National Review: Newtown could have been avoided if a man was around

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

National Review: Newtown could have been avoided if a man was around

jessicavalenti:

Yeah yeah, I know - don’t feed the trolls. But this is just beyond reprehensible. From Charlotte Allen, longtime antifeminist asshole, at the National Review Online:

There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

In addition to how forehead-smackingly stupid it is to suggest that 12 year old boys rush a grown man armed with an assault rifle - WOW is this disrespectful to the female teachers and staff at Sandy Hook. Allen mentions their heroism as an anomalous aside rather than exceptional bravery that saved lives.

The bravery of the women in Newtown - principal Dawn Hochsprung and psychologist Mary Sherlach who rushed the shooter before being killed, teacher Victoria Soto who died protecting her students, Kaitlin Roig and Abbey Clements who hid their students and calmed them - is remarkable. Not just because they demonstrated incredible calm and sacrifice in the face of terror, but also because of their gender - our picture of heroism in national tragedies like this is most often male. Not this time.

You would think that these incredible women would give Allen pause before driveling about how the real problem is the lack of a good man. It seems not.

If only the husky 12-year-old boys had manned up, unlike those lady teachers! That Adam Lanza would have never been able to match them! Or if a male janitor had thrown a bucket at him! RAMPAGE OVER. BUCKET WINS!

Fuck. This. Woman.

(There weren’t even any “husky 12-year-old boys” there. The school only went up to 4th grade. Good fact checking.)

Fuck her. My students are 12, and even the “husky” boys aren’t that much larger than I am (and I’m small at only 5’3”). We’re there to educate these kids in a safe environment, and part of that means protecting them. It isn’t their responsibility to protect us. And implying that the older students should have attempted to stop the gunman is all kinds of awful.