There’s a lot of scholarship out there linking the violence in our nation to the cultural construction of hypermasculinity reigning rampant in music, porn, television, and other forms of our popular entertainment. For example, social critic and anti-sexism male activist Jackson Katz’s work called The Macho Paradox is a great resource for a summary of what harmful masculinity looks like and how we can go about addressing it. After I heard news of the shooting at NIU last Thursday, I instantly thought of the culture of violence that I live in. I thought of its roots and reflected on how we must address this issue as a community. I feel like we are heading down the road to a normalization of violence (if we aren’t practically there already). When I expressed my utter shock and sadness to a friend about this incidence last Thursday, they questioned, ‘Well, were you really that surprised?’ They said this not to make light of the horrible occurrence, but to remark on the normalization of this type of violence that we seem to be hearing more and more of in the news– young males killing their peers. It hasn’t even been a year since the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. All this drives me to extreme points of anger and sadness. Sadness because my faith in humanity is slowly being chipped away and anger because we are not adequately reflecting back on a culture that makes us prone to situations like this. If we did, perhaps we could prevent such horrific events. We need to examine its root causes, which is what is discussed in this article from the UCLA newsroom about a professor that studies the roots of student massacres and other mass acts of violence.
In “Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the Virginia Tech Massacre” (Paradigm, 2008), UCLA professor of education and cultural critic Douglas Kellner argues that school shootings and other acts of mass violence embody a crisis of out-of-control gun culture and male rage, heightened by a glorification of hypermasculinity and violence in the media.
But once we have explored these root causes, what can be done?
Kellner recommends stricter gun control laws; improved campus and workplace security; better guidance and mental health care on campuses and in communities; a reconstruction of education to promote programs advocating peace and social justice; and projecting new and more constructive images of masculinity. (emphasis mine)
All great recommendations on paper, but tough to carry out systematically. I think the greatest effort we can all make personally, though, is standing up for a positive version of masculinity–one where “strength” is not for hurting, but helping and one where a male’s self-image is not forged through strict comparison based on who can be “man enough” or “tough enough.” We can do this by calling our friends out on sexist or heterosexist language and becoming media literate about the entertainment that is constantly eroding our brains. Creating lasting change in our beliefs and attitudes as a society is really all going to start on the individual and community level.
Filed under: gender, violence | Tagged: gendered violence, masculinity, school shootings
Dashaway
femmemeister
Bento
I would argue that these shootings are the result of a loss of authentic mascullinity (and authentic femminity) in our culture which media, education systems, and pc thugs have been all to happy to preside over.
As an increasing percent of each generation grows up without a father in the house, boys lose the first and best possible role-model that previous genertations had always had.
“Calling our friends out on sexist or heterosexist language” is not going to sovle the probelm by the way, getting rid of words like chairman, policeman, fireman, etc. is almost too pathetic of a solution to even merrit laughing at.
The media/big business/advertisers learned long ago that they could make a lot of money by appealing to the insecurities of women (this is the thrust of just about any cosmetics commerical) in recent years they have realized that the same sort of advertising can work on men.
Left-wing types do their best to purge “The John Wayne Mentallity” which was sort of our cultural fail-safe fire-wall against this . Likewise our (public) education system has a tendency to “femminize” men and to some extent try to make girls more like boys. Furthemore, the media gives us shows like “Sex and the City” which was sort of based on the concept of women being able to live like “men” (as if being single, randomly hooking up, and being obsessed with career and money should really be the defining aspects of mascullinity) we get sort of a forced middle-ground for both genders with millions of people in identity crisis mode.
Furthermore deny people the saftey nets of community and religion and you have a recipie for more and more people who feel hopeless, who fall through the cracks. Only 1 in a few million will react violently like these school shooters, to be sure, but we certainly do have a probelm in our society of millions of individuals losing touch with their own humanity and the humanity of those around them.
Also we can not forget that the power to legally decide who lives and who dies, once reserved for legitimate government authorities, was extended to all pregnant women in the USA in 1973, I am sure the millions of abortions that have followed have done plenty in cheapning the value of human life in our culture.
A footnote regarding religion, with the Bible-thumping, foaming at the mouth, Christian fundementalist being the very embodiment of danger in many liberal minds, it is worth noting that almost all school shooters have been athiests. Coincidence you say? Alright I’ll take your word for it but you can bet that if the shooters were religious the media wold be all over that fact.
Quick question, what is “authentic masculinity?” How do you qualify “authentic femininity?”
And as a future teacher, I am curious as to how you would argue education has influenced these things?
