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.
Diogenes:
Here’s some advice for you, please take it to heart.
It appears you have little experience with secondary (post high school) education, and if that is, indeed, the case I’m going to be gentle with you.
Backing up your assertions with actual facts is the very mark of intellectual honesty. Google is an excellent way to do this during online discussions. If you wish to be taken seriously here you will need to stop saying whatever comes into your head without proof and start backing up your assertions with facts with well cited sources.
This is how people who want to be taken seriously act when discussing complex and difficult subjects. It’s also how people get master’s degrees and doctorates. They make a claim, research that claim, and back up their research with citations to reliable sources. They don’t just pull it out of their asses and expect people to take them at their word. This si why there’s a defense process for PhDs. To be awarded a PhD you must literally defend your thesis and prove that it has intellectual value.
Am i getting through to you?
Hey degen… it’s fine to have a hypothesis, but you can’t just make guesses and assumptions and tell people you’re right. You need to test your hypothesis – try to prove *yourself* wrong. Make predictions based on your hypothesis and see if they are correct.
It’s called the scientific method. Very useful for not looking like an arse.
To everyone else: Please excuse the terrible typing. I’m getting ready for work after about three and a half hours of sleep and I’m suffering from what the Robot Devil’s piano teacher called: “Stupid Fingers”.
So this woman manages to work some ableism in along with her sexist bullshit. No Sandy Hook commentary in the mainstream media is complete without it, it seems.
Yeah, because a “masculine” male presence totally stopped all the other school shootings that have happened in recent history.
Yeah, because the parents of “sick” kids (sick? we’re talking possible autism here, not some kind of cancer. “sick” is a totally problematic word to use) should lock up their children, despite the fact that the shooter as yet is not known to have an official diagnosis, and despite the fact that people with disabilities (including mental illness and autism) are statistically unlikely to be violent and are actually far more likely to have violence committed against them.
Yes, because the reason a young person is not working and living at home has nothing to do with the economy or any personal needs or issues, it’s totally a case of laziness and being a ‘man-child.’ Gee, maybe some boot camp or regular spankings would have kept Adam Lanza from ever getting violent to begin with (/sarcasm). Seriously, I have a good friend who had to leave college and move back home because she wasn’t ready for it and had a breakdown, and one of her main issues now is that she feels ashamed she’s not in college like a “normal kid.” So when I hear people talking about kicking their kids out at eighteen and whining about how “entitled” my generation is, I tend to flip out a little.
Would someone tell these people that being suicidally brave and macho are not the same thing? Life is not some 50’s cowboy film where only the men in the black hats get hurt.
Thanks for the link, Yoyo. That’s a great article.
Also interesting to me in that I grew up in a family that doesn’t like guns, but in the Middle East where guns are common, and I have a very different emotional reaction to old-fashioned shotguns and automatic weapons. I don’t like shotguns, I feel no emotional connection with them, and I don’t want to own one, but they don’t scare me the way automatic weapons do, because I look at a shotgun and think “the person who bought that might use it to shoot at tin cans in the back yard, or to shoot vermin”, but I look at an automatic weapon and think “the person who bought that wants, on some level, to kill people”. It’s like the difference between an elegant longbow and a crossbow – one is potentially an object that can be used for multiple purposes, the other is designed to kill people as efficiently as possible. Given that any given person could choose to buy either one or the other, the fact that they chose to buy the one designed to kill people as efficiently as possible makes me very wary of them.
(I know that some archers like crossbows. I hate the damn things, they say “death” to my subconscious rather than “sports”.)
“…I’m suffering from what the Robot Devil’s piano teacher called: “Stupid Fingers”.”
Having just got a new violin after not playing for years, I understand completely.
“Yes, because the reason a young person is not working and living at home has nothing to do with the economy or any personal needs or issues, it’s totally a case of laziness and being a ‘man-child.’”
Yeah that’s certainly hitting a few buttons for me as well — I had to move back in with my parents, at 27, because between the economy and multiple breakdowns and a couple of suicide attempts I really need to be doing the psych and med management thing, not trying to find a job that’ll probably just lead to another breakdown >.<
One of my cousin’s has a son with autism (if you saw Dear John, that’d be him) — he’ll whoop your ass at chess, is hilariously forward about somethings (idioms like “time flies” are lost on him) and will lecture you to death on whatever his latest topic of choice is. In other words he’s way more likely to become a professor than a killer. Oh and he knows more math at ~12 than I think Diogenes ever will! Sick? No. Different? Yeah, but not in a bad way (unless you have an issue with losing a game of chess that is XD)
I used to work in the tech industry. Can I just say how hilarious the common assumption that people on the autism spectrum are destined to be spree killers is to me, after working with tons of guys who were on that spectrum? The biggest threat that I ever felt from any of those guys was that I might not have time to finish my project if I happened to hit on a conversational topic that they REALLY wanted to talk to about while in the break room.
I hate crossbows too Cassandra, but for an utterly different reason — the things are too damned hard to prepare for firing, just isn’t worth the work, even if you’re leisurely shooting at tin cans and have all the time in the world. Also, I shoot bow and arrow left handed, so I’ve yet to find one that didn’t just want to eat my hands. Thus I’ll take a nice solid left handed long bow, and a target set up over that way, please.
