A formula for an unspeakable mass shooting massacre =
a society drenched in patriarchy that teaches boys that their “rightful place” is above women
+
a toxic man in that society with guns who chooses to activate his white man’s aggrieved entitlement toward people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized groups ... including women.
There is no definitive meaning for toxic masculinity, but it generally refers to harmful and destructive behaviors associated with certain aspects of traditional masculinity.
Masculinity, in of itself, is not toxic. Toxic masculinity refers to a cultural phenomenon in which masculinity is taken to the extreme and becomes a weapon wielded against those who are unwilling to subscribe to behavioral control via gender roles.
Being biologically male is not the key cause of male violence, and that violence is not inherent in males. It is socialized violence.
That said, mass shootings happen when toxic masculinity reaches its most extreme form.
Brandi Miller of Sojourners says …
“The United States has a trend of writing off mass shootings as random incidents perpetrated by a few outliers who suffer from mental illness or a traumatizing family background. And, while it is necessary to have conversations about mental health and trauma in our culture, neither present as high of a statistical risk factor for violence as gender. To make sense of violence, specifically domestic and gun violence, we need not only look for the what to blame but to who and why.
“With men accounting for all but two of mass shootings in recent history and specifically white men making up over 50 percent of the shooters, we are faced not with a simply a psychological problem, but a social one. What is it that causes this culture of violence?
“It is much easier to treat violence as a series of one offs rather than to hold all men responsible for the culture of masculinity that both nurtures and normalizes domestic and mass violence. We have a cultural epidemic that has not randomly emerged, but has been developed over time through embedding patriarchy and misogyny into the foundation of U.S. culture.”
(Brandi Miller. “Want To End Mass Shootings? Start With Toxic Masculinity.” Sojourners. February 07, 2019.)
Miller explains how the cultural epidemic is a part of U.S. history – history with which we are all very familiar. Men used violence to drive Indigenous people off their land, thus breeding entitlement through force. They used the system of chattel slavery as an economic means to abuse and sexually assault enslaved women to multiply their property, creating a cultural incentive to abuse women. Men elevated bastardized patriarchal Christian values of submission and the inferiority of women, normalizing entitlement to power and control over others bodies.
Legacies of violence and oppression are just that, legacies. This violence not only formed the foundation of how the U.S. created patriarchy, but how it upholds it.
Miller concludes:
“Toxic masculinity and gun violence are fruits of the same legacy. While it is much easier now to say that slavery and genocide were evils, we have failed to cut them off at their roots, the roots that reek of manipulated biblical texts, hyper masculine domination, and antiquated assumptions about gender. We cannot expect that simply acknowledging the events that resulted from toxic masculinity in the past will deconstruct the assumptions and values that created it to begin with.”
(Brandi Miller. “Want To End Mass Shootings? Start With Toxic Masculinity.” Sojourners. February 07, 2019.)
Miller believes toxic masculinity is primarily violence and entitlement. Men are taught through media, church, business, military that “to be a man” is to use stereotypical iterations of masculinity to achieve success. Men are taught that they are to be strong, never the victim (specifically of trauma), and exist without showing or feeling emotions. Sadness, sentimentality, and silliness are perceived as weak rather than natural parts of the human experiences.
Thus, toxic masculinity robs women of their safety as it robs men of their full humanity. Toxic masculinity teaches men to become machines, unmoved by their feelings and experiences. This encourages problematic expressions of repression, typically violence and domination.
The result? The men who carry out shootings are not stronger, better, or manly men, but rather the product of a culture that breeds violence and entitlement.
Not all men, you say? Miller believes it will take men collectively rejecting entitlement, learning non-violent ways to manage stress, and to protect us as a culture, not just from mass shootings and domestic violence as we have experienced for centuries, but from “the everyday violence – physical, psychological, and ideological – in between the extremes that threatens to strip as all of our safety and humanity.”
Based on the present investigation of masculine norms, it appears traditional masculinity is often toxic and harmful, and rarely beneficial. The main positive association found is between masculinity’s norm of winning and well-being. However, studies confirm that rigid gender norms regarding roles, family, and marriage, contribute to men’s use of violence against female partners, and that when men believe or perceive themselves to not be “masculine enough,” intimate partner violence or emotional abuse may be used to conform to gendered expectations.
(Arash Emamzadeh. “New Findings on Toxic Masculinity.” Psychology Today. March 19, 2019.)
