This form of masculinity has failed us. It doesn’t produce men; it produces anger, rage, and pain. It teaches us that the only way to be a man is to aspire to be the worst in us. We can do better. We can be better.
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In the wake of any tragedy, there’s a natural impulse to wonder: How did this happen? Who was to blame for this? In the weeks since Christopher Harper-Mercer’s execution of nine students at an Oregon community college, the question has become the same: Who is at fault here?
Wedged among the proliferation of dank memes, choruses of copycat threats, violent Pepe .gifs, and cries of “Beta Uprising,” the 4chan forum /r9k/ might be closest to actually having an answer. According to the users, women were to blame for this rampage: If “the sluts” had just given it up to Mercer, he might never have gone on to murder innocent people. As horrible as 4chan may be, this claim is seemingly backed up by Mercer’s own words. In the days leading up to the attack, he posted complaints on a number of online forums about being chaste against his wishes. In his rambling manifesto left at the scene of the crime, he reportedly wrote: “I am going to die friendless, girlfriendless, and a virgin.”
Like Elliot Rodger, Mercer’s frustration and rage at being a virgin likely contributed to his lashing out at innocent bystanders. But the real issue wasn’t that Mercer was a virgin and that this whole thing could have been avoided with a pity-fuck. The problem is that Mercer—like the community that it seems he was a part of—felt that he wasn’t a “real” man because of it.
The state of being a man is a compilation of external influences that ultimately define whether someone is a “real” man or not. Guns, sex, and money serve as a sort of holy trinity for traditional masculinity, the tropes by which a supposedly true man is known. When it’s stripped down to its toxic core, “what is a man” ends up being defined by how many chicks he can bang, how much ass he can kick, and how much money and “status” he has. Among the people most obsessed with traditional masculinity—your men’s rights advocates, your Red Pill enthusiasts, your incels—you’ll hear about “alpha” and “beta” males. Alphas presumably rank higher on the violence, sex and status trinity, lording their inherent superiority over their lesser, beta brothers.
Their concept of masculinity is so fragile that a trending Twitter hashtag can threaten it.
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Of course, for all the swaggering machismo and bravado of these would-be alphas, their concept of masculinity is so fragile that a trending Twitter hashtag can threaten it. When we define so many aspects of “manhood” as being external to just existing, it means that manhood is something that can be taken away from you at any time. You hear it joked about time and time again—someone needs to hand in his man-card or turn in his testicles because of some perceived violation of man-code.
Today on #MasculinitySoFragile pic.twitter.com/7CWr0v6F9p
— mina (@shezumi) October 6, 2015
#MasculinitySoFragile Kanye wasted water taking #30Showers because he was horrified of the idea of a sexually liberated, active woman. — Progressive Ghoul (@brianinoty) October 6, 2015
#MasculinitySoFragile it needs gendered advertising for dairy products pic.twitter.com/2dSoASc4YF
— STOP WHITE PEOPLE. (@girlziplocked) October 5, 2015
But underneath the jokes and the ball-busting is a very real fear of losing their credentials as a man. A study from Washington University found that in marriages where women earn more money than their husbands, the husbands were more likely to experience insomnia, depression, and erectile dysfunction. A simple difference in pay stubs is enough to make their mighty swinging members to curl up and pout.
@SocofGender @changingdiets Mmm, any link I wonder?: http://t.co/zgvbqdEP4b — Paula Arcari (@Rainfed5) June 19, 2015
Elliot Rodger complained that he wasn’t the “alpha” he was meant to be and that he wasn’t being given the sex he deserved—so he went and murdered six people and sent 22 more to the hospital. Charles Harper-Mercer felt he couldn’t measure up as a man by being a lover, so he decided to show the world just how big his semi-automatic murder penis was.
Mercer was someone who was obsessed with the trappings of masculinity that he felt he couldn’t measure up to and lashed out, as statistics show that so many do.
A study from Washington University found that in marriages where women earn more money than their husbands, the husbands were more likely to experience insomnia, depression, and erectile dysfunction.
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We need to recognize just how damaging it is to sell the idea of men at their worst—brutish, violent and barely in control of themselves—is the only way to be a “real” man. We’ve stuck ourselves with a toxic idea of masculinity where you continually have to prove you’re a man—being willing to hurt others in order to do so—instead of manhood being something inherent. We need to recognize, accept, and even celebrate the wide variety of masculinity—from virgins to playboys, asexuals to satyrs, from macho to femme, cis men and trans men, gay and straight and everything in between.
