Charlotte Allen blames Sandy Hook tragedy on lack of male presence

"There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred . . . Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers . . . 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."

Never mind that a 61-year-old woman stopped a gunman in Tuscan, last year.

Original article:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335996/newtown-answers-nro-symposium

Responses:
- http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/19/1361521/top-conservative-publication...
- http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/education/national-review-blames-sandy-ho...
- http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/12/20/nros-charlotte-allen-blames-the...
- http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/charlotte-allen-newtown-shooting-comments-...
- http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/19/1171846/-Stop-school-massacres-with-a-p...

It has spawned this tumblr account: http://afeminizedsetting.tumblr.com

I'm rather...not happy with this individual, so I just LOVE her twitter profile summary:

"Respected conservative journalist--that's a quote from Virginia Postrel--plus, I have a Ph.D. in medieval studies, so I'm really smart!"

Hmm, I seem to recall that there was one adult male on the premises and without that one it would have been just another day at school.

Crazy talk.

#2

I was gonna say. One showed up.

I heard so much garbage in relation to this horror I just can't... respond to anything.

Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak (from itself???)... but it has been forced out of the culture... therefore male aggression??

That seems to be her cyclic logic.  I fear people like her, and how they might rationalize any horrors they might commit.

So, let me get this right - basically, we helpless woman need a nice aggressive man around at all times to protect us from the aggression of . . . um . . . men? Am I the only one who sees a strange circularity in this argument? Until yesterday I'd never heard of this woman and, somehow, the world was just a slightly better place.

"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."

Yeah, let's think about it for a nanosecond...they would have been cut in half like a hot knife through butter by an assault rifle that fires as fast as you can pull the trigger.

How does the author explain the theatre or the Virginia Tech shootings where there were plenty of men?

Gee, let's actually think about this for longer than a nanosecond. Gun violence in the US couldn't be related to our worship of male aggression. The fact that we hold up violent males as heroes has nothing to do with anything...Rambo, Terminator, football, Extreme wrestling, Ultimate fighting, violent video games...owning an assault rifle as a symbol of machismo.

What kind of culture would we have if we held up compassionate nurturing leaders as heroes? What kind of culture would we have if we held up the female teachers who gave their lives to protect their students as heroes, which in every sense of the word they are...I find that pretty macho actually.

I love hack-and-slash videogames (Blizzard's Diablo and Nintendo's Zelda, in particular), and friends and family would list me among the most compassionate people they know.  I don't write this to brag (because, in truth, it's really awkward to write or even speak of myself in this manner), but because it also worries me that parents are being told that, if they want to fix the problem of violence in the world, they just need to stop letting their children play videogames.  Would restricted videogame time help with their better development?  Most likely, but that also depends on what they do in their free time.  In high school, when I wasn't hacking and slashing demons and orcs, I was playing my saxophone, writing epics (to the best of my ability), playing with friends, arguing/debating with my little brother, engaged in school sports . . . it all depends the child and the child's family.  If a child is in a less supportive environment where videogames are not a factor, what's our excuse then?

Also, I really hope none of the children have read this guano woman's ravings.  At the age of nine, I'd be devastated enough to lose my little brother, but then to hear some woman blaming me for not doing anything to protect him, that wouldn't help me.  Then again, I'm a delicate female person, so maybe I don't count.  Maybe if, as @PedrBran points out, I go study under Rambo and Terminator, I'll get it, because they make such great role models for kids.  No harm comes from emulating them.

(Just to be sure, I hope my sarcasm comes through the text, because I'm agreeing with @PedrBran, not criticizing! ^^;)

Well after comment 2, is there really anything left to say? Thank you Booksloth.

As predicted, she's defending her stupidity.

#7 - Booksloth - Well said. You get post of the day. That's all I have to say about this atrociousness.

#10/12 Thank you both.

PedrBran (8), Point nicely made. Earlier that December I'd been surprised to find that 69 of the total of 248 Medals of Honor awarded in Vietnam involved men throwing themselves on grenades and mines in order to save their comrades. I'd add that even more medals were awarded in situations where men had exposed themselves to danger in order to rescue or treat their comrades. For the very reason you mentioned I have been campaigning ever since to have the heroism of the women of Sandy Hook Elementary School recognised - given that it was of the same order as the sacrifice made by those 69 men. The latest recognition by the Government in awarding them the Presidential Citizens Medal seems to me a job 'half done', but 'well started'. The point of course is that the women were not acting in the sort of 'macho' way that is extolled in that dreadful computer game 'Medal of Honor', but in the manner of true heroes, just as many recipients of the true Medal of Honor had before them. Personally I'd like to see an 'Education Medal of Valor' created, but I'm expecting it's a work of at least a couple of years to begin to see that happen. Again, in order to point out to America who the real heroes are. But in the meantime, my best regards and thanks for your posting.

