X Close

Women and girls were the victims of the Southport attack

Mourners gather today at the site of the stabbings which killed three young girls. Credit: Getty

July 30, 2024 - 5:30pm

Sometimes a news story breaks and what’s not being said seems painfully obvious. It happened yesterday, when reports of a multiple stabbing in Southport in North West England kept referring to the victims as “adults and children”. What kind of “people” go to a Taylor Swift-themed dance class? It couldn’t have been more evident that the dead and injured were girls and their female teachers, yet such a vital point was obscured by the framing.

We now know that three girls — aged six, seven and nine — died in or after the attack. Eight other girls were stabbed and five are said to be in a “critical” condition, along with two women assumed to be their teachers. A 17-year-old boy has been arrested but we know very little about him, despite wild speculation on social media. What is increasingly clear, though, is that this seems like a targeted attack on women and girls, and certainly not the first of its kind.

Seven years ago, another man launched a targeted attack on a venue packed with girls and their mothers. Ariana Grande has a huge following among teenage and younger girls, and her concert at the Manchester Arena in 2017 was the only one for weeks where the audience fitted that profile. Of the 22 fatalities, 17 were women or girls, while the youngest, 8-year-old Saffie Roussos, was in the same age group as yesterday’s victims.

There is a pattern here of young men attacking venues where all or most of the “people” killed will be female, yet the emergency services and the media appear to be reluctant to dwell on the sex of the victims. When something is so obvious — and speaks so pertinently to motive — why not say so from the outset? These are profoundly misogynist attacks and they fit into a narrative, identified by police chiefs only last week, in which violence against women and girls has reached epidemic proportions.

That report by the National Police Chiefs’ Council made headlines, yet it’s as if this week’s horrific event in Southport is entirely unrelated. Did crime correspondents forget all the interviews they carried out last week? More likely, they believe that a mass-casualty event belongs in a different category, even though women and girls are so often the primary targets. One of the worst mass shootings in the US, the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, is usually thought of only as a school shooting. But 12 of the 20 primary school children who died were girls, while all of the adult victims were female.

The extent of misogyny, and its role as a motive in terrible crimes, appears to be too much for many commentators to stomach. It creates a striking dissonance as harrowing accounts emerge, yet the most significant element is missing. Earlier this month, when the wife and daughters of the BBC racing commentator John Hunt were found killed, many of the reports focused on the alleged perpetrator, obscuring the fact that this was yet another crime targeted exclusively on women.

It’s easier — and perhaps less alarming — to see such crimes as one-offs. But they aren’t. We have a problem with men who hate women, whether they kill a former partner, a complete stranger or launch a mass-casualty attack. The warning signs are always there, but a society desperate to blame something else refuses to act on them. We’re yet to learn the Southport attacker’s motivations. But surely such horrors will keep happening until we acknowledge the extreme danger some men pose to women and girls.


Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women will be published in November 2024.

polblonde

Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

96 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
1 month ago

Two thirds of homicide victims in the UK are men. Whenever a man is killed, should the papers concentrate on the fact that the victim was male, and that males are overrepresented as victims and need special protection? Or should we just stick to treating murder victims as murder victims and not make it about gender politics every time?

Ryan Scarrow
Ryan Scarrow
1 month ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

There’s a difference between victims of street crime and victims of targeted attacks, which this was along with the other examples that Joan mentioned (along with the Sydney mall attack a couple months ago and the incel mass shooter in California decade ago). Obviously there’s a crime problem in regards to the total number of homicides that you mentioned; that doesn’t mean that there isn’t also a gender problem in which women are killed *specifically because they are women*.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago
Reply to  Ryan Scarrow

Well said. There’s a very ignorant cohort amongst men who try to turn this on its head when it’s clear that the motivations in respective cases are different. I’m not sure what their problem is, except they’re probably part of the problem too.

Dennis Roberts
Dennis Roberts
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

There’s certainly plenty of misogynistic attacks on women and this may well be one of them, though it’s not certain.

