It’s always a little distressing to see manosphere-style dumbassery outside the manosphere. Today’s offender: Charlotte Allen at National Review Online, explaining how the deaths in Newtown are the result of the school’s “feminized setting.” Had the school been filled with manly men (and manly boys), Adam Lanza could have been stopped in his tracks!
No, really, that’s what she says. Except that what she wrote is somehow even more egregious than my sarcastic summary. Read for yourself:
There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees.
As everyone knows, janitors with buckets can easily overwhelm adult males firing semiautomatic rifles. That’s why most armies in the world have given up guns, are stocking up on buckets, and have started massive recruiting drives aimed at janitors.
(In fact, there was a male custodian on duty, who (according to one witness) warned students and teachers of the gunman, probably saving lives in the process. It does not appear that any buckets were thrown.)
Oh, Allen gives the women at the school some grudging credit for confronting Lanza and saving lives.
The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms.
But they were ladies, and ladies just aren’t made to be heroes.
[I]n general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.
I’m pretty sure that if this had happened they would have been gunned down, and there would be a couple of former high school football stars and “some of the huskier 12-year-old boys” added to the list of victims. Not even the “huskiest” 12-year-old is any match for a man with a semiautomatic rifle. [EDITED TO ADD: Also, if there were any 12-year-olds on the scene they would have had to have have flunked several years, as the school only goes up to the fourth grade, as several commenters here have pointed out.]
People, even unarmed people, need to fight back against criminals — because usually, no one else will. It took the police 20 minutes to arrive at Sandy Hook.
According to this timeline, a police SWAT team was there ten minutes after the shooting started.
By the time they got there, it was over. Cops and everybody else encourage civilians not to try to defend themselves when they are criminally assaulted. This is stupid advice. There are things you can do. Run is one of them, because most shooters can’t hit a moving target. The other, if you are in a confined space, is throw things at the killer, or try a tackle.
Many students, with the help of teachers, saved themselves by hiding. Some of the students in one classroom tried to run, and were gunned down. Their classmates who stayed hidden survived.
Remember United Flight 93 on 9/11. It was a “flight of heroes” because a bunch of guys on that plane did what they could with what they had. They probably prevented the destruction of the White House or the Capitol.
The hijackers weren’t carrying semiautomatic rifles. And the heroes literally had nothing to lose by attacking them.
Parents of sick children need to be realistic about them. I know at least two sets of fine and devoted parents who have had the misfortune to raise sons who were troubled for genetic reasons beyond anyone’s control. Either of those boys could have been an Adam Lanza. You simply can’t give a non-working, non-school-enrolled 20-year-old man free range of your home, much less your cache of weapons. You have to set boundaries. You have to say, “You can’t live here anymore — you’re an adult, and it’s time for you to be a man. We’ll give you all the support you need, but we won’t be enablers.” Unfortunately, the idea of being an “adult” and a “man” once one has reached physical maturity seems to have faded out of our coddling culture.
Really? Very few mass killers have lived at home with their mothers, but somehow being “adult” and “men” didn’t stop them from killing. It’s good that Allen, without actually knowing any of the details of Adam Lanza’s apparent “sickness” (because at this point none of us do) is able to tell us what would have been best for him.
Appalling.
…Lanza’s parents “enabled” a mass shooting by having their son live with them at the ripe old age of 20?
Yeah, and never mind that had mom kicked him out, that would have been twisted to “that cold, callous bitch of a woman caused this”. Also, I’m pretty sure that kids younger than twenty can be given free range of the house. But go on telling us that “coddling” is the fault that men aren’t stepping up.
Also, comments section of latest poist on spreadhead is outright proclaiming that women, namely mom and teachers are at fault and the shooter is really a victim.
One of many idiots barking up the wrong tree.
The big question people should be asking is what it is in American culture that creates so many sociopaths. I usually don’t take Stephan Molyneux seriously, but he makes a good point that spanking, and other forms of corporeal punishment damage the psyches of children. Creating less sociopaths should be our goal here. Its not banning guns, or violent video games, or crap like that. Its raising people into adulthood who don’t have the desire to harm other people.
As to this specific idiot, he’s is actually trying to reinforce the old way of thinking. Being male doesn’t make me the bodyguard of society. If he were a real MRA, he would realize that.
This seems like a pretty good response (to me, at least) to the people who are trying to connect Lanza’s supposed Asperger’s diagnosis with the shooting.
On the one hand, Lanza’s mother “enabled” him by having him live with her; on the other hand, she is also being blamed because it is rumored she was looking to move him into an assisted living center or some such place. What is certain, though, is that she is to blame somehow. Woman, you know.
