A
couple issues ago, the Etownian printed an opinion piece on gun control in the U.S. with emphasis on the Sandy Hook tragedy. That is not what I am writing about.
I am writing about the very last paragraph of that piece in which the author wrote something along the lines of: “If criminally insane males want to shoot at our children, we ought to return fire.”
The sentiment expressed is irrelevant to my complaint except in that the author went out of his way, so to speak, to mention the perpetrator’s maleness as if his sex were in any way relevant to his actions. This is an incredibly harmful thing to say and frankly wildly offensive. If this statement had been framed as a statistical analysis of the sex of mass murderers it would perhaps be less vigorously objectionable but it was not and it is not. It was hate speech pure and simple. As we have been told countless times by this very paper, and indeed everywhere on campus, hate speech is harmful not only to the subjects but also to the listener and the speaker.
We are aware of the evils of racism and we fight it with every fiber. We are aware of the problem of violence against women and we fight it too. We fight domestic violence and rape and discrimination of every sort. These subtle and incalculable evils have plagued human history for as long as we have recorded it and we have now decided rightly that it is enough. We know that a woman is a man’s equal in any field. We know that the color of a persons skin in no way affects his ability to fly a plane. We would rage against anyone who said otherwise and rightly so.
Even to say such things is to harm us all. Not one word of discrimination is okay. No harm is permitted. So do we really think that this is true, that men are naturally a more violent population? Anymore than we think it true that young women must learn to cook to please their future husbands and raise children? More importantly do we think it should be true? Women were told that all they could do was raise children and be housewives. It was true at the time simply because they were told until they believed it. It became a stereotype. We only offered our little girls baby dolls and aprons and made them into stay-at-home mothers.
Perhaps we now do the same with our young men, telling them and their female peers that they are violent and dangerous. A seed may after all only grow in the soil it is planted in. Think also of the harm this does to the women who hear this. Their brothers and fathers and peers are now objects of fear and hatred. Rapists. Murderers. A society of paranoia and terror reigns.
This is not to say that women, and men, should not be cautious but, I am male. Does that make me dangerous? Do you fear me?