Hot take time: Make it much more clear, socially, what "positive masculinity" entails and separate "masculinity" from toxic behaviors as much as possible. I recognize this issue is much more...
Hot take time:
Make it much more clear, socially, what "positive masculinity" entails and separate "masculinity" from toxic behaviors as much as possible.
I recognize this issue is much more complex than that, and cannot be solved with one suggestion from a rando on the internet, but that's kind of the point of a hot take. I expect a lot of people are going to take umbrage with what I said in some capacity. If so, all I ask is that you at least lube yourself up before you fuck me with your knowledge dick because I assure you that you know more about this than I do.
Ultra hot take time: Fuck ascribing anything as masculine or feminine, how about we just focus on positive traits in general. Why is it that we need to focus on "lonely men" and not "lonely...
Ultra hot take time:
Fuck ascribing anything as masculine or feminine, how about we just focus on positive traits in general. Why is it that we need to focus on "lonely men" and not "lonely women"? Gendering traits and perceived norms of gender behavior only perpetuate the problem. I suspect a good deal of these "lonely men" might not have ended up in the same boat if gender wasn't so closely tied with behavior due to social conditioning.
We should worry about lonely men and not lonely women because lonely men are radicalizing each other into violence on the internet, lonely women are posting on Tumblr.
We should worry about lonely men and not lonely women because lonely men are radicalizing each other into violence on the internet, lonely women are posting on Tumblr.
And do you really think that what is considered "acceptable" or socially reinforced behavior is not at least part of this problem? Think about it for a second - do you think a woman would be...
And do you really think that what is considered "acceptable" or socially reinforced behavior is not at least part of this problem?
Think about it for a second - do you think a woman would be chastised for posting on tumblr? What about a man? Are men generally chastised for talking about violence or wishing to instill violence in response to a negative stimulus? What about women?
Social constructs of what is acceptable for a man and for a woman to be doing (or thinking) directly affect what kind of behaviors they participate in.
That's basically the entire premise of 'toxic masculinity' - the traits that men are taught give them value are unrealistic and can have harmful effects in practice.
Social constructs of what is acceptable for a man and for a woman to be doing (or thinking) directly affect what kind of behaviors they participate in.
That's basically the entire premise of 'toxic masculinity' - the traits that men are taught give them value are unrealistic and can have harmful effects in practice.
So how about we just call it toxic behavior and roll in the negative "feminine" traits and then rid ourselves of the idea that these traits are inherent to male or female society? By ascribing the...
So how about we just call it toxic behavior and roll in the negative "feminine" traits and then rid ourselves of the idea that these traits are inherent to male or female society?
By ascribing the term "masculine" we are implying that there are masculine traits and that men should act a specific way because they are men. This inherently discourages some of the stereo-typically "feminine" traits like "posting on tumblr" which could be serving as a replacement for violence for some of these men.
Why don't we just call it what it is? The point of language is to communicate thoughts and ideas, and describe things. Nobody using the term toxic masculinity is saying that all men do x, or all...
So how about we just call it toxic behavior and roll in the negative "feminine" traits and then rid ourselves of the idea that these traits are inherent to male or female society?
Why don't we just call it what it is? The point of language is to communicate thoughts and ideas, and describe things. Nobody using the term toxic masculinity is saying that all men do x, or all women do y. Rather, it describes the negative effects when social pressure is applied to make men conform to traits traditionally considered masculine. Like dealing with racism, pretending the problem doesn't exist isn't going to help.
By ascribing the term "masculine" we are implying that there are masculine traits and that men should act a specific way because they are men.
Correct. And when taken to extremes, this behavior becomes toxic. I don't really see the disconnect here, other than being uncomfortable with words, for reasons.
This inherently discourages some of the stereo-typically "feminine" traits like "posting on tumblr" which could be serving as a replacement for violence for some of these men.
Yeah, that kind of discouragement sounds pretty toxic, doesn't it?
As I said, it's my ultra hot take. I'm a bit of a gender anarchist and I think we do more harm than good by applying gender to anything. I see no reason why it needs to be labeled "toxic...
Why don't we just call it what it is?
As I said, it's my ultra hot take. I'm a bit of a gender anarchist and I think we do more harm than good by applying gender to anything. I see no reason why it needs to be labeled "toxic masculinity" as opposed to "toxic behavior".
