by Noora Juvonen, #TRAGE project intern<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When a school shooting occurs, media tends to look to the shooter\u2019s background to identify risk factors that lead to the act of violence. Mental illness, past experiences of school bullying or abuse and lack of social connections are some subjects that arise commonly in media coverage of school shootings. Although the vast majority of school shooters are white men, the complex relationship between race, gender and mass violence is typically left out of media coverage, and there\u2019s a notable silence around these background factors that are shared by nearly all American school shooters (Follman, Aronsen & Pan). In this text I argue that increased attention to these topics could point the way to additional solutions for preventing future violent incidents, and improve the public\u2019s knowledge about male patterns of violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the linkages between gender and school\nshootings are an under-covered topic in news media, some academic studies of school\nshooters have taken gender as their point of approach and they have reached\nsome similar conclusions. Both Farr (93) and Kalish & Kimmel (462) point to\na failing to conform to an adolescent masculine norm as an instigating factor\nin school shootings, and frame the shooting itself as an attempt to perform a violent\nversion of masculinity within the environment where the validity of the\nperpetrator\u2019s masculinity has been questioned. Instead of internally processing\ntheir feelings of hurt and alienation, school shooters feel justified to take\nrevenge against the school community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although school shootings garner much media attention,\nvery little of it is devoted to these questions of gender and aggrievement. The\nbroadness of gender as a category and the prevalence of male aggression across\nthe whole of human life may cause gender to appear an unchangeable,\nunaddressable fact about mass violence, but studies show that the correlation\nbetween testosterone production and violence is weak (Mims). Looking at school\nshootings through the perspective of gender as performance (as opposed to\ngender as physiology) is especially instructive, because it gives us an\nunderstanding of how violent masculinity is socially constructed from a young\nage. Additionally, addressing violent masculinity in youth could help prevent\nissues caused by it in adulthood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Better access to mental health treatment, tighter gun control legislation and new school safety measures are often proposed as preventative measures that could decrease the likelihood of future school shooting incidents. The extreme gender disparity in school shootings calls for additional measures to address violent masculinity in schools as well as in American culture more broadly. Farr suggests classroom discussions of masculinity as one avenue for action, and it is clear that whether in schools or in media, a more open discussion about gender norms would increase understanding of the social dynamics of American adolescents, and make addressing problems easier (94). Having a shared language for experiences of gender and the ability to talk freely about gendered pressures within the school community could be among the important first steps toward addressing the gender component of school violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n