As a mother of a boy, I remain terrified

Another tragedy, a massacre orchestrated by a young man who felt entitled and spurned. Another young man who thought women owed him their affection and their bodies by virtue of his wanting them, and who, by ignoring him, earned violence.

He was broken. I don’t know what broke him or when, but it was a snap loud enough to have repercussions far enough outside his sphere of existence that I am now writing about him, an entire country away.

There is a little boy in my care and it is my job to teach him how to live in this world. No small feat, considering I barely have a handle on that myself. It’s on me to teach him to respect boundaries, to understand that nothing is owed him, and that women are not a reward or something he is entitled to. That he is not merely an animal who cannot rise above his hormonal instincts and base impulses. That he cannot lash out and hurt just because he is hurting.

That last one is important because it is something I haven’t mastered in my thirty-two years on this big blue rock. The difference being, of course, that there is a canyon between lashing out with passive-aggressive verbal barbs and lashing out with bullets. A canyon, right? But the two actions arise from the same stupid little neuron firing, don’t they?

I wrote after Newtown about how terrifying it is to be the mother of a boy. To know that he might carry within him this need to lash out violently and take as many as he can down with him in a spectacular display of self-destruction. Or, more likely, that I will not be able to develop in him a full understanding of what it means that women have agency, that they are not merely receptacles for your hopes or dreams or pride or scorn or spit or sperm. So many seem to struggle with this concept. The whole world over, this is still up for debate. For all our progress, we’ve gone nowhere.

This YesAllWomen thing is interesting and feels necessary in the face of this insanity, but I find it exhausting and depressing. I guess that’s the point. The state of being female in this world is pretty exhausting and depressing, when looked at objectively. Somewhere out there right now someone is grumbling while reading that sentence and saying, “Sure, whatever — the state of being human in this world is pretty exhausting and depressing.” Without a hint of irony.

I remain at a loss.