I went to a Women in Medicine support group meeting yesterday and we spent most of the time helping one of my best friends deal with the Virginia Tech horror. She is an alumnus - a very proud alumnus - and a very successful women (she just got an NIH grant scored on the first try!). Most of the discussion was about how amazing the students are at Virginia Tech and how well they have handled the intense and often innapropriate media coverage they have had to deal with.

There are 1000 things that I would like to discuss regarding this incident - irresponsible media, journalistically unethical media, gun control, to name a few.

But based on previous discussions here about women's "values" and about characteristics that women bring to the table that are important for academics, I want to discuss violence.

We have discussed before how women "need to suck it up and understand the way things work" and how women need to bend to the system in place.
There has been discussion that women don't handle pressure well - that we cry, blame ourselves, don't act.

But we do not shoot people. We do not massacre. High schools and colleges are full of female students - often more than half. Yet to my knowledge, there has never been a documented American female student killer.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070416/16deadliest.htm

Not only are we not violent - we recognize violence at its most basic level. I think that Lucinda Roy (in link below) has contributed greatly to academics. She is a full professor, has recently written books, likely has a full teaching load - I am sure she is as stressed out as any of us. Yet she took the time to work with a disturbed student one-on-one. She identified underlying violence in this student and attenpted to deal with that violence with the best systems she could find. I am sure she will be criticised for not doing more - but I think she deserves credit for doing what she did.
We need more people like her in academics.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/index.html

I never thought about it before, but you're right, I've never heard of a massacre carried out by a woman. Even if there have been some, its no where near the amount carried out by men.

I think we just don't think the same way men do about violence. I recently was talking with a group of my guy friends and they asked me what I think about when playing sports and someone outrageously fouls me. (I am a very aggressive player.) I said I get p.ed off and get them back. Their reply was that they want to kill them. I kind of laughed it off when they said it, but they explained that in the heat of the game, all they want to do is kill the other guy. (All hostile feelings end when the game ends and their mentality is allowed to relax focus.)

This amazed me. There is only two things I can think of that would make me want to actually kill another human being:
1) They are a criminal/terrorist and it is a kill or be killed situation.
2)They murdered one of my family members.

And just as an aside to one of your smaller issues you said you wanted to discuss, I am completely 100% against gun control. All gun control will do is disarm innocent people. Does anyone really think criminals will obey a law outlawing or restricting guns? They don't even obey the laws we have now about waitlists and automatics. If you were stuck in say a diner and someone comes in and takes everyone hostage, wouldn't you rather have a good person in there with you who might be able to shoot the criminal before he starts killing of hostages, or would you rather be at the criminal's mercy?

I live and work about 40minutes away from Virginia Tech. There are many connections there with coworkers and friends who are professors and students there. So this has been experienced more personally for me. But I appreciate your comments.
You mentioned Lucinda Roy, and she had a lovely op-ed in the New York times last Tuesday. Along the lines of your mention of women and violence (the lack of association), I agree. I also wondered at one point, (unjustly?) if the English professors had been male, if their concerns/reports about him would have received more attention.

Could you post the link to the op-ed? I tried to find it. I would love to read it. Thanks!

A Black Day in the Blue Ridge

April 17, 2007, Tuesday
By LUCINDA ROY (NYT); Editorial Desk

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/115005

she had another local editorial over the weekend