Both: How do you feel about the Covenant School shooting?

submitted by worried19 from self.GCdebatesQT

In case anyone has been living under a rock, a transgender natal female shooter targeted and attacked a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, killing three adults and three young children.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/27/nashville-school-shooter-audrey-hale-identified-as-transgender-and-had-detailed-manifesto-to-attack-christian-academy

GC and QT, what do you think about this shooting? How do you feel about the media coverage, and what do you think was the shooter's motivation? How will this incident impact transgender political issues in the USA?

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[–]beris😎 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I'm certain the right wing media in the States will run with it until they've beaten the dead horse so thoroughly it's unrecognizable , all in an effort to once again point the finger at anything but guns. Otherwise, it's a non-issue. I don't care who is doing the mass shootings, I want them to stop. Trans people are, incredibly, people, and thus capable of atrocity just like the rest of us.

[–]worried19[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Trans people are, incredibly, people, and thus capable of atrocity just like the rest of us.

Very true, but there remains the possibility that Hale may have committed this crime because TRAs have whipped vulnerable members of their own community into a frenzy over an imaginary "genocide." Take a mentally unstable person, convince her that Republicans are comparable to Nazis getting ready to throw trans people into death camps, and it would not be surprising that that person may strike back in vengeance.

[–]adungitit 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Uhhh Republicans may not be putting people in literal death camps, but they're for sure extremely hostile to human rights and regressive to society as a whole.

[–]worried19[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Depends on the Republican. There are moderate ones out there, too. My main sticking point is the abortion issue, and while there are pro-choice Republicans, that's not their base. At this point I'm politically homeless. I'm still registered as a Democrat, but I don't feel like I can vote for them.

[–]worried19[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

At this point, I'm numb to school shootings, but the ones where elementary schools are targeted are still rare enough to make a bigger impression. This is too unique for the media to ignore. A female shooter who was trans identified attacking a Christian school hits too many hot-button topics.

The shooter's motivation is still unknown, although the police chief did say "there is some theory to that" when asked if the shooting was related to how Audrey Hale identified. I suspect gender ideology was mentioned in her manifesto, although we won't know for sure until the manifesto is released. There's also speculation she targeted the school because she may have been the victim of sexual abuse there. There's no evidence she was abused, although there was an abuser affiliated with the church at the time she would have attended.

I find it interesting how little the TRA movement has been able to police the language. On Reddit, you will see people complaining about Audrey not being called Aiden or "he/him," but the mainstream media is either desperately trying to ignore pronouns altogether, using "they," or outright using "she" with no regard for her pronouns. If Hale thought becoming a school shooter would cause her to be seen as male, she would have been sorely disappointed in this outcome.

As usual, the right and the left are going to take what they want from this incident. From the left, we are still seeing a continuation of the same tone-deaf rhetoric that may have radicalized Hale and caused her to commit this crime. From the right, we are seeing that conservatives view this as a welcome distraction from the issue of guns.

[–]BiologyIsReal 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I find it interesting how little the TRA movement has been able to police the language. On Reddit, you will see people complaining about Audrey not being called Aiden or "he/him," but the mainstream media is either desperately trying to ignore pronouns altogether, using "they," or outright using "she" with no regard for her pronouns. If Hale thought becoming a school shooter would cause her to be seen as male, she would have been sorely disappointed in this outcome.

Evidence #43817 that no one actually believes this stuff.

[–]BiologyIsReal 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I won't comment much on the shooter's possible motivations because I don't like to speculate with so little information. I've seen people blaming exogenous hormones for the shooting, which is possible, although I'm not sure if it is confirmed that she was taking testosterone and, even if she was, there are many potential confounding factors (like whatever unresolved trauma or mental illness she may had, she possibly trying to prove how "manly" she was, TRA's violent rhetoric and irresponsible talks of genocide and suicide, and so on).

On one hand, I don't think you can rule out, without examining it first, the role that her chosen identity may have played. On the other hand, focusing too much on her identity is missing the forest for the trees.

I read Nashville was the 129th mass shooting in the US in 2023 (that is more mass shootings than days in the year so far...) and the 13th in a school setting. This a very American issue that don't happen anywhere else, not at this rate, anyway, pretty likely because there are too many guns in the US. It's quite easy buying and carrying firearms there, even assault riffles, that belong in the military. What for a civilian would need, for instance, an AR-15 living in a country that is not fighting a war in their own soil? Of course, the US is always at war with someone else, but that happens far, far away.

It's far too easy for wannabee shooters to have access to firearms, even ones designed to kill many people in a short time, yet there is little political will to restrict said access. Supposedly because of some sacrosanct right to bear arms, but more likely because regulations kill profits and the American gun lobby is quite powerful.

And for many Americans, guns seem to be answer to everything. I'm not longer shocked that, after a new mass shooting in the US, there are calls for bringing more guns so the "good guys" can fight off the "bad guys" and protect the innocents. But, for what I've hear over the years, apparently plenty of these gunmen, in their twisted logic, see themselves as the "good guys" fighting for a "just cause" and write a whole manifesto justifying their criminal acts. Not unlike American politicians of either party deciding to invade foreign countries or to make "regimen change" abroad pretending that is for a noble cause like "spreading democracy" or "human rights", all with the full approval of MSM; except that American war criminals are respected and never pay for their crimes. And American troops are honored for "serving their country"; even though that usually means ravaging the invaded countries so as to rich Americans can get richer.