But to suggest the Manchester arena attack was misogynistic is to disguise the real reason. The Bataclan attack was conducted for the same reason as the Manchester attack and yet, as far as I can tell (I haven’t found a sex breakdown of the victims, only lists of some of the victims), more men died than women.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of men killing women, so why make one up?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Dennis Roberts

Nazir Afzal, former Chief Crown Prosecutor for north-west England, responsible for prosecuting the Rochdale grooming gang in 2012. Chief Executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in 2017 at the time of the Manchester bombing:

 “I walked out of my last job, as head of the national body for police commissioners, after the terror attack in Manchester so that I could speak up about the fact that the attack was specifically aimed at women and girls. The bomber chose Ariana Grande because of the make-up of her audience.”
He continues, “Extremism towards women and girls is not confined to so-called caliphates, it is found everywhere and anywhere you look. Gender terrorism pervades every society – although men never call it that, because it would then need a national and international response.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Might I suggest a little reading between the lines here. Can you think of any reason, post Rochdale, post Manchester etc. why Nazir Afzal might want to emphasise misogyny in these cases, might want to de-emphasise other commonalities, and might wish to generalise the use of the term terrorism.

Dennis Roberts
Dennis Roberts
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Well that’s an interesting opinion but given the Manchester arena bomber blew himself up and left behind no indication of why he wanted to kill anyone, nevermind underake that specific attack, an opinion is all it is.

John Moss
John Moss
1 month ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Maybe they should focus on the fact that the VAST majority of murders are committed by men. Women are also a huge risk of sexual violence. This is a problem, and the author is right that it needs to be addressed.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 month ago
Reply to  John Moss

Quite right the vast majority of murders are committed by men. This is indeed a problem and addressing it could be useful if someone has a practical solution to offer beyond the usual liberal nostrums to the effect that men should be taught that violence is wrong as if this was not already known by the violent men and minority violent women. Any suggestions?

As to why a nihilistic or religiously motivated man might target women and children might this not be less to do with misogyny and more to do with the fact that it will stir up far greater impotent fury and hatred among the men in the target group than if they had killed men.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 month ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

Way too intelligent. Prepare to be cancelled.

William Shaw
William Shaw
1 month ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

A fact unmentioned by the author, perhaps because it doesn’t fit her narrative, is that one of the victims was a man: a man who attempted to disarm the attacker.
Another fact not mentioned, this time by the media, was the ethnic background of the attacker. A fact that definitely doesn’t fit the narrative of the media.

Mike Dearing
Mike Dearing
1 month ago
Reply to  William Shaw

No male person was killed in the attack and the ethnicity of the perpetrators is irrelevant to this discourse about misogyny.

Nova J
Nova J
1 month ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Do you really hate little girls and women that much that you would embarrass yourself writing something so irrational and illogical in order to avoid facts? You rant about narratives while trying to reframe an UNEXPECTED victim as a targeted victim. A man wasn’t targeted, a man interfered in a mass killing of females and got a minor stab as a result. How does an attacker stabbing a male who tried to stop him from continuing his slaughter of little girls not make it a slaughter of female ppl? This is not an argument. This is misogynist gaslighting used to avoid accountability for the obvious. Men don’t like being confronted with what their ppl do to a harmless population that does nothing to deserve the hatred, violence, slurs and abuse they receive nonstop.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

You’re missing her point. The point was that this attack was specifically targeting females. And there have been quite a few, especially in the U.S. A good example actually happened in Quebec close to 20 years ago. The attacker entered a classroom at a university , and told all the men to leave. Then he shot the 14 women in the class. I’ve never heard of a women entering a bar, telling the women to leave and shooting the men. Everyone knows that more men are victims of homicides than women. She’s talking about sex specific mass killings.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I’ll grant you your Quebec example. But is this case the same?? Was this attack targeting women out of misogyny? If someone made a mass shooting at a football match with all-male victims, we would not conclude that this was a misandric crime. We would simply say that a would-be mass murderer happened to pick this target. And, anyway, women are half the population. They should expect to make up half the overall victims, no?

