Having explored some ways in which dominator culture can play out, there are many more left.
The point I want to make before getting into other aspects is that it makes things worse.
Good intentions and reasonable desires will choose solutions that cause more harm.
Let's look at the issue of school safety.
Often that is looked at through the lens of school shootings, with solutions like metal detectors and especially school safety officers.
They don't help. Some studies show they increase the level of deadliness.
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/states-cannot-rely-school-resource-officers-stop-school-shootings
You may occasionally find a story of a guard turning a shooter away, but not more frequently than a teacher turning a shooter away.
That isn't to say that the presence of the guards does not have an impact.
Black girls get ogled. They get hit on by the guards.
This is in addition to the already present push toward the school to prison pipeline.
They are both sexualized and criminalized; it does not make them want to stay in school.
One of the most ironic things about this is that the majority of school shooters (as well as adult mass shooters) are white males. If the goal is truly to prevent school shooters, that should be the population most scrutinized. It does not work out that way because of dominator culture.
It is not deliberate. Baked into the structure, it means that the white male students will be the most privileged, that students with darker skins will be more likely to be criminalized, and that the girls will be more likely to be sexualized, with darker skin increasing their risk.
I remember a Facebook conversation once between two former schoolmates. The first was feeling bad that budget cuts were eliminating the school safety officers, and the other was explaining about the inherent problems. The first was not exactly disbelieving, but that had not been her experience. Of course, her children were white, and the second one had a Black daughter.
A previous post had indicated that personal satisfaction might affect the need to dominate. Private security officers are often people who failed the entrance exams to get into the police academy. The common assumption is that they are frequently retired police officers. That does happen, but the former officers generally end up in management. (See Private Security and Public Police, Grunwald, Rappaport, and Berg.)
Maybe a lot of them will have something to prove, or maybe there is just an ease in falling along well-established lines of who gets what treatment.
As recently as April there were stories of a mistrial for one school safety officer killing a student, and another who killed his ex-wife and the student he had impregnated, then fled with the child.
https://abc7.com/mistrial-declared-in-long-beach-school-officer-shooting-trial/14677917/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/us/washington-amber-alert-elias-huizar/index.html
I probably still wouldn't have even thought of writing this post, except for also seeing this article:
https://time.com/6975013/teen-mental-health-school-nurse/?utm_source=pocket_saves
Even though one school shooting is too many, they are still comparatively rare. Bullying, mental illness, and physical illnesses happen all the time. School nurses are an important resource in identifying issues and providing help.
School nurses get cut from the budget far more often than safety offices.
Wouldn't it be better to identify the depression or anger or disconnection in a student long before they start thinking about shooting anyone?
Continuing to exert control reinforces the reasons someone might become a shooter.
That is ultimately the conflict.
Are we going to kindly provide resources or try to exert control, and then keep trying the second harder when it doesn't work?
It will continue to not work.
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