CNN is (finally) reporting "3 Muslim students
shot to death in apartment near UNC Chapel Hill." These murdered students
volunteered to give dental care to Middle Eastern children as well as help their
homeless neighbors. It is being reported that the killer was an atheist. When
will we notice that the one common denominator among almost all American
terrorists is not a religion, but a sex?
Are the “lone wolves” who commit acts of terrorism
women? Were the police officers who killed Eric Garner or Michael Brown female?
Do girl students shoot up their schools?
I am not about to speculate on what, if anything,
evolutionary or genetic may explain the lack of proportion between male and
female terrorists. I’m even limiting myself to one nation, the U.S., and not extrapolating
to every other culture on earth. (The U.S. is my example because it’s a leading
country in terms of being rich, yet depressingly ahead of most of its peers in
terms of violence, too.)
That is
not my point—the "why" of male violence. There are feminists who have spent a
lifetime on that and we’re no closer to ending it. My point is that it is wrong
to tar a group with a stereotype, even when that stereotype is overwhelmingly
true. And it is far closer to the truth to generalize terrorists, or school
shooters, or murderous police officers as male, than it is to characterize
killers as Muslim or atheist or even white.
Yet imagine how ridiculous were I to conclude that
we should fear all men. Or that maleness, the cause of so much suffering,
should be eliminated from the earth (which is what Richard Dawkins, apparently now the imam of atheism, wants to
happen to religion). Or what if I insisted that every instance of this male
violence was characterized as such—“a male fired on a classroom of first
graders,” “a male planted a bomb at the Boston Marathon”—just as “black” or
“Muslim” are used.
Come to think of it, that’s not such a bad idea. By
underplaying this truth, we risk not even noticing it, taking it for granted.
If we “don’t see” gender in this situation, we are accepting the violence as an
inevitable fact about the world, rather than something individuals are
responsible for. We should see the person.
"If you 'don't see'”color/sexual
orientation/etc., as Ash Beckham reminds us,
“you don't see me.”
