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.
I was waiting to see how these guys, the same people who chided the men who saved their girlfriends’ lives in Aurora, would handle a situation in which so many women acted heroically, sacrificed their lives and saved others. Good to know there’s still not a single thing a woman can do to counter the luck of her birth and the existence of her genitals.
pecunium
If we were to reduce the volume of children who are abused, don’t you think that later on we would have adults from that era that are less likely to be violent?
Yes, and why is it that pulling “data” out of your ass isn’t intellectually dishonest?
hellkell
Yemen has strict gun control laws?
Cassandra: but he just KNOWS there was something wrong with him. Right off the top of his pointy little head and everything.
I suspect you’re only responding like this because I’m the one who said it.
That’s right… it’ not that you are being an illogical twit, it’s that you think I dislike you.
This is the part which shows you aren’t paying attention. I’m probably one of the people here who dislikes you least, and was willing to grant you the benefit of doubt longest. It’s a quirk I have. I tend to take people at face value, long after most have decided they are dishonest sacks of shit.
What I’m not is tolerant of stupidity, even while I am being forgiving of apparent ignorance I expect people to be logically consistent.
You, my dear boy, didn’t do that. You combined it with a presumption of intellectual superiority and arrogance of presumed advantage of education. Hubris. It’s the kind of pride which sets up really long falls.
Oh FFS, diogenes the dumb is back.
Dude, consider the sheer number of : introverts, people who have been bullied, people who have been abused in horrific ways by family, people who have lived through wars for fucks sakes!, people who are lonely through no choice of their own, people whose minds are wired a little different than expected (which is pretty much everyone including but not limited to left handers) people living under financial stresses… The list goes on.
And people don’t kill. They don’t fantasize about killing. In a very bad moment, they might hit someone or say something cruel. But wishing death and actually killing their friends, their family…people wh don’t know them at all? Doesn’t happen.
Your thinking would mean a happier, somewhat less stressful world. But the reality is that some people kill simply because they can.
There are very few things I can think of that’s worthy of killing anyone for in an average north american life. All you are doing is providing excuses to killers and blaming victims.
Its disgusting. Stop it cynic.
More results than banning semi-automatic assault weapons? Are you serious?
You do understand that humans have been killing each other all throughout history, right?
Let me go slowly because you are an idiot: Diogenes, there was a time in the not so distant past when corporal punishment was fairly common. Teachers spanked students, parents spanked their children, aunts and uncles spanked their nieces and nephews and so on.
Why do you suppose mass shootings were rare?
So you know this guy was mentally ill because he did something you believe only a mentally ill person would do. Iron clad stuff, but as for your solution (that had nothing to do with gun control of course)- you think it would be a swell idea to keep people from becoming mentally ill in the first place… hmmmm…. Ya know, sounds a little out there- I know we all enjoy mental illness- but maybe we could give it a go. Ok! I’m in!! Let’s stop sociopathy!! Ready? Go!!!!! Did it work yet?
Diogenes: off the to of my head, yes.
@Nada – actually Charlotte Allen isn’t an MRA, she just thinks similarly.
If we were to reduce the volume of children who are abused, don’t you think that later on we would have adults from that era that are less likely to be violent?
Assumes facts not in evidence.
And… it’s an impossible end. Moreover it pretends to address causes, when the issue is one of limiting effect. What if your little fantasy is wrong? Fifteen to twenty years from now nothing has changed in this sort of event.
What then?
Ugh, the chew toy can’t keep up with the refutations. You’d think he’d be a bit quicker, coming up with all this stuff off the top of his head as he does.
TTF: It’s not as if he let things like facts, stats, etc. stop him in the “I think Accused Rapists Ought to Get Special Treatment” discussion.
TTF: chew toy is almost too easy to destroy. I almost feel bad about it, but then I remember the rape apologia, ableism, and all-around shitheaded simpleminded bullshit he spews, and I get over it.
pecunium
You’ve seen the numbers, I’ve seen the numbers. We both know that people who were abused as children are more likely to abuse as adults.
Nobody wants that violence, so howabout you know, not abusing the children?
So, you know a culture that has much higher rates of corporal punishment than the US? Japan, which also has much lower rates of the kind of incident we’re talking about here. The fact that you can’t go into a store and buy a semi-automatic weapon just because you feel like it there isn’t the only reason for that, but it’s definitely part of the overall picture.
(For the record, I really don’t like corporal punishment and would like it to be less common. I’m just not dumb enough to think that if that happened we wouldn’t have any more incidents like the one we’re talking about here.)
Nobinayamu
You tell me.
You’ve seen the numbers, I’ve seen the numbers. We both know that people who were abused as children are more likely to abuse as adults.
Red Herring. Abusing and mass murder are not the same.
Or, as they say in the real world Got Facts?
@ pecunium- I saw that one, and I couldn’t even find the nonsense he wrote for your folks utter demolishment of his arguments. I was a big fan of yours, actually- you articulated your argument way better than I ever have or will.
Hello, David? Can you ban someone if they prove themselves to be nothing but a cyber hemorrhoid?
Diogenes
Nobinayamu
You tell me.
What? It’s YOUR theory she’s referring to.
Wow, dio, what a swell idea- don’t abuse children! Sheer genius. Don’t tell me you came up with that off the top of your head?
to second TTF, how do you explain people abused as children who do not grow up to be mass murderers?
*crickets*
TTF: I saw that one, and I couldn’t even find the nonsense he wrote for your folks utter demolishment of his arguments.
He didn’t. He came here and pretended as if that had never happened.