'Guns and the Decline of the Young Man'

Submitted by Mastodon on Mon, 2012-12-17 17:56

Article here. Excerpt:

'This is merely anecdotal evidence, not social science, but I believe that it is indicative of a sort of infection spreading in our collective brain, one that whispers to the American subconscious: “The young men are in decline.” ...
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Certainly, there are young men who are paragons of success: the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley, the sharply dressed bankers, the swarms of brilliant graduates who receive their diplomas each year. And there are heroes who fight our fires, soldiers who fight our wars and the first-responders who are the first to set eyes on the dead children’s bodies at the scenes of mass shootings. But more young men these days are avatars of soldiers rather than soldiers themselves.
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I would argue that maleness and whiteness are commodities in decline. And while those of us who are not male or white have enjoyed some benefits from their decline, the sort of violence and murder that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary will continue to occur if we do not find a way to carry them along with us in our successes rather than leaving them behind.'

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Comments

... I still happen to think that "crazy" is the #1 component. It's true you're a lot more likely to see crazy guys with guns commit mass murders than crazy girls. But frankly I think this is socialization. We teach boys that weapons are essentially masculine items and that violence is "more acceptable" for boys/men to use than girls/women as a means of exercising power or expressing oneself. (Need evidence? Start watching TV and movies, play some video games, look up who's in the cage at an MMA match, etc., etc.)

If society flipped the script and raised girls with all the same examples it gives to boys re their relationship to violence, you'd probably get the same number of crazy girls committing mass murders as crazy boys.

And as for young men being "left behind", well, vis-a-vis education, sure seems to be the case generally, though the author forgot to mention the imminent plans to disenfranchise young men further from education via our fearless leader's plans to inflict Title IX on STEM programs across the country. And as for there being a dancing-on-the-graves-of-men (white ones in particular)? Well, she's got that one right.

There is a bigger problem though we have as a people and she discusses it some w/out really identifying it as such. It's the double-whammy of the development of a welfare dependent attitude (which subconsciously leads ppl to devalue themselves, IMO) on top of the substance abuse/dysfunction that operates across the more poverty-stricken areas she mentions. This affects everyone badly but in the case of women like the ones she mentions, "at least we have our kids". If these women never had kids, they'd probably be in as bad a place as the men.

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2012-12-18 03:25