We should be talking about the gender of mass shooters

Source: abc15.com

The Noblesville West Middle School shooting this week was the 23rd mass shooting to take place in a school in 2018 - meaning there has been at least 1 school shooting every week in America this year.

Every headline surrounding these 23 tragedies, as well as those that have come in previous years, have focused on the same attributes of these killers. We are immediately told that they come from the US and are most commonly informed on their racial and ethnic backgrounds. Whilst the gender of a male is assumed by many, it is rarely, if ever, disclosed and made explicit. Virtually every mass murderer, be that at a church, school, or cinema, has been male, a fact that is largely overlooked. 

The US channel their focuses, headlines and campaigns on access to guns, mental health, social safety and the culture of shooters, whilst the rest of the world regurgitate the very same ideas to their own national audiences. Almost everything is considered but the gender the shooter. 

This can be difficult to understand as gender has become an evaluative point for almost every issue of modern society. 2018, whilst it has seen back to back tragedies, has also been witness to an arena of conversation surrounding gender, whether that be the gender pay gap or the #MeToo movement. Gender now plays such a central part to all social issues yet media is reluctant to address the gender of these shooters.

We are yet to see media talk about a "male mass shooter", yet it is almost guaranteed that should there be a woman carrying out these acts, the concept of gender would lead every address towards mass shootings and would feature in every headline.

Her being a female would be seen as a definite factor towards her actions and her role as a female would become her most identifying factor. This is an example of where her femininity would trump her nationality and possibly even her racial backgrounds, and there would essentially be a separation drawn between male and female shooters. 

Any culture that simply refuses to recognise the importance gender inequality and the well beings of young men will only continue to produce wounded men, a fraction of which will become violent. 

Thank you for reading!

Aman