Woman held after 2 shot dead at Kraft cookie plant

Mensactivism.org is a powerful new force for change in the world. Many great conversations are happening here. Many new ideas are broached, and communicated, and critiqued through this site. The organizers have done a great job, and they are to be loudly applauded (as much as I can through a keyboard, I am doing the same).

But I wonder, is it not time for us to de-emphasize all these women doing violent acts stories? Perhaps we should only post those that have a clearly discernible men's right angle? Simply another instance in which a woman does some violence - that is not noteworthy, and there are so many of these cases, it is hard to know which to include and which not to include... so perhaps we should require the articulation of a specific men's rights angle on each of these women doing something violent stories, as a condition of being posted?

I wholeheartedly agree that there is a widespread myth that men are the perpetrators of violence, and women are the victims -- be it waging war, domestic violence, rape, you name it. We need to address that head on, absolutely. But the readers of this site are very well acquainted, by now, with the many violent things that women do. That a woman, who was upset about being fired, went into her ex-employer's premises and shot some people, that's not in the slightest unbelievable, or even new or different.

Yes, it is good that the media is writing about this, instead of hushing it up. But just what is the men's rights angle about this story? I don't get it. Maybe Anthony could give us the MRA angle.

I see your point, redwoodwriter, but as you say this; "Yes, it is good that the media is writing about this,..." the fact remains that this doesn't appear to be reported in cbc news when the same story involving a man would be front page for days.

I agree that simply documenting every case is likely not worth the returns on the effort. For this story, well, there are too many people out there who, when a man does this, would say "how come you never hear about women doing these sorts of things?" you can demonstrate that it does happen and then challenge the person to revisit in a non-rhetorical way the question as to why you never hear about it.

There are still advantages. Plus, you appear to assume that only MRAs visit this site. There may be a number of 'unconvinced' who are reading.

Unless there's an explicit Pussy Pass™ or other MR angle, it makes us sound like a tabloid.

I am not suggesting that we drop these "women doing violent things" articles from the site. I am suggesting that we accompany each of the ones posted with a clear indication of the men's rights issue. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not into making women look bad for its own sake [yes, I know many feminists apparently bash men for its own sake, seemingly as a sport, or perhaps to establish the alleged moral superiority of women, but we don't need to stoop to that level].

So either the one who posts an article, or the moderator who handles it, could add a comment about the men's rights issue that is addressed by each of these "women doing violent things" articles. For example, one might show inequitable treatment in the court system, one might show how the public's response to the same crime varies by gender, one might show how we make excuses for women but not for men, etc. Specifying a men's rights issue for each of these articles would also be educational for those who were lurking, or just passing through, making the site more educational in nature. For those of us MRAs, it would also be a more direct call to action. So let's get more mileage out of these articles, rather than simply leaving it at "here's another one of those women being violent cases."

Personally, I find the articles useful (thank you, anthony).

They help mitigate the "women are good, men are bad" mentality. I have used these articles in other conversations to strengthen MR arguments.

Also, it is possible to look at a collection or representative sample of these articles to demonstrate how the media often, but not always, portrays women's violence differently than men's violence (e.g., women are sad, depressed, disturbed, need help, whereas men are angry, aggressive, and violent.) I think it is good to have a nice and easily accessible "archive" of these articles if for no other reason than for research purposes.

You are right. The fact that women commit violent acts is not necessarily a MR issue. But I think there is a lot more that can be gained from these stories.

Collating and archiving these examples of womens violence is vitally important for the historical record and we should all be grateful to the administrators of Mensactivism.org for providing this important central repository.