There is such a thing as a hate crime, also against women. But not every attack on a woman is a hate crime. Even if you happen to be, say, gay, people might still attack you without caring about your sexual orientation, just because they want your wallet. Or because you are behaving like an a**hole.

Nova J
Nova J
1 month ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Misandry doesn’t exist. Women don’t mass kill males. So that’s not a valid comparison. If there was a mass killing of males you would absolutely not hesitate to draw conclusions based on the attackers identity. Misogynist mass killings happen all the time so trying to equate a reality with a fiction is not an argument. Unlike other types of mass killings & terror attacks, men as a group refuse to acknowledge misogynist terrorism despite it being more dominant than other forms. This denial extends to the media which covers up men’s crimes against the female pop. You make it about anything and everything but not the truth. Youre completely ok with him being any other kind of hater but a hater of females gets your hackles up. As it dues for a lot of men in these comments. There is no better evidence of how deep and widespread male hatred of the female pop is. And it’s deranged bc women and girls do nothing to deserve this insanity.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
1 month ago
Reply to  Nova J

So in the Stockport case should I attribute this to the Welsh hating the English (the perpetrator was born in Cardiff)? Or would it be the Africans hating the Europeans (he was of Rwandan ancestry)? Or all immigrants hating all the natives? Makes as much sense as blaming it on men (as a group) hating women (as a group).
As for male terrorism being ‘more dominant than other forms’, we are up against some stiff and well-organised competition: 9/11, Bataclan, the IRA, the Tamil Tigers, Hamas, … I wonder how objective your scoring function is.

As for hating women, I love women. I am married to one. Do you love men?

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

This is a better example than Sandy Hook. If 12 out of 22 children killed were girls that’s slightly over half – which is the proportion of females in the general population. As SH was a primary school I’d expect most if not all of the teachers to be female, which would account for all the teacher victims being female.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 month ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

There appears to be more money/jobs/kudos to be earnt via claims of misogyny – than claims of misandry – or those that don’t put sex/gender at the heart of problems..

Mike Dearing
Mike Dearing
1 month ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

How on earth is that baseless suggestion relevant to this matter? Should we detect a whiff insecurity?

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 month ago
Reply to  Mike Dearing

I just edited my comment to reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings. Let me know what you think.

James Simmons
James Simmons
1 month ago

I think it’s more responsible to wait before prescribing motive. Clearly this could be an attack targeted at women/girls. But it could also be one targeted at children where the fact the victims are female is more coincidental. Or it could instead be one targeting human life in general where children are the easiest target but are not an ideological target.

Ian Wray
Ian Wray
1 month ago
Reply to  James Simmons

Indeed. There are many possibilities, and we do not yet know. It could possibly be due to schizophrenia, with the murderer doing what his hallucinated voices told him to do; it could be someone who was seriously abused, and who has very low self-esteem, taking ‘revenge’; it could be ideologically or religiously motivated; it could be a young man with self-hatred exacerbated by constant indoctrination about ‘toxic masculinity’. Or perhaps a combination of such things.

Mint Julip
Mint Julip
1 month ago
Reply to  Ian Wray

Whatever the excuse, he needs dealing with in a very permanent way. How dare he, because of HIS problems or HIS indoctrination take the lives of innocents? Sorry, not sorry, but tired of nice but naive people trying to reason with and understand people who do abhorrent things.

Ian Wray
Ian Wray
1 month ago
Reply to  Mint Julip

I was not trying to excuse his crime. And what I wrote was based upon my professional experience and knowledge of such people.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  James Simmons

The young man took a taxi across town to go to that venue. He was targeting a dance class with the music and culture of Taylor Swift, who has been featured in all media for the past several months as she toured the UK. Like many female performers now she wears revealing costumes. As the motivation of the murderer gradually emerges with his name and mental health history, it seems likely that the small girls dancing to her music was why he chose that place. Unspeakable horror. Worse because it is impossible to prevent.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Maybe. Or he might simply have realised that he would make a bigger splash, and cause more hate, fear and revulsion, by attacking some girls linked to a famous performer, rather than the men in the nearest hardware store.

