By David Futrelle
More than a few observers were surprised, as was I, by the news that the “active shooter” on the YouTube campus today was not another young man angry at the world, but a female YouTuber who blamed company policies for a drop in her channels’ views who shot and wounded three others before taking her own life. [Note: This paragraph has been corrected; see bottom of post for more details.]
Naturally, a bunch of Twitter dudes decided to respond to the tragedy with jokes about women being as bad at shooting as misogynistic idiots insist they are at driving.
Can't drive. Can't shoot. 👀
— Chris Redfield (@Gen_Vengence) April 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/AnthonyChannin2/status/981308137549500421
Good thing the YouTube shooter was a lady, or someone might have gotten killed.
— Greg (@gregvegas) April 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/Mason0010/status/981277110831431680
Looks like there's less female shooters for a reason:
Competence Gap! https://t.co/Jg2mS9BPjl
— Edwardo Deendrow (@elderindro) April 3, 2018
Others made inane “ironic” jokes about glass ceilings being broken, welcoming the female shooter, whose name has not yet been released, to the boys club.
I'm hearing rumors the Youtube shooter is a girl. If so, congratulations, ladies. You've proven once again you can do anything a man can do. #girlpower
— THE KING OF NIHILISM (@amazingatheist) April 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/WeWuzVikings/status/981308119904083969
Hey! Latest shooter is a female! Way to break that glass ceiling ladies!#Equality
— Nerd Jared (@Knighticus) April 3, 2018
Others made jokes about sandwiches and how this means women should stay in the home lol lmao #AmiriteFellas?
https://twitter.com/sinndustries/status/981303664160706560
https://twitter.com/bk5950/status/981306476147937280
https://twitter.com/pvrgist2/status/981296657655529473
Then there were these dudes:
This female shooter has clearly perverted the peaceful teachings of the Holy Book of Womon and isn't a real womon. And before all you womonophobes jump in, the passage about 'kill all men wherever you find them' is taken out of context and is actually a peaceful message.
— Arthur Pewbglount QC (@Tigzy_J) April 3, 2018
Congratulations, fellas! Amazing work all around. Really doing your gender proud.
NOTE: This post has been corrected. The initial news reports suggested the shooting may have been related to a domestic dispute, and I said something to that effect in the first paragraph. The police later released the name of the shooter, Nasim Aghdam, a YouTube creator. NBC is now reporting that she was angry with YouTube for allegedly discriminating against her and filtering her channel in such a way that she lost a lot of her audience.
@Feministguy I’m pretty sure no one can help her now. You are new around here, howdy.
To give everyone the headsup, the gloating online bigotry could be about to intensify; it looks like the shooter might also have been transgender.
@ Weird Eddie,
“Prince of Darkness” LOL, I sent that link to my friend.
I do think there are some problems within Islam though, but EDL marches and “ban all muslims” ISNT the answer
Feministguy is getting some serious side eye for that comment from me.
@Feministguy
You’re going to blame a shooting on mental health problems HERE? Dude. Read the comments policy.
@Feministguy,
“Murderer” is not a mental illness. Nor is “asshole”.
By implying that her problem was a mental illness you are removing her agency and making excuses for murderers. The vast majority of people with mental illnesses don’t hurt so much as a fly – they are usually the victims of violence, not the perpetrator.
If a murderer is mentally unwell, that’s not the cause of their violence. The cause of their violence is a belief that they are justified. It’s entitlement.
Read the comment policy, please.
What’s wrong with suggesting mental health issues may contribute to somebody’s behaviour? It’s recognised under the law.
Not being funny but it seems odd that the comments policy is at odds with that?
Scild already explained what’s wrong with it. Which part is unclear? (I mean that question genuinely, I need to understand in order to answer your question.)
I read the commment policy (should have done so before, doh!) it doesn’t read as though feminist guy breached that unless it’s that he assumed her mental heath caused her actions without evidence that it did?
@kupo
I did not see the original comment, merely the quoted piece – but my question is essentially what it was.
I saw Schild’s comment but that appears to fly in the face of the law and the position of mental heath workers / experts who do seem to accept that mental health can be a driver for behaviours.
The policy also doesn’t seem to contradict that which is why I was confused as to the response to feministguy.
…You haven’t been around here for very long, have you.
Literally every time this comes up, your question has been answered. Mental health does not dictate a person’s actions, and there’s a trend of sidestepping gun control debates by simply claiming that the shooter was mentally ill and leaving it at that–making there be no solution and increasing bigotry against those with mental illness, who are far more likely to be assaulted or killed than neurotypical people.
It’s tiring.
“Mental health does not dictate a person’s actions, ”
But that’s not 100% true as many jurisdictions accept, the concept of diminished responsibility / not guilty verdicts by virtue of “criminal insanity.”
If Feminist Guy was rushing to make an internet diagnosis – then yes chuck that viewpoint in the bin. I didn’t see the comment.
But if the stance is that there is no such thing as behaviours driven by mental health issues then I was questioning that as it flies in the face of considered opinion and many legal systems?
@Steph Trohill:
Since it’s out of bounds to internet-diagnose here, isn’t that a moot point regardless?
See also: “murderer” and “asshole” are not mental illnesses.
Then go back, read the comment, read the comments policy again, and determine for yourself why it’s in violation.
