by Janis Cortese
Since constructing my WWW site for Women and Handguns at http://www.io.com/~cortese/resources/guns.html,
I've received a tremendous amount of feedback about it and most
of it has been positive. Many women write to me thanking me for
explaining the facts and me chanics behind handguns without trying
to spew jargon or talking down to them. (Plenty of handgun information
can be found on the web, but few handgun primers are extant anywhere.)
And many men have written telling me how they have en couraged
their wives or girlfriends to read the site in order to learn
more about their options.
But of course (you saw this coming, right?) I've also received
my share of mail from righteous anti-gun evangelists, all making
the same arguments, all of which can be poked full of logical
holes in seconds. I'm not going to bother addressing those arguments
since you probably aren't interested in hearing it, and since
I haven't heard a single original anti-gun argument in years.
What I would like to discuss instead is the rather disturbing
parallel I've detected between the left and right wing attitudes
towards two different issues, and how they are actually behaving
much more similarly
than either side would like to believe.
Before we continue, I'm going to come clean and say that I still
do consider myself a liberal. I'm pro-choice, pro-gay, and in
favor of some forms of gov ernment assistance, although I recognize
openly that the welfare system as it stands is in need of reform.
If you aren't in agreement with me on these is sues, prepare to
be irked slightly. If you are, then keep what I'm going to say
in mind the next time you are castigated for being "not really
a feminist" or "not really liberal" by someone
who hasn't thought out their position clearly.
Most of the anti-gunners who have written to me have attempted
to topple one of three positions in my page:
The reason why the anti-gunners' reactions to these three attitudes
have stood out so strongly for me is because they are precisely
the reactions against things like sex education and abortion that
liberals lose patience with when wielded by the right wing.
"Oh, so you just want to teach people about guns and not
be responsible for the death that it causes. That's what I expected."
Is this any different from, "Sure hand condoms out to teenagers
and then disavow responsibility for teen pregnancy!"
In both cases, they attempt to pin responsibility for individual
actions on someone other than the individual, and they equate
knowledge with danger in stead of realizing that ignorance is
the real enemy, and knowledge is the se cret to safety. The left
wing rightly shakes its head at the right wing atti tude that
knowledge and not ignorance of birth control causes teen pregnancy.
And then they turn around and cry that knowledge of the inner
working of guns causes gun accidents and crime.
Am I the only one experiencing cognitive dissonance?
Imagine a right-wing evangelical type talking about the inherent
nonviolent and nurturing qualities of the ideal woman. How many
feminists do you think would pounce on his remarks as sexist?
Probably quite a few.
Now imagine a "feminist" anti-gun activist saying the
same thing. Why are the insider victim feminists in the audience
now nodding up and down?
Because, while they are willing to fight a man's constricted definition
of femininity with everything they are worth, they are perfectly
willing to step into the same straitjacket as long as a woman
hands it to them.
Me, I'm suspicious of anyone who wants to tell me what I can and
can't do based on my gender including women. I've had my share
of experiences that have convinced me that women can be just as
restricting of other women's activities as men can. Maybe that's
why I still call myself a feminist and why I'm so vocal on self-defense
options for women. I'm not going to let anyone else tell me what
it means to be a woman, or tell me that I have to fit their criteria
for "nonviolence" and "nurturing" before I'm
allowed into the sisterhood. I was born a woman I don't need anyone
else's seal of approval to be one, and those victim feminists
don't own a copyright on the word "feminists." After
years of hard fighting to break out of the manacles placed on
women through patriarchal oppression, I'm not going to step right
back into them now that a woman has flounced them up and put a
new coat of paint on them.
Besides, who ever said that nurturance required nonviolence? We
all know that if you shoot the mama bear with her cubs nearby,
you'll just make her mad. There is nothing more dangerous in the
entire natural world than a mother de fending her children. Nurturance
without the capacity for protection isn't nurturance at all.
Many feminists, however, dislike guns because of the "phallic"
connotations of them that guns equal male endowments. Certainly
there are some men for whom this is the case, and that attitude
is irritating. But there are also men who equate their genitals
with cars and computers should we not purchase these are well?
We're talking about men who equate their genitals with everything
under the sun. Why do we have to take their definitions as canon?
In other words so some insecure men equate genitals and guns.
They are wrong.
This is a rather multifaceted attitude, and one that is hard to
address con cisely. Lurking in this one are a number of frightening
personal attitudes that do more to create the tendency toward
violence than any number of so -called "assault weapons."
The most chilling of these attitudes can also find a parallel
in the
right wing attempts to silence all discussion of sex education
and abortion as well as almost all other sexual and gender issues
in politics today. This is the following: that the mere awareness
of how a gun works, or simply picking one up, will somehow cause
your brain to be taken over with the urge to blow away strangers
at a shopping mall. Personal identity or personal attitude does
not exist any person alive will be mental kin to Charles Manson
and feel violent urges simply by having a handgun, or even just
by having shot one.
