Recently, a Maryland State Senator tweeted about a domestic violence murder that happened in broad daylight outside of my local public high school. The tweet read “this is being investigated as a homicide and appears quite specifically targeted and does not appear to have a link or be a threat to the community at large. Horribly sad for this woman and her loved ones.” It was then quoted by The Baltimore Banner.
Declaring that a violent act was “targeted” has become the favorite short-hand reassurance by all sorts of officials and law enforcement that “this was a private matter and the killer wasn’t after you, so don’t worry about it, you have no reason for concern.” There are a number of reasons that the term has entered the pantheon of language-that-makes-us-dumber-and-hides-reality, the first being the false implication that a seemingly targeted killing means everyone else is safe. The Baltimore Sun, in an August 7th article about Rachel Morin, a woman found murdered on a popular hiking trail, stated: “The sheriff’s office has not identified any suspects in the homicide, and have not determined whether the woman was targeted…”I hope that changes in the coming hours, but at this point in time, there is not a suspect,” Gahler said. “Can I put the comment out there that says, ‘There is no threat to the community?’ I can’t do that.”
Is there no threat to the community if her boyfriend killed her? Why would we believe that?
A report released by The Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence looking closely at intimate partner homicides found that of a total of forty-two victims in Maryland in 2021, five were bystanders, and three of those were children. Thirty-two of the victims were adult women, 90% of the perpetrators male. There is a well-documented link between those who perpetrate mass shootings of strangers, and a previous history of domestic violence. As Lisa Fontes, Ph.D., a psychologist and senior lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control In Your Intimate Relationships told CBS news. “If we look beyond domestic violence, which is usually considered violence against an intimate partner, we can see that an even larger number of mass killers practice at home — committing violence against family members before they strike out in public.” Instead of viewing intimate partner murder (as well as the violence and control that proceed it) as isolated acts not effecting the rest of society, it would make sense to treat DV as a bell-weather of dangerous aggression and disordered thinking – a broader public health and safety concern.
Did we tell the public not to be concerned by the January 6th attacks on the U.S. Capitol because they were “targeted” at a specific set of politicians? Those crimes were also carried out by people with power-and-control-based grievances that lead them to believe they were being outrageously robbed of something that belonged to them, even though it didn’t. We understood the Capitol attack as the outcome of an extended chain of distorted messaging and wounded self-image, based in the mysoginistic, racist and generally domination-oriented beliefs of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, is alleged to have a decades-long history of abuse towards his wife and children, including utterly bizarre types of coercive control. The basic thought and belief patterns, the power-based values demonstrated by those who carried out the Jan 6th attack are very similar to those of relationship abusers, and they can be unleashed on one relationship and then generalized.
All sorts of organizations use the “targeted” euphemism to tell people to look the other way. It is used for extra-judicial assassinations carried out by governments, as shown in the original headline of a recent Washington Post article: Israeli Agents Conducted Targeting Killings in West Bank, Killing a Child. A U.N. report found that of 108 Palestinians killed in targeted Israeli operations in the West Bank in the fist five months of 2023, 19 were children. Targeted drone strikes by the US have similar linguistic and moral problems. Universities wear out every form of communication in reassuring the public that their dead students were targeted, even in the case of the murder of four University of Idaho students killed in their sleep, although the man they finally arrested appears to have had no connection with the victims. These are the vicious, senseless killings that individuals and parents all over the world worry about – but if we can pretend that the people they happened to were destined to die and must have done something to cause it, we can pretend our loved ones are safe. That is how “targeted” has turned into “deserved it.”
The most common use of the term “targeted” in my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland comes from shootings. Most of those killed are Black males. As of early August, 161 people had been killed in Baltimore in 2023, many of them juveniles, the vast majority with guns. But an article in The Patch portrayed the reality of many of these killings: “Deanta Dorsey, 16, was killed in a Jan. 4 shooting near Edmonson Westside High School, according to Baltimore police. Four other teens were also injured in the shooting.” As described by The Baltimore Sun: “The shootings happen all over the city: At the Inner Harbor, at parties, at bus stops, at restaurants. Shots ring out near schools and at home. The victims are almost always students or recent graduates. Sometimes they have jobs. Sometimes they’re athletes or artists. All of them are someone’s kid. As of July 9, 28 young people were killed and an additional 91 shot this year.” Most of these shootings may be aimed at a person or group of people, but mainly they are an act of terror and social signaling: ‘I will kill; I am not too afraid, weak or too virtuous to kill.’ We’re all supposed to get the message.
I resonate with some of the experience of targeting suffered by Lakisha Wheeler, the 45-year-old victim of domestic violence who was killed near my home. We form part of the one in four women in the U.S. who experience assaultive abuse from an intimate partner. I was married to an abuser who told me he wanted to kill me, and did things – such as strangulation – which indicated a strong statistical likelihood that he would make good on the threat. I also continued in some contact with my abuser post-separation, which seems to make us “willing” victims and for which we are much condemned. But people don’t understand that abuse victims feel instinctively that our best chance of survival is to remain on good terms with the abuser, to keep him placated or know where he is. Abusers also use every sort of manipulation to convince the victim that she’s safer doing as he says. Considering that most victims of intimate partner homicide are killed as they leave or within the year after they have left their abuser, these survival techniques are not surprising. In reality Lakisha Wheeler was tormented by Levi Feldman long before her death, and she was trying to do what she could to survive. If he was not now incarcerated, Feldman would go on to unleash that same violence on another woman. The destruction emanates from the aggressor, not the person who finds themselves in its path, and the snuffing out of the victim is not going to contain that aggression and keep you safe.
Lakisha was targeted for harm, and none of us should find that reassuring.
Facing Down the Dementor 