I consider myself a feminist. A fierce feminist. And I feel that Im betraying the feminist cause in saying this. But I truly dont understand the narrow feminist framing of this weekends latest horrible spree killings at U.C. Santa Barbara. The young man who committed these horrible crimes had a long history of mental illness. His affluent Hollywood family, despite its resources and efforts, was unable to get effective treatment and care for him and unable get police to take their concerns seriously. The victims in this case werent just women. Men died too, at least three of them Asian. So this wasnt just about misogyny. It may also have been about racism. But mostly, it was about a failure of the mental health care system, mixed with Americas psychotic gun culture. Thats not to say that some of the people using the #yeseverywoman hashtag arent making perfectly valid points about cultural misogyny, or that #yesallwoman isnt a valid conversation. But to me, at some level at least, it seems an inappropriate response to the very specific factors involved in this specific incident. By all means, lets have a conversation about violence against women in general. But I think we do a disservice to the individual victims, male and female, in Santa Barbara, if we make this about that. Worse, perhaps, we lose an important opportunity to talk about young men and mental health. Almost all of these spree shootings are committed by young men, and almost all of them have displayed clear signs of psychiatric distress in advance. This isnt nearly as much about men oppressing women, it seems to me, as it is about young men in psychiatric and social distress. Instead of demonizing this young man, and making him the poster boy for misogyny, maybe it would make more sense to talk about the real complexities of this particular case. mercurynews/immigration/ci_25834727/three-fatal-stabbing-victims-santa-barbara-rampage-grew
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 18:35:06 +0000
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