It is way too easy to conclude that every horrible crime is caused by your favourite bugbear, and therefore serves to promote your favourite policies.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
1 month ago

‘There is a pattern here of young men attacking venues where all or most of the “people” killed will be female, yet the emergency services and the media appear to be reluctant to dwell on the sex of the victims. ‘

The attack on the Ariane Grande concert is part of a pattern, is it?
What pattern should we be Noticing?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

very disrespectful” to female members of staff and teachers and that he had “a real problem with women“. – quote from classmate of Manchester bomber interviewed during the investigation

“..represented someone who had a “very, very bad attitude to women.”- Mr. Matthew Wilkinson, expert in radicalisation for the inquiry into the Manchester bombing

 “I walked out of my last job, as head of the national body for police commissioners, after the terror attack in Manchester so that I could speak up about the fact that the attack was specifically aimed at women and girls. The bomber chose Ariana Grande because of the make-up of her audience.” – Nazir Afzal, former Chief Crown Prosecutor for north-west England, responsible for prosecuting the Rochdale grooming gang in 2012. Chief Executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in 2017 at the time of the Manchester bombing.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

Misogyny is inherent in medieval manifestations of religions.

Arthur G
Arthur G
1 month ago

A 17 year old is not a “boy”.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
1 month ago
Reply to  Arthur G

A 17 year old is a voter, or will be shortly.

Claire D
Claire D
1 month ago
Reply to  Arthur G

I would use the terms ‘youth’ or ‘young man’.

Catherine Conroy
Catherine Conroy
1 month ago
Reply to  Arthur G

You’d say ‘girl’ for a 17 year old, wouldn’t you?

Søren Ferling
Søren Ferling
1 month ago

Depends on the context. In terms of capacity for physical violence, a seventeen-year-old male is pretty much an adult.

Pamela Booker
Pamela Booker
1 month ago
Reply to  Arthur G

Not according to the Labour leadership anyway.

El Uro
El Uro
1 month ago

Hysterical article, sorry

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  El Uro

Or worse, simply opportunistic and seen as an easy opportunity to harp on her own pet obsessions. Could she not have waited a week at least, or until we know more about the actual motives.

Nova J
Nova J
1 month ago
Reply to  David Morley

Stop slaughtering women and girls and then she’ll stop. Why are you so bothered by r the truth?

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  Nova J

Stop slaughtering women and girls

What an odd thing to say. Obviously I haven’t slaughtered anybody, let alone women and girls. Indeed I’m a vegetarian, so can’t even be accused of slaughtering animals.

You seem dead set on holding a whole group responsible for the actions of a vanishingly tiny few. Is that a pattern you have noticed in your study of mass killers by any chance?

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago
Reply to  David Morley

She is clearly mentally ill.
Or example of misandry, which she claims does not exist.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 month ago

“Murder is worse when the victims are women” seems to be the general theme of this article.

John Moss
John Moss
1 month ago

It’s certainly worse when they are children.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 month ago
Reply to  John Moss

That is absolutely true.
Children are innocent, and crimes against children are particularly heinous.
Women, however, are adults. And very few men hate them, or wish them harm.

Nova J
Nova J
1 month ago

Name incidents where women have mass killed males. According to your logic terror anttacks are no big deal.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  Nova J

The Angel Makers of Nagyrév(HungarianTiszazugi méregkeverők, “Tiszazug poison-mixers”) were a group of women living in the village of Nagyrév, Hungary, who poisoned to death an estimated 40–100 men between 1914 and 1929.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 month ago
Reply to  Nova J

Women are physically smaller than males, and far more easily overpowered, so it’s obviously far likelier that males will kill other males, which is far and away the vast majority of homicides.
However, this is apparently far less serious than crimes motivated, somehow, by a general dislike for all women. In reality, of course, crimes against women are more often motivated by animus towards one particular woman, and not against women as a whole.
Similarly, violence against men is usually motivated by an animus towards one particular man – and not by misandry, with a few exceptions, like the attack on Andy Warhol by the radical feminist Valerie Solanas.
I quite like women myself, but I find violence against any innocent human being to be equally despicable, no matter who the victim or the perpetrator are.
THAT was my point.

