Jo Bartosch says we can't ignore a 'crucial detail' (Image: Getty)
On a gray Tuesday afternoon in the quiet Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar aimed a gun at his mother Jennifer and his brother, Emmett. He killed them both, then headed to the local secondary school and opened fire before turning the weapon on himself. By nightfall, at least six were dead and 25 more were wounded.
At the time of writing, twelve-year-old Maya Gebala, shot in the head and neck, remains in hospital, fighting for her life. As the authorities were scrambling to respond, police issued an active-shooter alert describing the suspect as a “female with brown hair in a dress”. Early reports from the BBC to Reuters repeated the description.
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But there's a crucial detail that has since come to light. Jesse didn't like the other girls. Because Jesse was male. An omertà seems to have descended on officialdom; Few are willing to say aloud that, far from the traditional portrayal of trans people as eternal and exclusive victims, an opposite-sex identity is, in some troubled young men at least, a warning sign.
Local police chief Dwayne McDonald certainly seemed reluctant to acknowledge it. At a hastily arranged press conference, a journalist asked whether the suspect was known to the police and if there was a history of mental health problems. When she referred to the shooter as “he”, McDonald pointedly corrected her to say that “the suspect identified as female”.
Only when another reporter asked whether police were hiding the suspect's trans identity did he admit: “We identified the suspect as they chose to be identified in public and on social media. I can say that Jesse was born a biological male.” He added that the suspect had started transitioning about six years earlier.
When it comes to violent crime, sex matters. No mass shooting in Canada has ever been carried out by a woman, and broader research indicates around 98% of mass shootings are committed by men.
For a public trying to make sense of an atrocity, official reluctance to state a basic fact is telling. It suggests that even the police are scared to face the truth.
That squeamishness is not surprising. Across much of the Western world, public servants have been schooled to treat gender identity as untouchable, even when it collides with material facts. Police, civil servants and journalists alike now operate in a culture where a misplaced pronoun can end a career. Canada has been at the forefront of embedding gender identity into law and policy.
But refusing to talk about it doesn't lessen the problem. In recent years a series of shootings have been carried out by young people who identify as transgender, particularly in the US: female Audrey Hale in Nashville, who killed six at a school; “non-binary” male Anderson Lee Aldrich, who opened fire in a nightclub; male William “Lily” Whitworth, arrested whilst plotting a Columbine-style massacre – and even the murders linked to the trans-led AI cult, the Zizians.
In the UK, where thankfully guns are harder to obtain, some activist networks have instead opted to terrorize opponents. Over the past year the group Trans Bash Back has boasted about acts of vandalism against MPs' offices, graffitied and smashed the windows of a venue hosting a feminist conference, and hacked the database of Free Speech Union supporters, publishing the names of donors.
In guidance produced by the group, supporters are urged to “ensure your target can be hit repeatedly until they desist from their activities”, adding: “All of our targets have blood on their hands. We refuse to let them wash it off in peace.”
Trans Bash Back also advises that items used in direct actions, including backpacks and hammers, should be stolen to reduce the risk of being traced, and offers tips on removing forensic traces.
The trans movement has become a haven for angry, and sometimes vulnerable, young men in search of a cause. None of this means that everyone who identifies as trans is violent, nor that identity itself explains criminality.
But it does point to a subculture where grievance is amplified, opponents are demonized and escalation is applauded. Add vulnerable young people, poor mental health and a politicized online world, and you have a volatile mix.
Canada has seen before what happens when male grievance curdles into ideology. In 1989, Marc Lépine walked into Montréal's École Polytechnique, separated the men from the women and murdered 14 female students in an explicitly political attack. His manifesto blamed feminists for his failures.
Murderous men like Jesse are Lepine's ideological sons. Today, like his victims, he has become another data point in an emerging pattern of trans violence.