Buffalo Springfield once sang, "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear."
That's how I feel about a certain fact surrounding the recent shootings in Colorado and Pennsylvania, where girls were singled out by the gunmen.
Why girls?
I'm sure I have no answer and will admit that maybe there's just a weird ooincidence. But I couldn't help being reminded of a story from 1989, when a man named Marc Lepine went into a Montreal university, separated the women from the men, shouted, "I hate feminists," and
opened fire. When it was over, 14 women were dead.
Then I thought about a mass killing in Texas around the same time, which, my memory told me, had some contempt for women attached to it. It took some searching, but I found details. This was the guy who drove his truck through the window of a diner and then opened fire, killing 24 people. His name was George Hennard and, around the time of the shooting, he'd sent a letter to two young women in which he said, "Then the abundance of evil women that make up the worst on the other side. ... I will no matter what prevail over the female vipers in those two rinky-dink towns in Texas. I will prevail in the bitter end."
These situations seem, and are, quite different than the killings that have taken place over the last week. But the common thread remains the same. Women and girls are bound up in the psychosis that drove the men in their murderous rampage.
Should we be surprised? Of course not. Feminism has inspired hatred and violence for a long time. And there's little question that women have been among the main targets of modern republican policy decisions. They want to repress us, pure and simple. Abortion bans and restrictions on access to birth cotnrol are not about some culture of life; rather, they seek control of women Pundits are only too happy to add commentary that separates "good" women from the bad. Worst of all, under the current regime oppression is measured by little more than whether women live in a culture that forces the wearing of a burka; without that, the message is to stop your complaining because your sisters are the true victims of oppression.
Is this the sort of thought that drove that man in Colorado to take only female hostages or, in Pennsyvania, led to the death of only young girls? Not directly, I'm sure. But I am certain that among the most successful and least discussed policy successes of the 30 years of republican rule is a contempt for the female sex, a contempt that is helping produce deadly results.