Some may object that I'm linking mass shootings with militarism, but when so many Americans regard an AR-15 as a reasonable choice for self defense...

This is how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart

Varmints, soldiers and looming threats: See the ads used to sell the AR-15

[–]adungitit 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

While there's a lot to be said in regards to trans criminals gender-typical behaviour, I find the conservative "look, trans shooter!" finger-pointing so laughably ironic, given just how much death and straight up terrorism their precious white male supremacism directly leads to, and given how much their no-questions-asked gun-worshipping keeps these things in the news.

As for my opinion, based on limited info and my experience with social trends in this area, she seemed to have been the standard-issue awkward (probably autistic) terminally-online artsy animal-idolising female millenial (mentally teen) with an interest in horror and morbidity, perhaps with a crushing-on-mass-murderers phase. I've pretty consistently seen those women directed into the trans pipeline. She would've been told that her fascination with male fictional/real life killers and her not wanting to be feminine was due to her being male herself, which is in line with trans people's very artificial obsessive ideas about the opposite sex. Since she was probably around male-dominated horror/gore websites or 4chan-like imageboards, she might've latched onto things like guns, atheism-as-an-identity and the "kids are annoying and need to die" mentality, and might've pushed it to prove to herself she belongs there. She sure as hell wouldn't latch onto the misogynistic abuse-and-rape-women aspect of these communities since that would hit a bit too close to home (err, I mean it would "gender invalidate her") and also target her female friends, so she'd need to compensate with something else.

I'm not sure if she got roped into some 4chan-level trans crowd or transmedicalists or whatever, or if she was just going off of the ever-present patriarchal toxicity all around us. Either way she probably felt this would be an ideal way to gender validate herself as a cool edgy loner boy, which is more attractive than crazy hysterical bitch or some other misogynistic slur. She must've liked the idea, based on previous trans shooters and general trans crime coverage, that the news would have to refer to her with male pronouns. Heck, the trans crowd is already gender-affirming themselves with her - "See! Female trans people are just as violent as men because they are real men!". I really don't think testosterone would make that much of an impact even if it was involved (I usually just see it more intensely fueling and encouraging the degree of a delusion, but not really changing anything in an of itself), but for both this and the Colorado shooter, as far as I know they weren't even on it, so it's kinda funny to see trans activists scramble to gender-validate their stage of transition by claiming this is just another example of extreme totally-cis-like male behaviour. Trans identified women have completely different motivations for imitating male toxicity than men, who never knew any better nor were policed or held to a higher standard. They are active imitators, as opposed to male shooters and male trans people snapping because that's what they are used to doing when they don't get their way. Trans identified women are not gonna go out and impulsively rape and murder (unless they're schizophrenic), they're gonna try to act out a fictional image of a "dude" that will maximise their validation points. They're like robots imitating humans in that way.

If the woman has male friends, she's going to engage in a lot of asskissing to gender-validate herself, but she'll also know to keep her head down so the guys wouldn't withdraw their approval. I doubt a woman like that would end up as a shooter. She's either going to know her place, or eventually her bros will turn on her for being female but in a way where she ultimately won't be able to "not like other girls"-herself out of it. And you can bet they won't have much patience for her "I'm a real boy"-pronouns if they're even slightly edgy. She'd either put up with being creeped on, or she'd be traumatised and run off. Either way, she's not going to shoot up a school, because women don't do that out of the blue. If she's going to shoot up a school, it's going to be fueled mainly by gender-affirmation, as opposed to just lashing out.

The shooter didn't seem to have male friends, but she probably spent lots of time in male-dominated spaces. Whether those had a trans community, I don't know. The more dysfunctional (talking 4chan levels) trans communities tend to be male dominated with the usual gamut of misogyny, racism and male narcissism, and with male-identified women who are there for validation points from roleplaying as edgy guys, ironically in a community where said edgy attitude is maintained by guys identifying as women. So, that dynamic is par for the course, but I feel the difference is that normally, women in non-trans communities will try really super hard to distance themselves from any "politics" for maximum approval from men, and will hyperfocus or derail to whatever "apolitical" interest removes the focus from them being women (with male friends, misogyny would be pretty much obligatory on top of that). She didn't seem to be trying that hard at transitioning, which could suggest a more passive attitude she'd have to take on in non-trans communities in order to not draw attention to herself, meaning she'd try to compensate with more violent attitudes.

The trans activist types will be a lot more into gender-validating themselves through general conceptual ideas on gender roles and/or brainsex, as opposed to ass-kissing specific irl guys in exchange for "one of the boys" points. It's more ideological in that way. They can also try to win points by emulating extreme misogyny if they latch onto brainsex (everpresent in any male community), but in this case it's more a performance to convince themselves personally of it, than the irl guys around them who are grading their performance. Basically they'll do it not out of fear that the guys will turn on them, but because they want to assure themselves that they're naturally just as misogynistic as the image of a guy they're imitating, despite what online naysayers claim. This is a very common sentiment in female trans spaces, so if the shooter was in trans spaces this might've inflated the (not that unusual for her demographic) fascination with school shooters and push to stand out by imitating them.