If only Shana Fisher had said yes. This is the implication of countless headlines following Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ decision to slaughter her along with nine of her teachers and classmates. According to a Facebook post by Fisher’s mother, Fisher “had four months of problems from this boy” where “he kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no. He continued to get more aggressive”. So a girl endures several months of harassment, until her harasser kills her. How are we supposed to see this?
The headlines say it all: “Spurned advances spark Texas shooting.” “Texas school shooter ‘killed girl who turned down his advances’.” “Spurned advances provoked incident at Santa Fe high school.” The message, in case you’ve missed it, is that Fisher’s rejection – her “spurning” – of Pagourtzis is what caused his murderous rampage. There’s something truly depressing about finding the world view of a killer reflected in the reporting of his crimes. Then again, belief that women and girls exist to tend to the sexual and emotional needs of men and boys is everywhere.
It’s there in every romantic comedy and pop song that recasts male stalking and harassment as the plucky determination of the underdog. It’s there in every parenting manual which tells mothers that boys require more attention than girls. It’s there every time we lecture girls on how much harder boys find it to express their feelings without using their fists. It’s there in our very concepts of manhood, masculinity and male pride. Men and boys, we are told, have something precious to lose whenever a woman says no. There’s no comparable concept of female pride. Girls who feel ugly, who are mocked for their appearance, who don’t get the boy they desire – the vast majority of us, that is – are simply expected to suck it up. There has to be a fundamental change in how our sons conceptualise their place in the world. The implication is that if only the parents of the eventual shooter had taught that all important life lesson that you will be rejected by a girl one day and that's the way the cookie crumbles. There isn't a guy alive that hasn't been rejected by a girl, or a guy who was once alive.
A week before the shooting, Fisher embarrassed him in front of others in a class by standing up and telling Pagourtzis that she wouldn't go out with him. This seems to be the final straw that caused him to snap. Even if Pagourtzis decided to carry out this tragic act of violence because Shana Fisher turned him down and embarrassed him, the shooting didn't happen because of Shana Fisher. The shooting happened because of the shooter. Sure she may have had a 'right' to embarrass him in class. Still, had she not, she would still be alive. And this is a very key point, that gets over looked and swept away. What does it say about our society that kids think the response to frustration over being rebuffed by a female student or embarrassed in front of others is sufficient cause to shoot a bunch of kids to death? I think one of the main problems here is the kids who are not taught how to deal with rejection or failure; therefore, when it happens, the only possible reaction, in their minds, is revenge... "getting even" with whoever rejected you or caused you to fail... In extreme cases, this could even extend to "eliminating" anyone who witnessed an event that resulted in the kid feeling shamed, humiliated or rejected. Everyone will jump on to ''she had the right to do anything'' and ''he should just suck it up''; but how toxic is that line of thought? It's normal and desirable, I think, for parents to want their kids to grow up happy and successful, but the kids ALSO need to learn and understand that not everything in life will be "fair"; that they won't always succeed at everything they try...and that they will not necessarily be loved, or even liked, by every other person in the world.
If it is true that for months the alleged shooter was harassing a fellow student, and that his harassment was escalating in severity, we need to ask WHY the school did not take action under Title IX's requirement to maintain schools free of gender discrimination and keeping schools safe from gender violence. I can only hope that schools look closely at this case and start understanding why sexual harassment can create climates that are unsafe for our children -- and why they need to take these incidents seriously. We need to do more to devote resources and training on sexual harassment and assault at Pk-12. It is part of addressing this multifaceted tragedy of violence in our schools. The sad truth is that schools, the community and people just don't want to do anything that will take time, effort and most of all money.
Some 4,400 adolescents commit suicide each year from being bullied. The underlying issue for then is mental health and guidance about norms during the adolescent maturation process. While some of these massacres are clearly by psychopaths (e.g. Las Vegas), most of them are by men left to their own devices to understand the landscape of the norms of interpersonal boundaries. A great deal of the adolescent period of life is about learning boundaries, understanding them with respect to awakening human sexuality, androgens and estrogen, and limits on interpersonal dominance (that bullying), how to deal with rejection, pride, menace, esteem and self-respect, when to stand your ground and when to ask for help, dealing with failure and success: basic socialization and mental health. We are social animals and children are not born with some innate understanding of this as they encounter it, or better said this monster reacted to it in a way a child would by acting out but with lethal weapons. Behold the apparent narcissism of a neglected generation. It is as much a part of the adolescent learning process as anything else taught in school, we just address our lame management of it later with revenge fantasy movies like Mean Girls and Revenge of the Nerds, something that actually encourages this.
The idea of parochial schools is an attempt to address these two learning experiences, academics and normative values, or religion or scouting, many families simply do not supply them (or even have them). I would say that we need a non-secular course like this in public schools but this both crosses the line into parental rights (to inculcate their own values into their children, separation of church and state), and I am also quite confident the teaching of them would be poached by politicos to also teach their own subjective values with the official stamp of academic objectivity.
We have to supply this education to children somehow though or this carnage will continue. Surely we can all agree on some basic set of norms about mental health and interpersonal boundaries, perhaps a selection of courses selected the parents, even provided by non-school organizations such as churches or more non-religious philosophical groups of their preference, the only requirement being that one of them be selected and completed. Hey people: we are primates, a sexual species with dominance hierarchies and like it or not no amount of political ideals will change that, get it? As we grow it takes guidance as children become adults or it is Lord of the Flies. Adolescents need this education to become socialized and self-actualizing as surely as they need to learn to read and write.
