A Crisis in Masculinity: Confronting the Disturbing Connection Between Men and Mass Shootings
The Las Vegas Strip Massacre. The Orlando Nightclub Shooting. The Virginia Tech Shooting. Mass shootings have become a daily occurrence in the United States and have shown no signs of stopping since the turn of the century. Whenever these events occur, a partisan battle re-emerges regarding how to prevent these atrocities. Many on the Left argue that the United States needs stricter gun control and regulation that would make it more difficult to obtain military-grade weapons capable of firing 60 rounds per minute. Right-wing opponents reject this view, stating that it violates the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees a right to bear arms. Instead, the Right views the epidemic of mass shootings to be a result of mental health and argues that by arming more Americans, the United States will be better prepared against violence.
Both sides have agreeable points. The United States, indeed, has a gun culture problem. For example, the United Kingdom has a gun ownership rate of 3.3 guns per 100 people—the United States has 101 guns per 100 people. As a result, the annual rate of gun homicide in the United States is 120 times higher than in the United Kingdom. On the other hand, mental health is also a valid argument, as more than half of mass shooters have been reported to experience mental health symptoms before or during their attacks. Despite the truths in both views, one crucial variable is seemingly always overlooked: the variable of gender.
In the thousands of mass shootings since the mid-1900s, males comprised 97.7% of perpetrators and females only 2.3%. An incredibly compelling statistic like this requires a deeper analysis beyond the surface level of just ‘man or woman’. To understand the variable of gender, one must examine gender norms and, more specifically, how society expects men to be ‘masculine’. As displayed in movies, television shows, and social media, masculine men generally exhibit traits of power, high status, authority, heterosexism, and physical toughness. Masculinity, in this sense, is not inherently a bad thing. Numerous studies have found a correlation between physical fitness and mental health. Along with physical toughness, strong leadership is essential to communities, governments, and organisations that all people should strive for. However, with masculinity comes toxic masculinity—the construed belief that conflates traditional masculinity and patriarchal ideation. Social media surrounds men with toxic masculinity on a daily basis, like influencer Andrew Tate, whose entire persona is to encourage men to fulfil the construed norm of toxic masculinity.
Tate's messaging reflects a lot of the internal dialogue happening in the minds of men across the country: if you aren't a masculine man, you are inferior to your masculine superiors. Take the example of Elliot Rodger, the mass shooter of the 2014 Isla Vista mass shooting in Isla Vista, California. Rodger, in his 138-page manifesto, grieved over his relative physical weakness compared to other men his age and felt deprived of an active sex life while attending college. Therefore, according to Rodger, the massacre of several fellow students acted as a method of proving his masculinity to both him and society. Or take the case of James Oliver Huberty, the perpetrator of the ‘McDonald’s Massacre’. Huberty, who felt emasculated by his inability to economically provide for his family, shot and killed 22 innocent civilians eating at a McDonald's restaurant.
Cases like Elliot Rodger's not only reflect a crisis in masculinity but also a sense of aggrieved entitlement that men have in the United States. Rodger's shooting sparked the beginning of the ‘incel’ movement: an ideology that believes that feminism is victimising men, as men can no longer exert sexual control over women's bodies. Since Rodger's shooting in 2014, a swathe of incel-related shootings has occurred, including the 2018 Tallahassee, Florida shooting of a yoga studio and the 2021 Atlanta, Georgia spa shootings. While prevalent in the United States, the incel movement has prompted international violence, including the 2021 Plymouth shooting in England where 22-year-old Jake Davison shot and killed five people after months of idolising Elliot Rodger and the incel movement online.
Aggrieved entitlement isn't exclusive to violence against women. Along with feeling a sense of entitlement over women, men, specifically white men, feel entitled to positions of power. While positions of power, like Fortune 500 CEOs, are still dominated by white males, a growing cohort of women and non-white individuals have been diversifying these positions of power in recent decades. As a result, insecure men who feel a sense of entitlement over power use shootings as a method of retaliation and an attempt to reverse an increasingly diverse world. Take, for example, the Great Replacement Theory, which views the increasingly diverse world as an intentional strategy to subvert the White race. Individuals like Payton Gendron, the perpetrator of the 2022 Buffalo, New York shooting, intentionally targeted a Black community and cited the Great Replacement Theory in his manifesto. Similarly, Patrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the 2019 El Paso, Texas Walmart shooting, targeted the Latino community and bemoaned ethnic replacement.
While arguments about gun regulation and mental health accurately diagnose the symptoms of mass shootings, the disease of masculinity in crisis is rarely discussed. Unless we consider why men are the perpetrators of mass shootings, the United States of America is bound to continue seeing the pattern of mass shootings unfold with greater intensity and frequency. And as mass shootings occur more frequently, the nation becomes normalized to daily news headlines detailing the next school, church, or movie theatre that becomes the site of America's next tragedy.
Image courtesy of Sarah Mirk via Wikimedia, ©2018. Some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
