Toxic Masculinity and Murder

I have not heard of "Toxic Masculinity" before, but The Atlantic just published an Article about it. What are your thoughts? Anyone familiar with this term and it's connection to murder?

"This seems a quintessential case of what has come to be known as toxic masculinity, as Marcotte defines it, “a specific model of manhood geared towards dominance and control.” When men seek that control—when we feel it’s our due—and don’t achieve it, we can resent and hate. Toxic masculinity sets expectations that prime us for disappointment. We turn that disappointment on ourselves and others as anger and hatred.

As the psychologist Arie Kruglanski told The Washington Post this week, the most primal act a human being can take to ameliorate self-loathing is “showing one's power over other human beings.” (As a small, non-masculine philosopher once said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”)

“If toxic masculinity was just about men posturing around each other in a comical fashion, that would be one thing,” writes Marcotte, “but this persistent pressure to constantly be proving manhood and warding off anything considered feminine or emasculating is the main reason why we have so many damn shootings in the United States.”

Whether it’s the main reason is necessarily speculative, but examining the role of masculinity in hatred is overdue. There was some discussion after the Santa Barbara killer’s 137-page manifesto literally said “my problem is girls,” who denied what he felt he deserved. And after the Washington Navy Yard shootings in 2013, amid a national argument over whether to blame gun control or mental illness, NPR asked simply “Why Are Most Rampage Shooters Men?”

The Orlando murderer appears to have been a violent bro who, in the moments before his death, bizarrely identified with the Boston Marathon murderers, with whom he had nothing apparent in common but a violent quest for self-actualization. ISIS seems to have been a vehicle for his hatred, which was more fundamental. The Orlando Sentinel reported yesterday that the killer frequented the nightclub Pulse, where he would “get so drunk he was loud and belligerent.” He also “express[ed] his intolerance toward homosexuals,” his ex-wife recalled, corroborating his father’s accounts."

By comparison, masculinity is straightforward. Men are not the marginalized gender, and much of what we call masculinity is malleable, in many ways learnable and unlearnable. If anyone appears to be condemning masculinity broadly (which Marcotte is elsewhere explicit that she is not), then the discussion devolves. The idea of toxic masculinity is—critically— not a sweeping indictment of bros or gender. It’s an admission that masculinity can be toxic at times.

Toxicity of anything in life is only ever a matter of context. And today’s context is one where a dangerous, militant sect is trying to radicalize volatile people who live in the country where weapons are the most plentiful in the world. Today’s context is that on top of all that, there are men who are full of insecurity and expected to express themselves only in certain, limited ways.

No cause is singular, and each inroad incremental: Preventing firearm abuse does not seem immediately politically realistic; divides created by religions will persist; no system will soon provide comprehensive mental-health care. The arbitrariness and pervasiveness of masculinity, though, make it especially actionable on a personal scale, day to day and minute to minute. It’s probably something between painting your nails and giving up all expectations of control. Though both of those would be fine."