayal of this German hate crime is another sad example of their hate towards 50% of the earth's population. Solution: 50% women news staff at every level and a feminist review board to ensure girls and woman are treated as equal to boys and men.
Thank you for mentioning the Amish murders.
I was in high school at the time of what is called in Canada the Montreal Massacre. We had discussions in every class, that would somehow apply, so we could work out our feelings. Every teacher, both females and males, stressed to us that the event was a hate crime.
I'm glad to hear that. K-12 education has a lot more women employees than journalism, so teachers are less sexist. Thus, it makes sense that teachers would focus on the sexism when reporting about that crime, whereas the press would censor references to sexism.
This supports my conclusion that to end sexism in the news we need 50% women news staff at all levels. Right now, the few women that are in journalism are working in a very woman-hating environment and that prevents them from speaking out about sexism and also sexist women are more likely to be hired and promoted. Only when women's employment is at least 1/3 in the upper echelons will we see a significant reduction in sexist journalism.
If a girl specifically shot a bunch of boys at school (especially if it was because they wouldn't go out with her) we would call it a hate crime in a second, but when a boy specifically shoots a bunch of girls, it isn't?? That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard.
That said, do we really know if he chose to shoot the girls and women over the boys and men? If we don't know things like where the shooter chose to start and how the other people were arranged before and during the shooting, we can't know for sure whether it was intentional or not.
Also, I agree with Gregory. The line about people of color was a very poor spot in an otherwise excellent article.
School shooting is happening in western countries, this is not good to keep community in good manner. Teachers must take an action to prevent it.
Hows that really possible?there must be something
I can understand what you are trying to convey. How in the world could the gender angle be overlooked or ignored by the police. A boy killing 11 girls means there is something more than just plain depression and below grades. He may have had some kind of motives to go against them. But police could have overlooked it but how come the entire world of media including bloggers could overlook it??
Does it mean the male dominated media hiding the facts.
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