The story: An abusive dad (took parenting classes after assaulting one of his children a few years ago) kills himself and his five children after learning his wife (the children’s mother), who fled several days before, is with another man.
The headline*: “Breakup Ignited Dad’s Deadly Rage”
The definition: Ignite: To set afire; to set in motion
The lesson: A man rapes a woman; the woman “is raped.” A man kills five children and blames a woman, the woman “ignites” the man’s actions. Her actions set him off; his actions were prompted, involuntary.
Or, as Shakespeare’s Sister put it, “Yep—Mom did it.”
*from the Seattle Times, where most commenters are blaming the woman for a) being a slut (“I hope you had a good time) or b) fleeing (she “obviously cared for herself only and her comforts”)
Okay, that’s a good point about the odd use of passive voice, but it still seems a big leap to say “passive voice = it’s the woman’s fault.”
I, for one, read that story this morning and didn’t for a second think “Oh, his wife made him do this,” unfortunate phrasing or no.
And you of anyone should know that the author of a news story can’t be held responsible for the asinine opinions expressed by the commenters on the website who respond to it.
Today’s lesson in the dangers of using inflammatory rhetoric brought to you by…
You’re dead on, ECB. It’s the oldest trick in the book: Eve ate the fruit and then got Adam to do it, you know. This story makes me want to vomit.
I guaran-damn-tee you that if there were no women in this world their would be no violence. Seems causal to me.
Of course. Because if I say “That dog told the schizophrenic man to kill people”, I’m obviously seriously accusing the dog of being an accessory to murder.
thanks for posting this, unlike the earlier comments, I don’t think it’s an overreaction. There’s a reason we teach our students not to use passive voice: it denies agency (oh, and it’s often sloppy, but that’s another matter). And actions, especially, say, rape or murder, definitely have an agent.
I blame guns. Well, guns don’t kill people. Gun nuts kill people. I blame gun nuts.
Although gun nuts with no guns wouldn’t be that hard to live with. Everything seems to go to hell when you add the gun to the gun nut equation that it all falls to shit. I blame guns.
Yes, @6, using the passive voice is generally bad writing. It doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s always an effort in political manipulation. I maintain that no one read that headline and said “Well, clearly he was justified then!” – unless they were already predisposed to that interpretation of the event.
The breakup did ignite it, what he chose to do with himself is the issue. If we don’t understand why things happen we’ll never understand how to fix them. Would you rather the headline be “Man kills 5 kids and himself just cause”? I think it’s overreaching to assume this is sexist, because anything in enough light can be misinterpreted as sexist.
In the case of rape many go unsolved, leaving just the victim and no motive, our media outlets could assume the motive was sexual but that would do a disservice to the community to lie. So in many cases the terminology used is “she was raped” because we don’t have any other information. When you see a sex offender go on trial do they say “Low top caused man to have a boner”?
You’re absolutely correct, ECB. This is an excellent example of how word choice subtly conveys meaning and inference, above and beyond conveying content. No way would that headline have been written by a woman (unless she was Ann Coulter).
So, your claim is that the Seattle Times is blaming the woman for her husband’s actions? Hmm, that’s kind of a stretch, isn’t it?
Whenever some nut goes on a killing spree, we all immediately wonder what could possibly be the motive (besides obvious mental instability). The headline simply answers this obvious question.
Is this sentence passive or aggressive?
“A couple of months ago, I left a QFC with a bottle of wine that I had failed to pay for.”
I think it’s completely appropriate to parse the language we use to describe the most sensitive and explosive issues of our time. The language we choose reveals the subtleties of our prejudices.
Remember, in the Bush administration, “Mistakes were made.” That is nowhere near the same statement as, “We made mistakes.” It’s completely right to question what it means when we say, “A woman was raped,” instead of, “The man raped the woman.”
The woman obviously is a slut. That in no way justifies the husbands actions but it remains true.
