In the past week, two shocking mass shootings occurred in North America. First, a troubled 18-year-old launched an armed attack in the remote northeastern British Columbia settlement of Tumbler Ridge, injuring as many as 27 people and killing eight. The dead included attacker Jesse Van Rootselaar, his mother and 11-year-old stepbrother. Many other victims were children.
Then on Monday, estranged father Robert Dorgan killed his ex-wife and daughter and wounded three others during a hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Mass shootings are not uncommon in the United States, but they are much less common in Canada, where the atrocity first occurred. What makes these attacks so rapid in succession remarkable is that in both cases the attackers were men who identified themselves as women.
There are always some troubled souls in society and sometimes they resort to serious crime or even murder. For example, Jesse Van Rootselaar did not commit horrific acts of massacre because he wanted to appear as a woman. But it’s still important to understand what went wrong in such cases, and whether our legal and institutional frameworks can actually prevent it happening again in the future.
While a degree of sanity has returned to the national conversation about gender in the UK, more radical approaches continue to dominate across the Atlantic, particularly in the very liberal Canadian provinces and US states such as Rhode Island.
Van Rootselaar apparently began identifying as a woman six years ago, when he was about 12 years old, and has been described as a trans woman by multiple Canadian news outlets. It is believed that he experienced mental health issues during his subsequent teenage years. Local police went to Van Russelaar’s home multiple times, and at one point Van Russelaar was arrested under British Columbia’s Mental Health Act.
Jesse Van Rootselaar killed eight people, including his mother – AFP
Still, he had his own firearms license at one point, which was set to expire in 2024, and the weapons confiscated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were later returned to another family member.
Although details in the Rhode Island case are limited, Dogan appears to have a history of family conflict that ultimately led to his gender transition and subsequent divorce. Unusually, Pawtucket’s local police chief insisted on referring to Dogan by his given name and used male pronouns in his statement. So far, however, much of the US media has been careful to do so, with local Democratic politicians in Rhode Island firmly insisting in their statements that gun availability is an issue, not mental health or gender identity.
Given the widespread approach to gender transition in much of North America, serious mental health issues may not be a barrier to automatic and full validation of an individual’s self-described membership of the opposite sex.
In fact, many gender theorists insist that failure to do so may exacerbate psychological crises, often suggesting that this may lead to violent or suicidal outcomes. Parents may find themselves forced to agree with their children’s claims about gender dysphoria – Self-identification as a gender other than birth sex – Even if they suspect it is a symptom of other psychological problems.
In some places, they may not be able to intervene at all. Under British Columbia’s Infants Act, minors can consent to so-called “gender-affirming” treatments, including puberty blockers and hormones, without parental consent.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visits a memorial at a school in Tableau Ridge – Christinne Muschi/AFP
In particularly “progressive” areas, this can all happen in an environment where schools, health and social services, courts and even the police often take absolutist positions on gender ideology and are policed by people who are decidedly unsympathetic to parents troubled by their children’s desire to change gender.
People identify as the opposite sex for a variety of reasons, and many find that they are happier and more comfortable as adults.
But there are clearly more worrying patterns; first, there seems to be a particular trend of shy or autistic girls suddenly deciding to become boys at the onset of puberty. There is also widespread concern about the phenomenon of “autoestrogens,” which involves men becoming sexually aroused by thinking they are female.
As we saw in the Tumbler Ridge case, there are also troubled young men who struggle with the hormonal changes that come with puberty and who, in the absence of any other solutions to their problems, seem attracted to the idea of identifying as women.
Ideally, the right psychologists should be busy analyzing these trends and providing society with some answers to understand it. But in today’s rigid climate of academia, things are not that simple. Questioning gender ideology may be tantamount to career suicide.
So, in the aftermath of these atrocities, we are left with not answers but more questions and prayers that such tragedies will never happen again.
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