Another "Goth" with a gun
Sep. 17th, 2006 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreaminghopeIn light of the shooting at Dawson College on Wednesday, all kinds of issues are being stirred up in the Canadian media: teen violence, gun violence and the gun registry, sub-cultures, alienated youth, and past rampage killings. I tried to read the many news articles about it all from my Saturday "Globe and Mail", but I'm finding it all very overwhelming. I'm hoping that writing it out will help me where reading hasn't been.
There are two main comparisons being made to past rampage killings:
December 6th, 1989: A man walked into L'Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, and killed 14 female students: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, and Annie Turcotte.
This comparison is made due to physical location and the horror of the citizens of Montreal, facing their second rampage killer. However, the Polytechnique killings were committed by an anti-feminist who specifically targeted female students. I don't think anyone believes anything similar about the Dawson College killer.
April 20th, 1999: Two students entered Columbine High School, Colorado, and killed 12 students and 1 teacher: Rachel Scott, Daniel Rohrbough, Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Isaiah Shoels, John Tomlin, Lauren Townsend, Kyle Velasquez, and William David "Dave" Sanders. They also injured 21 others.
The newest rampage killer is said to have admired the Columbine killers. He emulated the things about them that were focused on the media immediately following the Colorado crimes, such as the "trench coat mafia" and the Goth images. Some of the first news reports to come out following the shootings described the shooter as a man in black, with a mohawk. I said to Russ: "Why can't they dress like a preppy when they decide to go kill people?"
In the days immediately following Columbine, the Goth kids and similar sub-cultures of high schools in the US and Canada (and probably elsewhere) found themselves more on the defensive then usual. They, who had probably been the victims of bullying for years, suddenly found themselves suspected of being the next ones to blow. The bullying continued or worsened.
Many of these bullied teens found themselves in a weird situation. They want - need - to condemn the murderers and distance themselves from them, and yet... what bullied kid hasn't fantasized about revenge?
Russ and I, two years out of high school at the time of Columbine, and many of our friends, found ourselves sympathizing with the killers, though we didn't want to. We knew who they'd been before they were murderers; we'd been through the kind of things that made them into monsters.
September 13th, 2006: A man killed 1 student - Anastasia DeSousa – and injured 19 others at Dawson College, Montreal.
In the aftermath, revelations that the killer was a member of VampireFreaks.com has left the Goth community scrambling. The home page of VampireFreaks has two messages about the tragedy. The Officers of Avalon, a Pagan organization, has been preparing information about Vampyre spirituality. Other organizations have press releases circulating.
Many of the counter-culture people seem to be saying to their tormentors, as represented by the mainstream: "You can't reject me; I reject you." There's a lot of angry, disaffected kids growing into adults within these communities. Some find a place to belong. Some use the sub-culture as an excuse to be deliberately bizarre, to shock "the mundanes". Some stay angry. Eight years after he finished high school, Anastasia's murderer was still expressing anger at the "jocks" and "preps".
Knowing from experience what teens sometimes go through, I feel undesired compassion for the killers. This competes with my disgust at what they've done and my empathy for the families who have lost loved ones. Is it possible to feel bad for the criminals without being disrespectful to their victims?
We have to find a way to do exactly that, I think, because if we keep making the killers into monsters, unworthy of our compassion or understanding on any level, we will continue to seek ways to blame their crimes on their internal flaws or on a variety of external factors (pick your favourite: violent movies, video games, Marilyn Manson, the Internet, lax gun laws) that have nothing to do with what made these kids so angry to begin with. And if we act as though these kids are natural monsters, then it is too easy to label kids in the same sub-cultures, with the same taste in music or fashion, as potential monsters too, and maybe think that we have to target them to fix the problem.
At the same time, I don't want to give the individual killers more fame for their crimes. Though I feel bad about what they went through prior to picking up the gun, their choice is still their responsibility. That's why I haven't named any of the gunmen in this post.
I could get Wednesday's killer's name from dozens of articles in Saturday's paper, but I had to do a web search to find his victim's. It was probably in all the articles on Wednesday and Thursday, but was already gone by Saturday. I had to do a specific search for the victims to get the Polytechnique names; a general search for information about that crime gave me information about the killer and his motive, but not anything about who he killed. Columbine was a little quicker, for there are memorial sites for a lot of the victims.