So the conservative media is still not acknowledging that if the dude hadn’t been able to get a semi-automatic he wouldn’t have been able to kill so many people in the first place? And instead they’re suggesting that 12 year old boys should offer themselves up as cannon fodder (with no real hope of taking the gunman down, but hey, it sure would be manly)?
If these people really believe that you can overcome automatic weapons by being manly at them that would partially explain their ridiculous opposition to gun control. Unfortunately in reality if you rush at someone who is firing an automatic weapon without protective gear or proper training, you usually end up dead, and the person with the weapon moves on to the next victim.
Diogenes… The writer is a woman, and not an MRA. You have no idea what a “sociopath” is. Stop talking.
God, cloudiah, you’re so bitter. Why can’t you just let Diogenes be stupid in public without pointing out how dumb he’s being?
What the fuck does spanking have to do with anything, Dio? Almost no one spanks their kids anymore – what makes you think Nancy Lanza spanked hers?
More people need to see lowquacks comment on this incident, explaining how janitors can take down an armed attacker:
“Varnish into the shadows” was my favorite.
I work at a school, and OUR janitors take special combat classes. The can take down any number of gunmen with buckets, brooms, and (in extreme cases) wads of wet toilet paper.
Cloudiah, lowquacks, I laughed so hard at that comment.
So Ms Hochsprung gets a begrudging “performed bravely” – if she’d been a man doing the same thing, Allen and all the other misogynists would be praising him to the skies as a true hero. Except, of course, when they were saying that a man giving his life trying to save others, especially women and children, is misandry.
I wonder what Charlotte thinks would be in the bucket. Dynamite? Axe cologne? Semen? Warren Farrell books? What???
“Varnish into the shadows” ROFL!
Beware the ninja janitors.
“If these people really believe that you can overcome automatic weapons by being manly at them that would partially explain their ridiculous opposition to gun control.”
Ironic, isn’t it – if guns can be overcome by someone’s manly man vibes, why the hell does the right wing fetishise them so much? They can’t be very useful weapons if a blast of testosterone is enough to take care of them.
To answer the question in the previous thread? Not much. For any number of reasons (not least, I wasn’t there, and have no access to credible reports as to what actually happened) I’ve been avoiding this subject like the plague.
In part because I’m of the opinion that hard cases make for bad law.
But, absent a way to disarm/disable him, there isn’t much anyone can do. The advice in that column is cracked.
Diogenes, you were doing better in the rape discussion than you are here.
The school goes up to fourth grade, so that would be the husky nine year old boys she thinks should have rushed to shooter.
MAN LAW: Women are responsible for what men do to them.
There are so many things wrong with this “explanation” that I don’t even know where to start. This woman actually manages to be misandric (thinking that men and frickin’ TWELVE YEAR OLD BOYS should “heroically” lay down their lives to tackle a gunman) AND misogynistic (thinking that women are all incapable of handling a crisis that none were prepared for).
How the bleep can you be a misogynist and a misandrist AT THE SAME TIME? Does she just hate people in general? 🙁
Cassandra
There are no automatics. They’re basically impossible to buy.
The gun is one problem, but the person behind it is another. I see the point that you’re trying to make; guns enable mass killings. What you miss is that this person might have just stabbed someone else to death eventually. Sure it would be less dead people, but its not a more acceptable scenario. At least the person Lanza would have killed would think it so. Were better off taking care of the impulse to harm others.
Cloudia
Either way, my point still stands. By virtue of being a man, I did not sign up to be societys bodyguard.
Diogenes The Cynic, everyone!
So now you’re playing semantics? He had a semi-automatic. That shouldn’t be allowed either, since it’s not needed for hunting.
If you think that mass killings versus individual murders aren’t a problem then we’re back to the problem you were experiencing in the other thread, where your rather poorly evolved sense of moral reasoning is tripping you up, or possibly being tripped up by your egotistical need to try to “win” arguments.
Fuck OFF, Diogenes. Being armed with a knife is just as bad as being armed with a semi-automatic? There’s some chance of overcoming and disarming someone with a knife. Go screw yourself, you horrible little loser.
To expand, “making sure less people have deadly weapons” and “making sure no-one thinks it’s a good idea to kill people” are not in any way mutually exclusive.
If you don’t want to be society’s bodyguard then stop demanding all the perks that go with the position.
I can’t wait to see how hilariously clueless his ideas about how society can produce less people who’re inclined to kill are going to be, though.