Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Danielle,
I think those two columns are arguing different things, and no, one is not a “more able” version of the other. The one Megan linked to argues that “because resources are limited, gains for women and minorities necessarily equal losses for white males”. Which is such a bizarrely adversarial way of looking at life that I don’t really know how to respond to it.
Sorta. The words you’ve quoted, inside quote marks, do not appear anywhere in the column you’re quoting. On the other hand, Chemaly does actually say:
Losing power is hard and unpleasant, frightening and disorienting.
And Wampole does actually say:
Can you imagine being in the shoes of the one who feels his power slipping away? Who can find nothing stable to believe in? Who feels himself becoming unnecessary?
You wrote (sorry, don’t mean to sound finger-pointy, just keeping attributions in order):
she isn’t giving these guys carte blanche to rage at everyone around them because women got the vote, which I think the Wampole piece comes dangerously close to saying.
Except she doesn’t say that, or anything really like it. She also does not say “it’s the girls’ fault.”
I think the Wampole column is pretty flawed, and dumb in parts, but I also like people talking about empathy, which she does throughout.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Ross Mason,
Daughter’s link:
The last three paragraphs:
It’s not racist or sexist to suggest that white men are struggling with a loss of power in this country. I’m not demonizing white men, many if not most of whom probably don’t feel powerful and in control. But the fact remains that in this country white men have long ruled–in public and private life. They continue to dominate government and media even as the nature of families and private life has evolved over time. No one likes to lose power. Losing power is hard and unpleasant, frightening and disorienting.
But distributing power equitably is important. It’s a change we can seek to understand, openly discuss and facilitate, or we can ignore and exacerbate harm.
This violence is a public health crises. Other countries understand the vital importance to society of understanding gender constructions, but ours is mind-numbingly resistant. We really, really need to do this if we hope to understand how to stem this hemorrhaging of life. Pretending that hyper-gendered cultural pressures and entitlements that are part of boys becoming “real man” aren’t critically significant to these mass shootings, and to the everyday gun deaths in this country, is the national crime.This is a more able version of the column Megan linked to, derisively, above. The author still can’t quite say the obvious: that a significant number of the perpetrators of rampage killings, especially in schools, look like victims of those “hyper-gendered cultural pressures".
Like the Columbine shooters, Lanza was a retiring, bullied geek who probably projected his own self-hatred. Like the Virginia Tech shooter, he appears to have had the additional challenge of an autism spectrum condition.
Megan, you’re my friend, but I had to stop myself replying to what you said on Twitter about that column, in part because I know you’ve had young, male violence right in your face in a terrible way this week.
But for you to dismiss the idea of empathy for fearful, loser kids because they possess “immense privilege” just made me furious. It’s everything that makes me angry about the use of the concept of privilege. You have privilege, I’ve got it in spades. I think we should be very, very careful of attributing it to the kid in the photo in the link above.
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Hard News: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, in reply to Christopher Nimmo,
This Samuel Holloway?
I believe so.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to James Bremner,
So that explains why there were only 2 dead in Oregan last week, but the media being in favour of gun control hasn’t reported that.
Actually, James, the media haven’t reported it that way because it’s bullshit.
Oregon Live quotes the armed shopper, who confirms that he did train his gun on Jacob Roberts, but didn’t pull the trigger because he was worried about hitting bystanders – a possibly responsible decision indicating a fairly obvious flaw in the the right-wing “no one would die if everyone was armed” fantasy.
Roberts didn’t suddenly shoot himself before he was shot by an armed citizen. There’s no indication that he even saw Nick Meli pointing a gun at him in a crowded mall. Roberts just walked off, down a hall and down some stairs and then took his life.
But good try.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to David Hood,
Despite some clear divisions about the importance of Gender, I hope we can all agree that Bushmaster’s (the maker of the semi-automatic used) is really,really, horribly awful
Jesus. That's like gender fucking warfare.
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Meanwhile, my son is seriously pissed off about the video-game-blaming around Newtown.
He sent me these two links with the comment "This just feels like an insult to both games and the people we lost."
Mob Blames Mass Effect for Shooting, is Embarrassingly Wrong
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Ross Mason,
Does it really matter if she may appear mentally suspect?
It does if it's impacting on her son.
Autism parent world can be an unsettling place. There are incredible people like Barb Kirby, and there are people who are hurting their children with crank cures and worse. Sometimes the latter can be really challenging to deal with in social media.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to giovanni tiso,
There have been many good critiques of the post though. Like this one.
See, I had some problems with that one, which largely faults her for not having her disability politics in order. At least the Slate one acknowledges that she might be in a very difficult position. That one is crushingly devoid of sympathy.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Anne Russell,
That’s quite a jump, assuming Liza Long is a loving mother. Her ethics in using both Michael’s name and a photo of him are dubious (I appreciate your respect for your son’s privacy), and her other blog entries show she is mentally disturbed herself (http://bit.ly/ZbccQJ). It sounds like her son could do with living in a different environment.
Knowing what I do now, so do I. But I also know what it's like being judged as the parent of a difficult child.
I was troubled by elements of her post on first reading, but I didn’t spot some of the historical posts, which raise further questions about her attitude towards her children and her own mental state. I actually linked to the Slate coverage about an hour ago.
To be, fair, she at least didn’t use her son’s real name.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to DexterX,
The POV that males are violent because they’re driven by testosterone falls over when females behave as violently as males – this is a very real emerging phenomenon.
So you keep saying. I honestly think we should just leave this alone and get back on topic.