Mike Dearing
Mike Dearing
1 month ago

Nope. It’s rank misogyny, period.

Emmanuel MARTIN
Emmanuel MARTIN
1 month ago

Interestingly, your short comment gathered almost as many downvotes as upvotes. Did you call out some emperor wearing no clothes ?

Philip Stott
Philip Stott
1 month ago

Oh dear, early indications are that there may be a ‘culturally sensitive’ aspect to these horrific attacks.

Chipoko
Chipoko
1 month ago
Reply to  Philip Stott

Predictable.

Catherine Conroy
Catherine Conroy
1 month ago
Reply to  Philip Stott

Read the article first. There have been other attacks specifically targetting women and girls. It’s not about culture wars, it’s about gratuitous attacks by males on females.

R S Foster
R S Foster
1 month ago

…the Manchester Arena attack was undoubtedly misogynist…to exactly the same extent that that traditionally observant Muslims are theologically required to behave in a way that we in the West would normally deem to be inherently misogynist…hijab…morality police…one man’s word worth four women’s…stoning for adultery…and so on and so forth.
Whatever happened in Southport, it seems pretty clear that the Manchester Arena Bomber targetted an audience predominantly comprising young girls and women very few of whom would be wearing outfits that would pass muster at the Mosque…and who were therefore both western and sinful…Haram as opposed to Halal…a perfectly legitimate target for any Jihadi…
We can’t hope to tackle this unless we face that…

Geraldine Hanlan
Geraldine Hanlan
1 month ago
Reply to  Philip Stott

Not ‘culturally sensitive’ but unfortunately an example of the misogyny inherent in our culture.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago

Where do you live? This happened in the U.K.!

Jessica Oh
Jessica Oh
1 month ago
Reply to  David Morley

Are you denying that misogyny exists in every culture?

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  Jessica Oh

Are you denying that misogyny exists in every culture?

People who think they can fly probably exist in every culture.

There is a difference between exists and “inherent in our culture”. Modern U.K. culture certainly cannot be described as misogynistic. Indeed, if it shows antipathy it is towards men, who are popularly portrayed as bumbling, toxic, dangerous, incompetent, immature out of touch with their emotions and yes, misogynistic. Where once we had a deficit view of women, we now have a deficit view of men. Or haven’t you noticed?

Tom Lewis
Tom Lewis
1 month ago

Joan seems to have an agenda, an anti-men agenda. I’m sure she is right when it comes to selecting women (and children) for targets, but to suggest it is because of a hatred of women is a leap and a half and then some I assume she is not totally ‘thick’ and knows that fine well, but beating a drum for her favourite cause trumps all perspective and nuance, apparently. After all, presumably, if you wanted to cause a mass casualty atrocity, and had to select a target it must be a hell of a conundrum, do you attack a group of armed to the teeth Marine Commandos, or a group of women and children ? I have to admit, it’s a hard one that, decisions, decisions ?
The question Joan should be asking herself is; Why should the murder of women be considered, in this day and age, more atrocious than that of men ? ( FYI, I’m of the ‘old’, presumably misogynistic mindset, that values the lives of women more than that of men, but maybe that’s part of the problem).

El Uro
El Uro
1 month ago
Reply to  Tom Lewis

I named her post hysterical and I can add it’s offensive to the vast majority of men. I am more than sure that the men, including those present here, if she were in a dangerous situation, would gloomily spit aside and rush to her aid, even at the risk of their own lives, simply because she is a woman. I am not sure she realizes what I have said and frankly, I don’t care. Her opinion is not interesting to me, she is not the first and not the last woman of such kind

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
1 month ago

This is nonsense. A small minority of men are the worst offenders in any society. And most murder victims will tend to be other men.
Mass murders of the sort described are not really predictable or definable.
Women will bear the brunt of any increase in crime, since they are more vulnerable in any society.

