Quote:Apparently it’s important to be civil. Whatever pageantry of violent intolerance is playing out in the news, liberals and women and people of colour must moderate our language so that certain sensitive Caucasian gentlemen in the room aren’t made uncomfortable. We must remember that their feelings matter. We must not, for example, point out that violent misogyny – from online harassment and stalking to domestic abuse – is the live wire running through the machinery of mass murder, white supremacy and far-right mobilisation in Trump’s America and beyond.

Yesterday, Jarrod Ramos allegedly murdered five journalists at the offices of the Capital Gazette in Maryland. Ramos had sent countless threats to the paper, after one journalist reported on his harassment of a former classmate. The woman went through what she called a “year-long nightmare” of intimidation and threats before Ramos was convicted of misdemeanour harassment. Ramos was apparently furious that the Capital Gazette wrote about him as if he’d done something wrong.

Of 95 mass shootings carried out in the US between 1982 and 2017, 92 of the perpetrators were male, and 57% of mass-shooting perpetrators from 2009 to 2015 included a spouse, former spouse or other family member among the victims. “In many of these mass shootings,” Jennifer Wright observed at Harper’s Bazaar, “the desire to kill seems to be driven by a catastrophic sense of male entitlement.” That sense of entitlement may well be the greatest threat to what remains of civil society.

I’m sorry if that hurts to hear. I know that calling prejudice by its name makes people uncomfortable, and whatever happens, those of us who believe in silly things such as shared humanity are supposed to be civil, to be polite, to mitigate and manage hurt male feelings. After all, we know what might happen if we don’t.