JR, you have once again given us a lot to chew on. I’ll try to hit your points one by one:
1) Loss of “authentic masculinity” and “authentic femininity” has led to school violence
I think Ali is right to call you out on this. In the rest of your post, I read a lot about community, the value of human life, etc., but I did not really see anything that connects your conceptions of what men and women “should” be to issues of violence.
What Kellner was suggesting is that, in a culture in which “manhood” relies on power, control, and violence, a reeducation campaign might be useful. Men can be taught that they can be strong without having to dominate other people. And, some gun control measures and mental health care thrown in will certainly help stop the violence too.
Are you suggesting that men should be taught that domination and use of weapons is the “right” sort of masculinity, and that this will lead to a more peaceful culture? I don’t quite see the logic there.
2) Sexist/heterosexist language is not harmful
Although I am irked when people use the term “policeman” when there are plenty of competent police officers on the force who are women, a simple re-labeling campaign is not what we mean when we talk about improving our language. It is an important step, however. (After all, when I was younger, I never even considered the possibility that I would become a “policeman”–not because my parents or teachers were sexist, but because I did not think it was a “woman’s” job–”policemen” are “men” by definition.)
I think the most important aspect of language revision to stopping violence, however, has to do with more subtle things. For example, when a man calls another man “gay” in order to feel superior, this language has become a tool of domination, heterosexism, and even violence. Men feel as if they have to prove that they are straight, or strong, or sexually viable, and so they hurt other people–women and men. (Another good example is when men objectify the women with whom they have a sexual relationship. It makes them feel strong and “masculine” to say things like “I tapped that,” or “I banged that,” when really it just shows that they feel as if they cannot show real emotion and that other people are meant only as tools for their own gratification.)
When we call people out on such sexist and heterosexist language, perhaps they will rethink and reevaluate how they look at themselves and how they view other people. Sensitivity is not a bad thing here, JR, nor is it a weak “PC thug” thing: it is a valid attempt to show people that objectification, sexism, and heterosexism are unacceptable behaviors.
3) Society has led us to “gender confusion”
You made these points, but I’m not exactly sure what they have to do with violence . . . I’ll deal with them anyway though. (Always happy to talk about gender issues here at thewordwarrior!)
Anywho, you have hit on a point that has been up for debate amongst feminism for ages: should feminism attempt to eliminate differences between the genders (”equality feminism”), or should feminism attempt to celebrate the differences between men and women (”difference feminism”). Please keep in mind that I am WAY overgeneralizing here.
In any case, the feminist movement has reached a tenuous compromise of sorts. Basically, feminism’s goal is to eliminate patriarchal biases. Thus, a goal of making women “more like men” is not satisfactory. (This is why I, and a lot of other feminists, have a problem with Sex and the City too. Although there are reasons why Sex and the City can be defended. But I digress . . .)
Instead, the goal is to allow people to discover for themselves, outside of patriarchal interference, what their own preferences are. This might include sexual exploration, exploration into activities associated with the opposite sex, experimenting with clothing, etc. Although this makes each individual’s identity somewhat in flux, I do not see this as a crisis at all. After all, isn’t it better to find one’s TRUE identity–even if it takes a little while– rather than live one’s entire life with an IMPOSED identity? Sure, the latter might be more comfortable and easier . . . but is it truly better?
Feminism is not about making “women like men” or “men like women”: it’s about allowing men and women to decide for themselves how they can fulfill themselves, and about shaping society in such a way that EVERYONE can make those decisions without fear of ridicule or retaliation.
4) Roe v. Wade has “cheapened human life.”
I don’t think this is a logical point–it seems to be a token anti-choice remark. I can pretty much guarantee you that the poor, disturbed souls who have committed atrocities such as school shootings do not cite Roe v. Wade as justification for their violence. To me, and to millions and millions of people, a group of replicating cells is not a human life.
And I think it “cheapens human life” even more if women are seen as nothing other than vessels that are forced to carry all pregnancies to term, whether they wish to or not. That strikes me as a form of slavery, and is not at all life-affirming.
5) The loss of religion leads to violence
It is true that a sense of community is important in order to be a happy and well-adjusted person. In a world of hypermasculinity when those that don’t fit in are ridiculed, in a world of “bedroom communities” when people do not actually know their neighbors, and in a world where people spend more time chatting (or, ahem, blogging) online than having face-to-face conversations with friends, it is sometimes difficult to find one’s place. However, I would argue that religion is simply one of many ways of finding a community to belong to. Volunteer organizations, music groups, book clubs, and other forms of communities are springing up left and right in order to provide some sense of community to people who share interests.
