Mass Shooting Emotional Fatigue

I was visiting my mother recently. She asked me if I'd heard about Seattle. I'd like to think I'm a pretty well informed individual but told her that no, I have not & asked what happened. She went on to describe what happened on 5 June at Seattle Pacific University.

All I could do in response was shrug my shoulders. My mother seemed offend & rightfully so. I call it mass-shooting emotional fatigue, also known as apathy.

I have already registered my emotional outrage back in January 2013 in my blog entry, "Talking Gun Sense" which addressed the Newtown, CT incident where 20+ children under the age of 12 (if not younger) were massacred in their elementary school.

The Seattle Pacific incident comes less than 2 weeks after an Isla Vista shooting in California where a perpatrator specifically targeted women. In the CA case, the media passed him off as being "sexually frustrated." I call bullshit. If he had targeted Jews or African-Americans or Gays/Lesbians, we'd call it for what it is, a hate crime or just straight-up misogny. Instead it gets passed off as something considerably less dire.

Nor does this factor in his VERY long track record of YouTube rants (going back at least 4 years) laying out his motive, nor the 140-page manifesto he sent to police the day of. That is premediated. This isn't the work of a person who is mentally ill & just "snaps". The guy's a sociopath. He knows very well what the difference is between right & wrong, he just doesn't give a damn.

If we're not going to address (in my opinion) the real issue, peoples entitlement & inability to solve their problems in an adult manner, we're left with frittering around the edges. In this case, the mental health aspect & indentifying the perpatrators before they commit their carnage. But since we're either unwilling or unable to address the mental health aspect, we're left with narrowing the edges in what we can address, in this case, HOW they commit their violence (95% of the time using firearms). But since, god forbid, we can't even address that because person's 2nd amendment rights are more important than another person's Right to Life, Liberty, & an opportunity to Pursue Their Own Happiness, we're left with the status quo. The status quo means we're going to see more of these horrific acts & in greater frequency. The end result of which is that we grow tolerate to the violence, bullshit that we've "always lived in a violent society", or simply become indifferent to peoples suffering.

Indifference is what effects me. I'm ashamed to say it but its the truth.

Gun ownership is a right but its ALSO a priveledge. If gun owners & those who support them aren't willing to step up & police themselves & keep these weapons out of individuals who really shouldn't be handling them (particularly if they are a clear & present danger to others), I guarantee you either Uncle Sam or the States will. In which case, they'll be addressing it on the grounds of a public health & safety issue.

If precedent in other nongun related incidents is any indication, the Courts have been generally more receptive in government stepping in. Thanks to Oklahoma City & Timothy McVeigh, you can't buy X-amount of fertilizer at any one time without getting a knock on your door by the FBI. Thanks to Triangle Shirt Factory, you can't chain the doors closed in a workplace while operations are going on. Thanks to auto regulations, you can't drive without a seatbelt without getting pulled over & ticketed.


**********
In other news...
**********

This here is Bree. We mutually have called this the "Slutty Minnie" set.

Blurred Lines and Promotion of the Rape Culture

Its been over a month since the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards was held & I'm still hearing about the outrage over Miley Cyrus' controversial performance.

For those not in the know, she did a wacky dance routine with a foam sports finger while dressing in a skimpy outfit, stripping out of it into an even skimpier outfit, & then gyrating with her dance/singing partner. As someone who grew up watching Madonna wearing a white wedding dress & rolling around stage, faking an orgasm, I'm befuddled by this current brouhaha.

The outrage went like this: Miley's "off-her-rocker" or is going the "slut" route or she's "being a whore." All the focus is on her specifically as a person, not on her allegedly terrible performance.

Think about it.

Her costar performer Robin Thicke is singing a song entitled, "Blurred Lines." A song that promotes & excuses the blurred lines of consent & glorifies our society's permissive rape & sexual assault cultures (as best exemplified by the Steubenville rape case). The unrated version of the music video has women prancing around gratuitously topless while the men are fully clothed. Yet no one is calling Robin Thicke a "pimp" or an "abuser" or a "whore" or a "misogynist". Nobody cares because the lyrics are accompanied to an obnoxiously catchy beat.

Its double standard & I fundamentally reject it.

If a male enjoys sex & sleeps around, he's a "stud." But if a woman enjoys sex & sleeps around, she's a "whore." A man can sits down with his legs wide open while wearing trousers, no one cares. But if a woman sits down with her legs wide open while wearing trousers, she's "unladylike." If an adult has sex with a 15-year old male, that teenaged male is "lucky." But if an adult has sex with a 15-year old female, that teenager is a "victim." Except for their equipment downstairs, pre-adolescent males & females are for all intents & purposes the same. Yet boys are allowed to run around topless on a sweltering summer's day while girls need to cover themselves.

Don't even get me started on how the media covered the incident. It went something like... "reporting" on the incident (& I use that term loosely), saying how sluttified it all was, criticizing her as a person (versus her as an artist or the quality of the dance routine), & then showing a long clip of it every hour on the hour to boost their own ratings (ensuring themselves a hefty profit from the ratings). It is culture disaster porn we're eating it up like a fat kid on Halloween.

The media (& by extension us) attack the person because they make for an easy target when we should be attack & address the very issue that they're both either promoting or condoning, the glorification of the male dominated rape culture.

Why am I a male so passionate about this issue? Because the implication is that it gives dirtbags who rape & sexually assault women a free pass. You've heard the BS, "Boys will be boys" or "I couldn't control myself." I call bullsh*t & here's why. Yes, you can control yourself...you just CHOOSE not to do so. The other implication is IF males indeed cannot control themselves, it puts every single solitary daughter, sister, cousin, & mother on notice because they have a reason to fear every single solitary male in society. Even if they are their husband, brother, uncle, or son and has never given them a reason to fear them.

If that basis in society actually exists & I'm to blind to see it, is this the kind of society that's even worth having? You be the judge.

Edit: I found an interesting Tumblr link that juxtaposes the "Blurred Lines" lyrics side by side with pictures from Project Unbreakable. Here's another hyperlink that analyzes the song & the rape survivor quotes on a deeper level.


**********
In other news...
**********


This is family friend & classically trained dancer Christina of the Libertina Dance Company (pictured below), participating my abandonment project.

Feel free to comment on any part of this blog entry if you so desire.