GOP US Senate Candidate Sees Link Between More Working Women And More Mass Shootings

A Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate sees a link between the increase of women in the workplace and the increase in mass shootings. Former state Senator Jim Rubens, who is announcing today his candidacy to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, made the remarks in a blog post he wrote in 2009.

After Buzzfeed today reported on Rubens’ remarks, his blog was placed behind firewall, but the comments are preserved in a web archive. The blog seems to be a vehicle to hawk his book, OverSuccess: Healing the American Obsession With Wealth, Fame, Power, and Perfection.

In his blog post, “American Men, Falling Behind Women … Fast,” Rubens lamented that “for the first time in US history women are poised to hold more jobs than men.” He points to a New York Times article, and claims the “collapsing number of male jobs in the increasingly female-centric economy just adds to the already harsher impact of OverSuccess on males.”

Rubens adds, as supposed evidence of “the already harsher impact of OverSuccess on males”:

• Women already outnumber men in management, professional, and related occupations.

• Men are charged with 82 percent of violent crimes and 89 percent of murders, women with 53 percent of embezzlements and 45 percent of frauds.

• Over the period 1974 to 2000, 71 percent of school shooters—all of them were males—had been previously bullied, persecuted, or physically injured.

• Over the last century, between 75 and 85 percent of the world’s serial killers were American and 90 percent were men. Serial killing victimization rates exploded by about 35 times between the 1950s and 1980s.

“It’s a view Rubens still holds today, and he seemed surprised in an interview Wednesday that anyone would care about it,” Buzzfeed notes:

“If you read the … posting, I don’t see anything that causes anyone to conclude I’m seeking to in any way make a claim that it’s not great that women have come up in the economy,” he said. “My wife is my business partner so I know that it’s fantastic that the economy has made a fulsome role for women as I was pointing out in the posting. We need to get manufacturing jobs back.”

“The point of this, if you read the whole thing, is that manufacturing jobs, which have been the basis for higher-wage working men during the post-World War II era have been in decline,” he said.

“Men are more sensitive than women to external indicators of status, which is one of the points in my book — which you might want to read so you can understand the whole point of this — and it’s very important to all people, women and men, to have jobs, functions, and roles in life that are fulfilling and productive and engaging.”

On his campaign website, Rubens touts that he “earned an ‘A’ rating from the NRA,” and is opposed to Obamacare.

 

Image via Jim Rubens for US Senate on Facebook

Hat tip: The Raw Story