This quote by the administrator of the Disarmanuts Facebook page in response to one of my gun safety commentaries exposes a clear example of something the media rarely underscore in our current climate of gun violence: the gendered character of that violence.
In the over 50,000 shooting incidents in the United States in 2015, including approximately 350 categorized as “mass shootings” of four or more victims, men, mostly white men, committed the overwhelming majority. Since 2013, approximately 160 shootings occurred in schools. We have also seen numerous incidents of gun violence executed at family health clinics, houses of worship, community centers, and other sites with a disproportionate number of female employees. It is no mere coincidence that generally women (55%) favor gun control regulations more than men (40%).
In my attempt to come to an understanding why so many people oppose and resist common sense firearms safety regulations, I have developed a proposition that regulations on firearms challenge the promises of a patriarchal system based on notions of hyper-masculinity with the elements taken to the extreme of control, domination over others and the environment, competitiveness, autonomy, rugged individualism, strength, toughness, forcefulness, and decisiveness, and, of course, never having to ask for help or assistance. Concepts of cooperation and community responsibility are pushed to the sidelines and discarded.
Recently, to test out my theory, I distributed to a number of Facebook pages my understanding for the reasons why the United States remains among the last of the more developed Western countries to institute meaningful and appropriate firearms safety measures. Coming from the vast majority of sites devoted to enhancing firearms safety, members responded very positively, as if what I proposed was obvious, as common sense, and as indisputable.
I also reached out to other locations where I was less likely of receiving nearly universal support. I should have been more prepared for the veracity of responses. The overwhelming majority, who by name or Facebook photo presented as men, rather than discussing or debating, spewed venomous attacks against me in the form of name calling, character assassination, and direct threats. I include a brief sample below keeping the language exactly as responders wrote it. I also include a number of the memes they posted.
Calling My Masculinity into Question
Most members tapped into the larger societal hierarchy of masculinity in terms of the binary of the “Alpha Male” literally and figuratively on top versus the “Beta Male” on the bottom. According to the definitions on Urban Dictionary:
“Alpha Male”: “1. The leader of the pack/herd/etc. 2. The dominant male, 3. The main source of population.”
I also found the definition of “Alpha Male Syndrome,” which I surmise most members on the Facebook site would not embrace, since it is a “psychological ailment when a guy always has to push or boss others around, start fights, talk shit, makes himself the center of attention, assume responsibility for anyone else’s triumph while also pushing the blame for his fuck-ups onto others.”
“Beta Male”: “an unremarkable, careful man who avoids risk and confrontation. Beta males lack the physical presence, charisma, and confidence of the Alpha male.”
All responses associated with this hierarchy referred to me as “Beta” for the purpose of dismissing anything I have to say. I include only a few representative examples:
- “He’s a beta male = no relevance.”
- “That’s some beta male nonsense right there.”
- “If ever there were a poster boy for beta male…” followed by my Facebook picture with my three dogs:
In response to my initial posting: “Translation: Yada-yada, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword city, beta male cuckholdry, whining, hail Karl Marx, more yadas and finish off with a death to America.”
In Defense of Hyper-Masculinity:
- “…every one of those [elements of hyper-masculinity that Blumenfeld listed on his initial posting] can be attributed to natural human nature. Take that away, and we’d all be a bunch a limp wristed pussies.”
Again, for the purpose of dismissing me, they referred in negative terms to my sexual identity or my gender expression, which they could easily determine by accessing my Facebook page or by initiating a google search.
- “The only thing missing from his comment is a cute, transparent rainbow over his profile pic.”
- “Fgt” [Faggot]
- “A very learned, articulate, self flagellating fag. Good riddance.”
- “Man this oke right here sounds like he went to a Re-Education Camp. I hope they didn’t cut your balls off Boet.”
Feminization / Sexism
One of the most exploited ways of degrading males within our overarching patriarchal sexist society is to feminize males. This exposes our society’s blatant and covert forms of misogyny.
- “Warren….Aren’t you late for your bikini wax?”
- “Another liberal dipshit trying to pussify the American male. Go be a hipster somewhere else.”