I also have to say that, unlike other groups and clubs, religion creates community through more intense exclusionary practices. While a book club has members (who are close) and non-members (whom the members simply don’t know), a church has members (those who are saved) and non-members (those who are damned for eternity). Students who are victims of a hypermasculinized culture–especially those who do not conform to society and church-approved forms of “masculinity”–will automatically be excluded in a very pernicious and judgmental way.
And as for your comment about all school shooters being atheists, I have to say this: there is a difference between atheism and anti-theism. I think that many of those who have committed school shootings are the latter. They are so frustrated with society in all its forms, including religion, that they resist any and all forms of structure. It might not be so much that they did not believe in a God, as that they were angry at the God by whom they feel abandoned.
This is a tragedy, but it is not one created by atheism–not by any means.
In fact, most of the atheists I know (including myself) would never hurt a fly! We are a peace-loving lot for the most part!
Well, I guess I have to do homework now!
Wow this is a long response, I hope it helps…
Authentic masculinity and authentic femininity…. those terms need to be definedso I will happily oblige.
A good priest once wrote…
“Today American men often seem to fall into one of these two categories—or to vacillate between them. The macho remains a man but does not care much for others; he devotes his energy, strength, and intelligence exclusively to his own individual well-being. He looks out for his career. He looks out for Number One. The macho treats women as sex partners; he understands marriage as something to be avoided or as a temporary arrangement to be maintained until something or someone better comes along.
Many other men—the new wimps—are nice androgynous creatures who are fun to go shopping with, but they are also indecisive, unreliable, and weak. In short, men are opting for one of two ways of being—the strong man who leads and exploits or the weak man who is ineffectual but nice. Recently, it seems as though the latter is the fastest growing category.
This new type of sensitive American, the wimp-man, was at first welcomed by many women. But now the complaints have come in loudly. The wimp, like the macho, fundamentally avoids commitment to others. He can’t be counted on; often he is still dependent, too much like a child—a Peter Pan. Hence both the macho and the “wimp”avoid true commitment to women—and of course women know it. The final result is that a good man becomes even harder to find. All this only increases the disappointment, frustration, and anger of many women—which only leads to further criticisms of men and manhood, which further pushes men away—a vicious cycle.
The solution is the strong man who serves who sacrifices for others.”
As to authentic femminity, in the interest of saving space and due to the fact that I am especially qualified to speak to all that entails I’ll just say that Unfortunately, we are heirs to a history which has conditioned us to a remarkable extent. In every time and place, this conditioning has been an obstacle to the progress of women. Women’s dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude. This has prevented women from truly being themselves and it has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment of humanity. Women have contributed to that history as much as men and, more often than not, they did so in much more difficult conditions.
Ok in interest of full disclosure those words are not mine, they are John Paul II’s.
As to education influencing things, education always has an element of moral judgment to it and in recent decades a strong element of social engineering. Boys do worse in reading, getting into college, graduating college, etc, so the education system does fail them in some way.
Thinking back on my (public) education all too often I heard phrases like “its ok for men to cry.” Almost always it was some 60 year old divorcee with short-grey hair telling me this.
The feminist thinks that men don’t like to cry in public because they are suppressed by a patriarchy and would feel rejected by their friends if they did. Did you ever think maybe men simply don’t like/want to cry in public?
I never suggested men should be taught to be dominating, violence, etc, you thinking that was probably a natural allergic reaction to the words “John Wayne” just try watching one of his movies before you make up your mind on him.
Sexist/heterosexist language … first off, who are you to make such a morality laden value judgment as to what is and is not harmful, what can and cannot be said? Even agnostics like the philosopher Marcello Pera talk about “A prison of insincerity and hypocrisy known as political correctness.”
Your right to be irked by the word policeman is just as legitimate as my right to use it. You talk about “improving our language,” and “language revision” it is rather Orwellian and bothersome, but again it is your right. Spend some time in the former Soviet Union and they will know exactly what you are talking about. How far should we go? Should we get rid of the word “clerk” because it comes from the old English word for “cleric” aka Priest and by default is “sexist”?
Also this talk about what is objectionable and what we can and can’t do, say, etc. makes me wonder, wouldn’t living in a society completely ruled by third-wave feminist ideals be just as repressive to individual freedoms of thought and conscience as living in any sort of theocracy?
As to the word gay I am not ready to coincide that word, as far as I am concerned “we’ll all be gay when Johnny comes marching home!” and the Flintstones will continue to have “Gay old time.” Until the past few decades gay simply meant happy, I wish people would stop shaping our language to fit their political interests.
