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.
Ah yes, all the women’s fault (from the Spearhead under the police state article:
“highwasp December 18, 2012 at 21:53
you read my mind… I wonder to what extent did the shooter’s mom and female teachers have in motivating his actions? what if the shooter is the victim? what if more and more evidence (or strong implications) of the women using their authority as mom and teachers to manipulate a mentally unstable young man keeps coming out? ~ what they couldn’t plan on and didn’t intend was how totally berserk the young man went… and his choice of targets was a complete and lethal surprise…
Of course it’s not actually paranoia if ‘they’ really are out to get you, is it?. And ‘they’ being a feminist police state, well, they really are out to get me!”
We knew this was coming.
@Scarlett
My first reaction on hearing it was “I wonder how long it will take the MRM to blame women for this?”. It took half an hour for them to start speculating it was a man going through a custody battle, and that his ex-wife had ‘stolen’ his children from him.
Diogenes, if you’re still reading – the above paragraph is why people are calling you stupid. You don’t know what caused Lanza to do this and speculating about how to cure what you don’t know isn’t really the most solid of plans. Especially when you do it so half-arsedly. I mean, when I was 20 I was only friends with about one person I’d been to high school with (I had other friends but they’re more difficult for the media to track down, instead of just getting hold of a yearbook), and I once went 5 years without seeing my brother because we just kept missing each other and were both too lazy to actually do anything about it, keeping thinking we’d see each other at the next family event. Does this make me a sociopath who’s likely to go shoot a bunch of infants?
“what if the shooter is the victim?”
Yeah, never mind twenty-seven corpses along the way. Never mind little kids being the targets. Oh noes, it was Lanza who was the victim because maybe he actually got told to wipe his own ass or was expected to do the dishes or something.
I’ve lost track of which thread it was, but I’d fourth (fifth?) Shiraz’s suggestion that Dogbreath be banned or modded for being boring as well as a sexist, ableist, lying little creep.
It’s actually pretty easy to tell who the victims are in a situation like this, on account of them being dead.
Not for MRAs, though. Victims can only be male. At birth, and not trans, or gay, or anything else. Victims are only straight white males. (No manginas need apply.)
“It’s actually pretty easy to tell who the victims are in a situation like this, on account of them being dead.”
One problem with that logic — Lanza shot himself too. Of course, in non-MRA-land most murder-suicide suicide “victims” aren’t treated as a suicide victim but as a murderer. (Does that sentence make sense? My sleep schedule is all kinds of wonky and I’m trying to set it straight but that means I took my night-time pills already…can’t tell if logic is still working or not <.>)
Yes, it makes sense! No sympathy for someone who kills themselves after committing murder(s).
OT – I saw my psychologist tonight and he has a KITTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
“I’ve lost track of which thread it was, but I’d fourth (fifth?) Shiraz’s suggestion that Dogbreath be banned or modded…”
Fifthed // sixthed // whatever the fuck number we’re on.
“Of course it’s not actually paranoia if ‘they’ really are out to get you, is it?.” — technically, no, but you need a specific “they” and some logic why you think “they” are out to get out (eg “do you think anyone is out to get you?” “well, my father, but he really seems to have a problem with Every. Little. Thing. I. Do.”)
“…And ‘they’ being a feminist police state, well, they really are out to get me!”” — nope, that’s just straight up paranoia.
Re: not speaking to family — the media, or at least the MRM, is spinning it like all cases of a person being estranged occur because the family doesn’t want anything to do with them. My not-an-ex doesn’t speak to zir parents, because they were abused and ze just doesn’t need that shit — is finishing grad school, working part time, did the rules for an absurdly successful RPG kickstarter (avarice industries anyone? yeah *that one*). Point here is that that cuts both ways, some of the healthiest people around have cut out abusive family members, that they don’t speak to those family members does not somehow magically proof anything bad about *them*.
I’m not sure that it’s possible to explain things to people who don’t see the difference between killing yourself and being murdered by someone else. It’s one of those things where if it isn’t immediately obvious to you where your sympathies should lie then, um, maybe your moral compass is broken?
