AVA: Yes, we were friends. Look, she’s not a monster. Not at all. They all had it out for her for so long. It wasn’t right. For a while she was trying to defend people, trying to put the shoe on the other foot, I guess, trying to make a difference. It got out of hand. And then … what they did to her … I’m so disgusted with the people at this school. The pictures they were sharing around, too. Those are the real monsters. I’m not forgiving or justifying what she did; I’m just saying that’s not all she is. She is more than this.

Part 3: July

JULY

Chapter 31

31

From Salon.com:

Rape Culture made a girl school shooter, plain and simple. In last week’s attack at Woepine High School in a small town in Ontario, students witnessed what is a rarity of its kind: not a gunman but a gunwoman, using a handmade gun. And while shootings are few and far between in Canada, there has been such a rash of school shootings and attacks in as many years in the United States that we’ve become desensitized to them. What they have in common is that the accused are overwhelmingly young, white men. So much so that there have been books, articles and movies about angry white men, a disenfranchised and misunderstood group, and what is troubling them as a generation, about toxic masculinity and its impact. Now we have a new problem on our hands, and it may well be thanks to the same guys. The shooter was bullied, harassed, and possibly assaulted. She took to violence—whether for the purpose of self-harm or harm against others might never be clear—as a means of pushing back.

We are accustomed to rape culture, that normalizing of violence and harassment against women. We are also accustomed to angry young people taking their furious revenge out on their peers. What we weren’t ready for was the intersection of these two things, and for the attacker to be female, for her rage to be gender-based. But here we are: at a moment when the pressure cooker blows and young women are finally releasing the tension of years of abuse. We are post-Weinstein, post-#MeToo, post-Women’s March, and now we are here.

We created an environment that left little choice and few options. We must shoulder some of the blame. (cont’d)

From CBC: