[Megan] It's not as stupid as "Now's the time to get those atheists!" But "It's the fault of feminism" ranks up there with "it's the fault of the freemasons" as one of the least convincing explanations of the Virginia Tech shootings. This is a kid who seems to have been troubled since early childhood, when his mother was worried because he wouldn't talk--in Korea, which is not known for its ultraliberal relations between the sexes. The existence of moody, disaffected loners is not some modern creation of "hook up" cultures and anomie, and nor is the violent reaction to same. The guy in the tower at the University of Texas managed to get up there long before feminism had reared its (sensibly coifed) head on the campus dating scene.

It probably is correct to say that low-status men who aren't getting any form the recruiting pool for mass killers. But feminism hasn't created any more of these men than there used to be. Nor do I buy the notion that it's deprived them of opportunities for adventure and manly self expression. I had friends who took off for parts unknown after high school, which was a while ago, but not such a long while ago that I think there's been some gigantic sea change in the feminisation of our culture. They did manly things (even the girl) like work on salmon boats, camp in odd places while doing casual labour for food money, and backpack through Tibet. They were able to do this because they were somewhat impulsive, had a taste for adventure, and were not suffering from extreme mental illness--not because life in 1990 was so much more rugged and masculine.