- Mass shootings are a pressing issue in the U.S. And gun control is an important part of this problem. But, when we focus only on the guns, we sometimes gloss over an important fact: Mass shootings are also enactments of masculinity. And they will continue to occur when this fact is combined with a sense among some men that male privilege is a birthright—and one that many feel unjustly denied.
You know you're from New Mexico if ...you fact check the mass murder map. They missed at least two: Ricky Abeyta, walking distance from my grandparents' house, and Hollywood Video, where my buddies used to get their tapes. That said: Sounds legit. I created /r/aggrievedentitlement, by the way. because holy shit what a lovely phrase to describe Red Pillers.Michael Kimmel suggests that these changes have produced a uniquely American gendered sentiment that he calls “aggrieved entitlement.” Of course, being pissed off about an inability to cash in on privileges previous generations of men received without question doesn’t always lead to mass shootings. But, from this cultural perspective, mass shootings can be understood as an extremely violent example of a more general issue regarding changes in relations between men and women and historical transformations in gender, race, and class inequality.
I've been calling them douche bags, but that is more of a catch-all. I had an unreasonably heated argument with a Facebook employee about gun control shortly after their IPO, so I think we should keep in mind that gun fetishism isn't limited to our society's cast-asides. Gun fetishism is an outright cultural identity in the United States and it isn't just Deliverance-style hicks that have bought into it.
Ex-boyfriend of one of my closest friends got dumped after 3 years - let's just say for legitimately valid reasons. Like holy fuck why are you still putting up with this valid reasons. We were talking about him today and I navigated over to his Facebook because of something she mentioned he'd posted a while back that had caused some mutual friends to be like "Uh...J is clearly feelnig sore about being dumped." What I was struck most by as I scrolled through his feed, however, was all his posts of guns and about guns and gun control. I was just really surprised because I hadn't known him to be that into firearms before. At first this started off as just a funny comment about how there are all sorts of levels of "cast-asides" and sometimes maybe a man who's just been dumped or going through a little rough patch might still on a minor level fetishize guns (through facebook posts) as a way to reassert his masculinity. You know, all creatures, great and small. I now find myself consciously reassuring myself that you know, that's all this is. But reading this article and about how clearly gendered some of these crimes are, that provides a context which makes my friend''s loser ex-boyfriend who lives with his parents in his 30s seem potentially more worrisome, I have to be honest.
There's a Louis CK bit about how men are the most dangerous threat to women and I believe that this is factually corroborated. Extended bit here Further, I think if you look at it in terms of social inheritance it makes a lot of sense that a boyfriend/husband is the most likely person to kill a woman. If the historical record says, in no uncertain terms, that a wife is a husband's property, then any attempt on her part to liberate herself would be "just cause" for her husband to take extreme actions. I don't think shaking off thousands of years of precedent is easy, and that entitlement is having a little renaissance in the US presently. The other side of the coin is that a lot fewer people are murdered in general, so the threat is maybe a little overblown, but the people that pose a threat are the same characters that they've always been.
The argument put forth in the research, however, is that those whose statuses are unchallenged are unlikely to react through violence. In this case, the rich, secure gun nut isn't a threat. It's the unemployed gun nut that can't get a date you need to worry about because culturally, he's the "breadwinner" who defends his family through violence.
I think the cultural enablers are part of the macro problem, but I agree, that friend with the Facebook options isn't going to hurt anyone; he'll watch as other people get hurt and say, "eh, I like having a gun and it's only black people that get murdered." -- Getting meaningful legislation requires a culture war with these types more than the cast-asides, but certainly, the cast-asides are the ones that pose a tangible individual threat. It makes intuitive sense that the less you have to lose, the more likely you are to "risk it all." Great post, btw. I hadn't seen it before. :)
Both the linked article and the source it cites focus only on the male results from the threatened gender identity experiments. I'd like to see the female results too. With only 5 female mass shooters in the past 50 years I'd like to see if that were only being blamed on an over-representation of males or if sociology points to a corresponding under-representation of females. Also, the maps presented make me interested to see regional comparisons. On first glance, the places that are largely rural, but also have looser gun laws, seem to have fewer mass shootings. On one hand, of course, less people means less to shoot and to do the shooting. But any town over 5 people could have a mass shooting. Why are they such an urban phenomenon? Could the access to unregistered and untraced weapons contribute? The article seemed to focus on just a single primary cause, but it'd be interesting to see additional factors too.
For the rural thing, it might be that rural locations aren't as affected by "progressive" social issues like feminism and such, where male privilege is a little safer from such movements. Maybe not, just thinking out loud.
It's almost 8 am and I work nights (staying up to go to the bank) so pardon my slow brain, but I'm not sure I follow. Could you expand on that?