- “This moron needs to go back to Star Bucks, sip his Latte, and shut his fucking douchey mouth. What a mouth breathing dick bag… Seriously…”
- “Another ‘I’m smarter and more enlightened then you’ liberal douchebag, who’s nowhere near as original as he believes he is. Fuck outta here with that shit.”
- “Wtf [What the fuck] are you people smoking?! I’m an INDIVIDUAL. That’s not negotiable. Shove this leftist/globalist community bullshit back in whatever orifice you dug it out of. Pansy ass apologists are the reason this Country faces destruction from within.”
I observed in many of the respondents’ comments linking feminization and what I had thought was the extinct concept of the “hippy.” Also, I see that going to Starbucks they also depict as feminizing.
- “Trying to drop hippy buzzwords like patriarchal and transabled and overly masculin or masculinization or whatever the fuck else is hip right now. Piss off hippy, I discredit you when you when you do this. It truly does make you a regurgibot. That is a robot that regurgitates the bullshit you soak up in the liberal robot factory/marxist indoctrination system such as liberal biased media driven sensationalist clown colleges across North America. Go piss up a rope and let the adults talk you tight pants scarf combo wearing Starbucks loving social experiment.”
Concluding Remarks: The Social Construction of Gender Role Scripts
Our society promotes what most of us have been very consciously and carefully taught throughout our lives. Gender roles (sometimes called sex roles) include the set of socially-defined roles and behaviors assigned to the sex we are assigned at birth. This can and does vary from culture to culture. Our society recognizes basically two distinct gender roles. One is the “masculine,” having the qualities and characteristics attributed to males. The other is the “feminine,” having the qualities and characteristics attributed to females. A third gender role, rarely condoned in our society, at least for those assigned “male” at birth, is “androgyny” combining assumed male (andro) and female (gyne) qualities.
A fairly simple way to remember the differences between “sex” and “gender roles” is to consider “sex” as a noun and “gender roles” as a verb (a repeated action).
This all conjures up images of the Hollywood movie “The Truman Show” starring Jim Carrey in the lead role as Truman Burbank. The film documents a man who for most of his life remains unaware that he lives within a human-made artificial set of a reality television show, broadcast 24 hours a day to billions of people around the world. The show’s executive producer and director, Christof, placed Truman at birth in the fictitious town of Seahaven, and manipulates every aspect of his life. (I will leave it up to you to analyze why the director of this farce has been given the name “Christof.”)
To dissuade Truman from exploring past the limits of the constructed set, Christof pretends to kill Truman’s father in a fabricated storm to teach him to fear the water. In addition, actors playing the part of TV news reporters warn of the dangers of travel, and promote the benefits of staying home. However, stemming from some unforeseen glitches in the scenery and unexplained and habitual coincidences in the placement of the actors around him, Truman becomes suspicions until he discovers the truth about the artificiality, manipulation, and control Christof has perpetrated on him for the past 30 years. Truman eventually outwits Christof and escapes the fabricated set into the warmth and brightness of a true sun, and the coolness and wetness of natural rain.
The respondents to my firearms commentaries serve as the director in the larger coercive societal battalions bent on destroying all signs of gender transgressions in young and old alike, and in the maintenance of gender scripts. Most of us function as conscious and unconscious co-directors in this drama each time we enforce gender-role conformity in others, and each time we relegate our critical consciousness by failing to rewrite or destroy the scripts in ways that operate integrally to us.
Those who bully, like these respondents, often fulfill the social “function” of establishing and reinforcing the socially constructed scripts handed to them when they entered the play of life. However, each time any of us rewrite the scripts so as to give an honest and true performance of life, each time we work toward lifting the ban against our transcending and obliterating the gender role status quo by continually questioning and challenging standard conceptualization of gender roles, only then will we begin as individuals and as a society to experience what Truman experienced after he lifted himself from the manufactured dome of artifice: the warmth and brightness of a true sun, and the coolness and wetness of natural rain.
Possibly, our society can then rid itself of at least some of the gun violence as well.
When you mix toxic masculinity with American culture, you’ll get gun nuts every time