A Republican U.S. Senate candidate in New Hampshire is defending a 2009 blog post, saying he did not mean to imply that women working outside of the home leads to a rise in mass shootings.
Former state Sen. Jim Rubens (R-Hanover) told The Huffington Post that a post he added to his blog in 2009 was meant to explain statistics published in The New York Times that showed more men had lost jobs than women and the impact that lost jobs could have on men.
BuzzFeed first reported the blog post on Wednesday and Rubens has since taken it down, but the post is still visible in archived versions of his blog. Rubens announced this week that he would seek the GOP nomination to challenge United States Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) next year.
In the post, Rubens describes the Times report, then lists a series of statistics, including one showing that women receive college degrees more often than men and hold more managerial jobs. The post includes a series of crime statistics showing that men are more likely to be involved in mass shootings and murders, while women are more likely to commit white-collar crime. It also notes that school shooters are men.
"Bottom line: the collaborative, flexible, amorphously-hierarchical American economy is shutting out ordinary men who were once the nation’s breadwinners in living-wage labor and manufacturing jobs," Rubens says in the post. "Because status success is more vital to the male psychology, males are falling over the edge in increasing numbers."
Rubens told HuffPost that he did not mean to offend women with the post, but wanted to make a point about what happens when men lose jobs and about the decline of America's manufacturing industry. Men are more likely to be unemployed, he said, since traditional male jobs in the manufacturing industry have been outsourced to other countries, while more collaborative jobs where he said women excel remain in the U.S.
"The suggestion that the advances that women are making in America, which is a good thing, is connected to extreme male violence is not true," Rubens said. "I have not made that claim or assertion."
Rubens stressed that he is not against women, noting that his wife is his business partner and he has long been surrounded by strong, independent women.
On Thursday, he suggested that Shaheen, the first woman in American history to be elected governor and senator, was engaged in a "war on women."
"This is the typical war-on-women campaign that doesn't work on me," Rubens told HuffPost about objections to the blog post. "I am a social moderate. If there is a war on women, it is the incumbent who voted to bomb Syria where the collateral damage is innocent women and children."
In his campaign, Rubens has stressed that the U.S. should focus more on climate change, noting that it is a man-made problem. He is also calling for a decrease in corporate taxes and a new carbon tax. Rubens said he wants to bring back the manufacturing industry to the United States to benefit men and women.
"These jobs will be held by men and women," Rubens said. "The manufacturing jobs don't require the brute strength of the 40s, 50s and 60s, so men and women are capable of doing them."
But state Democratic Party spokesman Harrell Kirstein said the blog shows Rubens believes women working causes a rise in violence. When asked about Rubens' claims that Shaheen is actually against women, Kirstein said it is not true.
"Jim Rubens is out of touch with New Hampshire and out of touch with reality," Kirstein told HuffPost.
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