Boys and Their Toys: Toxic Masculinity and Mass Shootings
By: Mikayla Lewis
Image by: Jena Ardell/Getty
American mass shootings have long been a hot topic for debate, both in the public and private lives of Americans themselves. There are squabbles over gun control laws amongst families and politicians alike. There is becoming little middle ground in this area as the problem continues to expose itself in headline after headline of body counts and injuries sustained.
Regardless of one’s political views, there is no avoiding the fact that mass shootings are a gendered issue in that men are virtually always the perpetrators.
An FBI report conducted on mass shootings from 2000 to 2013 found that only 3.8% of those shootings were perpetrated by a female. Therefore, mass shootings are a male problem in a patriarchal society, meaning it's something that will continue to go unresolved - so long as men and their masculinity are seen as dominant in the power structure.
Without gender equality aimed specifically at dismantling toxic and hegemonic ideals of masculinity, these shootings will continue to happen.
Mass shootings are consistently about power: power being exerted in the form of terror, gained from the oppression of minorities, and being taken back through revenge. This need for power is often derived from toxic masculinity, with homophobia, racism, and sexism also being perpetrated in the process.
Boys are taught to react to threats with violence and authority from a young age, especially to threats regarding their masculinity. Young men and boys are taught to mock or attack feminine traits and those that exhibit them, from calling girls weak as children to calling supposedly emasculate peers derogatory slurs in the schoolyard.
Taunting often eventually leads to physical violence. School shootings take this violence to the extreme, and here suicide is seen as the “honorable” conclusion to a rampage shooting.
The history of public American mass shootings is largely attributed to the massacre at Columbine, wherein Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve students and a teacher before turning the gun on themselves. This is thought to be the model of any mass shooting: premeditation, the rampage, the suicide of the shooter or shooters. With minor variations, it generally holds true.
Take for example the individual cases of Dylan Roof, Elliot Rodgers and Omar Mateen. Each enacted their plan after careful premeditation, and all but Roof perished either by their own hand or law enforcement following their attacks. These three shooters leave some of the largest legacies in America’s bloody history of public gun violence.
All three similarly boast large amounts of toxic masculinity and male entitlement because their attacks were aimed at terrorizing women, people of color and sexual minorities. Taking a look at these three separate shootings, there is a clear case for how deeply toxic masculinity was a factor.
Dylan Roof attacked a prayer session at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, killing nine. His motivator was “to start a race war,” which may seem deeply racist at first -- as it certainly is -- but it is also deeply misogynistic. Roof’s hatred of black people was not due merely to supposedly inferior biology, but also as a means of policing white women’s sexuality.
Roof sought to protect white women through patriarchal ideals. Because black men are stereotyped as hypermasculine and hypersexual, an untrue stereotype that Roof subscribed to whole-heartedly throughout his manifesto, he saw black men as predatory and a threat to his and other white men’s hegemonically masculine image. Because both toxic and hegemonic masculinity are tied so tightly to control and superiority over women -- particularly white women -- any racial group that may infringe on this “right” is seen as a threat to white men’s masculinity.
It is this mentality that contributed to so many of America’s historical lynchings of black men who were falsely named as rapists and abusers of white women. Through this, Roof’s actions were not only race based -- they were also based in patriarchal sexism, which is rooted in toxic masculinity.
In the case of Elliot Rodgers, who shot, stabbed, and killed seven in 2014 near UC Santa Barbara, sexism was a primary motivator. Rodgers, like Roof, had written a manifesto prior to his rampage. Unlike Roof, Rodgers clearly stated exactly what his motivations were, what he sought to prove, and who his targets were - women.
In a culture where masculinity is based in large part, on men’s control and engagement with women, being unable to accomplish this leads men to feel emasculated and insecure. Because toxic masculinity also dictates that men are never to blame, men tend to aim blame towards women instead of themselves. Blaming leads to “punishment,” which Rodgers successfully demonstrated in his horrifying and brutal attack.
Here, Roof and Rodgers bear a similarity -- the need to exert control and superiority over a separate social group. Both were rooted in male entitlement to women’s sexuality, however one saw himself victimized by women themselves and the other by the threat of black men encroaching on what he saw as entitled to him.
In 2016, Omar Mateen shot over 100 people at Pulse nightclub in Florida, killing 49. Mateen’s self-declared motives were anger and discontent with US-led airstrikes on Iraq. However, a closer look at Mateen’s history with Pulse shows a different side of the story.
