Sheriff Bill Brown has already referred to this mass shooting as ““the work of a madman” and suggested that we will soon learn “how disturbed this individual was”. Despite there being no evidence, as yet, that the perpetrator suffered a mental illness, and the statistical unlikelihood that a perpetrator of such extreme violence does have a mental illness, the police officers investigating the crime and the media reporting it are assuming that Rodger must be mentally ill. After all, “normal men” don’t murder women every single day (unless of course we count the 2 women a week murdered by current or former partner; women and girls brutally murdered by men during home invasions and robberies; the women raped and murdered in war zones and disaster areas; or any of the hundreds of thousands of examples of fatal male violence against women and girls every single day). The media is reporting that Rodger has Asperger’s Syndrome as an excuse for his killing but there is no clear evidence of a link between Aspergers and such extreme forms of violence. Whether or not Rodger’s has a formal diagnosis of one of the very few mental illnesses which has links to perpetration of violence is to be seen, however, assuming that a man who murders women must be “mentally ill” is to ignore the real pattern of fatal male violence. Also, suggesting a direct correlation between mental illness at large and acts such as these is deeply, deeply offensive to people who struggle with mental illnesses, people who are statistically more likely to be the *victims* of violent crimes, not the perpetrators.
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 15:19:45 +0000
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