Commenting on the German School shooting in which a 17-yr old kid killed 16 people, I found a disturbing throw-away line in two of the reports that I’ve read- from the Washington Post and from BBC News World. Washington Post published:

“I don’t want to speculate too much about this,” Rech said at a news conference. “But it is noteworthy that primarily girls were killed — eight girls and one boy . . . The teachers killed were women.

Three teachers and nine students were killed inside the two-story school building, where about 1,000 students ages 10 to 16 are enrolled, authorities said.”

The BBC had a single sentence at the end of the article that expressed the apparent targetting of women in the shooting. However, some very loud silence followed after these short sentences.

The German Police said that they found pornography and violent videos on the kid’s personal computer, which isn’t all that surprising, after all, what 17 yr old boy doesn’t have these things on their computer nowadays? It would be more informative if it was violent pornography or, say, a letter describing the boy’s motives.

What bothers me is the relative silence on news sites about the possibility that women were the main targets in the school shooting. What, there can only be one Montreal Massacre? Or is the violence-against-women thing too banal? Too passe?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.