OK, you can’t blame the newspaper or the headline writer or the reporter for the online comments on a newstory. But it is thought-provoking, or hell I’ll call it “creepy” that that particular headline, and variants of it in other newspapers, seem to have attracted an unusually high number of commenters who are focused on condemning the woman’s behavior, and not the behavior of her murderous fuck of a husband (may he burn in hell).
Even I can’t follow Erica’s logic in this.
Sorry, your lame attempt at being Charles today doesn’t fly.
P.S. Erica, have you actually looked at any other Seattle times headlines? Right, didn’t think so. Here’s a random sample involving male and female victims of violence.
“Man shot in face during Skyway party”
“Sledgehammer-wielding burglar shot to death”
“Hotel clerk raped in Federal Way”
“Police say 12-year-old girl raped at Eugene park”
“Man shot in leg this morning in dispute over woman”
They always use the same passive grammar regardless of the victim’s sex. Your conjecture is bullshit, as is your habit of assuming the worst in people.
You need some love in your life, sister.
LOL:
“A couple of months ago, I left a QFC with a bottle of wine that I had failed to pay for.”
That one’s never going to get old!
translation: “I got busted trying to jack a bottle of ripple.”
@18 FTW
@18,
By that logic, the headline for this story should have been: Man shoots children, himself after wife leaves him. Instead, the Times went with something that puts more/most of the blame on the breakup.
Also, ECB supposedly has a boyfriend. What is it with you insecure nitwits always jumping to the assumption that any woman you disagree with either needs to get laid or otherwise needs a man. Grow up.
I blame elenchos. With or without guns. It’s all his fault.
“Breakup Ignited Dad’s Deadly Rage” is not an example of the passive voice. It’s an active voice sentence with an inanimate subject (“breakup”). The passive would be “Dad’s Deadly Rage Ignited by Breakup”.
I agree that the headline was completely inappropriate, but that inappropriateness has nothing to do with active versus passive voice. Those are grammar terms.
#18, and all the rest of you living in la la land and pretending this isn’t sexist:
Just because they’re all in passive voice doesn’t mean that this headline is not sexist–this asshole psycho would’ve found some reason to kill his family at some point, breakup or no, based on his history, and so it’s sexist to make the primary focus of the story (ie, the headline) the fact that his wife was leaving him. It might be a proximate cause of the murder, but the short version of the story, for reasons of journalistic integrity, should focus on ultimate explanations, ie, HE WAS A DANGEROUS ASSHOLE and justice system/social services failed to protect his family from that. Something like “Family falls victim to historically abusive dad’s deadly rage.” I even left in the passive voice, for consistency, and even with it, you can direct the attention to the *REAL* issues. (Of course, active voice would be MUCH better for this, and ought to be used here)
What’s more, just because they might not have meant to blame the woman or imply that the man was not at fault for his own actions does not mean that the grammatical construction itself doesn’t suggest this. If you’re just reading headlines, IT IS DIFFERENT to read that a breakup led to a murder suicide instead of reading that an abusive father killed his kids and himself. The moral of the story is not that the Seattle times is deliberately and knowingly being sexist. The moral of the story is that intellectual laziness on the part of the media feeds the sexism and victim-blaming already out there. If the framing of the story was different, maybe there’d be fewer “slut” commenters and more “how did we let this happen” commenters.
Shit, 23, you’re totally right. My mother is cringing somewhere.
OK, people – I know this is kind of disappointing, but arguments for reading the covert meaning in a text are lost on people that are too dumb to be able do that.
People going “naw-awww!” are missing the actual point of the post, or putting up a straw man (“your claim is that the Seattle Times is blaming the woman for her husband’s actions?”), or like this fellow who is “in Seattle,” asserting that it doesn’t have any point, since he “can’t follow” the logic.
@18
The examples you cite are ‘journalism’. It is unfair to expect anyone at slog to have even a passing knowledge of the subject.
Wait a minute.
Was “Breakup Ignited Dad’s Deadly Rage” the headline to the original report on this news event?
No, it wasn’t.
