Speculations on the Whole Boy in Newtown

It is not by accident that a boy was made into a “shooter,” a “gun-man.” What if I told you that the Newtown shootings were proof of our disdain for men who need too much? Would I lose you? I hope not, since I mean to develop, using empathy, a deeper understanding of the whole boy in Newtown without the least intention of condoning his deadly acts or the profound disdain for neediness that still lingers in the margins and underbelly of what has happened.

When I heard the news of the loss of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, I felt heartbroken, lost and outraged. After a while I began to experience a distinct and troubling identification with what I initially imagined to be only the children’s profound sense of helplessness. But then I began to wonder if the boy we have been calling the “shooter” or “gun-man” was unconsciously motivated to bring about precisely this emotional experience in someone other than himself. Following Lacan’s request that we feel our way to understanding, I began to imagine the boy, long before he took up the initiative of the gun, already relating both sympathetically and disdainfully to the children’s neediness and, by extension, to those charged with administering to it. Then, as if on cue, we received an e-mail from our sons’ principal reassuring us that the school intended to better provide for the safety of the children.

It is not insignificant that we have come to expect schools to look after the “wants” of young children—almost, at times, more than we expect parents to. What I mean to say is that a gun, the elementary school setting, and the generally tolerated neediness of the young subjects waiting there already held symbolic meaning that could be evoked so that a human being, who was not quite a

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boy and not quite a man, could speak completely and truthfully about his existence. After all, we all compulsively use other minds to convey vital aspects of our existence of which we cannot speak and we all, more than we might want to admit, “rage” to be understood.

Elsewhere I have written more extensively about masculinity, care, and violence. Here I am asking you to accept that there comes a time in every boy’s life when his neediness becomes a problem—even something to rage against. This is not a developmental crisis we talk about. We prefer to pretend that masculinity just is. Still, there are exceptions. As a male colleague shared with me, men are to disavow “wanting the care we all so desperately need as human beings (and men need even more desperately because they/we are supposed not to need it).” We might note my adult colleague’s need to use a parenthetical to qualify his talk of his need, as well. I know something about this sort of qualification. However, it is not a desire for care, but initiative, that I must qualify or suppress if I am to remain intelligible as a woman and thus “fit” for human company. As James Gilligan writes, “Restrictions on their freedom to engage in sexual as well as aggressive behavior is the price women pay for their relative freedom from the risk of lethal and life-threatening violence to which men and boys are much more frequently exposed (a dubious bribe, at best, and one which shortchanges women, as more and more women realize)” (Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, 1996, p. 227).

What if Gilligan has this story backwards—or not quite right? What if the aggression and violence instigated by boys and men are not signs of freedom (or exposure), but of unnatural obligation? What if this violence is the result of a dubious bribe? Exactly what choice do the subjects of masculine lives have, as Wittgenstein might have argued on behalf of my male colleague, not to be what we already know them to be? This is not superfluous; the fact that we are all burdened by certain gender obligations is a central part of the story of what happened in Newtown. It is also a central part of what is happening to us all.

I am a parent of two boys, ages eight and eleven. There is a different, and yet related, line of thinking I have developed around how my experience of the whole boy in Newtown has changed my

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experience of them. I am now more conscious of my recent struggles to continue to relate to them with care. Ironically, the older they get it seems that my care for them is viewed increasingly as “feminine” and thus contaminating. So much so that even I have to fight thinking that it is undesirable. In fact, this is so significant that I have felt the kitchen floor rumble from the violence in the video games being played below and I have felt resigned to do nothing about it. When I do intervene I am rebuffed for being too sensitive (feminine), and this works to reinforce the fear of contamination I bring about when looking after, not just my sons, but my husband as well. In fact, writing this piece I have shared drafts with my husband for reasons that go beyond the need for a thoughtful reader. His struggle to continue to look after our boys has taken on a different timbre—one that is actually missing the hugs, kisses, and concern for their inner life that he easily provided when they were younger. I watch him now and I understand that their developing “masculinity” is closely tied to his own. I understand why he reacted badly (anxiously) when our youngest son received a sewing machine for Christmas. I understand that he joked about it until our son not only rejected the machine but had to disavow the happy and recent memory of using mine to sew a stuffed animal. I have watched my son grieve the loss as he now carries around objects that are noticeably more masculine. This is why, in a desperate and loving move, I pulled my husband in to listen to drafts of this paper.

Richard Novia, the school district’s head of security until 2008, and former advisor (for the tech club Adam Lanza joined), has reported that when approached in the hallways, Adam would clutch tight to the black briefcase he was never without. “The behavior would be more like an 8-year-old who refuses to give up his teddy bear,” Novia said (AP SOUTHBURY, Conn.). What if this particular young man, Adam Lanza—the “shooter,” we have been calling him—was desperate to be found as precious as a child? What if he envied the right to be needy of the first-grade children he killed? What if we all envy it? What if our own defense against the neediness of men—our endless talk of the effectiveness of guns—has been mimicking a reality in which a growing boy was obliged to take up initiative and use it against an innocent dependency that he could no longer call his friend? Following

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Binswanger’s idea that people are not things but integral wholes, perhaps we should be careful not to divide Adam up into classifications such as “shooter,” “gun-man,” or any number of other categorical terms that not only create a buffer between his heart and ours, but do little to garner care for the subject assigned. Without condoning his acts, it is possible to note and mourn the remarkable absence of loving regard for Adam (and his family) in what are otherwise heartfelt prayer requests. This one I received on our first day back after Winter break:

Let us take a moment today in prayer for those Sandy Hook Elementary students who will be returning to classes today for the first time since the tragedy nearly a month ago. May they find comfort in their teachers, friends and surroundings….May they feel the love and prayers that have been sent from all ends of the earth…May they continue to heal along with their parents….Our hearts go out to those children who will not be returning today because their lives were tragically cut short…And, for all the residents of Newtown—that they form a special trusting bond as they move forward together in the aftermath of this tragedy (Director of Campus Ministries at Rockhurst University).

What now? We could pretend that we know nothing of the whole boy—who was not quite a man—and the claustrophobic hell he found himself in. Or we could take our acquaintance with him and do something about the tragic fact that our nostalgia for gender is actually deadly under certain—even cheered on—circumstances. Perhaps then we will be free to lament that we no longer need to imagine what the untimely and inappropriate loss of a growing boy’s right to be needy feels like. We have felt it. But have we understood it well enough?

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