I was only ten when Polytechnique happened, so I don't think I knew anything about it at the time. Dawson College hasn't hit me very hard on its own: maybe because the victim was a little older, maybe because only one person died. But it is taking me back to the day of Columbine, when I cried during hours of coverage: news footage of the kids running out of the school, the parents and students sobbing on screen, and the news reports that followed, analyzing the killers. And that's when my anger started, as the killers were called "Goths" and everyone talked about their violent video games, and reports started coming in about new school dress codes, increased problems with bullying, copy-cat killers, suspensions over behaviour that would have been considered innocent the month before. And little being done to cure the problem.
Will this time be any different? Some of the analysis articles are talking about the bullying, the isolation, the anger, the disaffection. Others are still talking about gun laws (not that greater gun control isn’t a good idea, in my opinion), video games, etc.
I wish I had a conclusion to draw from all of this. Tonight I'm going to post this, hope that the links help clear up misconceptions, and then I'm going to pray for the families of the victims and for the lonely kids who aren't sure that they will ever belong anywhere.
There are two main comparisons being made to past rampage killings:
December 6th, 1989: A man walked into L'Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, and killed 14 female students: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, and Annie Turcotte.
This comparison is made due to physical location and the horror of the citizens of Montreal, facing their second rampage killer. However, the Polytechnique killings were committed by an anti-feminist who specifically targeted female students. I don't think anyone believes anything similar about the Dawson College killer.
April 20th, 1999: Two students entered Columbine High School, Colorado, and killed 12 students and 1 teacher: Rachel Scott, Daniel Rohrbough, Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Isaiah Shoels, John Tomlin, Lauren Townsend, Kyle Velasquez, and William David "Dave" Sanders. They also injured 21 others.
The newest rampage killer is said to have admired the Columbine killers. He emulated the things about them that were focused on the media immediately following the Colorado crimes, such as the "trench coat mafia" and the Goth images. Some of the first news reports to come out following the shootings described the shooter as a man in black, with a mohawk. I said to Russ: "Why can't they dress like a preppy when they decide to go kill people?"
In the days immediately following Columbine, the Goth kids and similar sub-cultures of high schools in the US and Canada (and probably elsewhere) found themselves more on the defensive then usual. They, who had probably been the victims of bullying for years, suddenly found themselves suspected of being the next ones to blow. The bullying continued or worsened.
Many of these bullied teens found themselves in a weird situation. They want - need - to condemn the murderers and distance themselves from them, and yet... what bullied kid hasn't fantasized about revenge?
Russ and I, two years out of high school at the time of Columbine, and many of our friends, found ourselves sympathizing with the killers, though we didn't want to. We knew who they'd been before they were murderers; we'd been through the kind of things that made them into monsters.
September 13th, 2006: A man killed 1 student - Anastasia DeSousa – and injured 19 others at Dawson College, Montreal.
In the aftermath, revelations that the killer was a member of VampireFreaks.com has left the Goth community scrambling. The home page of VampireFreaks has two messages about the tragedy. The Officers of Avalon, a Pagan organization, has been preparing information about Vampyre spirituality. Other organizations have press releases circulating.
Many of the counter-culture people seem to be saying to their tormentors, as represented by the mainstream: "You can't reject me; I reject you." There's a lot of angry, disaffected kids growing into adults within these communities. Some find a place to belong. Some use the sub-culture as an excuse to be deliberately bizarre, to shock "the mundanes". Some stay angry. Eight years after he finished high school, Anastasia's murderer was still expressing anger at the "jocks" and "preps".
Knowing from experience what teens sometimes go through, I feel undesired compassion for the killers. This competes with my disgust at what they've done and my empathy for the families who have lost loved ones. Is it possible to feel bad for the criminals without being disrespectful to their victims?
We have to find a way to do exactly that, I think, because if we keep making the killers into monsters, unworthy of our compassion or understanding on any level, we will continue to seek ways to blame their crimes on their internal flaws or on a variety of external factors (pick your favourite: violent movies, video games, Marilyn Manson, the Internet, lax gun laws) that have nothing to do with what made these kids so angry to begin with. And if we act as though these kids are natural monsters, then it is too easy to label kids in the same sub-cultures, with the same taste in music or fashion, as potential monsters too, and maybe think that we have to target them to fix the problem.