According to the Seattle Times archive, I’m seeing “Five children slain in Graham-area home” as the original story headline. That tells you what happened…no implied misogyny there.
(Still passive voice, though. It could have been “Man kills children, self” as I see other publications have used for their headline.)
I also see another article from the Seattle Times that reads “Town mourns 5 lives cut short by shootings”–as that story details the impact on the community from the actions detailed in the original story.
So, the “Breakup ignited dad’s deadly rage in Graham” headline isn’t to the event, but to an UPDATE on the original story, one that adds details to the backstory…one that helps explore the “why” of this story.
I’m sorry, Erica…I think this is one windmill that there’s no need for you to tip.
@21 none of that changes the fact that this posting is the ECB equivalent of ‘Every child deserves…’ i.e. totally anecdotal.
the difference being that Dan uses his totally unscientific, anecdotal evidence as emotional ammo to support gay marriage/adoption rights. ECB uses posts like this as emotional ammo to…be angry at the world around her? What? There’s not even a hint of anything but agenda.
Hell, maybe she should, at the end of posts like this, suggest something creative to solve the ills she sees in the world, like getting grassroots support to better educate Times editors in the subtleties of biased phraseology. Then at least her anger would have a positive direction, instead of turning some poor headline writer (who likely meant no harm in his or her phrasing) into an evil servant of the patriarchy.
@24: “Family falls victim to historically abusive dad’s deadly rage.”
What headlines should have said. Who cares if she’s a “slut”? Dude had a history of being an asshole, starting with when he knocked up his wife when she was 13.
@28: The paper that’s on all the newsstands and in all the front yards is “Breakup Ignited Dad’s Deadly Rage”.
@half the folks commenting on this thread: The headline quite obviously ameliorates the shooter’s crime. “Oh, he was despondent that his wife broke up with him. Someone broke up with me once. I know what that pain feels like.” Even if we don’t conclude that his actions were acceptable, we still accept the breakup as a reason for his actions. And the breakup is not a reason for his actions. No reasonable person would think that.
@13, 19: No one fucking cares.
#11, do you know who wrote the headline? It looks like the main author of the story was a woman.
@13 19
EVERYBODY CARES!
“Author’s Use of Passive Voice Invites Further Atrocities!”
@31: That’s TODAY’S headline, perhaps…because we’re already pretty deep into the news cycle.
The SUNDAY paper’s headline is “5 kids slain in Graham” with a subheadline of “Father, suspected in shootings, found dead of apparent suicide.”
Welcome to the 24 hour news world–where something happens on a Saturday afternoon, gets reported on the air on Saturday night, gets reported in our last remaining print media on Sunday morning, gets described and updated on radio and tv all day and night on Sunday…and by Monday, editors are looking for any other angle they can to feed the beast.
My point is that if the original reporting on the story was “Woman drives man to kill kids”–then Erica might have a stronger point (unless that was accurate, of course…)
But that wasn’t the take of the original story…and it isn’t even the take of the “Breakup Ignited Dad’s Deadly Rage” headline, unless you’re willing to read much more into the word/concept of “Breakup” than is really there…
Reporting on the mindset of someone you can’t interview is always going to be a foolishly speculative endeavor–but reporting that a man who did a horrible thing might have been upset due to a recent emotional event seems like a decent effort at journalism at least.
i don’t know why, but i’m totally with erica on this one.
@35: Yes, it’s today’s headline to today’s story in today’s edition of the newspaper. Look, if you’re wrong (or simply misinformed), just say so. Spending several paragraphs defending your ignorance invites ridicule.
@32: Story writers don’t write their own headlines. No doubt they wish they did, but it’s someone else’s job.
ECB is right on. Our grammar betrays our prejudices, even when we don’t mean for it to. Much of the time, it is simply embedded in the language, and impossible to extricate.
For example, have you ever noticed that there’s no reasonably polite way to say “to fuck”? All the other options (to have sex with, to copulate with, to mate with) are both periphrastic and transitive. Though fucking is highly personal and requires the active participation of both partners, the only way to talk about it — politely — is to distance yourself grammatically. It’s a sad thing that “to rape” is intransitive, and “to have sex with” isn’t.
