Disabled, queer, poor teens are not shooting up schools. The profile of a school shooter is overwhelmingly white, male and middle/upper class. A shooting is an ultimate tantrum for which the perpetrator is never held accountable.
Because 1. there's support networks for them, and 2. they don't have the resources themselves.
The "white upperclass male" has the resources to do harm, and don't get supported.
I keep thinking of Elliot Rodgers, who had a thought that girls owed it to him to date him. I don't think any of that was because he was white, male, or upper class. It was because he was lonely. And without proper socialisation and support he got further and further into the deep end. Males are violent but it can be channelled into positivity.
It drives home why such divisive language doesn't help the situation.
Obviously the whole "everything supports them every other day" isn't true, because of they were supported, they wouldn't be going through this mess. Or you can believe that it is due to inherent "whiteness", or "maleness", if you would like to continue to divide these kids further.
Elliot Rogers did not kill young women because he was lonely. He did it because he felt entitled to do that and lacked awareness into his own contribution to his loneliness.
> Or you can believe that it is due to inherent "whiteness", or "maleness", if you would like to continue to divide these kids further.
If whiteness and maleness doesn't contribute to this issue, how come this crime has such a distinctive perp profile? As far as I know, young women in the US are not banned from going to a gun shop and getting an AR-15 as soon as they turn 18, and have equal capacity to contract mental illness. The difference is they don't feel like they are owed something that the world hasn't given to them. This is behavioral issue, not a mental health issue.
I agree completely. And you're right on the Elliot Rogers part, I'm sorry that I wasn't quite clear on that. The issue was 100% the thought of being "owed" something.
Perhaps trying to put another way: He thought he was owed something because he felt that he fit some profile of a young, handsome, gentleman, who's a son of an actor, and life doesn't follow scripts.
My point is that if we keep saying "young white males have it all" when they don't, they will start to think "well why don't I feel complete, if I have it all?" - it's a genuine question. I think the answer is that we need to stop demonising "straight white males" lest they become demons*.
I'm not saying that they don't fit the profile. I'm saying that it's not because they are white and male. Black males fit a distinctive criminal perpetrator profile as well, but it's not due to being black. You can't have one without the other. Either you believe this is due to their race or not.
* I just recently had a newborn daughter, and my mother-in-law said something along these lines: whatever I call her: "princess", "monster", etc. is what she will become.
I think it's the same thing here: the more we demonise and stigmatise "straight white males" the more there's going to be a lash back from young males who don't feel like they have the power you claim they have, yet.