Mental health can be a factor, in theory, but the person still has to make the choice to go through the steps of obtaining the weapon and bullets, getting to the location, and opening fire. That might sound simple, but for people who are actually mentally ill, this can take too much energy. (Hell, I’m mentally ill and have trouble rolling out of bed.)
That said, the broader point is that saying that the shooter was mentally ill is used to shut down further debate about gun control and the reasons why the shooter, well, started shooting while increasing stigma against mentally ill people. It’s easy to just say that someone is mentally ill and that we shouldn’t look through their actions and words leading up to the moment and move on. But it’s a continuing scapegoat.
A couple of years ago people were straight up saying “ONLY autistic people committed mass shootings” I even saw one person actually claim that any violence at all (even as a trained solder in combat) meant a person was mentally ill,
now its “ONLY mentally ill people commit mass shootings (if its a white guy)”,
from the look of of it entitlement and being radicalized by violent and bigoted ideology is a much larger part of the problem.
Claiming mental illness causes mass shootings is good for business since stopping mass shooting would lose gun makers money because mass shooting leads to a panic buy of the weapon used (which blaming mental illness will not prevent),
blaming mental illness suggests that gun control does not work (fewer laws means more sales and more mass shootings both good for business),
stokes fear of a marginalized group while diverting suspicion from hate groups/domestic terrorists meaning more violence against marginalized people (and more violence means more gun sales),
and promotes involuntary commitment in asylums as the solution to mass shootings instead of gun control (which means more business for abusive institutions not unlike the private prison system and less incentive to actually prevent mass shootings).
@kupo
I can’t read as it appears to have been deleted – hence my question.
@Troubelle.
Thanks for the taking the time to offer the broader explanation and yes I agree. A knee jerk default to “they have mental health issues” as a defence for murderous behaviour is problematic.
And if that’s what Feminist Guy did I understand the side eye!
@Steph Tohill
No it has not,
that post is still there.
I would also like to add that “mentally ill” is not a diagnoses in and of itself especially when “committed an act of violence” is the only symptom.
@TreePerson, thanks for backing me up.
@Steph
Thank you for taking the time to read it, and hopefully be a little closer to understanding. That said, given that you popped up immediately after the last guy got called out and you’re a bit slippery with this, we’re all looking at you a little funny. Might want to find your footing.
“Thank you for taking the time to read it, and hopefully be a little closer to understanding. That said, given that you popped up immediately after the last guy got called out and you’re a bit slippery with this, we’re all looking at you a little funny. Might want to find your footing.”
What an odd comment.
I am not sure what the insinuation is but it’s far from my first post here. Nor do I see what’s slippery but ok. Let’s park that odd post to the side.
You arrived under suspicious circumstances, and hence the side-eye shifted. We’ve had people dive-bomb before.
@Steph Tohill:
Then why are you okay with people using it as one, and skeptically disbelieving everyone except Feministguy?
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2018/04/03/cant-drive-cant-shoot-idiots-respond-to-news-that-the-youtube-shooter-was-female/comment-page-1/#comment-2079594
Here’s the quote, by the way.
This is a misrepresentation of the actual argument, which–since you desire a broad explanation–is that mental illness does not singularly cause somebody to act on violent impulses. Whether it contributes is, in most cases, immaterial, especially when viewed in the context of how people use it.
In the wake of nearly every high-profile act of violence, the first reaction the vast majority of vocal commenters have is to assume that the perpetrator(s) must have been mentally ill. Beyond the fact that we cannot know that based simply on the information that they committed a violent crime, this presents a few major issues:
First, it offsets the blame for the act itself. As Scildfreja said, blaming violent crimes on mental illness removes a person’s responsibility for committing the crime; in effect, the argument is that they simply couldn’t help it because they’re mentally ill. I should think it would be easy to see why this claim is problematic and, moreover, logically incorrect. People in many assorted scientific and academic fields have conducted countless studies on people with wide varieties of mental illnesses, and even in people who do have violent ideation, the vast majority would never act upon their thoughts.
Second, it distracts from attempts to examine other contributing factors to violent crimes. When you can simply blame mental illness and be done with it, there’s no reason to examine the underlying societal structures which may have had a much larger impact on the person in question. This creates the same atmosphere of avoiding any introspection as do, for instance, endless repetitions of “thoughts and prayers”.
Third, it’s a way of distancing oneself from discomfort. This actually directly connects with the two previous points; blaming mental illness helps people to convince themselves that “normal” people couldn’t ever commit violent crimes. “Normal” people have the ability to choose to not do it, after all. This also means that things like access to guns for “normal” people couldn’t possibly be an issue worth discussing.
As a slight digression, it’s also worth pointing out that “mental illness” is a profoundly unhelpful thing to blame anyway, because it can encompass so many different things. I suffer from depression and extreme anxiety. I am technically mentally ill, and yet I am in a far better position with regards to mental illness stigmatization than a large portion of people. But every time somebody claims that a mass shooter, or a domestic abuser, or a run-of-the-mill misogynist is “just mentally ill”, every last one of us gets equated with them.
Awareness and aid for people with mental illnesses currently certainly has a long road of improvement still ahead of it, but immediately jumping to mental illness as the root cause of every violent crime doesn’t do that. It doesn’t make most people think that society should treat the mentally ill better. It makes them think that people with mental illnesses are dangerous.
Also, since you’re repeatedly bringing up legal codes, it should go without saying but apparently needs to be said that the law can be wrong. Or that even when it’s not directly wrong, that still doesn’t mean it’s entirely accurate.