Re: misgendering: I’d like to assign the correct gender to this person, but it’s not at all clear at this point. I’ve seen some evidence that the person was female, and some evidence that they used male pronouns. But using male pronouns is not the same as identifying as male, and I can’t see whether this person used them consistently or occasionally.
The early sources I saw about the trans identity did not strike me as reliable, especially given the ongoing vilification of trans people in the region, and I’m always suspicious that when part of our narrative (“women aren’t school shooters”) is challenged, other prejudices can be brought to bear to explain it away.
Can anyone provide definitive information as to the murderer’s gender identity?
Edit: this is the evidence I’ve seen—you’ll pardon me if I don’t find the police’s feelings compelling evidence either way:
‘Police say they “feel that she identifies as trans, but we’re still in the initial investigation into all of that and if it actually played a role into this incident,” and a LinkedIn page for Hale cited by NBC News, which appeared to no longer be public as of Tuesday morning, used “he/him” pronouns.’
For half the country, it’s intimately linked, along with race. Of course, that doesn’t change the right thing to do, but it’s certainly at least a complicating factor.
Because apparently there’s some confusion/question about whether or not this person was trans. Their family denies any such thing, although they have stated the person was in “therapy” for some sort of “emotional problem” whatever the hell that means. The media is all over the place with this, with some reports using female pronouns, some male, some use neutral 3rd person singular, some do gymnastics to avoid pronouns entirely, some emphasize this person was assigned female at birth but might be trans or claimed to be trans…
“Confused” might be the appropriate word here. I might stick with 3rd person singular “they/them/their” unless someone raises an objection.
I don’t think gender identity is relevant here, except that if the person’s family was pressuring the person into some sort of conversion therapy, engaged in gaslighting, or otherwise was making a bad situation worse. But I don’t think we can know that, having so few facts to go on at this point.
Well… I do. Because religion-based therapy that attempts to reprogram someone’s personality can be extremely harmful. Was that the case here? I don’t know. If so, though, it might have made this person’s mental state worse instead of better, which may or may not have contributed to the massacre.
Just a whacky idea, but maybe if we knew how a bad thing can to be we might be able to do something different to prevent a repeat. Same reason we study any sort of criminal, really. Or do autopsies in order to find medical mistakes or figure out what does or doesn’t work when treating a problem.
Statistically female mass shooters are extremely rare. I can only recall only one other, though there may be more. So “guessing” a shooter is a man means you’ll be right 98% of the time.
Seriously, 98% This gift article from the New York Times indicates that since 1996 (outside of this recent Nashville shooting) there have been only 4 women who were “mass shooters”, and of those 4 only 2 of them were lone actors, the others were doing the deed alongside a man.
So… out of 172 shooters total there were 4 women and 168 men. Women were 2% of shooters (more or less - there’s some rounding). I’m not entirely sure that’s a complete database, but it’s telling.
Mods - do you want to state which pronouns we should use when referring to this shooter? Just to settle the matter and avoid future confusion? Or at least minimize confusion.
It shouldn’t be a problem…I mean what if, god forbid, we use facts to report the, you know, Facts? At this point, reporting that this shooter was a woman is not a lie. The mods suggested that we stick to the facts as we know them and not to debate the pronouns until we have further information.
“the shooter was a woman” is one of the details that seems to be up in the air. I think it’s a stretch to call it a fact at this point.
I like “the murdering pos”, personally. That seems to be a pretty clearly known fact.
This is breaking news, and i expect we’ll learn more over time.
Speaking as a mod, if the evidence is unclear, it’s perfectly okay to discuss that, and to point to news sources with information about the murdering pos’s gender. To the extent their pronoun preference is uncertain, we aren’t going to take a hard line in any direction. If their pronoun preference becomes clear, we expect posters to use those pronouns to describe the murdering pos. They may simultaneously discuss what pronouns others used to refer to the murdering pos.
But, again, speaking as a mod, this thread is not the place to discuss general trans issues, or other political issues. This is a breaking news thread. I encourage anyone who wants to, for instance, dive into whether people who are pressured into a particular gender expression are more likely to commit violence, or similar questions that are broader than this particular story, to start a new thread in p&e, the pit, IMHO, or even MPSIMS, as appropriate to the tone they want the discussion to take. But it doesn’t belong here.
FWIW, I’m watching the ABC evening news programs, and they’ve done 10 minutes without using a pronoun in reference to the shooter. The writers did a good job, it’s not sounding too stilted, but I’m sure it wasn’t easy.
I also post on a true-crime board, and a poster who is from the area said that Covenant Presbyterian, both the church and school, were the subject of a sexual abuse investigation about 10 years ago, involving staff, parishioners, and students, and of course the biggest scandal was the facility’s effort to cover it up. Finding links was easy earlier today, but at least for now, the information appears to have been scrubbed from Google.
One of Rand Paul’s staffers, whom he’s refusing to name for now, was seriously injured in a stabbing earlier today. I wouldn’t want that to happen to him, either (and I do remember when he was assaulted by a neighbor).
I can’t find it right now, but I know what I saw online a few days ago, and it was a video that showed Dr. Paul posing with an adolescent boy who took the phrase “ammosexual” into another dimension, probably without realizing it. The boy, who couldn’t have been more than 12 years old, was wearing a hoodie that depicted two AR-15s in a “69” position. Dr. Paul was praising the boy, and you know his parent(s) had to approve and buy that shirt!
We advertise school shootings prolifically in our media, including having an active policy of teaching children about the normalcy of doing such a thing.
They lock up people who have reported mental issues.
Obviously, we do have guns but there’s nothing to stop someone from running a truck through a crowd of children or spraying them with a lit stream of gasoline. Both of those might be more effective than guns.
Not putting it in people’s minds that they can have instant fame by killing kids and keeping insane people from running around untreated are the two main techniques. If you get rid of the guns, that will help until someone is smart enough to realize that it’s just not that hard to kill folk and, once they do, there’s going to be no limit to the free press that the new technique gets.
Free press for bad things sells newspapers but it’s a real bad idea for anyone that lives here.
I made the mistake of watching the police camera footage. I will say that it looks like they did a good job. Into the building quickly, searching in teams, and they found the shooter quickly. I will also note that it looks like they had people showing up from whatever they were doing. Some of them were in uniform, some of them were in jeans and khakis. It looked to me like some of them were off duty and rushed over.
Sure, sure. That’s why all the other countries in the world that have many fewer guns per capita have huge problems with mass killers using these other techniques of killing. Oh wait.
They don’t. They actually have fewer mass murder. Huh. I guess America is just exceptional.
I don’t know who he is though. Why should I listen to him? What’s the context beyond some guy talking about the shooting; what does he bring to the conversation? I’m not trying to be a dick about it, but the video was posted with just the guy’s first name like it might be obvious who he is. But honestly I don’t know who he is. I’ve listened to it now and I’m not getting it. All he did was repeat that the cops did all they could, and we need to stop these things from happening before they start.
So I guess, at the end of the video I still don’t know who he is and I’m not sure what his videos are typically about or who is audience is. Is he an ex-cop? A YouTube Joe Rogan? A “liberal redneck” type? A comedian?
I don’t even know what I’d be listening for. If you want people to follow your link, you’ll do better if you give some hint of what the pay-off will be.
Also, if you want moderators to know whether the link is even on-topic…
This is a breaking news thread. If you want to talk about gun control or the impact of America’s gun culture, i urge you to start (or post in one of the existing) a thread in p&e or the pit.
