Fiamengo: We Need to Admit That Women are Just as Capable of Doing Terrible Things as Men

[T]here is no way to know whether the female shooters listed in the K-12 School Shooting Database were primarily victims or aggressors, whether they acted out of hurt or hate. Most killers likely have a mix of precipitating factors. One of the first female school shooters, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer (of “I Don’t Like Mondays” fame), who in 1979 killed two adults, wounded a police officer, and wounded eight children at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, was described by acquaintances as full of defiant anger, railing against police, accusing her parents of neglect and abuse, and promising “something big” that would get her on TV. Like some other such shooters, she seems to have been a disturbed loner who resented that classmates did not recognize her superiority.

On the other hand, Audrey Hale, the Nashville school shooter, doesn’t seem to have given any indication of incipient violence until the day of her rampage. Quiet and reserved, with a talent for drawing and a love of stuffed animals and cats, she seemed to one of her graphic design classmates to possess a “child-like obsession with staying a child.” The voluminous writings and art that she left behind have not been released to the public, so it is difficult to understand the source of her violence.

As for Natalie Rupnow, perhaps psychologists will in time be able to put together a clear profile. She idolized school shooters and wore a black KMFDM band shirt (the same German industrial rock band favored by Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold) as a signal, it seems, of nihilistic defiance. But why? Petite and rather pretty, Rupnow is said to have had an online boyfriend, and she mentioned in her statement that there were “two people I trust, one partially and one I would never doubt.” That’s better than a lot of 15-year-olds can say. In her badly-written and at times incoherent statement (which actually makes rather few references to what she was about to do), she expressed deep contempt for her parents and an emphatic sense that they, and the world, had failed her.

Overall, however, the statement seems to show an ordinarily wretched, not particularly bright, teen rather than a psychotic or abuse survivor: self-regarding (“I am part of the real thought and the real revolution”), disdainful of others (“most people can’t do what I’m going to do”), and taking no responsibility (“it’s truly not my fault though, it never was”). The dominant note sounded is less anguish than a resentful sense of superiority and desire to see others suffer: “Maybe you’ll see me as a weirdo, a freak just as some of you do now but I’m not, I am not like the others, I would never ever want to be like them,” she declared. “I hate how the population thinks, grows, and talks and how they make romance fake. If only some day we could do a public execution, that would be gladly needed. I wouldn’t mind throwing some stones at idiots or even watching from the far back when they get hanged.”

She used the words “filth” and “scum” repeatedly, at times complaining about being picked on, at other times saying she preferred to be alone anyway. Her disgust and sadism are certainly disturbing, but they do not seem at all gendered.

Many teens are angry and unhappy, in love with violence, and not yet capable of empathy or self-regulation. I knew them well, including many girls, when I was growing up. The modern tendency to portray teen girls primarily as sad and abused, rather than also raging and abusive, has always struck me as short-sighted and false to fact. If we are to deal responsibly with teen girl violence, we must begin by being honest about what it is. We should stop excusing some atrocities based on the sex of the perpetrator, finally admitting that in their capacity to do terrible and cruel things, girls and women are not categorically different, or more innocent, than boys and men.

— Janice Fiamengo in When Girls Shoot Up Schools