We all talked about it, though , on feminist blogs. It's great that he writes about it in the NYT, of course.

i had hoped herbert's last paragraph would offer a solution. maybe several. i don't buy beer/long distance service from companies that use women's bodies to sell it. i don't sleep with men who like me only because i'm attractive. i don't encourage men who objectify me on the street. i don't give a fuck about beauty pageants and i've always thought the excitement when women and girls get killed was to punish the murderer. but none of that stops crazy men from killing girls. so what would? what can we do?

(also, how dare herbert malign the mighty thong. so sex-negative. (i'm kidding, but how come he gets a pass, and twisty gets a complex?))

The statistics as recently as 2005 were that violence against women and men has been plummeting since 1994. Violent crimes against men are still more prevalent than against women in straight numeric measure. Also, since men represent a smaller part of the population, the gap for violent crimes per person in each group is even wider for every violent crime other than rape for men.

While I agree that any violence against any person is intolerable, this piece seems like sensationalism to me. It ignores the underlying trends (some might even say positive trends) for the big splash he could get focussing on a small number of crimes that got lots of press coverage. And why did they get press coverage? Because they were all white girls and women, that's why.

Crimes against men and crimes against women of color are much more prevalent and have nothing to do with Clinique ads. His thesis is unsupported and off base.

It ignores the underlying trends (some might even say positive trends) for the big splash he could get focussing on a small number of crimes that got lots of press coverage. And why did they get press coverage? Because they were all white girls and women, that's why.

I have always thought that the "we only care about violence against white girls" canard, no matter how well-intentioned, has mainly served to minimize violence against women in general and make it acceptable to cast the issue as tabloid sensationalism. Case in point.

I wrote about the tendency to assume a difference between the levels of sexism and racism a while ago. It sounds reasonable, but there turns out to be no difference.

The stereotypical form of violence against women is domestic violence, and sometimes rape. True gender-based hate crimes don't really figure into media stereotypes, so the media ignores them.

For a good racial analogy, consider this. Everybody knows about hate crimes. When a redneck kills a man because he's black, everyone will know it's racially motivated and react with horror. Things like the racial infant mortality gap and the fact that corporations tend to dump toxic waste in majority-minority areas are outside even the mainstream liberal American psyche, even though they kill far more people than old-fashioned hate murders.

I think you missed the point, buffy. How many of those people that are violent towards men are violent towards them solely because they are men? Not a lot, I would imagine.

The point is not that violence against women has increased or decreased (on a global level its definately increased as women are the primary victims of the war in Iraq and genocide in Durfur), his point was that such crimes are expected in our culture and do not create the same shock value a murder would create against another minority group.

I don't think it is wise to react to "the recent school shootings targeting girls" by citing statistics about the prevalence of violence against males or cautioning against sensationalism or pointing out more women are harmed by domestic violence. Yes, all violence against anyone is horrible, but these recent crimes are, to my recollection, unique. In both, a group of girls were targeted in one fell suicidal, sexually charged swoop, and one can not help but note the age of the Amish girls.

At the very least these two atrocities should be held up as examples of what can happen in our "advanced" society. We must remember those that died, why they died, and that both crimes occurred in rural areas commonly thought to be free of this sort of violence. But remembering them and the circumstances of their deaths is not enough. We must also keep create and maintain the dicussion about how and why this happened, and what to do to prevent it in the future.

Jessica is doing the right thing by using the popularity of this blog to highlight the conundrum: had the victims been African American or Jewish there would have been an unceasing outcry. A single missing white woman is gets months of play on the 24-hour news channels, yet this story is gone already. What a young blogger wears and how she poses in a group picture with a former President generates literally hundreds of comments in the blogosphere. In contrast, what sort of people are we when we react to these school shootings of young girls with even less energy?

Buffy: what waxghost said. And how many of those crimes against men are perpetrated by one group of people to another, how many of them are hate crimes. Men are mainly attacked by men, so the comparing of these statistics are unhelpful.

I'm TIRED, so I hope this post is coherent.
I had a similar reaction to the recent killings, seeing them as comparable to "hate crimes" despite the fact that the major news wouldn't even touch upon that aspect of it all. On NPR I heard a comment that the killer (at the Amish school) "seemed to have no particular hatred/issue with women" (that is paraphrased). I was shocked to hear that said. Really shocked. Of course this guy hated women!!
I've had a question in my mind for a few years now. I was wondering if other coutntries have as many mass killers (not political) or serial killers as the US. I haven't heard much about such things internationally. However, I do know that extreme physical violence against women is still deeply entrenched in much of the world. Do you think that in those areas the agressions/hate/fear that men feel are sanctioned in such a way that they can relieve themselves by abusing wives, children, prostitutes, and other women? Whereas in America Men are often unsure/afraid of venting these emotions because extreme physical abuse is looked down upon by Society. Maybe the killers, such as have been in the news lately and serial killers, are an anomaly for sure, but still a sympton of American culture. Also, to my knowledeg (and I maybe wrong here) but the usual profile for these sorts of killers is white, midd class, you wouldn't have suspected him kind of guy...
My Lunesta is starting to kick in for real!
But think about it. Have we suceeded in getting rid of the most obvious expressions of sexism and misogony, only to continue to have a very deviant and terrifying form unique to our own culture.
By the way - I am in NO way saying that sexism and misogony are dead in the US. Also, I know that some men are not sexist, as well as there are greatly varying degrees of misogony and dif. types of violence. I 'm also not concerned in this post about what causes fears/anger in men who are violent. All that would be great to explore later when I'm not so damn tired.

As someone not from the US (an outsider if you will) I think the basis of the problem (outside of misogyny that is) is the appalling gun culture. It allows this misogyny to take the form of mass killings rather than the usual rape, domestic violence, murder that it is usually incarnated as. It allows it to go that one step further.

We've had one mass shooting in Australia in the mid-90s, since that happened, gun laws were extremely tightened and there hasn't been another one since.

That law makers refuse to bend in the face of mass murder on the gun issue is really troubling.

- Again, I'm an outsider but that's my perception of things.

thanks ANNA for your perspective. That perspective would be critical for me to find some understanding for the question that I posted.

AndyS --

I would like to mention that serial killers usually target young women.

Also, a similar school shooting happened in Montreal in 1989 by Marc Lepine, who ironically screamed, "I hate feminists!" while murdering 14 women that he believed took his rightful place in a polytechnic institute.

I'd imagine all mass murders are unique to a degree. Three mass killings of women and strings of serial murders, while appalling, does not prove or perhaps even indicate the existence of misogyny or even sexism if viewed in isolation. Because of the scale of the violence perpetrated, these specific crimes cannot be generalized to include normal men and women -- after all, no matter what their view of gender equality, race issues, or other charged debates, hardly anyone actually perpetrates this scale of violence on those that they might dislike, mistrust, disrespect, or devalue.

However, this MUST be looked at in context. The other instances of violence that specifically target women indicate that this is part of a bigger problem -- a society where people believe that violence against women (be it sexual, physical, or other) is not a hate crime. If one group is targeting another on the basis of their 'difference,' it is a hate crime.

The fact is that women were targeted as women (or as sexual vessels in the eye of the perpetrator) for this violence, as they are in many realms.

As usual, the outcry is inaudible. That's why this is so frustrating.

I don't mean to derail the discussion of Bob Herbert's piece. I wish that it had been about 300 pages longer and researched with a bibliography! However, I do think that all of the trappings of sexist phenomena cannot be separated from one another.