14:  I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't thought about that.  They most definitely deserve such recognition.

#14 What a great point and I wholeheartedly support what you are doing. Unfortunately a great deal of female valour consists of making the best of an impossible situation created by men and protecting their loved ones from the consequences. Not the kind of thing that's going to receive medals any time soon.

The other side to this argument, I suppose, is whether the whole idea of awards, medals and honours is a male concept anyway and whether women should even want to join in. Maybe we should leave the men to their glory-hunting and demonstrate a better way? (I'm not saying I think we should - just offering an alternative position to think about.)

#16 I have to say first of all that you've got me thinking about gender issues in relation to awards, medals and Honors - and I hadn't done so previously, so well done and thank you! I note that you suggest that there might be a link between 'glory-hunting' and men, while earlier noting that 'protecting ... loved ones' is a typically female trait. It sounds kind of 'right', but as I've become more familiar over time with the various awards and Honors systems, the evidence seems to point elsewhere. I'd venture to suggest (and I am working to quantify this data) that at least half of the instances of heroic acts could be characterised as 'compassionate' (if we consider recipients of military and of civilian Honors), and that most of those are performed by men. There is no aggressive or self-serving aspect to someone throwing themselves on top of a grenade to absorb the blast, or running into a burning building to rescue a child. That more men than women receive these sort of Honors is because the numbers are skewed by the preponderance of males in categories of employment that routinely award Honors (eg the military, police, fire fighters etc). The Carnegie Medal which is awarded for civilian life-saving appears to be allocated fairly evenly between male and females. Whatever is happening, it doesn't seem to have a 'neat' gender divide.

Of course the Military created the Medal of Honor in order to celebrate (and foster in its ranks) the spirit of aggressive valor. But it is an interesting development that within the Military among troops and commanders who were experiencing real combat there has over time been equal (and ungrudging) recognition of compassionate valor. And again, amongst Veterans (and I worked with them for many years) there is an astonishing modesty and reluctance to talk about their own acts of heroism, regardless of whether they might be characterised as aggressive or compassionate. Most heroes - military or civilian - say that they didn't have time to think about whether their heroics would reflect well on them, but rather that they simply acted 'without thinking'. That's not to say, however, that the impulse that drove them to act 'without thinking' didn't arise from notions of self-worth and of social expectations that had a gender element to them. On the other hand some real life heroes do describe 'thinking' before doing something heroic, and sometimes it is some thought of revenge or anger, but more often it is (as they describe it) a sense that they couldn't live with themselves (and in society) if they didn't give it a 'try'. We could speculate that males have a notion that they have to behave bravely in combat in order to sustain the admiration of women (and the white feather campaign in World War I played on that notion), but at the same time we might equally speculate that a person who has dedicated their life to teaching would instinctively act to protect their students - and that would apply equally to female and male educators.

My real campaign is to promote the concept of compassionate (non-aggressive) valor, and counter the infantile notions propagated by some toxic computer games that valor can be measured in 'kills'. I wouldn't care so much if it wasn't that most teenagers are more familiar with shoot-em-up games than they are with the realities of sacrifice and compassionate heroism. For them to see teachers given an honor equivalent to the bravest police and firefighters in the Nation would seem to be a step in the right direction. Furthermore a specific Medal of Valor for educators is an opportunity to talk about the sacrifice of all teachers and people who work in the education system. And finally, it sends a message to gunmen that the teacher will come out of any encounter as the hero and never as the 'victim'. Which leaves little or no room for the gunman to achieve heroic status through his or her deeds.

For a real life example of a teacher I'd recommend this link to Utube: http://tinyurl.com/9wazxu8. I might add that Jencie Fagan talks there about hugging the gunman/child after he throws down his weapon, and being so relieved that he didn't have it in his hands when armed responders arrived - not for her own sake, but you can guess she meant that she feared otherwise he would have been shot and killed. What is revealing is that every news report I've read on the incident describes her as 'restraining' the gunman until responders arrived. I had the distinct impression from what she said in the video interview that she was hugging him out of compassion. An interesting case (I suspect) of the media trying to paint her heroics in a more aggressive and less compassionate light. Given that the Congressional Medal of Honor Society sponsored her award - and the video - the mention of this act of counter-intuitive compassion in the video says something (I believe) about the values of the Medal of Honor Society. And of course the Congressional Medal of Honor Society is possibly one of the most exclusive organisations in the world. In order to be a member you have to be a recipient of the Medal of Honor. Those folks know a lot about being a hero, and seemingly a lot about compassion as well. Sorry if I seem to be chewing your ear over this (at great length). See, you set me thinking...