Glad that made sense!
Also KITTTEHS are awesome, even when your hand has just become a chew toy.
But can you imagine their outrage if a woman had been the shooter? Even though other women were murdered (which they probably think is good), they’d have suddenly been outraged at all the little boys dying and there would have been NO suggestion that the murderer was the ‘real victim’.
On the MRA moral compass true north is always “it’s the woman’s fault”.
LOL Argenti, “chew toy” is very appropriate, since psychologist said his kitteh will bite when she’s had enough petting!
She looked so much like my Katie. Love grey tabbies.
Hey well, 10pm here, those of us who get up at 5am had best wander off to bed … Niters, all! Don’t leave chewed up bits of troll where people will walk on them!
Cassandra — yeah, I don’t even know wtf is up with some people. I do know that um, certain religious people, shall we say, find being murdered more acceptable, because suicide is the person’s choice, and murder, even of yourself, is sinful. Perhaps needless to say this whole theology gets my brain tied up in knots.
Even for them though, murder is bad, suicide is bad, being murdered is just tragic — so murder-suicide would still be labelled a murderer (the part where my brain implodes is that suicide would also be labelled murder…or at least be met with a shaking head and “are you sure it wasn’t an accident?”)
I’m sure that’s too convoluted to really be clear, since my brain is all “wtf is this mess” about it. (Epically short version — my friend’s brother committed suicide a couple years back, my mother still refuses to admit it was suicide because “suicide is a sin” and suicide is murder of thyself, which is the same sin as murder…and this whole sin is sin is sin nope doesn’t matter wtf sort of sin thing makes my head hurt)
“On the MRA moral compass true north is always “it’s the woman’s fault”.”
That makes so much more sense than my little rant there!
Night kitteh, we’ll try to clean up the troll bits, but chewed up troll can get sticky, so please watch where you step.
*facepalm*
Using some sort of online anagrammer while playing Scrabble = cheating
Looking shit up on wikipedia while palying trivial pursuit = cheating
Informing yourself of facts and checking to see if your assumptions are actually true while having an online discussion = not cheating. Really, almost the polar opposite of cheating. In fact, after reading this discussion I may have to add “unwillingness to learn” to my list of moderatable/bannable offenses.
“There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred.”
omg an entire building without ANY male supervision whatsoever? but how could it even have functioned at all with a man there to guide the females?
*meant to say “without a man” -_-
You know what, I just re-read Allen’s “article.” Shit, I missed it the first time, but maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that some righty mentioned Flight 93. You know, as an example of how everyone should have reacted during a shooting spree.
And all this. Allen writes:
“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.”
I don’t even know where to begin with all of that mess.
“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.”
I know you’re just responding to what the author of that article said, but this comes off a little victim blamey. Like a “if only they hadn’t run they would have lived” tone. I’m sure that’s not how it was meant.
I left this reply over there:
Life is not an action movie. Even if there had been ‘burly’ males with guns around, this is no guarantee they would have been able to swoop in and save the day – they could just as easily have been gunned down on approach, not to mention risked more children’s lives. And your analysis raises a question – if there had been a bunch of adult males on premises, and the incident still unfolded as it did, would you somehow then assume these men were not ‘real men’, since they didn’t pull a SWAT and take out the shooter (because, perhaps, they were busy herding children into hiding spots?)
The school goes up to the fourth grade – research is your friend.
And the “flight of heroes” literally had nothing to lose – they were going to be flown into a building. Not comparable at all.
Unfortunately, the idea of being a “man”, to Charlotte Allen, is limited to Hollywood action films. This article is insulting to the staff and children of Sandy Hook, to Newtown, to parents (do you have some insider knowledge into the Lanza’s situation the rest of us don’t, or do you also watch too many Dr Phil reruns?) and to men and women all in one fell swoop – way to go.
I bet Diogenes thinks mathematicians aren’t allowed to use calculators. That would be cheating!
Very nice, Tracy.