School shootings have begun to feel so common in America that a recent shooting that left three dead including the assailant at a private Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin on Monday seems to have barely made the front pages. In a country with more than 80 school shootings this year alone, what was unusual was the fact that the shooter was a 15-year old girl—Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow. This meant that the event did not go unnoticed in the online culture war. Within hours, the tragedy had become a blank page for competing narratives: Depending on which side one was on, the shooter became a violent trans person, a right-wing neo-Nazi, or a nihilistic “femcel” radicalized into murderous hatred of all men.
Police are still gathering evidence on what might have motivated the killer. However, the surge of online speculation that followed, fueled by potentially doctored digital footprints and accounts from supposed friends and acquaintances, painted a less revealing picture of the tragedy than it did of our current cultural moment. “Oh, Natalie Rupnow was apparently a misandrist radfem,” wrote one user. “Told you guys. Will you finally care about the people you harm? Words, it turns out, do matter yet again.”
Given the rarity of the shooter’s sex in violent incidents of this nature, it might seem obvious that the online debate would take on a gendered dimension. But it’s usually “toxic masculinity” that receives the most analysis. This time, the discussion became not about men radicalized online, but women.