Nova J
Nova J
1 month ago

This is nonsense. Getting killed in a drugs dispute is not the same as little girls getting mass killed just for being female. We’ve seen this EVERY SINGIE YEAR ALL ACROSS THE WEST. You think it’s no big deal when little girls in an Amish school get separated from the boys for extermination? You seriously are arguing it’s normal and the same as a personal dispute over criminal activities.? Get out of here. Remember that logic next time you whine about other forms of terrorism or violence. Mass killings out of irrational hatred is nothing like losing at a risky lifestyle. Disgusting comment.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
1 month ago
Reply to  Nova J

So you are saying that when men get killed it is mainly their own fault?

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 month ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Feminism’s core belief is that men oppress women, and are therefore an enemy, not a partner, which is why feminists embrace socialism – men are tantamount to the mustache twirling bourgoise – and, incongruously, feminists confuse the term “men” or “male” with the term “criminal” or “sex offender” or “psychopath.”
Happily, the majority of women reject that view. Most women aren’t clinically neurotic, and most likely adore their husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, etc. Or at least, they tolerate our presence, and if it were otherwise humanity would’ve died out some time ago.
I personally can’t imagine harming an innocent woman. Nor even a moderately malevolent one, and I assume most men feel the same.
But feminism, like most other -isms, -ists, and flawed ideologies, is primarily constructed around delusions, and deeply mistaken assumptions about other human beings.

Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
1 month ago

Linking the Manchester Arena atrocities, the appalling events in Southport and what appears to be an equally tragic incident within a single family is, to say the least, somewhat tenuous.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Nazir Afzal, former Chief Crown Prosecutor for north-west England, responsible for prosecuting the Rochdale grooming gang in 2012. Chief Executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in 2017 at the time of the Manchester bombing:
 “I walked out of my last job, as head of the national body for police commissioners, after the terror attack in Manchester so that I could speak up about the fact that the attack was specifically aimed at women and girls. The bomber chose Ariana Grande because of the make-up of her audience.”
He continues, “Extremism towards women and girls is not confined to so-called caliphates, it is found everywhere and anywhere you look. Gender terrorism pervades every society – although men never call it that, because it would then need a national and international response.

CF Hankinson
CF Hankinson
1 month ago

I think the point being missed by many of you is the deliberate refusal by the police to identify the victims as girls. Only as ‘children’. It’s almost as though the report just over a week ago which noted that violence against women and girls had risen by 40% and what were the police going to do about it? Was that not calling them girls could be a start. It was a deliberate mismanagement of facts which would have changed headlines, when it was obvious that they were all little girls and their women teachers.
They were Taylor Swift fans, little Swifties adoring a star who celebrates girls empowerment. Like the Ariana Grande event this was very special to them, a big treat for them. This we know, the fact was obvious and hidden.. they weren’t random children playing as was implied. It was a very specific target and we want to know why.

Nova J
Nova J
1 month ago
Reply to  CF Hankinson

They ALWAYS do this. I’m still angry about the Amish School shooting in 2006. The guy literally set the boys free and herded the girls to their slaughter but the media never mentioned or discussed the targeting of the girls or even acknowledged they were specifically girls. Also, Females being targeted in the Atlanta spa shooting in 2021 was falsely reported as a racial hate crime. It was a textbook misogyny slaughter and sure enough the guy explained it was misogyny motivated and not racially. Celebrities were going on and on about “stop Asian hate” and nobody acknowledged his actual motivation. It’s always like this.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 month ago
Reply to  Nova J

You seem to be ignoring an exceptionally large elephant in the room, namely the more likely motivator behind these crimes.
It wasn’t simply that an evil man wished to ruin a little girl’s special day, and ruin or end her life.
It was that an individual with very anti-western views wished to ruin all our days.

Interested Inlearning
Interested Inlearning
1 month ago

Agreed, good article and sound points.

Victor James
Victor James
1 month ago

Filth, scum, you can tell them by their zoomed out euphanisms.

Be specific. What happened here??????????????

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
1 month ago
Reply to  Victor James

What is the name and ethnic background of the murderer?

Matthew Powell
Matthew Powell
1 month ago

We don’t know what the killer’s motivation was. Just because his victims were women and girls doesn’t mean the motive was misogyny. I think this article is as much in bad taste as some elements of the right who are also engaging in unfounded speculation as to the motive. Can’t people wait for the facts before opening their mouths anymore?