You seem to know a lot about what men feel and why men do what they do, I understand that is probably part of what one learns in a class on feminism.
Your complaints about men using foul language regarding women is well taken, I think there is a difference though between “policeman” and “I banged that “regarding respect for women. Anyway “men” acting in such a way illustrates the very sort of loss of authentic masculinity I talked about.
As to the point about other people being tools for their gratification, I agree with you 100%, it is dehumanizing and insulting and sorry to say, a side-effect of the “Sexual Revolution.” Hugh Hefner of Playboy claims to be a great “feminist.”
In fairness, free-market industrialization and such has also played a role in the “thingification” of mankind/womankind in that it reduced the world to pure materialism.
I am glad we seem to have at least some common ground in criticism aspects of the show “Sex and the City.” It is interesting to hear about all these division and compromises and disagreements in feminism as I had always perceived it as being more monolithic.
I would suppose that if I had any say in the “movement,” what you call difference feminism is obviously a concept which is easier to subscribe to, provided that by “difference” you do not mean there are innate superiorities and inferiorities but rather different spheres.
I guess a good example of this would be life 100 years ago, the image of the woman at the stove cooking dinner for the family “SEXISM!” might be the knee-jerk response but recall that the man put in just as much effort and sweat splitting the logs that are fueling the cook-fire in the stove for the meal they will share, hence a division of labor indicated inter-dependence (which is healthy) not dominance (which is problematic).
Likewise other problems you blame on “patriarchy” are merly the fruits of sexual revoltuion ideology. You complained about men objectifying women before but then you say people should consider “sexual exploration” “experimenting” etc.
The contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Love, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. He now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness.” To quote Pope Benedict.
What I meant in mentioning Roe is that we have aborted millions upon millions of children since 1973, the loss of those innocents weighs like a heavy burden over our society. To you a group of replicating cells in not human life, fine, but it is potential life, and even that must be worth at least something?
No one is saying women are nothing other than “vessels,” the fact that you think a woman having a family is a form of slavery strikes me as sad.
I like your term “bedroom communities” I agree 100% there. Though it is funny how you think that religion is more exclusionary than any sort of secular club. If I was expressing the sort of views I do on this blog at some sort of feminist meeting, wouldn’t I just be pissing a lot of people off and find myself rather unwelcome in the group? The truth is all groups based on voluntary membership can be as exclusionary as they want. Should NACCP be forced to allow KKK members to join? I would agree that Catholicism, which is obviously my religion, is extremely non-exclusionary. Without getting too much into theology, it was the Catholic disciples (who were Jewish) who took their message of salvation to the gentiles (something unheard of in the Jewish community) so St. Paul went to Greece, St. Thomas to Indian, St. Peter to Rome, etc.
The world Catholic odes mean universal and it is interesting that the Church has spread to every culture and class in every age of history no other institution has been able to do this. Hence there is no difference between a rich aristocrat going to Mass at a grand Cathedral in Spain, a disabled elderly man at a Mass in Milwaukee, and a little kid at a Mass in a tin-shack church in the ghettoes of Rio.
Thus Christianity is inclusive to the point of being for all people and for all time, no other institution comes close. What would you expect from a religion where the founder, Christ, hung out with tax-collectors, Roman occupation soldiers, prostitutes, and leppers as well as the rich, respected, and powerful? It does not get more inclusive then that!
Atheism, my main beef here is not personal (noting that you are a self identified atheist) however I think there is a very unfair dual standard, especially in liberal circles, in which atheism is never scrutinized for its role in violence. All too often religious people have to hear people telling them “religion leads to conflict and violence.”
Someone may then cite suicide bombers in Palestine or the 9-11 attacks. If the religious person were to protest and say “Well that is Islam, I am Catholic, I don’t defend those sort of actions.” This probably sounds silly to the atheist because Christ walking on water is just as foolish a notion as Mohamed receiving a revelation in a cave.
Likewise the fact that Christ and Mohamed brought radically different messaged to the world that led to the development of radically different societies, many people paint with too broad a brush and figure, “patriarchal religious extremist with irrational beliefs, all the same.” Of course Christianity has to bear the brunt of the criticism because Islam has a track record of hitting back hard when attacked by intellectuals.
Thus in rejecting God (your choice) atheists have more or less taken themselves out of their own culture and lose a lot of ability to understand it. This is not to say that it doesn’t also give them certain insights, it is a give and take.