“Shoplifting can trigger arrest.” Wait-that’s a loaded statement.
#37, I didn’t say they did, I was just pointing out that neither Erica nor the other commenter really has any clue who wrote the headline.
@36
You’re wasting your time, she doesn’t put out.
Headline:
“Bottle of wine ignites local woman’s class envy”
Byline:
“Reporter apprehended in shoplifting attempt”
The definition: Ignite: To set afire; to set in motion
The lesson: A woman shoplifts a bottle of wine; the bottle “is shoplifted.” A woman steals a bottle of wine, the bottle of wine “ignites” the ignites the woman’s actions. The bottle of wine’s actions set her off; her actions were prompted, involuntary.
If the situation was reversed and an unstable woman killed her children and herself because her husband had been sleeping around and was going to leave her, and the headline read “Breakup ignited mom’s deadly rage”, would you have written this post?
Stop trying to dig up sexism in other peoples’ tragedy and news reports. It’s very unbecoming. Nobody at the Times is placing this woman at fault for this horrendous murder, and if that’s all you can see because of the headline, you need help.
@37–I’m not wrong. I may not be explaining my point to your satisfaction, but I’m not wrong.
There’s a difference between the meaning (and any implied bias) of the headline of the story that explains what happened (the “what” story, which came out on Saturday afternoon, printed on Sunday)…and the headline to the follow-up story, published days later, that is merely adding supplemental information to a story that is already known and understood.
Treating this as “I can’t believe they covered the story with this angle” without recognizing that this wasn’t the primary angle used to cover the story, but simply one of many angles taken much further into the news cycle, misstates the situation and diminishes the argument that there is inherent bias in the way that this story was covered.
@43,
Supply just one example. Just one. Or shut the fuck up.
Headline was written by a woman. Yes, I have inside knowledge.
The fact is, the breakup was indeed the event that “ignited” the killings. It doesn’t excuse them, or explain them, or anything of the sort, and the headline doesn’t say that.
Obviously this was building for a long time, and there’s an ugly history. But the breakup was the final trigger.
There’s nothing sexist about that.
Oh, and if you’re going to throw around grammar terms you should know what the fuck you’re talking about. “Breakup Ignited Dad’s Deadly Rage” is most certainly not in the passive voice.
42
That bottle of wine was begging for it…
45
who made you the boss of slog?
Wow, social services were really on the ball here. Older abusive, controlling person knocks up 13 year old. Police don’t send his ass to prison. Older abusive daddy gets reported to CPS for abusing kid(s), police still don’t send his ass to prison. Older abusive, controlling man goes on to impregnate teenage “bride” 4 more times. Neighbors constantly overhear him abusing kids/wife…for years. Wife dumps abusive, creep husband for better (we hope) man, abusive husband kills kids and goes looking for future ex-wife to kill, because “if I can’t have them, nobody can!”…
Oh, yeah, most of the other news sites are playing up the “slut shaming” angle. It’s all that damn floozy’s fault…not the abusive, murderous husband’s.
Surrrrre. Okay.
@22 is right, it’s all elenchos …
The Times headline implies that the killings were incited by someone not actually threatening the life of the suspected killer at the time the murders were commited, which is about the only justification I can think of for pointing to another’s action as having any role in what the killer did in this situation.
I agree, the headline blames one of the victims.
Yeah, the Times headline really needs to be rewritten, especially because so much of the coverage of this crime is slanted. I just listened to the news story on KOMO 4. They show footage of the mother talking to the press, saying she wasn’t having an affair, talking about the situation, encouraging women who are abused to leave their spouses. Then the reporter ends the story with “the sheriff’s department stands by its claim that she was having an affair” or somesuch. SERIOUSLY? That’s what the sheriff’s department is busy making a stand on? For real? Give me a fucking break.
