Steinem’s “Supremacy Crimes” was thought provoking and a little frightening. All of the killers that are discussed are well known, but I have never thought about the social categories that they all happen to fit into. Why are white, middle class men disproportionately becoming murderers? Steinman writes about how these men have become addicted to dominance. I find this to be very frightening, and in my own experience I have encountered many males who have a propensity towards violence. When is this violence taken too far? When is that line crossed? And what drives these individuals to completely go off the deep end and become murderers?
One point that really interests me is that Steinman states that “white, non-poor men have a near monopoly on multiple killings of strangers”. Is there a statistic to support this? The only reason I question it is because I feel that murders happen when conditions in people’s lives are so incredibly terrible that they turn to extreme violence, which implies that they have zero economic means.
The best point in this article is when Steinman brings up the idea that society would react so differently to these crimes if they were committed by women. Our society seems to systematically ignore the fact that a specific subset of white men are committing murders disproportionately (I never thought about it until reading this article). However, if women were committing these murders, I think that it would have been noticed, addressed, and dealt with by now.
When you say, “One point that really interests me is that Steinman states that ‘white, non-poor men have a near monopoly on multiple killings of strangers.’ Is there a statistic to support this? ... I feel that murders happen when conditions in people’s lives are so incredibly terrible,” I completely agree with you. I felt like Steinman was making generalizations based on her assumptions. However, as we talked about in class, because she is discussing a fairly new topic there are no statistics that she can provide. This is exactly the problem. In our society, it makes us nervous when we do not have facts or figures to back up claims.
ReplyDelete