Professor Judith Taylor recently wrote an op ed in The Toronto Star discussing white men and their violence. Judith Taylor is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, with teaching responsibilities on the St. George campus. Her research focuses on the intersection of feminist activism, community organizations, and social changes within public institutions.
We have posted an excerpt of the article below. The full story is available on The Star website here.
'Murdering' white men and the work for white women
June 16, 2020
By Judith Taylor
...Part of coming into conscious adulthood for me has been becoming aware that every week, white men will be in the news for trying to kill based on racism and sexism. We won’t name them as white men. And we won’t connect the dots to think about the systems of thought that animate their adventures in harm.
If we look just at the violent acts that have occurred in the U.S. and Canada since most of us have been in lockdown, it seems pretty clear: white men have murder on their minds. It can be police officers, or a man pretending to be a police officer. It can be a teenager animated by INCEL, or a man by his wife’s intention to divorce, but murder seems like a good option to many white men, and they feel entitled to it.
COVID-19 time provides us two legal proceedings, one for the man accused of murdering many people with a van, and one who murdered a woman in a massage parlour. We can exceptionalize these cases, but hateful ideologies underpin most white male rage, whether it leads to date rape or targeting a mosque. It’s punishment of more vulnerable others as a guiding principle or a way of life...