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The Recent Mass Shootings in the US All Have One Thing in Common: Misogyny
The longer we ignore the toxic masculinity that underlies so many of these crimes, the more violence we’re enabling
By Jessica Valenti
The massacre at Santa Fe high school last week that left 10 people dead — most of them students — seems to have something in common with so many other mass shootings that happen in the US: misogyny. The shooter, one victim’s mother claims, targeted her daughter as the first victim because she rejected his continued harassing advances.
How many more tragedies have to happen before we recognize that misogyny kills? The longer we ignore the toxic masculinity that underlies so many of these crimes, the more violence we’re enabling.
Sadie Rodriguez told the LA Times that her daughter Shana Fisher “had four months of problems” from the Santa Fe shooter.
“He kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no.” A week before the shooting, she says, her daughter stood up to the shooter and “embarrassed him in class”.
This comes not even a month after the van attack in Toronto that killed 10 people and injured 13 more — violence enacted by a man who was reportedly furious that women…
