Massacres & Misogyny

George Soldini Sodini was clearly crazy. But then, so was Marc Lepine. As was Charles Carl Roberts IV.

All three walked into classrooms, targeted women and girls, and then turned their guns on themselves.

Lepine infamously ended the lives of 14 female engineering students at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. He specifically separated them from the men and cut them down. In his suicide note, he blamed feminists for ruining his life. You can't get more clear-cut misogynistic than that.

Roberts was the guy who entered an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania three years ago and took the little girls hostage, shooting them execution-style. He too shot himself. What his motives were is is not as cut and dried as what drove Lepine but the fact that he targeted the girls while sparing the boys says it all.

Now we have Soldini Sodini who, last night, entered a women's dance class in a Pennsylvania fitness facility, turned off the lights and sprayed some 52 bullets at his victims, killing at least three women and wounded many 10 9 others. He, of course, killed himself as well.

This massacre is getting relatively little play in the US. By that I mean it is not top of the news, top of mind, top of everything.

Who knows why? Maybe they're inured to shooting sprees. Maybe three dead is not much of a toll in the US of NRA. Maybe it's because ... no, I won't say it ...

Soldini Sodini, who was educated, affluent and, judging from his photo, not bad-looking just could not relate to women. (He was also racist but, from what I gather, his victims were white.) Why he couldn't maintain relationships with women is hard to say. That despite how he documented his problems with women on his personal website, which has now been taken down.

November 5, 2008: ''Planned to do this in the summer but figure to stick around to see the election outcome. This particular one got so much attention and I was just curious. Not like I give a flying f**k who won, since this exit plan was already planned. Good luck to Obama! He will be successful. The liberal media LOVES him. Amerika has chosen The Black Man. Good! In light of this I got ideas outside of Obama’s plans for the economy and such. Here it is: Every black man should get a young white girl hoe to hone up on. Kinda a reverse indentured servitude thing. Long ago, many a older white male landowner had a young Negro wench girl for his desires. Bout’ time tables are turned on that s**t. Besides, dem young white hoez dig da bruthrs! LOL. More so than they dig the white dudes!''

Dec. 29, 2008: "Just got back from tanning, been doing this for a while. No gym today, my elbow is sore again. I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me — over an 18 or 25-year period. That is how I see it. ... A man needs a woman for confidence. ... This type of life I see is a closed world with me specifically and totally excluded."

May 18, 2009: "I actually had a date today. It was with a woman I met on the bus in March. We got together at Two PPG Place for lunch. The last date for me was May 1, 2008. Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one."

May 29, 2009: "Another lonely Friday night, I'm done. This is too much."

Apparently, Soldini Sodini left a suicide note, although police have yet to publish its contents. (A news conference by local police is scheduled for this afternoon.)

Pale over at A Creative Revolution nails it:

Truly, this person saw women as objects, not people.

<SNIP>

This entry is telling:

May 25, 2009: I was invited to a picnic, and I went. An older woman there, out of the blue, asked if I liked high school. Then quickly asked if I was picked on very much. Intersting why she would ask that. But, thanks, I already know what the problem is, but a solution eludes me.''

In the next few days I am sure that there will be many people who say that they knew this person. Maybe some clue into his behaviour and personal ticks will emerge.

Why is it that some men who cannot deal with life decide that it is all the fault of women?

UPPITY WOMAN DATE 1: Watching the newser with the Allegheny County Police who refer to the victims as ''people,'' ''individuals,'' ''the deceased'' -- but never as ''women.'' Why?

UPPITY WOMAN DATE 2: Okay, now more than 30 minutes into this newser, the police spokesperson mentioned Soldini's Soldini's ''hatred of women.'' Most of the questions so far have been about the small arsenal Soldini Sodini had in his bag.

OOPSY DATE: I totally goofed on Sodini's name. Apologies.(Thanks Jude!)

UPPITY WOMAN DATE 3: On the subject of Lepine, here's Sooey on the subject last December.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE 4: Jennifer Pozner has more on gender-based massacres, with a femicide slant on the Jonesboro and Virginia Tech massacres that I missed. (H/T to Mattt.)

So, finally, a gender-based hate crime is being reported (at least by the AP, at least for now) within the context of the killer’s actual anti-woman agenda. It’s an important step forward in media understanding of and coverage of this sort of crime. But if the press’s previous track record is any indicator, Sodini’s misogyny could potentially fall out of the frame of follow-up reporting.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE 5: Here's Dammit Janet!

There are many men who feel this way. There are also many women who would like to find a boyfriend/lover/life partner, as well as gay men and lesbians who deplore the fact that they are alone when they long to be in a couple relationship.

Yet most of them do not blame the objects of their desire for their inability to attract and "secure" a girlfriend or a boyfriend. While some may radiate hostility and resentment towards the target of their attention when that person deflects or discourages these attempts to initiate some form of intimacy, rarely do they follow the exit strategy this man chose.

Fury? Hate? Absolutely. This man felt entitled to the benefits of a relationship and, unsuccessful in his efforts to establish a connection with one woman, decided to murder as many women as possible before ending his own life.

Somehow this will end up being feminism's fault.

Comments

[matttbastard]

Did you catch MSNBC this AM? Had a mass-shooting 'expert' on who kept saying how unfortunate it was that no one had reached out to this 'poor man' whose website was OBVIOUSLY a cry for help. No mention of the women deliberately targeted and murdered in Soldini's brutal act of gender-based terrorism in that instance, either.

Reading between the whines, it would appear that Soldini was the ultimate Nice Guy™ (http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/06/12/nice-guys/ )

[deBeauxOs]

More telling is the tone used in his diary entries, as though securing a girlfriend/lover is an entitlement, from which he has been excluded.

It's interesting that men, when faced with a mechanical break-down, will turn their mind and efforts to repairs. But when dysfunctions are psychological in nature, they will not seek professional help for guidance and help.

[fern hill]

The silence from the right-wing side is deafening, isn't it?

Oh. Right. The right wing is only interested in crimes against brown women by brown men, or by crimes against anybody not-brown by somebody brown.

How silly of me.

[sooey]

Marc Lepine's suicide note is no worse than the editorial pages of any CanWest newspaper. Conservative pundits regularly and repeatedly tell men that they should blame Feminists for their lots in life.

[Keith]

"Somehow this will end up being feminism's fault"

With comments like this, frankly it appears that you want the blame,

"Watching the newser with the Allegheny County Police who refer to the victims as ''people,'' ''individuals,'' ''the deceased'' -- but never as ''women.'' Why?"

I find it quite typical of feminists to be offended that "women" are treated as equal people, and not afforded special treatment, priviledge, status due to their gender. yet another example that feminism isn't about equality, it's about priviledge based on gender.

[Keith]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32279584/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

And these ladies claim they were the "victim" because they didn't get the special status they thought they deserved.

[Ashley]

It enrages me to think about how some truly unbalanced individuals take their hate and anger out on groups of people who belong to a certain race, sex, creed, profession, hair-colour or whatever just because they have had bad experiences with others of that group. There is NO LOGIC in that and I can't even begin to wrap my mind around how someone could be so ignorant. It's unimaginably sad that there are so many people like that on this planet.