A decade ago today, two high school seniors from Columbine High School in Littleton, Co., made headlines by opening fire on their fellow students, subsequently killing 13 and injuring more than 20 others prior to killing themselves.
Then the deadliest school-related shooting until the Virginia Tech massacre eight years later, Columbine remains in the hearts and minds of Americans, and is a centerpiece of discussions about gun control and violence.
But there's nothing special about the Columbine shootings - school shootings took place before Allen Klebold and Eric Harris ever opened fire on those students, and they have taken since. Case after case, the blueprint is similar, and shows a disturbing trend: young men using violence to solve problems, and in the process, killing themselves and those around them.
This is hardly a phenomenon, and is often the rule rather than the exception, yet each time a shooting takes place, the same tired record is played - questions about gun control will be answered, the role of parents will be discussed - and yet, each time, nothing will be changed. Boys, it appears, will be boys.
But what if we approach the problems of violence differently? What if, rather than blaming the evil media for the violent programs put forth on TV, or the availability of guns, we actually discuss the messages we're teaching young boys, and look at violence from a gender perspective? If Cynthia Enloe's arguments of looking at international conflicts through feminist lens makes sense, then perhaps, Jackson Katz' arguments of looking at men's acts of violence through feminist lens also makes sense.
After shootings like these, social commentators will always have someone to shift the blame. Social conservatives will point to the decline of family values, and encourage parents to turn off the television and focus on being parents. Peace-loving liberals will focus on the lack of gun control, and say that to cure the sickness of our society, we've got to make it harder to obtain guns. Those who look for cultural changes will point to the rap industry, and try to get parental controls on the records children buy, and the movies they watch.
But herein lies the problem: if children are learning from their parents to embrace violence, to whom do they turn to learn any differently? If fathers continue to beat mothers, will any amount of teaching their children help? Violent men, after all, are just grown up violent boys. On gun control, we can take away all the guns we wish, and with that the knives and sticks and stones, it does not mean young men will stop the cycle of violence. Children, after all, can get quite innovative. We can also turn off the violent music, and the censor the movies they watch, but until we show young men a different outlet, they will always take up violence as a way to solve problems.
After every shooting, it seems, talking heads - the supposed authorities on the social ills of the world will tell Nancy Grace and Larry King that we need to be on the lookout for warning signs of persons most likely to commit violent acts. But if we'd just stop for a second and view society from a different lens, the so-called "warning signs" are all there, being played out everyday.
More than 950,000 reported cases of violence against women committed by men each year that is a warning sign. Nearly 32,000 women murdered by their intimate male partners in a 30-year span is a warning sign. Ninety-two percent of all domestic violence acts consisting of men-on-women is a warning sign. Forty percent of young girls ages 14-17 reporting having been the victims of violence by their male partners is a warning sign. One in 4 women being sexually assaulted by men is a warning sign. And, lastly, the incarcerated ratio of 9 men for every one woman is definitely a warning sign. Did someone not think that sooner or later, some of these violent men will snap? Worst, where do they think these violent men come from? Their violent nature didn't appear out of nowhere. It was bred and grown in them from the very beginning, as children and later, as men. .
Yet, there continues to be groups of people will pass the buck - either out of a refusal to acknowledge the real problem, or because of just sheer ignorance.
Earlier today, I was reading an article about Columbine's 10-year anniversary, and do you know what the writer blamed the problem on? Evil! No, the problem is not some evil-being possessing men to do what they do, and no amount of prayer or exorcism is going to change that, and most certainly, having a penis does not make one evil! To blame it on evil means to write off all men, that somehow, men were "born that way." They were not. The problem is young men don't know any better because we're not teaching them any better.
The problem is we're not standing up and saying that no, boys will not be boys, and that they have a responsibility as well as a right to learn to be better human beings, because being boys as patriarchy defines it is sending them to prison and their peers and the women they love to hospitals and morgues.
Rather than engaging in an open dialogue about the cultural constructions of what it means to be a man, we make our schools less accessible, thereby closing the gates to an institution that's supposed to foster opened minds. Rather than condemning violence and showing men better ways to cope with anger, we try to curb the threats of violence with "better" violence by bringing in security guards with enough firepower to take over a village. Through this, our message isn't a rejection of violence, but rather, "my method of violence is better than yours."
I am not interested in changing anyone's lifestyle or the activities they associate with being "manly." But the fact is this: masculinity can exist without violence, whether used to establish "king of the hill" status or to coerce women into submission; men, whether they believe it or not, can still be men without using violence, and in fact, will be better off for it.
The fact is the solutions that have been brought forth by administrators, psychologists and sociologists have failed. We, as a society, need a new solution, and that solution is feminism.