At the same time, I don't want to give the individual killers more fame for their crimes. Though I feel bad about what they went through prior to picking up the gun, their choice is still their responsibility. That's why I haven't named any of the gunmen in this post.
I could get Wednesday's killer's name from dozens of articles in Saturday's paper, but I had to do a web search to find his victim's. It was probably in all the articles on Wednesday and Thursday, but was already gone by Saturday. I had to do a specific search for the victims to get the Polytechnique names; a general search for information about that crime gave me information about the killer and his motive, but not anything about who he killed. Columbine was a little quicker, for there are memorial sites for a lot of the victims.
I was only ten when Polytechnique happened, so I don't think I knew anything about it at the time. Dawson College hasn't hit me very hard on its own: maybe because the victim was a little older, maybe because only one person died. But it is taking me back to the day of Columbine, when I cried during hours of coverage: news footage of the kids running out of the school, the parents and students sobbing on screen, and the news reports that followed, analyzing the killers. And that's when my anger started, as the killers were called "Goths" and everyone talked about their violent video games, and reports started coming in about new school dress codes, increased problems with bullying, copy-cat killers, suspensions over behaviour that would have been considered innocent the month before. And little being done to cure the problem.
Will this time be any different? Some of the analysis articles are talking about the bullying, the isolation, the anger, the disaffection. Others are still talking about gun laws (not that greater gun control isn’t a good idea, in my opinion), video games, etc.
I wish I had a conclusion to draw from all of this. Tonight I'm going to post this, hope that the links help clear up misconceptions, and then I'm going to pray for the families of the victims and for the lonely kids who aren't sure that they will ever belong anywhere.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-18 05:00 am (UTC)My worst experiences were more than half my lifetime ago, but they have shaped who I am so they probably affect me daily in ways I don't realize. It caused me to be curious about homeschooling, and to read up on the original purpose of schools: to teach people to be widgets, so they can be fit into the industrial system (rough paraphrase, according to J.T. Gatto).
Do you think that there is a way to avoid the kind of emotional scarring that goes on as a part of the youth culture of our institutionalized school system? There have been programs like 'The Empathy Project' where a baby is brought into class weekly to teach the kids about empathy, and any number of anti-bullying initiatives. It seems like these programs are small, weak responses to a huge root-causes problem: poverty, families with insufficient support, hyper-competitive culture, the ingrained idea that bullying is an acceptable way for adults to get what they want, plus probably lots of other causes I can't think of right now.
Why do I always end up deciding that a large part of our industrial way of life is wrong, and that we must scrap it!? It's not really a very helpful conclusion.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-18 05:25 am (UTC)I don't know. I find the whole thing so frustrating.
As inadequate as those anti-bullying projects are, I think they are better then the response to Columbine was for most schools, which can be summarised as blaming absolutely everyone and everything except what was happening inside that school.
In the meantime, we need to work on whatever root causes we can tackle. Poverty, over-crowded schools, over-worked teachers... these seem to be good places to start.
I know. The problem is, that is at least a part of it, so as unhelpful as it is, it is something we need to know. I guess the best we can do is help where we can, and refuse to participate when we can.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-18 11:13 am (UTC)I don't think it can be totally eliminated but things can be done. From my vantage point, the schools need to first look at bullying as a serious problem rather than the way things are and will always be.
The worst time of my life was junior high school. I can't remember how many times I got called into the principal's office for fighting. The fact that I never started a fight in my life never seemed to register with the administration. Surprisingly, neither did the fact that in so many of these so-called 'fights,' the odds were usually three against one. It should have been obvious that I did not have a Jackie Chan complex considering every 'fight' where I was ganged up against, I got my ass kicked.
I've long since forgiven my fellow classmates; even those that were two cowardly to attack me one-on-one. I've never forgiven the incompetent administration who, rather than trying to stop the bullies, would punish me simply for trying to defend myself.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-19 02:45 am (UTC)I hear you there. Administrators often punish the victim or just scold the bullies: "He says you are picking on him. That hurts his feelings. Stop doing that." Like that would ever work.