Articles like this highlight the systemic, societal based normative attitudes that we are bathed in. Male violence is looked on in a sympathetic light and the narratives spun around them serve as a justification for their actions.

Lying in wait with a shotgun under your family’s car and then dispatching your wife and daughter with a shotgun is not a fucking act to by sympathized with. This sort of violence and abuse is the hidden backdrop of our society and needs to brought to light in a most unsympathetic and biased toward the victim way. Laying low at the root of situations like these is the male patterned socialization that states that using violence is an acceptable way to solve problems – coupled with the notion that women somehow are property and less than human leads directly to shit like this murder suicide.

We need to change the programming for our men and despite the insidious backlash of from the patriarchy about letting ‘boys be boys’ we need to get them early and counter these messages that glamorize violence and dehumanize women.