Monica Hesse writes about "Things I do not ever need to hear or read about a shooter again" in today's Washington Post:
I do not need to hear that he was heartbroken over a woman who dumped him/rejected him/ignored him. It is not the responsibility of women to pay attention to men to make sure those men do not shoot other people.
I do not particularly care whether his family was shocked.
I do not particularly care whether he did not resist arrest.
I do not need to hear about how he was a churchgoer, unless that revelation also comes with an acknowledgment that some faiths have historically taught such horrifying messages of misogyny and female subservience that “he went to church” is as much of an explanation as an expression of dumbfoundedness.
What kind of church? Is it a place where non-heterosexual people are viewed as sinful? Where purity culture twists normal desires into malignance? Where premarital sex is seen as such a moral failing that girls believe they are worthless if they have it? Where boys believe they should blame girls for making them want it at all?
The answer to that last set of questions is "yes." We learn that from a lengthy piece in another section of the Post that describes in great detail the shooter's life before the murders, including coverage of many of the topics Hesse (and we) don't care to know about this murderer. But, on the question of his churchgoing, here's confirmation that his religious upbringing helped shape him into a person who summed up his life as "Pizza, guns, drums, music, family, and God":
The family was active at Crabapple, the Southern Baptist church where Aaron’s father, Robert “Buddy” Long, was a valued lay leader. Aaron and his parents attended Sunday services, afternoon group activities and Wednesday evening meetings, church members said.
Church officials — who removed their social media pages, including videos of Long, hours after the shootings — initially declined to comment but on Friday issued a statement confirming the family’s membership and expressing grief over the attacks and sympathy for the victims.
The evangelical congregation’s minister, the Rev. Jerry Dockery, is an energetic preacher who advocated for a socially conservative brand of Christianity that, as the church bylaws put it, views “adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, pornography, or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex” as “sinful and offensive to God.”
Hesse concludes her op/ ed with this:
I want to hear about the systems that helped build the shooter. He didn’t come from nowhere. He is not a lone wolf. He might be a predator, but he is one whose worldview was shaped by the culture that raised him — the things he saw celebrated, the things he saw excused, the people who he was taught have value, the people who he was taught have none.
I want to hear about whatever solutions we need to implement to make sure we don’t ever have to talk about people like him again.
But if your reaction to a man who has slain eight people is to look for ways to humanize him, or blame women for making him inhumane, or imbue him with more dignity than has been bestowed upon the victims whose names we are only beginning to learn, or conflate “madman” with “man who garden-variety-hates women” — then I emphatically, resolutely, do not need to hear about that.
Yes, let's hear about those culpable systems and solutions to their toxicity, because if they're not part of a frank discussion, the demonization and violence will continue unabated. But, in the meantime, remember the 8 innocent victims and don't humanize that Atlanta monster.
(Photo montage: Four of the eight Atlanta victims -- Hyun Jung Grant; Paul Andre Michels; Xiaojie Tan; Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez/ screenshot via Time.com)