Above all, feminism challenges us to see the world through gender-free lens - to see ourselves not as women and men, but as human beings. Using feminism to help men deconstruct their masculinity - a characteristic often associated with overpowering others through violent means, is paramount in this case, not only because other methods have failed, but because men are the obvious problems here.
When all of the violent shootings at schools are committed by men, there clearly is a male crisis that needs to be resolved. For as long as we fail to engage young men in conversations about violence and healthy ways of coping with life's challenges, they will continue to kill.
In the many layers of feminism, encouraging men to let go of violence is one we can all take on, regardless of our values and convictions on other social issues. We, as a society, may not agree on where life begins or what defines a marriage, but we have to, we must at the very least embrace the social movement to redefine the definition of what makes a "good" man and woman.
While feminist women and pro-feminist men, along with progressive organizations have joined us in the movement to deconstruct masculinity, isn't it time the social conservatives who see us as the enemy do the same? After all, no amount of prayer, censorship, or talks of family values will help us, until we teach men to let go of their patriarchy-driven masculinity.
All across the country, pro-feminist men are working alongside boys to curb the male violence problems, and we're waiting for social conservatives with open arms, all they have to do is take our offer. To borrow from a Unitarian-Universalist saying, "We need not think alike to love alike," - it's time we teach men how to love.
Marc
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Thanks for posting this.
A few weeks ago, I was listening to a DC-based NPR talk show discussing violence against women. One of their guests ran a program targeted at teaching at-risk boys not to be violent.
He said something that struck a chord with me: he explained that a large part of his role was teaching boys that patriarchal masculinity had already failed them.
I think, then, that this is the root of the larger problem:
Patriarchal masculinity teaches violence instead of conflict resolution, and then sparks constant conflict through "king-of-the-hill" gender hierarchies. Of course, reacting with anger and violence creates more conflict, and therefore patriarchy escalates the problem it helped create.
Most boys know that society has failed them by bringing them up this way, but don't see an alternative. This creates extreme cases--Klebold and Harris didn't kill people because they thought its what their patriarchal society wanted them to do. It wasn't violence in media or a lack of family values or exposure to violence. They killed people because they were angry. They were angry because they were picked on by patriarchal forces and violence/anger was the only way the patriarchy taught them to respond. Masculinity failed them--twice.
While I may be twice as likely to murder my girlfriend as she is to murder me: (for instance, see http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/sdvv.pdf, though I am assuming the gender ratios are the same in the United States and Canada, which might not be appropriate, given that our murder rates are somewhat different overall and so forth, as well as assuming the ~3-5% of men who are in relationships with men, and the ~0.5%-1% of women who are in relationships with women do not experience domestic violence at a rate that is orders of magnitude different from heterosexual couples), and I may be 50% more likely to assault her than she is to assault me (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/topics/crime/intimate-partner-violence/extent.htm - again, assuming American rates, which requires some caveats), and she is two, maybe two and a half times as likely to be seriously injured in a domestic assault, this is not orders of magnitude different. It is not fundamentally different.
While it might be tempting to "Men are the problem, men are the source of violence, women are the victims of violence, women are the solution to violence", it simply does not hold up. Men are not generically violent thugs on a killing mission, most of us will never be violent towards a woman, and women are not all pure, innocent babes, without the ability to think of harming another.
Women and men are somewhat different on the aggregate. We are not fundamentally different, and our sameness is much larger.
Those numbers probably overstate our differences, too. I would have been a victim of domestic violence, but a 5'7" 170 lbs. woman just can not do a lot of damage to a 6'3" 220 lbs. man with her fists. The odds that I murder someone this year (based solely on my gender demographic) may be ~0.0017%, while the odds that my girlfriend murders someone may be ~0.0002%, but if you look at the odds that I do not murder anyone (~99.9983%) versus the odds that she does not murder anyone (~99.9999%), you should see that we are both very minimal risks for that. It is not a generic behaviour of either of us. (Yes, I used the 2004 homicide rates for Toronto, and I used this 2006 Canadian stat that 87% of those accused of homocide were men http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/collection_2007/statcan/85-002-X/85-002-XIE2007008.pdf - it also gives me twice the chance of murdering my girlfriend as I have of being murdered by her, so my earlier substitution of American numbers was probably reasonable; hopefully at least matching stats from different years can be forgiven)
"Men are the problem, men are the source of violence, women are the victims of violence, women are the solution to violence"
Where are you getting that? I don't think that's what the OP was saying. For one thing, part of the post said "pro-feminist men are working alongside boys to curb the male violence problems."
So then isn't the OP saying men are the solution to violence?
Hi Brian, the 99.999...% v. 99.998...% comparison is really important for me, too: we often look at the drastic effects of violence in our culture in a way that distorts the cause. That is to say: while men outnumber women 9 to 1 in terms of violent criminal acts (a troubling statistic, yes), when inverted to consider the nonviolent men v. nonviolent women, the number is probably more like ~95:100 (estimates! forgive me).