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  Matthew Powell

Can’t people wait for the facts before opening their mouths anymore?

I guess the answer is no! If it even looks like it fits their agenda – which, let’s admit it, matters more to them than the actual event – then they start running their mouth and stirring up hate. Could they not even wait just a week before they kick off.

M Harries
M Harries
1 month ago

The perpetrator of the Manchester Arena massacre went after non-Muslims and non-Muslim culture. The fact that the victims were all female is coincidental.

We don’t know yet why the 17 yr old man targeted that play group. Was there an ideology of hatred that inspired him? Did he in fact target it because there would be mostly girls there?

The police say that Islamically-inspired hatred – ‘terrorism’ – was not a factor, but we don’t know. If he wasn’t shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ it is unlikely he was acting as a jihadi martyr for Islam.

Seb Dakin
Seb Dakin
1 month ago

Most of the adults in a primary school are female. So that’s why the dead teachers at Sandy Hook were female. A bit over half the children were female, a bit under half were male. I’d suggest the shooter chose a primary school since he was a coward, rather than a misogynist. So shoehorning that into this article doesn’t add anything to it.

Mark HumanMode
Mark HumanMode
1 month ago

totally agree to call this hatred of women out and attempt to stop it. For my money, men have got to start calling this out. But you used a bad example in Sandy Hook: 12 out of 20 kids as girls is to close to 50% to mean much, and that all of the teachers were women was very likely in a system where 20% of less of teachers are men.

Claire D
Claire D
1 month ago

Is it hatred of women and girls, or is it that these assassins are base cowards and choose the most vulnerable to vent their frustration and anger out upon ?

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  Claire D

And because it is the most felt by any community. I think I’m a typical man, in that although intellectually I think a man’s life is as valuable as a woman’s, that is not how I feel. The killing of women, and children is still by far the bigger outrage.

Nova J
Nova J
1 month ago
Reply to  Claire D

They write manifestos and make it clear they hate females and want to annihilate them. These mass killings always fit the same pattern. They are common and about misogyny.

Claire D
Claire D
1 month ago
Reply to  Nova J

Between March 2022 and March 2023 there were 590 homicides in the UK.
The homicide rate was 9.9 victims per million population.
The rate for male victims was 14.2 per million, which was more than twice that of female victims at 6.0 per million.
(ONS statistics)

Obviously it would be preferable if there were no homicides at all, but 9.9 victims per million and only 6.0 female victims per million is not “common” by any stretch of the imagination.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  Claire D

For the more visual: if the Canary Wharf tower represents the female population of the U.K. – like an enormous bar chart – then the number of women murdered per year would be represented by a line less than 1mm from the bottom. It really is vanishingly rare.

Obviously zero would be better, but I doubt there will ever be a society in which murder never happens.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  Nova J

Nova – I think perhaps you have read too many of these manifestos. You seem to have picked up the style.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago
Reply to  Claire D

Some clearly are motivated by hatred of women. But it is worth remembering how vanishingly rare such events are given the population of the planet.

Some have been genuinely mistreated by women (abused by mothers, for example), others seem to be misfits who can’t understand why women dislike them. They blame women rather than acknowledge their own shortcomings.

What is common is they turn hatred of specific women (justified or not) into a generalised hatred of all women – and then act on it.

What is both wrong, and unacceptable, is blaming perfectly normal men, or men collectively, for the craziness of a tiny few. Not only is it wrong, but it is eerily reminiscent of the thinking style of the killers themselves.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
1 month ago
Reply to  David Morley

This exactly.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago

There is a pattern here

The author cites two events, seven years apart, which apparently constitutes a « pattern ». We still don’t know what the motive for the attack was, people are still in shock, and the author thinks it appropriate to use this as grist to her own particular mill. For shame!

Nova J
Nova J
1 month ago
Reply to  David Morley

I can list misogynist terror attacks for every single year going back decades. In all countries. What year you want? And the media won’t call a spade a spade in many of these incidents like the Amish mass killing bc misogyny is endemic.