I haven't done a thorough analysis of the data, so I'm just as prone to confirmation bias as jleopold. When I look at the map, I see tons of shootings in rural areas in states with no gun laws. When jleopold looks, he (I assume) apparently sees mostly shootings in New York and San Francisco. Actual data shows that states with more guns have more gun deaths. Surprising, right. He (I assume) wants to not only defend guns which are very clearly a part of mass shootings, but (American) men, who are also very clearly a part of mass shootings. My main point above was how quickly he seized on your suggestion that all the shootings happen in San Francisco because of feminism. I think you were just being agreeable and coming up with possibilities. I don't think that is jleopold's motive, but I could be wrong.
To be clear from the start: I'm not trying to defend guns, traditional gender roles, or, Lord forbid, mass shooters. I was also very purposefully trying to not be agreeable. Also, to be brief, I'm really confused as to where I blamed feminism anymore than the article, i.e. that it could contribute to the threats to masculinity felt by mass shooters. There is one side in that situation obviously on the wrong side. My motivation was simply to look at the article as a skeptic. I've found over the past couple months that Hubski can have a tendacy as a whole to turn posts like these into a simple congratulatory,'stick it to the dumn-asses' conversations. I would prefer for questions both about the study and for further development be raised, irregularities and inconsistencies pointed out and discussed, and in general the article taken not as gospel but as suspect. I'm a skeptic by nature, and I have an apparently unfortunate tendency to attempt to share my scepticism. With the map, I am on a mobil, and can't see the whole thing at one time. Also, I'm not as familiar with gun laws in the East, nor their development over history. Of course more guns means more gun deaths. That is obvious. But there are also major psychological differences between a serial killer, a mass shooter, and a 'normal' murderer. With all of that said, I'd encourage to look at my reply to kleinbl00 below in regards to specific cities that raise some questions about environmental factors. And yes, to confirm all of your suspicions, I am a white, American middle-class male.
Aha, I understand you now. Yes, there are plenty of rural loci for mass shootings. My suggestion was just an idea to explain any possible discrepancy that doesn't ignore the "aggrieved entitlement" phenomenon proposed in the article. There is also plenty of data that shows aggression is directly linked to testosterone levels, but that's not directly related to any of the data in the article and I likely only thought of it due to my own cognitive bias and past forays into (only the most basic) criminal psychology.
I was thinking that, but forgot to add it. I can see this easily being a part. Though with increased ease of access, where people on the other side of the globe can be upset about something happening in a tiny town, maybe this isn't as influential as it once was.
Few things: 1) The "source it cites" is here, if one of our scholars wishes to free it from its chains (bfv?). From the abstract: So the research didn't focus on male results, but the male results were "more pronounced." 2) The argument of the article is that "violence" is not a traditional gender role of women. 3) Demographically speaking, 80% of the US population lives in major metropolitan areas. Not necessarily "cities" but "within the cultural influence of cities." So any shooting you see is going to be "on the outskirts of" not "in the middle of nowhere." Fully 50% of America lives in cities while a tiny percent lives in rural areas. The law of averages is going to lean towards urban shootings over rural ones.We experimentally investigated the effects of gender identity threat on men’s and women’s perceptions of date rape and sexual coercion. Results showed that men whose masculinity was threatened responded by blaming the victim and exonerating the perpetrator more, while threatened women respond by blaming male perpetrators more and placing less blame on female victims. Men’s response to threats was more pronounced than women’s, an asymmetry we attribute to the cultural devaluation of femininity.
This research provides important evidence of what men perceive as masculine in the first place (resources they rely on in a crisis) and a new kind evidence regarding the relationship of masculinity and violence. The research does not suggest that men are somehow inherently more violent than women. Rather, it suggests that men are likely to turn to violence when they perceive themselves to be otherwise unable to stake a claim to a masculine gender identity.
It's really interesting that the article blames excessive masculinity, while the abstract makes it seem like it is the result of a 'devaluation of femininity.' They may be saying almost the else thing, but the implications of the wording choice are kind of strange. What I'd still like to see is if it can be experimentally shown that females are more likely to try to act as peacekeepers or mdore reserved, as per traditional gender roles. That would obviously result in less women mass shooters. When pressured, they might react like men, conforming more to traditional gender roles, but for them, it would move them to be a smaller chance of becoming a mass shooter. Hopefully a freed full article can explain that. There is still some things going against statistics. The greater San Fran area has 4 shootings on the map. Houston has zero, Dallas two, Denver two and Portland two all out West. Out East, Philly has zero, DC one, Chicago three out East. These are all in the top 20 metro areas. But NYC, LA, Detroit, and Atlanta have a ton it seems. What is it about these areas that make them have more mass shootings? It goes beyond population here, into regional culture, which definitely opens up new areas of investigation.Men’s response to threats was more pronounced than women’s, an asymmetry we attribute to the cultural devaluation of femininity.