Ms. Magazine suggested on its Facebook page that “toxic masculinity” played a role in the Oregon school shooting.
The Facebook post linked to a Ms. Magazine article published online entitled “Mass Killings in the U.S.: Masculinity, Masculinity, Masculinity.” The piece delved into the Oregon school shooting and whether “male entitlement” played a role with these “beta male” gunmen.
Ms. Magazine writer Soraya Chemaly questioned whether the mass killings are beyond mental illness and guns but about a deeper crisis of women being targeted in school and the workplace.
“Educated women aggregate and compete with men as equals” in schools and are “twice as likely to die in school shootings as men,” Chemaly wrote.
She continues:
“Another young white man with a gun has wreaked havoc on a community and once again the media is fixated on a numbing conversation about guns and mental illness. These are important dimensions of this crisis, but they are insufficient ones. Without addressing the gender and race dimensions of male entitlement in the United States — and the role they play in the treatment of mental illness, gun culture and the targeting of victims — we will never tackle this problem in a meaningful way.”
“So, it doesn’t require an explicit statement of misogyny to result in an explicitly disproportionate harm to women and children due to the violent expression of masculinity. There is, however, no shortage of explicit and public statements of hatred of women, in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Particularly in connection to women’s education and status.”
Chemaly called for “a public conversation about hegemonic masculinity in the United States.”
“What we really need, central to all of those dimensions, is a public conversation about hegemonic masculinity in the United States, particularly the historical and social relationship between ideals of white manhood, agency and guns. Masculinity does not have to be misogynistic. It doesn’t have to be based on white supremacy. It doesn’t have to cultivate the denial of men’s emotional pain…
Too many boys are learning that violence and entitlements to domination and control, including, centrally, over girls and women, define them as “real men.” That’s about gender, and the outcomes are grossly misogynistic, whether they use money, knives, fire, laws, or guns and whether or not their stated intent is religiously or racially motivated. Schools, parents, coaches and religious communities all need to be thinking deeply about how traditional ideas about gender and gender stereotypes work to create a national culture.”
