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Why are there so few female mass murderers?

Why are there so few female mass murderers?

  • Is it because males can't handle social rejection as well as females?

    Votes: 2 6.5%

  • Are men just more violent than women?

    Votes: 17 54.8%

  • Other, please explain.

    Votes: 13 41.9%
  • Total voters
    31
  • Poll closed .
Harry Guerrilla said:
Just finalizing things from the paper.
It seems that they've identified the wrong thing which encourages/causes mass murder.

To me it seems like they think that having control over ones life is inherently masculine, but women too like having control over their lives.
To me, the primary cause of mass murder, just from reading this paper is a temporary psychotic episode.
Click to expand...

hmmm.. the detail in planning some of these events indicates that it is not always that temporary. also - the columbine pair ... did they share their psychotic episode?
 
marywollstonecraft said:
hmmm.. the detail in planning some of these events indicates that it is not always that temporary. also - the columbine pair ... did they share their psychotic episode?
Click to expand...

I'd say so.
Temporary doesn't necessarily mean a few minutes, hours or days.

Considering the conditions they were both supposedly under, they found comfort in each others plans to "end" the problem.
I'm not saying it was right, what they did, but if they were truly bullied, harassed, what have you, I definitely understand their plight.

Kids like that are left with little recourse, because schools encourage prison behavior (aka extreme social competition).
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
I'm saying that access to the tools can increase that incidence of mass murders.
Click to expand...

Most of the country would agree that is "a" factor. You will get some blowback from the guns-make-us-safer crowd on this statement however.


I don't think it's learned behavior that causes mass murder.
Click to expand...

Based on what?


That paper you linked doesn't say so either.
I'm still reading it though.
Click to expand...

Mass Murderers

"Mass murder is defined as “the sudden, intentional
killing of more than one person in the same location and at the
same time, usually by a single person” (Palermo & Ross, 1999,
p.8). Turvey (2008) notes that the problem of mass murders is
not unique to the United States. However, Hamamoto (2002)
argues that the United States produce most of the world’s mass
murderers because of a “blow back” by civilians scripting
violence in a hyper-militarised America which started with the
increasing military adventures after World War II. Research on
mass murder is relatively limited when compared to other
forms of multiple homicide (Bowers, et al, 2010), yet several
authors have identified descriptive characteristics, patterns, and
typologies that differentiate mass murder from other forms of
multiple murder and from murder in general (Fox & Levin,
2012, Bowers, et al, 2010, Bartol & Bartol, 2011)."
 
cpwill said:
Now you are shifting goal posts from individual incidents of mass-murder to national warfare. However, the answer is: lots. Britain, for example. China for another. Japan less so, but France and don't even get me started on Italy :).

But hey, don't sell us short - we're young :).
Click to expand...

to outsiders, the US does appear too be obsessed with militarism. it spends more than four times as much on the military as does china, and more than seven times as much as Russia (and everybody else is way behind that).

it also appears to be obsessed with controlling others and setting the agenda for others.

on the surface, it doesn't seem strange that the US WOULD have such a high murder rate.

it seems like some killers may be manifesting a variant of what some may argue is the national obsession with power, control and solving problems with a bullet.
 
cpwill said:
Now you are shifting goal posts from individual incidents of mass-murder to national warfare. However, the answer is: lots. Britain, for example. China for another. Japan less so, but France and don't even get me started on Italy :).
Click to expand...


Did you not read the paper I posted? None of those countries have started more wars against others during the period of time that mass murders have become such a common event in the US.
 
Catawba said:
Most of the country would agree that is "a" factor. You will get some blowback from the guns-make-us-safer crowd on this statement however.
Click to expand...

I don't care who likes it or doesn't like it.
I think a degree of "bad things" is acceptable in a somewhat free society.

The whole, "freedom isn't safe" thing.



Catawba said:
Based on what?
Click to expand...

I just don't think you learn to commit mass murder.
I think it's a psychotic episode, where the murderer projects his feelings on the all the perpetrators of his torment (whether real of imagined).
Lots of innocents get caught in it to.

But very few people teach others to murder a bunch of people for slights.

Catawba said:
Mass Murderers

"Mass murder is defined as “the sudden, intentional
killing of more than one person in the same location and at the
same time, usually by a single person” (Palermo & Ross, 1999,
p.8). Turvey (2008) notes that the problem of mass murders is
not unique to the United States. However, Hamamoto (2002)
argues that the United States produce most of the world’s mass
murderers because of a “blow back” by civilians scripting
violence in a hyper-militarised America which started with the
increasing military adventures after World War II. Research on
mass murder is relatively limited when compared to other
forms of multiple homicide (Bowers, et al, 2010), yet several
authors have identified descriptive characteristics, patterns, and
typologies that differentiate mass murder from other forms of
multiple murder and from murder in general (Fox & Levin,
2012, Bowers, et al, 2010, Bartol & Bartol, 2011)."
Click to expand...

The paper doesn't say mass murder is a learned thing.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Just finalizing things from the paper.
It seems that they've identified the wrong thing which encourages/causes mass murder.

