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On the list of female terrorists this guy writes about, I would have to include Janet Reno. ;-)
Ruby Ridge...
Waco...
Elian Gonzalez...
War/Terrorism/Violence is not male.
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Since we can't, unfortunately, deny the accuracy of his observation that most (known) terrorists have been male, I was wondering what all of your theories were as to why this is? I'd like to think it's not the reason that the author of this article insinuates. And, make no mistake, this guy is definitely insinuating that males are - inherently - the root of most evil, and with no excuses.
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I think men and women are equally as evil, just that men may be more efficient killers. Consider this: each of the pilots of those four planes had exactly one chance to turn back, while Andrea Yates had five. She killed far fewer people, but I submit to you that her evil was rooted much deeper.
Frank H
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This suicidal terrorism is an evil perversion of the male tendency for action and self-sacrifice. The terrorists probably even convinced themselves they were being protective of their loved ones from the object of their hatred. Does this mean terrorism is soley male? I doubt it. I'd like to know how many women served on the sidelines to support and encourage these men - even if it was just moral support. Women certainly weren't absent from the radical muslims that cheered the terrorist acts. Does anyone doubt that women are immune to hatred, or acting on hatred? Didn't Nazi military men have the love and support of wife and family?
In the case of the Sept 11th terrorist, the amount of female involvement is something we will probably never know.
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The events of September 11th shocked all of us very deeply, and in the immediate aftermath of the events one group of people were held up as a shining example of courage at the hour of most need: men. Whether it was the 300 fireMEN who died when the WTC towers collapsed or the policeMEN who went with them or the MEN who took on the terrorists on one of the hijacked planes, the word was that men were good - great - heroes!. This image of men runs so counter to current 'thinking' that it was inevitable there would be a backlash against it. Even as members of the New york fire department searched in vain through the rubble for their missing buddies, one female journalist over here in England was sniffily complaining at the lack of female voices on TV in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe. Her take was the usual thing: that women's voices would have acted as a counter to those of brutish, warlike men. Never mind that the same pole that showed some 75% of men to be in favour of military retaliation also showed nearly 60% of women to be of the same opinion. Another article stated that the attacks were motivated by a hatred of feminism, drawing attention to the fact that all of the terrorists were MALE and came from a highly male-centred culture - though it failed to draw attention to the gender of most of the victims or the nature of the targets.
If one word sums up this backlash against the striking heroism of these men it is this: resentment. War imagery is not uncommon in modern popular feminism, but the reality is that nobody is at war with women. The use of the metaphore is wrong, and it leads to profoundly distorted ideas about the reality of people's lives, as anyone who's trawled through the literature on domestic violence will know. The events of September 11th and the selfless courage of the men who died trying to save the lives of others momentarily threw into stark relief the pettiness and crappiness of pop feminists' attitudes towards men. Even as thick clouds of dust and smoke fell accross Manhattan it was as if another obscuring veil was lifted. Here were men, quite unstaged, shown not as rapists, wife-beaters, idiots, oppressers or murderers, but as they really are. The magnitude of the events made it impossible to keep their heroism off our TV screens for a period of several days, which must have seemed like a torment of wrongness to media manhaters - hence the backlash now.
Questions such as 'Is terrorism male?' are symptomatic of a mindset which equates the word 'male' with 'bad', and as such the asking of the question is redundant since the one doing the asking already believes that it is. One could just as well ask 'Is art male?', 'Is computer science male?', 'Is genius male?'. Certainly these things are largely done by men (which is not the same as saying they are male). Oh, and how about 'Is heroism male?'
As an aside, the question sometimes arises as to what one should do when confronted with a manhating (sometimes wrongly called 'male-bashing') attitude. Given that most of these attitudes are petty or based on incorrect ideas about the nature of society, perhaps one could activate memories of the gobsmacking lifting of the veil that seemed to take place in the immediate aftermath of the WTC attacks. So, next time some tedious idiot drones on about how bad all men are, look them in the eye and say the following two words:
Remember Manhattan.
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Here's what the author of that article had to say when I questioned him in an e-mail.
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It struck me that terrorism seemed to be a male-dominated profession, much like murderer, domestic violence perpetrator and school shooter. I don't agree that this has nothing to do with anything. I did say most
of us men abhore this act and would have nothing to do with it, but we live in a world where no one is surprised when men are violent.
I was just making an observation. I respect your opinion and I'm glad you took the time to write.
Jim Stingl
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There are probably actually more female terrorists than male, though they tend to restrict their field of opperations to the "home" front.
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I just sent Jim Stingl an e-mail expanding on the points I made in 'Men Are Good' Shocker!, and tying them in more with points he raised in his article. It's no bad thing to prod these people more than once, since their attitudes are only maintained through peer-group pressure anyway. If they though a lot of people disapproved of what they think they'd soon arrive at a different point of view. I'll probably just get the usual bluster - you know how it is - but it's better than saying nothing and letting the guy think there's nothing amiss in his attitudes. I'll update you when I get a reply.
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