How many right wing crusaders harp on how teenagers will naturally
be overcome with the urge to engage in constant and faceless sex
simply by hearing about the existence of birth control? How many
seem to feel that any woman would jump at the chance to have an
abortion simply by learning about the option? How many of them
act as if simply acknowledging that homosexuality exists will
cause them to be overcome with the desire to become a drag queen
or bull dyke?
Again, beneath both of these fears of being well-informed on the
part of the left and right wings is the fear that a person's identity
is not under their control. I suppose it's the flip side of not
holding someone responsible for their actions: not believing that
you are truly in control of your own. Surely I can't be the only
person who sees how this refusal to acknowledge one's own control
over one's actions promotes violent behavior! If you treat people
as if they would become violent barbarians at the slightest provocation,
they tend to live down to your expectations.
Well, I don't buy it from right wing evangelists, or supposed
feminists. Each of us is in control of our actions maybe our lives
or our pasts were not entirely in our control, but we can choose
how we react to this. Maybe they are so weak-minded and susceptible
to thought control that they will open fire in a McDonald's just
because they learn the difference between a revolver and an autoloader,
but if that is the case, they don't have much business telling
the rest of us well-adjusted people how to live.
So, far from the left wing or right wing promoting individual
rights and responsibilities, it seems that be it firearms or reproductive
freedom both sides are promoting very similar attitudes, and neither
of them make the slightest bit of sense:
the refusal to acknowledge that each person is responsible
for their own actions, and that we are, each of us, included in
that.
Liberals often speak about how poverty, child abuse, and racism
do more to pro mote violence in our society than anything else,
and I agree with them. There are root causes that have nothing
to do with individual choice that seem to promote violent behavior
there has to be a reason why inner city African -American men
have a greater chance of being shot than graduating from college,
and anyone should recognize that living in a depraved, unstable
environment will promote criminal behavior. (I'm not saying that
this excuses anyone from responsibility for their actions, but
am just making the observation that cer tain social conditions
seem to promote violent behavior.) Why then, after argu ing so
hard that societal influences can cause violent urges, do they
rush to point at something outside of themselves as the First
Cause for violence? Murder, rape, and robbery existed long before
firearms the church/state in the Middle Ages murdered upwards
of nine million women as witches with nary a hand gun in sight,
and I've never been accused of being violent because of the boxes
of matches in my kitchen drawer.
I believe that underlying their fanatical desire to equate violence
with guns is an attitude of fear and a lack of control over events
that frighten them. This is entirely understandable living with
the realization that we are all potentially victims of violent
crime, and that it can happen even if we are very careful is a
terrifying one. It would certainly be nice if violent people were
marked on the brow like Cain, and could be easily identified by
all of us for avoidance or incarceration.
But the hard truth is that this isn't the case. Rapists can look
like school teachers. Murderers can look like ministers. Robbers
can look like the nice neighbors next door.
Some of us realize this and take the most rational and practical
steps to protect ourselves in the face of this watching where
we go at night, locking and reinforcing/alarming our doors, purchasing
some defensive equipment be it pep per spray or a firearm, taking
an Impact or Model Mugging class to improve our fighting skills.
This is the reaction of the pragmatist who recognizes the problems
with society and works to survive them. (We can't work to solve
the problems with society from six feet under, after all. This
is particularly hard to communicate to feminists, who seem to
think that women are at our most effective as Dead Exalted Martyrs
instead of as action-oriented movers and shakers. Personally,
if I see one more image be it from feminists or from a movie or
television show that promotes the dead beloved woman as the only
im portant role a woman can play, I'm gonna hurl.)
Some of us, however, don't reach this stage. We may refuse to
acknowledge that we can't tell the Bad People from Good People
Like Us. Frightened or in denial about the bald facts that there
is no Us and Them when it comes to violent criminals, and that
they are often no different from us until they commit a crime
they seize hold of any distinction to act as a litmus test for
violent potential.
The right wing has, in the past, believed that the amount of pigment
in your skin is the deciding factor, the ten-second test for violent
tendencies. "Are you black? Then you're more likely to become
violent, and I can save myself from being a victim by avoiding
you or locking you up as a po tential criminal." The left
wing has grasped at the possession of a firearm as the same ten-second
test, ignoring that it makes about as much sense as label ing
someone with a fire extinguisher a potential arsonist. "Do
you have a firearm? Then you are automatically a Bad Person and
I can avoid you and re main safe forever."
Disastrously, this just isn't so.
How many more people will remain unable to defend themselves from
the preda tions of others before we realize this?
Copyright 1996 by Janis Cortese
mailto:cortese@netcom.com
http://www.io.com/~cortese/