The defenders of toxic masculinity love to portray those who don’t conform as being unmanly or beta white-knight manginas—sexual quislings who seek to betray their gender because they can’t measure up. It’s a way of derailing the conversation, to pit people against one another rather than to accept the truth: This form of masculinity has failed us. It doesn’t produce men; it produces anger, rage, and pain. It teaches us that the only way to be a man is to aspire to be the worst in us. We can do better. We can be better.
We can free ourselves to be the real men we are meant to be. It’s time to be better than we are.
This post originally appeared at The Daily Dot. Reprinted with permission.
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About the author
Harris O’Malley is a dating coach who provides geek dating advice at his blog Paging Dr. NerdLove, the Dr. NerdLove podcast, and the Good Men Project.
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Photo via Free Grunge Textures/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Yes, the shaming of men who don’t conform to traditionalist views of masculinities are an issue. But I have to question the sincerity of a person who goes on to shame men for not bucking the expectations placed upon them – expectations very often enforced by shaming tactics: A study from Washington University found that in marriages where women earn more money than their husbands, the husbands were more likely to experience insomnia, depression, and erectile dysfunction. A simple difference in pay stubs is enough to make their mighty swinging members to curl up and pout. A jab containing a… Read more »
Thanks for the corrective insights Tamen. It is so annoying to read these gender armchair psychologists spin their tales. I’m thinking they get paid bitcoins every time they use and misuse a term such as “entitled” in their spin narrative.
Lacking social connections, for a host of reasons, is now the new entitlement!
“But more importanly; men who earned less than their wives prior to marriage did not see any increase in anxiety, insomnia or ED (nor did their wives). ” That could also be because they were already OK with it prior to marriage. I think it’s more telling that many more women refuse to marry men who make less than they do or don’t have full time jobs. In that light, what do you make of all the articles about women not being able to find a man / where have all the good men gone articles? Wouldn’t that be supporting… Read more »
Well done Tamen!
Here we have a mother that is fascinated with guns (and have lots of them at home)
and tells that both her sons have a autism disorder.
The son is on medication.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/us/mother-of-oregon-gunman-wrote-of-keeping-firearms.html
And what about the side effects of medication ?
http://www.naturalnews.com/051453_Christopher_Mercer_psychiatric_medications_autism_spectrum_disorder.html#
I do not doubt that this man was in deep pain,but we have no reason to think only problem was that he never had a girlfriend or any sexually happenings in his life.
The manifesto many refers to is NOT released , only bits of it leaked to the press and we do not even know if the few details we have can be trusted.
So is all this about toxic masculinity?
It never ceases to amaze me that some young men like the mass murderer from Oregon, believe that they are somehow “entitled” to a young woman’s body. He did not have to remain a virgin; there were several ways he could have sought and had sexual contact with a female. His personality and the creepy aura he exhibited undoubtedly turned off a lot of young females. I would have advised my 21 year old daughter to head in the opposite direction if she encountered a male like him who gave off “bad vibes”. And even more so if she had… Read more »
Please digest Jesse’s comment from Oct 20 – specifically: “You may also be adding stigma to the problem by implying that these are ‘gender-role’ issues. There is a basic fact the men also want to be able to express their anger and their passion as part of who they are, and to reduce that to something that has been ‘taught’ is to denigrate a very natural feeling.”
Harris
Do we have any facts about what kind of serious emotional health problem this man had?
If this young man became psychotic,then why do we think he had insight into his own problems?
(maybe he was not psychotic,but something is seriously wrong )
Of course a mass shooter’s manifesto tells us something.
There are many manifestoes now after mass killers.
But what makes us think he totally understand himself and the society he is a part of?
Women are toxic
You may also be adding stigma to the problem by implying that these are “gender-role” issues. There is a basic fact the men also want to be able to express their anger and their passion as part of who they are, and to reduce that to something that has been “taught” is to denigrate a very natural feeling. This is not to agree with the right wing that would accuse Feminazis and other silly cultural scapegoat tropes of being the cause, but to isolate and disparage the feelings behind the desire for guns, sex and money is simply dishonest. Testosterone… Read more »
Spot on and well said. I’ve tried to explain the same phenomenon, maybe not so eloquently at times. Some people assume that you’re making excuses for killers rather than explaining social issues that hurt everyone, and lead only the most psychologically vulnerable to commit the worst violence.
Awesome insight about how our society alters our perception of being a man, we are treated like disposable givers, protectors and hunters, when a man refuses or can not display those characteristics, our society reject him, the results of this are evident, these kids become corrupted, depressed and angry, then violent and murderous. There is hope in our new generation of parents, they must raise their children without hurtful gender cliches, giving them the right value and promotion of self esteem that every kid deserve.