Color blindness, for example, is not a gendered trait but it's presence is also much higher among genetically male individuals. Just because the term doesn't involve gender does not mean the identification, treatment, and resources shouldn't be targeted to the appropriate population.
I don't really see the disconnect here, other than being uncomfortable with words, for reasons.
I never argued with the fact that it's toxic behavior or that it falls under the umbrella of the defined term "toxic masculinity". I simply stated that we should divorce gender from this problem because it biases how we approach the problem and blinds us to problems we will need to eventually tackle anyways.
I probably agree with you on more than we disagree on, gendering definitely goes too far a lot of the time. Maybe it's a good bias, though? You can't ignore the fact that all these mass shootings...
I'm a bit of a gender anarchist and I think we do more harm than good by applying gender to anything
I probably agree with you on more than we disagree on, gendering definitely goes too far a lot of the time.
I simply stated that we should divorce gender from this problem because it biases how we approach the problem and blinds us to problems we will need to eventually tackle anyways.
Maybe it's a good bias, though? You can't ignore the fact that all these mass shootings are men, predominantly white men, who are using these assault style weapons that have been marketed as a way to get your man card back. Women participate in gun culture here in the US too, but they're not massacring innocents left, right, and center. Why? Society doesn't treat men and women the same, even if that is our eventual goal it makes no sense to me as to why you would act like that's the case now.
Here's my defense of the term toxic masculinity. It's a useful term, and that's why the various proponents of the patriarchy have tried so hard to attack it. Toxic masculinity is what makes intersectional feminism relevant to men. Toxic masculinity is not, as some will try to suggest, an innate characteristic of manhood. Rather, it is a set of births and behaviors forced upon us from birth to reinforce the patriarchy. Identifying one's own toxicly masculine traits is how a man can be a real ally of feminist causes. I know some people just have a bad gut reaction to the term, but it is useful and meaningful.
It should absolutely shape how we implement, but it shouldn't shape how we approach - we should keep the lens as wide as possible until we can define the scope most appropriately, as sometimes we...
Maybe it's a good bias, though? You can't ignore the fact that all these mass shootings are men, predominantly white men, who are using these assault style weapons that have been marketed as a way to get your man card back.
It should absolutely shape how we implement, but it shouldn't shape how we approach - we should keep the lens as wide as possible until we can define the scope most appropriately, as sometimes we miss out on important pieces of information when we toss it out because it doesn't fit into our model of how we think the problem arose.
I know some people just have a bad gut reaction to the term, but it is useful and meaningful.
In general I do not have a bad gut reaction to the term and I am a proponent of more research and more targeted resources to tackle the problem.
I'm mostly posting this as my hot take, for the gender anarchist reasons I've already mentioned. I think we aren't questioning the affect of societal roles as much as we should be, and because of this we're missing out on some opportunities to improve everything by getting rid of ideas that persist simply because no one is questioning them.
Alright, right here is where you convinced me: And to add another point: I've seen many a dude get really mad about the term "toxic masculinity", they read it backwards like "masculinity is...
Alright, right here is where you convinced me:
Color blindness, for example, is not a gendered trait but it's presence is also much higher among genetically male individuals. Just because the term doesn't involve gender does not mean the identification, treatment, and resources shouldn't be targeted to the appropriate population.
And to add another point: I've seen many a dude get really mad about the term "toxic masculinity", they read it backwards like "masculinity is toxic". That's not what's meant by the term, but if you have a whole lot of people who don't understand your term then maybe it's time to consider a new name.
Because it's occurring in men, due to how we present masculinity, and how boys absorb that message. “Gender anarchy” may sound nice in theory but, in practice, this is a male problem. We're not...
I see no reason why it needs to be labeled "toxic masculinity" as opposed to "toxic behavior".
Because it's occurring in men, due to how we present masculinity, and how boys absorb that message. “Gender anarchy” may sound nice in theory but, in practice, this is a male problem. We're not going to solve this problem if we define it wrongly.
I agree with you ideologically but if our goal is to expediently stop violence then the deconstruction of what exactly masculity and femininity are, and decoupling the conditioning of social...
I agree with you ideologically but if our goal is to expediently stop violence then the deconstruction of what exactly masculity and femininity are, and decoupling the conditioning of social behavior in respect to gender might not be the best approach. That sort of stuff takes a long time.
