The Perils of Patriarchy for Men as well as Women: Another Mass Shooting, another Reason to Begin Discussing Violence and Gender
Saturday, 19 October 2013 09:44By Jeffrey Nall, Truthout | News
(Image: Aiming gun via Shutterstock)Between 1982 and mid-2013, there were 67 mass shootingsacross the United States.[1] AsMother Jones reports, mass shootings are defined as the killing of four or more people, not including the killer, in a single event. Thirty of these shootings occurred between 2006 and 2013. This list grew on September 16, 2013, whenAaron Alexis, a 34-year-old former Navy Reservist, killed 12 people and wounded several others on a District of Columbia naval base. Alexis, too, was killed during a shootout with police.[2]
Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, former NRA Executive Vice President Wayne Lapierre explained these events in part by stating: "The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters."[3] Joseph Engeldinger disagrees. Speaking of his nephew, Andrew, Joseph said, "I can only assume there was some kind of mental break there. He wasn't a monster. ... He was a real good kid, a real good person. He had a real good heart. ... "[4] Certainly what Andrew did was evil. But the simplistic notion that such evil - causing profound unjustified pain and suffering to others - is the work of "genuine monsters" obscures the truth that the capacity for evil lurks in virtually all of us. Just as importantly, it obscures the social factors facilitating such evil, factors that are at least partially within our control.
One crucial factor associated with violence is gender, a lens that dictates “proper” characteristics, interests, and even behavioral trends. While Lapierre wishes to placate our fears (and undermine demands for stricter gun laws) with talk of "monsters," a far more significant and undeniable fact about 66 of the past 67 mass murderers is that they were men. This is a fact that often goes without notice - or at least without acknowledgement. Even Michael Moore's thoughtful post-Sandy Hookdiscussion of American violence[5] failed to identify the relevance of gender. Moore wrote that the slogan, "Guns don't kill people" is incomplete: "Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people." Given that the vast majority of our nation's violent acts, including gun violence, are perpetrated by men, a truer clarification of this saying would be: "Guns don't kill people, (far too many) American men kill people."
“Boys Will Be Boys”
Mass shootings are only part of the story. The oft-ignored yet fundamental connection between men and violence is attested to in everyday headlines across the U.S.: 23-year-old former Marine Terence Tyler kills two co-workers after firing 16 rounds from an assault rifle in a suburban supermarket he worked at in New Jersey (August 31, 2012). 58-year-old Jeffrey T. Johnson opens fire outside of New York's Empire State Building, where he worked, killing a former co-worker (August 24, 2012). A man uses a "sharp-edged weapon" to kill his teacher and himself in a community college classroom in Wyoming (November 2012).[6] Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher kills his 22-year-old girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins - who was the mother of their 3-month-old daughter. Belcher, 25, then drives to the team's practice facility. Despite the pleas of his coaches - whom Belcher thanked for all they had done for him - he kills himself (December 2012).[7]
In 2013, a 5-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in Kentucky. The accident occurred while he was playing with a .22 caliber single-shot Crickett rifle, marketed especially for children under the brand name "My First Rifle."[8] Other recent headlines include: "Minnesota: 9-Year-Old Boy Killed After Man Opens Fire on Passing Traffic"; "Paralympic Champion Oscar Pistorius Charged with Murdering Girlfriend"; "2 Dead in Shooting [by a man] at University of Maryland."
Men are responsible for the majority of violence in this nation. According to the FBI's 2010 statistics on crime, men made up 90 percent of the 11,000 murder offenderswhose gender was known.[9] Men also were responsible for 77 percent of aggravated assaults, 84 percent of burglaries, 82 percent of arsons, 74 percent of offenses against the family and children, and 99 percent of rapes.[10] According to Futures without Violence, while three-quarters of those who commit family violence are men, women make up 84 percent of spousal-abuse victims and 86 percent of those abused by a romantic partner.[11] Considering that men make up just 49.2 percent of the U.S. population, these statistics should be alarming.[12] The many, many men who enact the majority of our nation's and the world's violence - are they monsters? And why are so many silent, including progressives, about the role gender socialization plays in violence?
Even when it is recognized that men are the culprits for such violence, few talk about the relevance of our socially constructed gender norms. Black intellectual and feminist bell hooks writes that many are hungry for answers about why male rage occurs with such lethal frequency:
"Every day on our television screens and in our nation's newspapers we are brought news of continued male violence at home and all around the world. When we hear that teenage boys are arming themselves and killing their parents, their peers, or strangers, a sense of alarm permeates our culture. Folks want to have answers. They want to know, why is this happening? Why so much killing by boy children now, and in this historical moment?"[13]
A long-standing explanation given by some audacious enough to acknowledge the gendered character of violence boils down to "boys will be boys." Indeed, many hold a pessimistic vision that suggests men are biologically prone, if not destined, for violent lives. But when I look at my sensitive and nonaggressive 9-year-old son, Julian, and my precious infant son, Winter, I find it hard to believe that these beings are destined for viciousness. Essentialist dismissals of biological “males” as aggressive and violent are not helpful tools for uprooting the structures that perpetuate the violence that plagues our culture. More useful would be a feminist critique and reconception of the self-fulfilling prophesy that defines “men” around notions of violence.
A Feminist Response to the Model of Masculine Violence
Further Reading: http://truth-out.org/news/item/19316-boys-will-be-boys-how-valorizing-masculine-violence-is-killing-society
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