To me it seems like they think that having control over ones life is inherently masculine, but women too like having control over their lives.
To me, the primary cause of mass murder, just from reading this paper is a temporary psychotic episode.
Click to expand...

Brought on by what?
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
I don't care who likes it or doesn't like it.
I think a degree of "bad things" is acceptable in a somewhat free society.

The whole, "freedom isn't safe" thing.
Click to expand...

Freedom for increased homicides is your "thing"?





I just don't think you learn to commit mass murder.
I think it's a psychotic episode, where the murderer projects his feelings on the all the perpetrators of his torment (whether real of imagined).
Lots of innocents get caught in it to.

But very few people teach others to murder a bunch of people for slights.
Click to expand...


Well thanks for sharing your personal opinion!

The paper doesn't say mass murder is a learned thing.
Click to expand...

This is the Abstract of the paper:

"This exploratory study examines the act of mass murder
as an attempt by the perpetrators to lay claim to a hegemonic
masculine identity that has been damaged or denied them, yet
that they feel entitled to as males in American culture.
Biographical information was gathered for 28 men who have
committed mass murder in the United States since 1970 and
examined for evidence of stressors to the perpetrators’
masculine identities. The majority of the sample demonstrated
financial (71%), social (61%), romantic (25%), and
psychological stressors (32%) and other stressors (18%) that
indicated a failure to attain the hegemonic masculine ideal in
American culture. There were co-occurring stressors such as
financial-social, financial-psychological and socialpsychological.
These stressors suggest that the motivations for
mass murders are numerous and complex. There is no
psychological profile unique to mass murderers and many
authors have speculated on their motivations. However, in this
study, the range of interrelated stressors experienced by the
majority of mass murderers threatened their hegemonic
masculine identity and these men engaged in violence to
protect their identity."
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Social stressors, loss of job, money, relationships, etc.
Click to expand...

We all have those stressors, yet we don't all committ mass murder. Why?

And why would women be more capable of dealing with these stressors than men?
 
Surtr said:
There's definitely a biological factor present as well.
Click to expand...

I think everyone has agreed it is "a" factor, but doesn't explain why more men commit mass murder in some rich countries, like the US, than in other rich countries.

Profiling also cause mistakes to be made.
Click to expand...

I'm simply stating there are common identifiers in most
 
Catawba said:
We all have those stressors, yet we don't all committ mass murder. Why?

And why would women be more capable of dealing with these stressors than men?
Click to expand...

women cope better with change/transitions etc. we have to. psychologically we could nt cope with pregnancy and lactation if we didn't.

women's bodies, and our lives have more often been subject to others.

american society emphasizes the individual (not the collective) which also places more importance on the individual male achieving success in a society where "anyone can become president" of course, its a lie. social mobility is less in the US than in many other places.

for vulnerable men who may also be experiencing marginalization or other forms of bullying, this combines with a culture of masculine honour, easy access to weapons and the kind of overt hostility to alternative ideologies so frequently seen in forums such as this.

all this contributes to an environment which feeds, and even allows justification of dangerous levels of resentment
 
Catawba said:
I thought not.




No one has said gender wasn't "a" factor. Hedgemonic masculinity makes the most logical sense as the biggest factor when we compare intentional homicides by country.

By the way, most mass murderer's in the US are from middle class backgrounds, not poor backgrounds. The profile for a mass murderer in the US is middle class, white, young, male.
Click to expand...

That is an interesting theory, yet does not seem to square with either the Batman theater shooter or the Sandy Hook shooter. In the Batman case the perp was living somewhat independently and appeared to be academically successful, yet socially challenged and was not suicidal; in short he wanted attention and to be institutionalized. In the Sandy Hook case the perp was totally dependendent, living with only mommy, became jealous of mommy's attention to her school volunteer work, probably found out she intended to have him committed, killed mommy allong with those that she chose to spend her time with over himself and was suicidal; in short he wanted revenge followed by suicide. To lump these shootings together under some "common cause", because both perps were were white, affluent and male is a gross oversimplification, and ignores the very significant differences that I cited.
 
marywollstonecraft said:
That wouldn't explain why there are more mass murderers (as in the mass shooting type) in the US than anywhere else
Click to expand...

Maybe there's nothing to explain. Statistics on rare events are hard to interpret. In the last decade, we had Sandy Hill, Aurora, Fort Hood, Michael McLendon, Virginia Tech - 5 "high profile" mass shootings. Finland had two: Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed 8 people at his high school , then Matti Saari killed ten at a college. Norway had one: Breivik murdered 77. We have 315 million people, Norway and Finland - about 5 million each. Gives you 0.016 mass shooting per million of population for USA, 0.2 for Norway and 0.4 for Finland. Does it mean that Nordic societies are more violent by an order of magnitude? Of course not.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
That is an interesting theory, yet does not seem to square with either the Batman theater shooter or the Sandy Hook shooter. In the Batman case the perp was living somewhat independently and appeared to be academically successful, yet socially challenged and was not suicidal; in short he wanted attention and to be institutionalized. In the Sandy Hook case the perp was totally dependendent, living with only mommy, became jealous of mommy's attention to her school volunteer work, probably found out she intended to have him committed, killed mommy allong with those that she chose to spend her time with over himself and was suicidal; in short he wanted revenge followed by suicide. To lump these shootings together under some "common cause", because both perps were were white, affluent and male is a gross oversimplification, and ignores the very significant differences that I cited.
Click to expand...

