Men Against Violence: Reflection on the Virginia Tech Shootings

[ProgressiveAmPatriot]

I just realized I never posted this on the DU. Here is the link to the original: http://progressiveamericanpatriot.blogspot.com/2007/04/men-against-violence-reflection-on.html

I help run a group on my college campus called Men Against Violence. Tonight, we helped organize a vigil for the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. Below are the reflections I shared at the vigil. I know that these remarks do not address much of the racism and sexism that have occurred around this particular incident. The media should stop talking about how the shooter was Asian and start talking about how the shooter was male. The fact that the first shooting was dismissed as a "domestic" shooting says a lot about how pervasive sexism is in our culture and how seriously we take domestic violence. Others addressed these issues more specifically. I chose to reflect on school shootings in general. While I talked specifically about the Virginia Tech shootings, my remarks could have applied to any school shooting.

Reflection on the Virginia Tech Shootings

33 dead. 33 lives left unfulfilled. 33 human beings forever lost. The shootings at Virginia Tech will forever mark our hearts and minds. We are all shocked and saddened by Monday’s terrible tragedy. As we grieve, we reflect on how this could have happened.

In grappling with what we cannot fathom, it may be easy for us to dismiss such violence as an isolated incident. It may be tempting for us to dehumanize the gunman by labeling him a sociopath, or refusing to count him among the humans that are dead. In a desire to feel secure, it may help us to think that watching out for strangers and locking our doors at night will keep us safe.

While each of these thoughts may console us in a time of need, they are a false comfort.

To say that this is an isolated incident detaches our community from this terrible tragedy. We would all like to think that this could never happen in our community, but this is a false sense of security. These shootings were not an isolated event. School shootings have become a common occurrence in our society, which is why this particular tragedy feels so close to home.

To say that no human being could have done what the Virginia Tech gunman did distances us from the humanity of a troubled young man. As a society, this mentality allows us to absolve ourselves of the responsibility we all share for failing this young man. In failing him, we failed all 33 human beings whose promising futures will now go unfulfilled.

To say that we will be safer if we watch out for strangers and lock our doors at night is to ignore that this problem arises from within our community. Sensationalized reporting meant to drive fear into our hearts, and well intentioned emails meant to assure us of our safety, do not address the underlying problems within our community.

School shooting after school shooting we are marked by the terrible tragedy of a reoccurring nightmare which we would rather ignore. However, until we acknowledge that these events are a product of a culture which associates masculinity with extreme stoicism, physical aggression, violent self-assertion, and guns, we will continue to relive this nightmare. Until we make it socially acceptable for a troubled and depressed young man to publicly seek counseling, we will continue to relive this nightmare.

The Virginia Tech shootings have profoundly affected us all. Our hearts go out to the victims, their friends and their families, including the gunman, his friends and his family. I am sorry that we as a society have failed you all.

[billbuckhead]

1. Guns have been sold as a masculinity enhancer, even as a kind of porn

Men killing women and then killing themselves as suicide has become a kind of American folk crime. We are a nation in denial about this.

[TheWraith]

2. What a ghoulishly retarded behavior.

Attributing the VT shootings to maleness? What a horrendously inhuman way to push an absolutely idiotic agenda. It's quite obvious that the shooter was mentally ill. Full stop. He needed no other reason to snap, and blaming it on being male is no different from the idiots who blame video games, or lack of prayer in schools, or any other damn thing. Did the woman who confessed to drowning her five children in the bathtub do it because she was a woman? As for your initial statement, they didn't "dismiss" the initial incident as a domestic shooting, they thought that they had their suspect in custody. Whatever they might have screwed up wasn't a result of not caring about the shooting. And frankly, anybody who's willing to spin these events into supposedly supporting their personal crusade shows themselves to be a pretty poor human being.