Anyway back to the track records, in my hypothetical situation in which the religious believer tries to defend himself by saying he is Catholic; your reply might be something like “What about the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, etc.” To that I can say is what about the French Revolution, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler, Castro, etc? I can make a pretty good historical defense of the Crusades but I don’t feel obligated to do so until I can get a pretty good explanation from atheists as to why it was necessary for Stalin to kill 20 million people.
Every time society decides that man is greater than God (aka there is no God) people die, and not just a few people. Indeed atheism is the thread that links nearly all murderous totalitarian dictatorships in history. Why is this? Without God (especially in the Christian sense) might makes right, love has no place in the world. Thus when Stalin came to power, what sort of moral code was there to limit him, to restrain him, to give him pause from destroying millions of people?
So while I believe it when you say you would not hurt a fly, your point about atheists being “peace-loving” is actually offensive to me since history shows atheists are beyond some of the most unspeakable crimes and acts of aggression imaginable.
There is no difference between atheism and anti-theism, which is an artificial construct; you are being a moral relativist.
Your point that school-shooters are failed by society (and Religion is part of that society) has more to do with correlation than causation. Besides in our modern society it is not like religion really had much of a chance to influence the kids who become shooters, it is not like they are kids who grew up evangelical protestant and one day walked out of church pissed at the world, usually they come from very secular families which are maybe nominally-Christian but if your only church-going is at Christmas time with Grandma, religion just isn’t going to be a big influence in your life.
Well that got a lot longer then I thought, if at any point my tone seems harsh, I promise that is more just a flaw of the limits of written communicatoin vs. verbal than anything else, as I have become a fan of this blog, learn from it, and have nothing but respect for the dialouge promoted here.
* paragraph on femminity should read “especially UNqualified”
Hehehe–once again, we have gotten ourselves into a rather long dialogue here! So, I am only going to go over a few points, for the sake of some tired-eyed readers.
First of all, about language revision being “Orwellian”: we are in no way suggesting that certain words be banned or outlawed. Instead, we are merely suggesting that, when someone uses a term or phrase with sexist/heterosexist overtones, that someone else call them out on it. For example, if someone uses the term “queer” as a pejorative, a more heterosexism-conscious person could explain why using that word as an insult is harmful because it is insulting to a large portion of the human family, and because it promotes a culture in which men constantly have to prove that they are “straight” and so things such as violence and the sexual objectification of women are promoted.
This is not an Orwellian policy–this is educating, enlightening, and empowering to ALL people–hetero, homo, and bisexual.
As for your points about androgyny being “weak”–I think looking at society this way is dangerous. If androgynous men are “wimpy,” then it means that women themselves are “wimpy.” I don’t think you mean to say this, but if men who act “like women” are weak, then it seems to indicate that women themselves are not strong. This is not to say that feminists demand that all men cry in public–I’m a woman and I haven’t cried in public since I skinned my knee in kindergarten. Some people are more prone to crying than others–but I think that this particular trait crosses sexual and gender boundaries. The problem is not that men don’t cry in public–the problem is that men who do cry in public are seen as “women-like” and thus as “weak,” reinforcing the false belief that emotions are weak. When women are associated with emotions, then they are also seen as weak. Thus, men who might WANT to cry feel as if they will be seen as weak if they do; women are expected to cry because they are the “weak” ones. Feminism seeks to disalign biological sex from these personality traits that often have powerful political connotations behind them.
Now, as for the atheism comments: I think there is a huge difference between atheism and anti-theism. Hating God is much different from merely thinking that one does not exist. And, there is a further distinction between atheism and fascism. It is true that fascist dictatorships have set themselves up as godless governments (and thus technically are atheistic). But this has been less a matter of personal belief than a matter of eliminating institutional competitors. A good example would be Nazi Germany: those priests who resisted the Nazis out of their religious beliefs were often killed. However, those priests who were complicit in the antisemitic atrocities had a great deal of power within the Nazi administration. It wasn’t their belief in God that determined their fate: it was whether or not they saw their beliefs as corresponding with Nazi doctrine or not. Furthermore, many of the individuals who committed atrocities within fascist dictatorships were actually privately religious people–they just did not see their religion and their obedience to the state as mutually exclusive.
Also, you might want to read up on secular humanism, which is a philosophy that accounts for morality, sympathy, and doing good works within a Godless universe. I am no moral relativist–in fact, I am quite the opposite. It is just that my moral framework does not depend on there being a personal God.
**Just to clarify, I do not wish to associate feminism with atheism in any way. There are numerous religious feminists out there who are proud of their beliefs, and rightfully so!