1989 – Montreal – female engineering students slaughtered bc a misogynist didn’t think women should be allowed to be engineers per his manifesto.

2006 – Amish school shootings in PA- Males were told to leave and girls/women were exterminated. Every single girl dead or shot. He was gonna grape and torture them first but skipped to the extermination. No media even mentioned only the girls were targeted just like they are doing in this weeks case. Always hiding the truth behind generic language that implies males were also victims when they werent. Imagine being a girl herded for slaughter while all the boys run free.

2009 – Collier Township – misogynist went to a women’s fitness class to exterminate women per his manifesto.

2021 – “Spa” shooting in GA was a misogynist hate crime but the media labelled it an Asian hate crime. Anybody informed on this topic knew right away it was a misogynist attack and that is exactly what the attacker said and the evidence. There are examples of similar mass misogynist attacks at “spas” in other countries. – Like the 2020 machete attack in Toronto.

These are random examples off the top of my head. I could go all day.

Stop gaslighting about what’s going on. The jig is up.

Citizen Diversity
Citizen Diversity
1 month ago

There will indeed be more to this attack in Southport than the sex of the slain.
While there is misogyny among some men, in the killing of females misogyny need not be the primary motive, or a motive at all.
The idiot boy who attacked the young people and their parents in the Manchester Arena was motivated by the deaths of children in the American-led intervention in the war in Syria.
Does it do any service either to the female victims of male violence or particularly to the children in Southport if the wickedness that caused their deaths is conflated with and smothered under a camouflage blanket of women-hatred?
Is it really ‘society’ that’s ‘desperate’ to blame someone or something else?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

A growing consensus is that he was motivated by the deaths of children in Gaza. Just as the attempted murder of the Lt Col was motivated by the impending sentencing of Choudary.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 month ago

There is no sense of punishment, retribution and correction conveyed by our political and media class in Britain. They go as far as to deny that there should be any anger at all in response.
In fact, they wait for right-wing protestors to express their anger so that this section of society can be condemned.
They are perhaps the most pious and conceited ruling class we have witnessed in our modern history in the West – effectively for five or six centuries since the Church ruled unchallenged.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago

It couldn’t have been more evident that the dead and injured were girls and their female teachers, yet such a vital point was obscured by the framing.

Is the author saying it was deliberately framed in this way? Is she saying that violence against women (as opposed to men) is deliberately de-emphasised by our media?

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago
Reply to  David Morley

Yes, she is saying that.
However, how much of MSM including bbc is staffed by women?
Problem is these women are fully subscribed to woke pro immigration narrative, so unwilling to see who is committing these crimes against women in uk and the West.
I guess when they are ganged raped by Muslim and African savages they will be begging white men (who they denigrate on daily basis) to come to their rescue.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 month ago

We also need to recognise the danger that “some men” pose to “most men and women”. The likelihood of writers like this one acknowledging that is virtually zero.

Spencer Dugdale
Spencer Dugdale
1 month ago

Are there any groups – culturally or regligiously – that have a problem with women? Is it Welsh Methodists for example or Quakers perhaps. I know there is a culture somewhere that we have been importing and which does not tolerate women’s liberation Western style but I can’t quite put my finger on it. No doubt it will come back to me.

Russell Sharpe
Russell Sharpe
1 month ago

Just to remark that the fact that a disturbed or deranged killer might target the most innocent and defenceless, those who inspire the kindest and gentlest feelings in normal people: that is, children rather than adults, and – still, I guess – girls rather than boys, not because he seethes with hatred for this most innocent group per se, but precisely to maximise the pain and inconsolable grief of those who so treasure them. It may be a decision simply to do the worst possible thing. That does not make it any the less misogynistic of course, but may point to a deeper cause than the misogyny, if this is ‘only’ a means.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
1 month ago

What is the name and ethnic background of the attacker?

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
1 month ago

The cultural sensitive aspect only goes so far in explaining such attacks. Very, very, few people from any culture would attack young children, boys or girls. So why are these attacks taking place?