Murder on the Appalachian Trail

Off Our Backs, Jul 1996 by Mantilla, Karla

How Attacks on Women Are Seen

So it is important how we come to see this incident and all supposedly "random" attacks on women. It is interesting that it is nearly impossible in mainstream thinking to characterize an attack on a woman as a woman-hating attack. Instead, when a man attacks a woman out of women-hating, the perpetrator is instead seen as crazy. His motivations are psychologized. Even in the case of the perpetrator of the Montreal massacre, where the man explicitly stated before he shot the women that feminists had ruined his life, the general consensus was that he was psychologically disturbed. His motivations were individualized. They were not seen as reflecting the climate of woman hating on the larger societal level.

Compare this with how we see racially motivated attacks. Members of the Ku Klux Klan are not characterized as primarily acting out of some psychopathology. We know people can and do act out of racism. And we know that the racism of such people is not an "isolated incident." It is fueled by the racism in the rest of society. But we don't acknowledge that battering and rape and random murders of women are fueled by women-hating. Instead we have therapy groups for batterers and rapists. Imagine having therapy groups for Ku Klux Klan members.

How could we tell a hate crime if we were murdered by one?

The "authorities" said that there was no evidence that this was a hate crime. But what would constitute evidence? A written treatise by the perpetrator explaining his motives? If women (in this case, lesbians) are randomly killed -- not in the course of a robbery or for some other motive -- then what is left as a motive?

Since there is no understandable motive, such attacks are explained away by the psychological state of the murderer. We don't explain away bank robberies by saying the robber is deranged. We can all see what he wants: money -- and we recognize that money is highly valued in this society. We don't have to have a treatise (or even a note) stating that he did it for the money. We understand that without the perpetrator making it explicit.

But when a man attacks a woman, we pretend we cannot understand his motivations. Because, as a society, we do not admit to the male dominance we live under, most people cannot see what the "deranged" woman killer (or lesbian killer) wants: control over women -- something perhaps as highly prized in our society as money -- just not admitted to.

Just as a bank robber or thief is motivated by a desire for money (something we can all understand), a woman killer is motivated by hate of seeing women unaccompanied by a man. But why is it that women feel safe when with a male companion? It is not because men are so strong and virile that the "deranged" killer with a gun or knife could not kill them too. But somehow a heterosexual couple does not fuel the ire of the "deranged" killer. He does not feel the "irrational" outrage when a woman is out camping if she is with a man. In his "deranged" worldview, he only feels the desire to attack or kill women who are unescorted. It seems to him that the woman "deserves" it, that she has no "right" to be there.