Idk that a cross bow would be effective at killing more than one person though, all the one’s I’ve used required you to reload a new arrow for every shot, and it took a lot longer than doing so on a long bow (but again, I suck with the things).
I think part of my aversion is that they feel like they were designed to be used by people without much skill, so as to make it easier to kill people without much training.
“The biggest threat that I ever felt from any of those guys was that I might not have time to finish my project if I happened to hit on a conversational topic that they REALLY wanted to talk to about while in the break room.”
Or a nerf war broke out, but maybe that was just the techs I worked with. They did have they’re own room to make chaos in. I’m not particularly frightened by flying pieces of foam, no matter how aerodynamic they may be XD
“I think part of my aversion is that they feel like they were designed to be used by people without much skill, so as to make it easier to kill people without much training.”
Maybe in theory? Either that’s not the case, or training makes using them harder. Definitely does allow for aiming straight in front of you though, which may well make them more dangerous. I’m also averse to the things, but more because I’m likely to shoot myself in the foot! (Lol, I shot a handgun exactly once, ricocheted into my foot, I am that unlucky)
There was one guy who couldn’t resist an opportunity to try to figure out how things worked, resulting in, say, him spending the entire evening in a hilariously tacky tiki bar staring at the walls and ceiling, trying to figure out how the system that made fake rain worked and what triggered it, if it was on a timer, etc. I eventually figured out that if I needed his attention then I needed to wave my hand in front of his face. Yep, he sure was scary.
“There was one guy who couldn’t resist an opportunity to try to figure out how things worked…”
I have to resist the urge to do that to Doctor Who, thankfully their techies are good enough that I’m not usually all “I know how they did that”
“I eventually figured out that if I needed his attention then I needed to wave my hand in front of his face. Yep, he sure was scary.”
He might, um, not notice you and knock you over while you’re carrying boiling hot tea!!
My family once had an electromechanical automatic pepper grinder (parmesan cheese dispenser thing? I don’t remember). It was broken three times over the period we had it, each of them when we had an engineer over to dinner. Eventually we banned engineers from touching it.
Wait, that’s an autism spectrum thing? I just thought it was a techy thing. I’m like this – for example, I have to figure out the configuration of any parking garage I park in. There are multiple configurations, but I’m sure I haven’t figured them all out yet. Sometimes the up and down ramp wrap around each other, sometimes they are side by side, sometimes there is a two way ramp in the middle and one way level parking to each side. If you’re in the car with me, I’ll go “Hush! I’m parking!” because the garage is too fascinating. I would totally be doing the same thing in a tiki bar as your co-worker too, Cassandra. At least my husband is the same way and keeps me company when I geek out.
I don’t know what the point of this comment is, except that diagnosing people with syndromes over the internet is stupid.
Dio, sociopaths, or those with anti-social personality disorder, are not spree killers. One of the hallmarks of ASPD is extreme impulsiveness and sensation-seeking. Things which require planning and attention to detail are not their forte. Usually siociopaths are imprisoned for rape and assault, crimes of rage and opportunity.
But wow, we had better be careful around my buddy Ry, he has autism and he might hug you suddenly, or scream loud, or use a picture board to request a marmite sammich.
The idea that being a sociopath means you’re a lonely nerd with no friends is pretty lulzy too. I used to know a diagnosed sociopath. Scary fucker, but certainly not someone anyone would accuse of lacking social skills or the ability to get to know people. It’s like Diogenes is playing pin the tail on the donkey, but with psychiatric diagnoses.
I stare at people’s sweaters to figure out the stitch pattern and construction technique… And I don’t have ASD.
(Also, I’m not the only one, and uh… sorry. It’s just that’s an interesting bit of lace there with the purls and…)
Late to the party but the nickname I’d choose for Diogenes is Dumb as Dogshit. Clunky, yes, but that’s appropriate.
You don’t look things up because he thinks that’s intellectual dishonesty … so is the dishonesty you practice here just basic dumbass dishonesty? Your pretensions to being an intellectual are certainly dishonest.
Me too! It’s called “Being new to knitting and getting all excited about How Did They Make That?”
I’d like to point out something else germane to the conversation: “sociopath” is not a diagnosis that exists outside of “pop” psychology. Socoiopathic tendencies and behaviours are a “thing”, but they are used within the framework of a complete diagnosis. Please stop using “sociopath”.
Well, let’s see. There were plenty of men at the Aurora Theater shooting. Only one shooter. Hmmm. Readers on the site have pointed out the belittling language used to describe even admirable behavior and professional standing, when describing women.
And the MRM was full of scorn for those men at the Aurora shooting who tried to protect others, and were quite unconcerned – or even approved of, IIRC – the man who left his girlfriend and child (am I remembering this right?) and fled. Not that Charlotte Allen is in the MRM, but misogynists’ nonsense has this way of blurring after a while …
Did anyone else catch this: ” 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.” The misfortune ?!? What is the author trying to say? Especially since she seems to think that kicking these troubled sons out of the home and telling them to “man up” will fix them.
The women part: I can’t think of any group that could be more deadly than a group of protective women with innocent children under their care. I certainly wouldn’t mess with them. This young man/coward had to arm himself with 3 or 4 weapons. He didn’t go into that school unarmed.