In their book Gun Violence and Public Life, Michael Kimmel and Cliff Leek suggest that given the data, the NRA slogan — "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is not as close to the truth as "guns don't kill people; men and boys kill people."
And you may say, “That's obvious. Men associate with guns.” Precisely.
Men also are less likely than women to seek mental health care for depression, substance abuse and stress, according to the American Psychological Association. Because men are forced to be tough and unemotional. Violence is also inculcated as a more masculine alternative than help seeking," Kimmel and Leek wrote.
"Masculinity runs through all of this," Carlson said.
(Alia E. Dastagir. “'Guns don't kill people; men and boys kill people,' experts say
USA TODAY. February 15, 2018.)
Data shows gun violence is disproportionately a male problem. Men commit the vast majority of gun violence in the U.S. According to FBI data from 2017, men were responsible for 88.1 percent of all homicides, and firearms were used in 72.6 percent of homicides. Women in the US have the same ability as men to acquire, use, and kill with guns – but they do not.
(Crime in the United States.” FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. 2017.)
Psychologists Joseph Vandello and Jennifer Bosson have coined the term “precarious manhood” to describe a dilemma that only men seem to face. In a nutshell, they argue that “manhood” – however an individual male’s culture might define it – is a status that must be continually earned. And one’s self-worth is tied to being perceived as a “real man.”
It’s precarious because it can be easily lost – especially if the man fails to measure up to the relentless challenges that life throws at him, be they tests of physical bravery, or competition with other men for respect and status.
Young male violence is most likely to be initiated by young men who don’t command respect from others. They’ll often feel like slighted outcasts, deprived of what they want or feel they deserve.
It’s no mystery why the media will often describe mass shooters and terrorists as misfits or loners. In many cases, they are.
Frank T. McAndrew, Cornelia H Dudley Professor of Psychology at Knox College identified as one of the "key individuals" in the history of environmental psychology by a survey of researchers in that field reported …
“Nicolas Henin was a Frenchman who was held hostage by ISIS for ten months. Here’s how he described his young, murderous, Jihadi captors:
“They present themselves to the public as superheroes, but away from the camera are a bit pathetic in many ways: street kids drunk on ideology and power. In France we have a saying – stupid and evil. I found them more stupid than evil. That is not to understate the murderous potential of stupidity.
“Apparently, a lack of attention from others results in a lack of status, resulting in a lack of access to women. Combined with a young man’s testosterone, it creates a toxic, combustible mix.
“There may not be much we can do to change the structure of the young male mind that evolved over the course of millions of years. However, ignoring or denying its existence doesn’t do us any favors.”
(Frank T. McAndrew. “If you give a man a gun: the evolutionary psychology of mass shootings.” The Conversation. December 4, 2015.)
How do we raise our boys to be men? The answer to that question goes deep into the values that we tend to hold dear: power, dominance and aggression over empathy, care and collaboration. For some males, alongside their development of traditional masculinity, a toxicity takes control, and they begin to use their gender roles as weapons.
They tend to blame others for their problems and refuse to find peaceful solutions. As toxic men, they turn their rage outward, preferring not to seek constructive solutions to their shortcomings.
Men are much more likely to externalize blame in general; they’re much more likely to see other people as causing them problems and to act. Some of those men who have turned toxic even seek a way to perform their masculinity by engaging in massive acts of violence.
“In the many hours devoted to analyzing the recent school shootings, once again we see that as a society we seem constitutionally unable, or unwilling, to acknowledge a simple but disturbing fact: these shootings are an extreme manifestation of one of contemporary American society’s biggest problems – the ongoing crisis of men’s violence against women [or any group that activates aggrieved entitlement for men].”
– Dr. Jackson Katz, Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity, 2006
As prominent feminist Jessica Valenti puts it, “The longer we ignore the toxic masculinity that underlies so many of these crimes, the more violence we’re enabling.” The evidence is in plain sight. The need for a sea-change in how we raise our boys begs America to confront the issue.
“Virtually all mass shooters suffer some form of aggrieved entitlement – 'an existential state of fear about having my rightful place as a male questioned … challenged …deconstructed.' According to the Good Men Project, 'Aggrieved entitlement is being told “no” when the prevailing mythos of the culture has taught that I have a 'right to something because of my birth (as male, as white, straight, educated, able-bodied … the list goes on).'”
(“Masculinity and Mass Shootings. The Representation Project. August 05, 2019.)
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