Remembering the Virginia Tech massacre
April 16, 2009
by Violet Socks, Editor
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It was two years ago today that Seung-Hui Cho went on his murder spree at Virginia Tech, killing 32 people, wounding 17 others, and finally turning the gun on himself. It was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
A few days after the massacre, Sarah Baxter put her finger on what was troubling Cho in an article that must surely rank as one of the most brutally inane things ever published by the Times: it was feminism made him do it! What the shooting revealed, said Sarah, was “the crisis of young males in a feminised society.” Sarah Baxter is something like the English version of Camille Paglia, though without the bustier: both are anti-feminists who claim to be feminists, yet somehow only manage to write about how a) feminism is crap, b) most women are crap, and c) everything would be fine if we’d just stop whining and appreciate all the wonderful things men have done for us. Anyhoo, Sarah consulted with her buddy Camille and came up with a tender portrait of Cho the Shooter, a manly young man who was frustrated by a modern world full of harlots and unfeeling feminists: “college girls who reported him to the police for stalking and got him carted off to mental hospital after he sent them shy love messages full of yearning,” in Baxter’s phrase. Damn those idiot college girls for reporting Cho as a stalker! If only they’d appreciated his shy love messages full of yearning, there would have been no massacre. See what feminism does?
Actually, there is a connection between feminism and the Virginia Tech massacre, though it’s precisely the opposite of what Baxter thinks it is. But first, let’s get one thing clear: what caused Cho’s behavior wasn’t feminism or anti-feminism or anything in this big blue world but the addled contents of that boy’s skull, emphasis on addled. The guy was insane. A raving psychotic. You might as well blame gallstones on feminism. Yes, I understand that mental illness is affected and sometimes prompted by life history — it’s not all just brain chemistry — but the level of psychosis displayed by Cho is pretty clearly in the realm of massive disease. But if Cho’s actions had been shaped by some kind of angry response to women’s liberation (as was the case with the Montreal killer), what that would show us is not a society that is too feminized, but one that isn’t feminized enough. A society where bigotry against women’s rights is still so deep that it evokes murderous rage. A society that needs more feminism, not less.
Think about it: feminism is surely the only social justice movement that is still treated as a problem rather than a solution. If a group of young toughs go on a gay bashing spree, for example, the gay rights movement isn’t named as the social problem that has prompted those poor confused young men to kill. Instead, everyone understands that the problem is the bigotry, the homophobia, and that what needs to happen is for the young toughs of our society to learn tolerance and respect for diversity. Yet when women are slaughtered, people say, “well, if they’d just stop trying to be equal they wouldn’t get killed. No wonder men are upset.” We see that right now with the Chris Brown-Rihanna trainwreck: people actually blame feminism for imperiling young men’s self-esteem. Surely the answer to that is more feminism — perhaps young men could be taught that manliness isn’t measured by the number of stitches in your girlfriend’s lip? — but no, instead we’re told that “of course” young men beat the crap out of women to assert themselves in these terrible feminist times. And that if feminists had any sense or compassion they’d recognize the crisis of masculinity that is causing those balled-up fists to collide with our jaws. Still waiting to see that argument applied to gay bashing.
But back to Cho and Virginia Tech. The other thing the massacre shows (as if we needed more evidence) is how much violence against women is accepted as normal. Just part of the landscape. Cho had already been reported by female students as a stalker, yet he wasn’t confined, wasn’t under supervision, wasn’t on a police watch list. He was even able to buy guns, for pete’s sake. And the morning of the massacre, the police initially assumed that the first two shootings were “just” domestic violence, which is why they didn’t issue an alert or shut down the campus. “Just” domestic violence. Yeah, yeah, just another dead woman, murdered by her stalker/former boyfriend/would-be boyfriend. Happens all the time.
I remember. I’m glad you also remember the part about the cops believing the first murder was “just” domestic violence, so they felt no need to respond quickly and lock down the campus. That piece of the story is forever burned into my brain.
It wasn’t feminism, not by any stretch of the imagination, that caused this. But you could make a good argument that misogyny caused this tragedy. If his female professor had been listened to when she voiced her concerns, if those women he frightened had been taken seriously, perhaps he would had gotten the treatment he needed. If the cops had not mistakingly dismissed the first casualties as “just” domestic violence, perhaps he would have been contained sooner.
There’s a whole lot of “what ifs”, and every one of them has it’s roots in misogyny, in cultural habits we have become so accustomed to we hardly even notice them anymore.
I like your article linking sexism to the massacre. I tend to attribute most problems in our society to the glorification of violence, but you have added another dimension to that tragedy I hadn’t considered. I remember after Va. Tech, I was at the movie theatre and watching previews. The scenes featured in one preview were disturbing in that they modelled many of Cho’s action poses that he sent out before the murders.
[...] Remembering the Virginia Tech massacre Cross-posted at The New Agenda. [...]
another excellent analysis Violet, thanks.
your comparison with gays is quite revealing. society has moved on and does not blame the victims anymore, not so with women.
You’re absolutely right – feminism didn’t cause this, and yes, we need more feminism. As you hint, we also need much more emphasis on and support for those values and attributes usually scorned as “female” or even “effeminate” – and far less lauding of those our society celebrates as “manly”. In acting out the cherished scenarios of his insanity, this student reached into the popular culture and produced that universally applauded image of the heroic individual living free or dying hard – the gunman. Violence and guns, the patriarchy’s twin fetishes, which are enshrined in both the institutions of militarised states and the underworld of counter-culture fantasies. All too often, these are the totemic amulets clung to by vulnerable young men trying to assert their male identies and addled young women striving for a sense of potency and dominance denied them by their sex. Stripping such destructive charms of their power should be one of the main aims of feminism.
“these are the totemic amulets clung to by vulnerable young men trying to assert their male identies and addled young women striving for a sense of potency and dominance denied them by their sex. Stripping such destructive charms of their power should be one of the main aims of feminism”
I agree with you whole-heartedly, Briar. Guns and violence are now viewed as the source of male identity, and this identity is destructive toward feminism. The trick here, though, is that in order to remove this destructive identity successfully, we need to replace it with something constructive.
In a few societies – I can’t recall which ones exactly – women were in charge of the government while men were mainly in the military. The military was subordinate to the government. I think that by featuring media such as this, we can adjust the current male identity without getting rid of it completely to be more accepting of feminism because the men there view women as their superiors.
I agree that had the police taken the stalking reports seriously, maybe this psychotic monster could have been locked down in jail or carted off to a psych unit somewhere. It’s difficult to eradicate the culture of guns given our 250+ year frontier history and conflict with Indians on the expanding frontier as well as many major wars and countless lesser wars we collectively have been embroiled in. Young men are also extremely dangerous with cars. Testosterone and acculturation is a bad mix and lethal and this is a monumental task given the glorification of violence, the profit attached and the women that buy into it as well.
It is troubling to say the least that we try to teach our young not to fight then glorify the boys if they can develop the talent and physical ability to brutally slam other men to the ground via a football scholarship to college. They then assume near God-like status if they make the pros and millions get to watch them on TV.
I just now randomly checked the price of pro football tickets and to watch a game live between the Packer and Bears will cost $600.00. The stadiuim will be filled or nearly filled for that game and there will be a large number of women seated in the stadium.
“Still waiting to see that argument applied to gay bashing. ”
I don’t think gay bashing is taken very seriously. In the Matthew Shepard case, many media stories emphasized that he had sexually hit on the murderer. (The horror!) And most gay bashings don’t get any coverage.
I don’t understand the point of dragging gays into the argument.
this men is a sico he would have died in jail any way i am glad that my cuzo did not get shot.
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