{"id":12145,"date":"2009-08-14T10:57:39","date_gmt":"2009-08-14T15:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=12145"},"modified":"2013-05-16T01:19:01","modified_gmt":"2013-05-16T06:19:01","slug":"guest-post-dead-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/08\/14\/guest-post-dead-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"News Coverage Of The George Sodini Murder\/Suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0Anglofille<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"20301811_640x480\"<\/p>\n

The Reclusive Leftist<\/a> wonders why George Sodini\u2019s mass murder of women in an aerobics class in Pennsylvania last week is not receiving more news coverage.\u00a0 And also, why is the crime not being referred to as a hate crime?<\/p>\n

If I want to read about the Pennsylvania shooting, I have to search for it. This evening I typed \u201cGeorge Sodini\u201d (the murderer\u2019s name) into the Google News search box. The stories that came up told me that Sodini was lonely; that he felt rejected by women; that he led a sad, bitter life; that he hadn\u2019t had sex in years; that he longed for women to notice him. Well, isn\u2019t that special.<\/p>\n

I looked for the words \u201chate crime,\u201d but only Ms. Magazine<\/a> is referring to it that way. Good for them\u2026But Ms. Magazine appears to be alone in its assessment. I can\u2019t find any other media outlets calling the massacre a hate crime. If spraying bullets into a group of female strangers because you hate women<\/em> isn\u2019t a hate crime, what is?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Her conclusion, which I agree with, is that hatred of women is considered \u201cnatural and universal\u201d and so we don\u2019t even give it a thought.<\/p>\n

In his NYT column<\/a>, Bob Herbert nails it.\u00a0 He refers to another mass murder of females in Pennsylvania, when in the autumn of 2006 a man went into an Amish school, separated the girls from the boys, then shot all the girls.\u00a0 Herbert writes:<\/p>\n

I wrote, at the time, that there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women \u2014 not so much of an uproar\u2026We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected. We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation\u2019s entertainment. The mainstream culture is filled with the most gruesome forms of misogyny, and pornography is now a multibillion-dollar industry \u2014 much of it controlled by mainstream U.S. corporations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sadly, Bob Herbert is in the extreme minority with his coverage of the Sodini story.\u00a0 Instead, for most of the media, Sodini himself is the real victim – a victim of women.\u00a0 This Boston Globe<\/a> editorial is a perfect example.\u00a0 According to the Globe, Sodini fits the \u201ctypical profile of an American psychopath: He was a loner who lamented his failure with women. His online diary was filled with fury over his sexual frustrations – claiming at one point to have been rejected by \u201830 million\u2019 women. There are, of course, millions of frustrated men who don\u2019t open fire on innocent civilians, so there\u2019s a danger in making too much of his loser profile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sodini is first described as a \u201cpsychopath\u201d by the Globe but then by the end of the passage he\u2019s just one of \u201cmillions of frustrated men\u201d who are rejected by women.\u00a0 What is implied here is that while most rejected men don\u2019t commit mass murder, it\u2019s understandable why George Sodini – or any man – could snap.\u00a0 He was lonely!\u00a0 Them bitches rejected him! Sodini, a psychopathic multiple murderer, is merely a victim of selfish, shallow females.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Imagine that instead of hating women, George Sodini hated and murdered Jews.\u00a0 Imagine the Boston Globe writing this: \u201cGeorge Sodini tried to befriend many of the Jews in his town, but they rejected him.\u00a0 Last week, he went down to the local synagogue and sprayed bullets everywhere.\u00a0 There are, of course, millions of people around the world who are frustrated by Jews, but most of them don\u2019t actually go out and kill, so there\u2019s a danger of making too much of the fact that Jewish people had rejected Sodini in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

This would be outrageous, of course.\u00a0 Any attempt to rationalize murderous behavior and hatred like this is indefensible.\u00a0 Yet female victims, when targeted because of their femaleness, aren\u2019t accorded this kind of dignity and respect.\u00a0 Instead, women are blamed.<\/p>\n

I should point out that the main focus of the Globe\u2019s editorial on Sodini is his racist blog posts against Obama.\u00a0 A lot of other media have also made this the focus of the story, making racist blog posts<\/em> against Obama equal in significance to mass murder<\/em> of females. Because, you know, the Obama angle is more interesting and, let\u2019s face it, more important.<\/p>\n

The coverage of this case is, across the board, sickening.\u00a0 Here are a few headlines:<\/p>\n