That is to say, violence may be considered a "crisis of masculinity," but masculinity cannot become synonymous with violence! (analogy: women suffer 9:1 in terms of eating disorders: eating disorders can be termed a "crisis in femininity," but femininity should not be conflated with body image issues...)
What is most frightening about violence is that it does not take many perpetrators to cause a lot of damage; 2 disaffected young men can kill 14; ~28 disaffected terrorists can kill ~5,000. We cannot forget that the majority of human beings are peaceful, peaceable, and banded together to stop these moments of violence whenever possible. And that's where I think you're absolutely right, Brian: we need to consider most men and women our allies, because they are.
But just like the 9:1 eating disorders statistic, I still think that the 9:1 violent crime statistic is telling. While thinking about how to deconstruct patriarchal strictures, we don't have to buy into any (also patriarchal!) views of "transcendent feminine virtue" or (generally straw men versions of feminist) wholesale derogation of masculinity. What can we do to keep violence to a minimum? that's a goal everyone will agree with. Reaching out to young men is an essential part of this project, and that's the spirit in which we should each read Marc's post, I think.
For violent crimes in general, it is more like 4:1 or 5:1 (http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvus/previous/cvus38.pdf, again as a Canadian I should look for Canadian stats, but I am somewhat lazy, and this is victim perception of gender, which may skew somewhat male). While there is certainly some difference here, yes, the larger point is that violence is a human problem which manifests itself more in men than in women, but which does not come from our "man-ness". The message is also somewhat overslanted against young people, I think, compare (http://www.ojp.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvus/previous/cvus39.pdf) which gives people under 30 committing about 60% of violent crimes while representing maybe 40% of people (for instance, http://www.census.gov/popest/national/asrh/NC-EST2007-sa.html)
But moreover, yes, the vast majority of young men are already being taught to eschew violence, as are the vast majority of young women., and the vast majority of people in general. A few people, of all ages, are not getting this (or are disregarding it), and while that group is disproportionately young men, it is not "just young men", although it is slanted that way. The message that is being sent from society to young men is that violence is unacceptable (especially against women), at least given how our behaviour manifests. It was certainly the message I got, and it seems fairly typical. Since I turned 18, (probably since I turned ~12, but I digress) I have been involved in a single physical altercation, when I (and a friend) wrestled some guy who had been assaulting his girlfriend in a subway station (until the police arrived).
It is probably worthwhile to say "How are these people falling through the cracks?", but to suggest that the training we are giving young boys is the problem simply is not borne out by the facts. Men are occasionally violent, women are occasionally violent, old people are occasionally violent, young people are occasionally violent. When we ask why men are more violent on average, some factors are obvious (size, for instance), others may be less obvious (societal behavioural models, for instance), but "It is just what we teaching our young men" is clearly problematic, since young women are engaging in the same behaviour (albeit at a lower rate), as are old men, old women (ditto the caveat).
In short, I guess:
"If we are teaching young men to be violent, why aren't young men violent?" While we may stereotype them this way, the numbers simply do not bear that out.
Another good post ^_^
This made me think of a show I was watching, that Nanny 911 show. One of the nannies went to a house of 2 remarried parents (I think,) and there were 4 boys. 2 four-year-old twins, one uh... six-eight(?) year-old, and a thirteen year old. The younger 3 played violent video games all the time (literally all day, the parents used games as a literal baby-sitter) and reenacted the violence on each other and hurt each other. A lot. Nanny tried to tell the parents this is not good behavior, and the dad looked in the camera lens and told America that "boys will be boys, and if you don't believe that, you're on crack." Thus, excusing their behavior.
I totally agree that this idea of 'boys will be boys' is ridiculous, and what's worse, because it's masculine it is valued and doesn't get questioned. Men don't think about how insulting it is to be talked about as though they are just naturally violent, naturally selfishly sexual, natural predators. No parents looks at their 7 week-old baby boy and thinks "If he hits kids in school and ends up getting in trouble for peeking in the girls' locker room, it's okay, because boys will be boys." Why is that when they get older and look more like 'a boy should look,' they change their mind?
Columbine is an interesting topic for me, mainly because I was about the same age as Klebold and Harris when it happened, and subsequently it was my group of friends, at our small high school, that was regarded with some suspicion.
It's weird, because it was the "boys will be boys" attitude that let those two slide through the cracks, but after it happened everyone tried to find something else to blame. It's a strange analog to rape culture: boys/men are violent predators, and that can't be changed, so it's the job of women/society to keep them in check and not give them the opportunity to exercise their natural proclivities.
If you're interested, the documentary, "Playing Columbine" doesn't really address the gender/masculinity problem, but it's a very interesting approach to the whole blame frenzy following.