these scenarios are way too simplistic, and contribute nothing to an understanding of what happened in these individuals.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
That is an interesting theory, yet does not seem to square with either the Batman theater shooter or the Sandy Hook shooter. In the Batman case the perp was living somewhat independently and appeared to be academically successful, yet socially challenged and was not suicidal; in short he wanted attention and to be institutionalized. In the Sandy Hook case the perp was totally dependendent, living with only mommy, became jealous of mommy's attention to her school volunteer work, probably found out she intended to have him committed, killed mommy allong with those that she chose to spend her time with over himself and was suicidal; in short he wanted revenge followed by suicide. To lump these shootings together under some "common cause", because both perps were were white, affluent and male is a gross oversimplification, and ignores the very significant differences that I cited.
Click to expand...

Speculation based on very limited information.
 
Cyrylek said:
Maybe there's nothing to explain. Statistics on rare events are hard to interpret. In the last decade, we had Sandy Hill, Aurora, Fort Hood, Michael McLendon, Virginia Tech - 5 "high profile" mass shootings. Finland had two: Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed 8 people at his high school , then Matti Saari killed ten at a college. Norway had one: Breivik murdered 77. We have 315 million people, Norway and Finland - about 5 million each. Gives you 0.016 mass shooting per million of population for USA, 0.2 for Norway and 0.4 for Finland. Does it mean that Nordic societies are more violent by an order of magnitude? Of course not.
Click to expand...


You only included a few of the mass murders in the US in the last decade. Here is a more complete listing:

Citizens Crime Commission of New York City - Mass Shooting Incidents in America (1984-2012)
 
marywollstonecraft said:
these scenarios are way too simplistic, and contribute nothing to an understanding of what happened in these individuals.
Click to expand...

What? Are you defending the "hegemonic masculinity" theory as less simplistic? My point is that no single factor motivates all (or even most) of these mass shootings. Many have little in common beyond what defines them as mass shootings - a high victim count and guns used during the crime.
 
Catawba said:
You only included a few of the mass murders in the US in the last decade. Here is a more complete listing:

Citizens Crime Commission of New York City - Mass Shooting Incidents in America (1984-2012)
Click to expand...

Sure, sure. I said "high profile" - those that attract wide attention. And it all depends on what you count as "mass shooting". But it doesn't change my point:

Your list has 14 shootings in the last decade - and includes the attack on Rep. Giffords, a political assassination attempt. Let it be so. Let's also not try and dig for "lower profile" cases in Finland and Norway. We still get 0.04 mass shooting per million in US vs 0.4 in Finland. Are Finns ten times as murderous as Americans? Ridiculous.

Also, look at the map, above the list: if we want to compare apples to apples, Finland is probably comparable not with America as a whole - demographically, economically and socially - but rather with states like New Hampshire, Vermont, Minnesota...which did not have any mass shootings - not a single one in three decades. What does THAT tell you? Eh, approximately nothing.
 
Last edited:
Catawba said:
Freedom for increased homicides is your "thing"?
Click to expand...

Absolutely. :roll:
Just as "your thing" is leaving people to be defenseless from murderers.


Catawba said:
Well thanks for sharing your personal opinion!
Click to expand...

That's what you say when you have no other retort.
It's lame, try defeating my argument with logic or evidence.

Catawba said:
This is the Abstract of the paper:

"This exploratory study examines the act of mass murder
as an attempt by the perpetrators to lay claim to a hegemonic
masculine identity that has been damaged or denied them, yet
that they feel entitled to as males in American culture.
Biographical information was gathered for 28 men who have
committed mass murder in the United States since 1970 and
examined for evidence of stressors to the perpetrators’
masculine identities. The majority of the sample demonstrated
financial (71%), social (61%), romantic (25%), and
psychological stressors (32%) and other stressors (18%) that
indicated a failure to attain the hegemonic masculine ideal in
American culture. There were co-occurring stressors such as
financial-social, financial-psychological and socialpsychological.
These stressors suggest that the motivations for
mass murders are numerous and complex. There is no
psychological profile unique to mass murderers and many
authors have speculated on their motivations. However, in this
study, the range of interrelated stressors experienced by the
majority of mass murderers threatened their hegemonic
masculine identity and these men engaged in violence to
protect their identity."
Click to expand...

That doesn't mean that it's a learned behavior.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Because more are more likely to commit visible acts of aggression.

Female aggression tends to be passive or social.
Click to expand...

I will suggest that they are simply clever enough to talk a man into doing the deed for them, thus they remain "innocent". You can be a mass murderer serially rather than go all out in a single event.
 
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