If the culture of male supremacy is pathological then those mired in it/acting out of it at the violent end of the extreme are all the more pathological – and yet in understandable ways like all the other abusive men, so ‘usual’ or ordinary. We are all very deeply embedded in the culture, and when it’s pathological, we are.

To generalize that, no doubt controversially – consider the consumer culture, shop til you drop and its relationship to everyone, but for my purpose right now, especially women’s acculturation. Individual materialism doesn’t often lead to violence or other harm to individuals, but the materialism is pathological in my view, destroys the earth if not its individual people and some women are mired in it at the extreme end of the pathology as it manifests in individuals. In that way they are pathological. Cultivating materialism in women and men is just not seen to be pathological because of its relationship to capitalism, its ubiquity, and non violence. Not sure that works as a comparison. Perhaps anorexia would be a better example, because it’s so much more destructive (though of self, not directly of others) and treated as an individual pathology already (though not a mental disorder in law?), while it’s distorted bond with the misogynistic cultural demands re ‘female beauty’ is obvious.

My main point is that I think individual pathology is never totally independent of cultural tropes/trends/pressures/ whatever, but rather fueled or at least nourished by them. I first tried to articulate this with respect to the Lepine murders of women who were engineering students. I can’t quite get what I want to say right, but I think the dichotomy between individual psychology and pathological cultural patterns is false and needs critical examination. Rather we need to work on understanding how the cultural feeds the individual. The law doesn’t recognize that relationship or care about it, and this renders it useless to the discussion, and oversimplifies the ‘by reason of mental disorder’ findings. Yet we do recognize and honour it in the political sphere, as you have with respect to the sexual harassment by all the notorious men now being outed for attitudes/actions rampant in male culture. And as you in fact say above “Borutski is not unique,,,”

So maybe, I’ve written myself through to the right point – the law re this kind of thing is totally naive, outdated, silly really. And we shouldn’t be surprised by that. Look who it’s protecting!

But will leave this comment as written since it may spark other ideas in readers.