‘T I S U N M A N L Y G R I EEFF By Reese Hill
W
hen I heard the news of the Parkland, Florida shooting last month, I immediately assumed the shooter was male. It didn’t even cross my mind that a female could just as easily have committed that crime. But looking back, I cannot remember a time when a mass shooting was perpetrated by a woman. Knowing women are just as capable of murder as men, it made me wonder what might explain that gender imbalance seen in shooters. In the past 36 years, there have only been three female mass shooters in the United States. Compare that to the 95 male mass shooters. Perhaps that serves as a significant example of the vast gender imbalance of violent tendencies among our population. Now, this is not to imply that men are inherently more violent or are at fault for these national tragedies. In fact, it is a result of the institutionalized patriarchy that has structured our society globally since before
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recorded history. However, in Western culture, the concept of “masculinity” is something that harms both women and men socially, economically, and perhaps most importantly in this context, emotionally. The reader is likely familiar with the phrase “boys will be boys”, which is drilled into our heads from a young age. Aggressive men with physical skill sets and signature weapons are glorified in media—for example, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, James Bond, and superheroes like Batman, Captain America, and the franchises surrounding them. On the flip side, women are glorified for their beauty and sex appeal and portrayed as domestic objects, often not even the protagonists of popular media and instead fulfilling the role of the male hero’s love interest. This creates a toxic cycle of hyper-masculine men using their savvy violence to defeat evil and win the perfect woman, ultimately becoming the Western idea of a hero. Not only does the patriarchy encourage vio-
lence in males, it also discourages and sometimes even humiliates boys for expressing emotion or doing anything generally considered “feminine.” Another familiar maxim is “boys don’t cry”. Everybody glorifies James Bond’s gunmanship and Captain America’s soldier physique, but nobody’s made a movie about Indiana Jones’ mental health. Meanwhile, movies targeted towards young women are based on emotion and romance—for example, Disney Princesses, chick flicks, or romance movies. As a little girl, I was told that when boys were mean to me at school it meant they liked me. We live in a society where men are discouraged from expressing feelings, the foundation for our humanity, in any way except anger or violence. So when some boys don’t fit this macho, stoic facade of male perfection it can leave them feeling dejected and unhappy—similar to the female equivalent of not fitting into beauty stereotypes. However, the problem is instead of trying to change the way they look, boys face a higher danger of becoming isolated, angry, and prone to