The Huffington Post<\/a>
\n\"Capture\"<\/p>\n

The Telegraph U.K.<\/a>
\n\"times\"<\/p>\n

Associated Press (via Yahoo News)<\/a>
\n\"ap\"<\/p>\n

The Times<\/a>
\n\"Capture1\"<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review<\/a>
\n\"Capture2\"<\/p>\n

And the list goes on.\u00a0 In each case, we see that Sodini is the victim.\u00a0 Nowhere do we see a headline like this: Misogynist Commits Mass Murder or Three Women Murdered in Hate Crime. The articles are clear that Sodini hated women, which of course he did, but for the media, if Sodini hated women, then there must be a reason<\/em> for it.\u00a0 A good<\/em> reason. If George Sodini, a proven racist, had murdered African-Americans simply because of their race, would we be asking why<\/em> George Sodini hated African-Americans?\u00a0 No, because what possible legitimate reason could he have?\u00a0 There isn\u2019t one.\u00a0 He\u2019s a racist asshole and that\u2019s the end of it.\u00a0 But apparently, there are legitimate<\/em> reasons to hate all women.\u00a0 The articles try to explain, in rational terms, why Sodini hated women, thus making his rampage seem like the next logical step given his mental instability.\u00a0 If women hadn\u2019t deprived him of sex, none of this would have happened.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the opening of the story from the last headline above, from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cGeorge Sodini couldn\u2019t find love. He tanned, worked out at the gym, held a steady job and still went nearly two decades without the loving touch of a woman, according to his online blog begun in November. He wrote that he felt totally alone \u2014 isolated \u2014 and estimated that 30 million desirable women rejected him in the last 30 years. Enraged, he hatched a heinous plan to make some of those pretty young women pay for his misery. The price would be their lives.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is just sick.\u00a0 It\u2019s beyond<\/em> sick.\u00a0 It reaches new levels of vileness.\u00a0 You\u2019ll notice that this, like a lot of the other coverage, is not written as a news report, but almost as entertainment.\u00a0 Whoever wrote this seems to be taking some vicarious pleasure in the actions of Sodini.<\/p>\n

Sodini worked out \u201cand still<\/em> went nearly two decades without the loving touch<\/em> of a woman\u201d [italics mine].\u00a0 Poor George.\u00a0 He did everything right, yet these cruel women rejected him.\u00a0 What\u2019s wrong with women?\u00a0\u00a0 When confronted with a vicious, hate-filled psychopath, they just ran in the other direction, without even considering his good qualities at all.\u00a0 Typical!<\/p>\n

For a moment, just imagine if George Sodini had<\/em> had a girlfriend.\u00a0 There can be virtually no doubt that she would have been physically and emotionally abused during the relationship, because George Sodini hated women.\u00a0 If the woman had tried to escape from him, she would have been stalked and likely murdered.\u00a0 And after he killed her, he would have probably committed a mass murder of women anyway.\u00a0 The headline: Heartbroken Man Goes on Rampage After Being Dumped.<\/p>\n

The real story here is not lonely men (there are plenty of lonely women as well), but instead, the real story is male violence against women and girls, which occurs every second of every day in the form of domestic abuse, molestation, harassment, rape and murder. There is no rational, legitimate reason for this hatred of women, yet it is widespread in our culture and everyday, women die as a result. Writes Herbert:<\/p>\n

Life in the United States is mind-bogglingly violent. But we should take particular notice of the staggering amounts of violence brought down on the nation\u2019s women and girls each and every day for no other reason than who they are. They are attacked because they are female<\/span>. A girl or woman somewhere in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. There were so many sexual attacks against women in the armed forces that the Defense Department had to revise its entire approach to the problem. We would become much more sane, much healthier, as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem, and that the twisted way so many men feel about women, combined with the absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the conversation we should be having.\u00a0 Instead, the media is legitimizing Sodini\u2019s misogyny and giving him the exact platform he craved – he\u2019s gone out in a blaze of glory, with everyone dissecting his blog posts and commenting on his mistreatment and loneliness.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Anglofille<\/a>\u00a0is the nom de blog of an American ex-pat living in London.\u00a0 She is finishing up a PhD in English and writing a novel with feminist themes.\u00a0\u00a0 She has previously written for\u00a0Our Bodies, Ourselves<\/em>, as well as numerous consumer magazines.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0Anglofille. The Reclusive Leftist wonders why George Sodini\u2019s mass murder of women in an aerobics class in Pennsylvania last week is not receiving more news coverage.\u00a0 And also, why is the crime not being referred to as a hate crime? If I want to read about the Pennsylvania shooting, I have to search for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,23384,55,2090,129,133],"class_list":["post-12145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender","tag-gender-violence","tag-media","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12145"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55407,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12145\/revisions\/55407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}