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Each new child reminds us that creation
has not yet despaired of man. -Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
As the century winds down, like an unwound clock, case after case chases each other in an apparent attempt to outdo the one that went before, in horror if not in number. Pearl, Mississippi: Jonesboro, Arkansas; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Eugene, Oregon…and Chicago, Illinois. Some literalist will perhaps object, based on the idiosyncrasies of one or another site of slaughter, and point out how one does not belong in the category of the other. But categories are funny things, and classifications change over time. Beyond the number of child killings, beyond the weaponry utilized, and beyond the geographic areas where they occurred, lies another, more telling reality. If one looks at all of the occurrences the prevailing feature is of the victims of violence: females. Add to this the fact that young boys or male teens are uniquely perpetrators (or suspects) and a grim picture begins to emerge. While it is dangerous to prejudice these kids or their cases, the radical divergence of male assailants and female victims suggests a deadly dynamic at work, one that is reflected in the clear-eyed behavior of children. A prominent Massachusetts prison official, Dr. James Gilligan, sees violence as intimately related to shame: If the main causes of violence are these
social and psychological variables (shame versus honor), an apparent anomaly
lies in the fact that men are and always have been more violent than women,
throughout history and throughout the world. If shame stimulates violence;
if being treated as inferior stimulates shame; and if women have been treated
throughout history as inferior to men, then why are women less violent
than men? (And they are indeed vastly less likely than men are to commit
homicide, suicide, warfare, and assault, in every culture and every period
in history.)
Dr. Gilligan explains that boys are socialized into "patriarchally defined 'gender roles,'" a kind of "gender code of honor" that rewards physicality, an action orientation, and violence. Similarly, girls are socialized into what may be called a culture of acquiescence, a code of conformity that is often ruthlessly policed and enforced by other females. When one considers these powerful cultural codes, and contrasts this with the formally claimed adherence to gender equality, one creates the conditions for inner conflict, between the public, formal claim, and the deep, cultural compulsion. Nowhere is this conflict more stark than in the psychic puzzle that is childhood, when kids are doing the hard, lonely, and terrifying work of becoming. Is it mere coincidence that almost all of these boys were slight, short, or overweight? Is it mere coincidence that they were almost all at that strange, maddening age when many more girls (because they develop earlier) are taller, stronger, and more 'adult' than they? Prepubescent, voices unchanged, swimming in a sewer of sexualized messages that portrays women as mere booty, perhaps enraged that these taller, more 'adult' pre-women sought boyfriends who were more man-like, can we see the rejection, the pain, the hurt, the rage, and the chaos that results? These were not 'bad boys' rather, they navigated this fierce divide between social claims and cultural truths badly. Every informal channel in the culture taught them that girls were property, prizes, or items to be owned. When girls chose to operate as if they were, as the formal claims suggest, free to choose, they triggered a deep and underlying sense of violation, and a maddened chaos was loosed. They are our children. They are ourselves. They are our nightmares at noon. MAJ©1998 |
Children
of Chaos and Rage