There are multiple testimonies from differing Pulse patrons that say they had seen Mateen at Pulse dozens of times in the years and months leading up to the disaster. Mateen’s wife also stated that her husband attended clubs frequently. Some may say that Mateen was merely staking out the scene of his attack, but there are also reports of him dancing and meeting with other men at the club, suggesting that Mateen may not have entirely been heterosexual.
In addition, Mateen was registered for services aimed at homosexual men, such as Grindr. He conversed with other men on these apps beginning at least three years prior to the attack.
Yet, in spite of this, his wife and father say that Mateen was extremely homophobic as a person. His wife stated that he would be sent into rants at the sight of homosexual couples on TV, and his father recalls a specific incident wherein Mateen had an extreme episode of anger after witnessing a male couple kissing on the sidewalk outside a grocer.
These two differing sides of Mateen are confusing to anyone looking into the case, yet upon closer examination they make sense within the frame of toxic masculinity.
Boys and men are taught to fear traits that may harm their image of masculinity, and in the case of Mateen, this would be his perceived homosexuality. In American culture, androcentrism is cornerstone, and through that masculinity becomes the quickest way for boys to fit in. Mateen was the child of immigrant parents, and children of immigrants can have difficulty fitting into two cultures -- the one at home, and the one beyond.
Part of fitting into America is first fitting into the gender binary. Mateen was likely homosexual and saw this aspect of himself as not only a threat to his masculinity, but also fitting into American culture as a whole. Add in various psychological problems and Mateen likely saw his rampage at Pulse as a means of cementing his masculinity while separating himself from the LGBT+ community. He could be the ideal hegemonic man for a night while striking fear into a community of sexual minorities.
The correlation between these three cases is toxic masculinity, which played a heavy hand in that they were asserting their masculine dominance over women and minorities. They also all utilized the internet, both in creating their ideals and finding a “home” for their logic.
For Rodgers, it was INCELS and creating and posting his manifesto. Roof had a multitude of white supremacist pages and images linked to his name. Both Roof and Rodgers had a strong interest in the Holocaust, Nazis, and Heinrich Himmler. As for Mateen, his search engine bore many records of ISIS and foreign terrorist interest -- so many that the FBI placed him on a watchlist in 2013. He also posted an explanation about his anger with US airstrikes as his motives to Facebook before the Pulse shooting, though the post was removed.
Prevailing in all of these is the role the Internet played. It helped to cultivate hate filled mindsets in boys and men that were already struggling with some part of their identity or masculinity.
The Internet is, needless to say, broad in its topics and sites. Places like 4chan, INCELS, and Reddit are great examples of this. However, because the Internet goes unchecked, this also creates a great space for white supremacists and so called “meninists,” alongside so many other toxically sexist, racist, and homophobic movements.
Elliot Rodgers extensively researched Nazi ideology, Dylan Roof created accounts devoted to “starting a race war”, and Omar Mateen felt drawn to ISIS and similar organizations (despite having no actual affiliation). All posted or wrote manifestos based on beliefs largely inherited from the Internet. Given this, the Internet radicalized the feelings many of these men were already facing.
Yet, there still ceases to be a clear solution. As previously stated, mass shootings are a male problem in a patriarchal society. Without gender equality that specifically aims to dismantle toxically masculine ideals, shootings will continue to happen.
However, learning to correct behavior in youth is critical to create a more inclusive society that does not heavily rely on androcentricity, as well as reducing the amount of gun violence America faces. Treating children as equal in their competition and behavior is key. Gender policing should be eliminated, as it teaches children inequality and upholds the gender binary.
Beyond childhood, beginning conversation around mental health and state of mind is important to prevent adolescents from developing a stigma. This could dramatically reduce suicide rates amongst males, and help to break the barriers toxic masculinity has built around being vulnerable and honest about emotion and mental health.
It is important to note that these are only contributing factors to a larger picture, one built around gun access, mental health, bullying, and countless other factors. Toxic masculinity, however, is consistently the missing piece in conversation about America’s mass shootings -- a problem that is male dominated. Masculinity can indeed thrive without being toxic, but it becomes the job of individuals to call it out when it becomes harmful. Still, it is consistently ignored in media coverage, a missing piece often acknowledged but never named.
Americans must aim to fill this gap and ask the difficult and uncomfortable questions in order to achieve a better way of life.