"...toxic masculinity is a performance
that emphasizes violence, control over others, sexual aggression and a lack of
emotion and vulnerability." In a recent module we learned about
masculinity and violence. The movies, video clips, and readings all showed
different links between the two. We also learned about race as it relates to
masculinity. All aspects of people's lives are intertwined, and in some cases
factors intertwine in ways that cause violence towards others. For example,
Dylann Roof, a young, white, middle-class male, shot 10 African American
church-goers in Charleston, North Carolina, killing 9 of them in an attempt to
start a "race war." "Roof’s racism and sexism thus
intersect in what philosophers Carol Pateman and Charles Mills have
described as 'racial patriarchy.' This is
a system of racial domination in which people of color are subordinate to
whites. It is also a relationship where white men have more power than white
women." Roof embodies the idea of toxic masculinity, and
when mixed with unstable home life, white supremacist views, and
access to a firearm, he did what other young white males have done in an
attempt to reclaim power they feel they have lost in life: he took that anger
and used it to kill innocent people.
Mass shootings are all too common
in America, with more than 200 mass killings in the US since 2006. But every
time media talks about a mass shooting, they leave out the most important
patterns from their analysis: the shooters are almost always white, middle-class
men."The
corporate news media does not want a sustained discussion of gun violence as a
type of public health crisis. The corporate news media is also unwilling to
discuss how domestic terrorism by right-wing white men is now the United
States’ leading threat to public order. Very troublingly, the corporate
news media considers it impolitic to explore how the right-wing echo chamber is
radicalizing and weaponizing its followers." If we want to stop these
shootings from happening we need to do a number of things, including raising
boys with the notion that they shouldn't use violence as a solution to their
problems.
http://www.gannett-cdn.com/GDContent/mass-killings/index.html#title
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylann_Roof
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