Cho Seong-Hui And The ‘Crisis Of Young Males In A Feminised Society’
ANORAK has long espoused the view that when some men don’t get enough sex they go bonkers.
Could not the War on Terror be won by spreading the love and letting the virgin-hungry men know that someone fancies them?
And now this in the Times:
“WHEN Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, the horrific slaughter revealed not only the poisons lurking in popular culture but the crisis of young males in a feminised society, says Sarah Baxter.”
Writes Baxter: “Deprived of sex himself, he regarded those who were getting it with malevolence.”
And then readers get this: “Trapped in the perpetual adolescence of the student, he [Cho Seung-Hui] has become a new monstrous poster child for boys who would rather kill themselves and others than grow up.”
The writer quotes Camille Paglia, professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and author of Sexual Personae. Says she: “Young men have enormous energy. There was a time when they could run away, hop on a freighter, go to a factory and earn money, do something with their hands. Now there is this snobbery of the upper-middle-class professional. Everyone has to be a lawyer or paper pusher.”
The Devil makes work for idle hands. Is that it?
And then there’s James Gilligan, a former prison psychiatrist who teaches at New York University. Says he: “An underlying factor that is virtually always present is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood and the way to do that, to gain respect, is to commit a violent act. It is tremendously tempting to use violence as a means of trying to shore up one’s sense of masculine self-esteem.”
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama tells us the lone killer and the jihadist suicide bomber are upset about girls “whose attention they can’t get”.
One comment on the piece runs: “As an Asia-born male on an American campus, Cho would have been at the bottom of the desirability stakes in the college dating game. This is something that has to be taken into account when analyzing the gunman’s feelings of rejection.”
If he had got sex, or at least got into porn and onanism and not guns, would Cho have not killed?
Posted: 22nd, April 2007 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