Anyway, you’re right, commenter up above–one can’t convince people to consider the deeper meaning of words when they’re simply unwilling to do so. It’s annoying as hell, though.
Ew. Have you seen her? Go to the Seattle Times home page and check out her photo. She’s no prize. A lifetime diet of high-fructose corn syrup, McDonald’s, GPC menthols, five kids by the age of 30 (starting at 13 – classy!), ciggie in tattooed hand…
ECB nails it again. Thanks for writing about what nobody else will!
@11,
You mean… Ann Coulter is a woman??!!
You know what, ECB is absolutely right, although the real issue here goes back much further than the tragic culmination of what was obviously a fucked up situaton.
The real question I would have for this woman is: If this guy was so abusive, such a jerk, so unstable, blah, blah, blah, how the FUCK did you end up married to him AND spawning 5 kids???? that’s not some one-time deal…..
@47:
Yeah, it puts the blame squarely on “the breakup.”
As a sensitive, educated male, I completely agree because I recognize this breakdown of privileged linguistic framing from my Women’s Studies class. There is no reason to look for “motives” or “explanations” for actions like this man’s, because doing so just perpetuates the idea that women have no agency, and speak in the passive voice.
If the situation were reversed, that wouldn’t be the headline.
“Poverty Ignited Writer’s Wine Theft”
@30 Thank you. That is exactly what the headline should have said. I have been angry about the way the headlines blamed the victim for days. The headlines inflamed the misogyny of the worst of the obsessive newspaper commenters.
That man didn’t kill his children because of a breakup. He did it because he chose to, he did it because he had guns, because he felt he owned his wife, because he was threatened by his perceived loss of control over her sexually and otherwise, because he felt entitled to control her, because he had no tools to deal nonviolently with the jealousy and loss he felt, because he had a depraved indifference to human life, because he was more willing to kill his child hiding in the bathroom than he was to deal with his own ugly worst self. He killed because he was a murderer.
I know about people like this first hand.
Many years ago my friend’s boyfriend tried to kill her because he was paranoid that she was cheating on him with another man, and he became enraged and violent. I happened to be there, and because of that simple fact, he tried to kill me too. He failed. Unfortunately, he was never prosecuted for those crimes.
A few years ago he killed his wife by suffocating her with a plastic bag after she initiated divorce proceedings. In retrospect, he pretty much always had it in him to do something like that.
Also in the last couple of weeks, there was Robert Stewart who killed eight in the NC nursing home while most likely trying to kill his estranged wife; as well as 73 year old William McTonic who killed his 73 year old wife because he was already murderously upset about the situation of their three week old marriage.
We treat stories like these murders as if they are aberrations of society, unconnected to each other and random. I don’t think they are. I think they are part of a continuum of violence against women, and a symptom of the unequal power and position, worth and respect as independent beings that women are afforded.
I think a study needs to be done to examine the root causes of this kind of violence against women and children by their intimates, with an eye towards preventing it by teaching strategies of coping with difficult feelings to everyone starting at an early age– that loss and grief don’t have to be expressed as murderous rage, and even murderous rage doesn’t have to be expressed as murder. Can this be taught, or are we just rampaging apes?
That man didn’t kill his children because of his wife’s actions. He did it because his fantasy that he was in control of his wife and the family was threatened, and by killing his children he took ultimate control.
It is an unconscionable tragedy, but it will happen again. The papers need to develop some perspective in their reporting instead of making it worse.
Check this one out:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/new…
See? That’s “Crazed mom guns down son”
Not “delusional visions tell mom to kill son,” not “shooting range environment ignites trigger finger,” not “religious fervor causes mother to shoot son,” not “son’s drinking milk straight from the carton drives mother to kill.” It’s just “crazed mom guns down son.”
When a woman kills, no matter if she’s so mentally ill she’s seeing goblins from hell bouncing around and chattering away all over the place, no one’s to blame but her. When a man kills, the nearest woman, usually his victim, “made” him do it.
holy crap y’all a bunch of nitpickin’ freaks