Teaching people to recognize and diffuse toxic behavior is no different whether you call it toxic masculinity or toxic behavior. I see no reason why we can't work on both at the same time without...
Teaching people to recognize and diffuse toxic behavior is no different whether you call it toxic masculinity or toxic behavior. I see no reason why we can't work on both at the same time without compromising either. In fact, one might argue that the effects of each are synergistic on each other.
Social conditioning isn't the reason men commit mass shootings. I know it'd be nice if everyone was born a uniform blank slate but that just isn't the case. Men are biologically more aggressive...
Social conditioning isn't the reason men commit mass shootings. I know it'd be nice if everyone was born a uniform blank slate but that just isn't the case. Men are biologically more aggressive and that is the key reason why we see exclusively men don combat gear and pick up assault rifles with the aim of killing innocent people. To try and minimize that facet of the problem is, in my view, anti-intellectual.
The tendency for males to engage in more aggressive behavior is widely supported in many, many different species, including birds, monkeys and chimps. The going hypothesis seems to be that this is...
The tendency for males to engage in more aggressive behavior is widely supported in many, many different species, including birds, monkeys and chimps. The going hypothesis seems to be that this is related to male-vs-male competition for access to mating females. In humans, males are far more likely to be the victims of homicide than females. This suggests that the burden of proof should rather be on the person claiming that in humans, this aggression is uniquely tied to human social norms and not caused by more general mechanisms that generate such aggression in other species.
I would never go so far as claiming that society has no influence on rates and forms of violence, but the biological basis of male aggression is not something that can be denied.
A fair point, however it make me wonder that if the hypothesis is that it's related to male-vs-male competition for access to mating females, then what would happen if we fix this socially? I also...
A fair point, however it make me wonder that if the hypothesis is that it's related to male-vs-male competition for access to mating females, then what would happen if we fix this socially?
I also think it's important to point out that it's a "tendency" - it's not a guarantee. Humans could be one of the groups in which it's not a given truth for the same reasons it is in other observed animals. We should be cautious about inferring the reason for a specific sample within a larger sample size without more information.
To be clear, I do believe that hormones and genetics absolutely affect aggression and that while we have yet to really prove it, testosterone is likely one of the biggest contributors. I only ask these questions to get people thinking scientifically. It's very easy to say "this is what we always see, so it must be the case here too" and have that bias us.
If in theory we somehow eliminate male-vs-male competiton socially, we would be removing certain selective pressures off of males that lead to this behaviour. This is assuming that there are no...
If in theory we somehow eliminate male-vs-male competiton socially, we would be removing certain selective pressures off of males that lead to this behaviour. This is assuming that there are no other selective pressures that favour these traits, in which case, over hundreds of thousands of years, this tendency will naturally get diluted and eventually disappear, provided society keeps a negative outlook on violence. It won't happen within the next millennium though.
Should it not be the case that as society has become more equal and less severe in its enforcement of gender roles, we should be seeing a more equal split between the genders of mass shooters - if...
Should it not be the case that as society has become more equal and less severe in its enforcement of gender roles, we should be seeing a more equal split between the genders of mass shooters - if we accept the premise that social factors are the predominant ones? And yet, shooters are just as male today as they have always been.
Mass shooters are just one form of violence. The incidence of violence in general has been going down among both genders. Social pressures affect male society to a larger degree than female...
Mass shooters are just one form of violence. The incidence of violence in general has been going down among both genders. Social pressures affect male society to a larger degree than female society. There's a lot to unpack here, it's not just a simple if>then problem.
Yes and I'm trying to say we need to think of this from as broad a perspective as possible. Current average male society has a lot to contribute to and shape why this has happened and I'm not...
Yes and I'm trying to say we need to think of this from as broad a perspective as possible. Current average male society has a lot to contribute to and shape why this has happened and I'm not convinced that we wouldn't have the same problem with women if we reversed male and female societal pressures. If the problem is a societal one, and we have the freedom to construct the society, why not entirely destroy the concept of gender roles and simply reinforce good behavior and chastise toxic behavior? We'll end up solving this problem and a lot more at the same time.
I do see the value in what you propose. But the fact that every culture and every civilization in history has, seemingly independently, produced gender roles (as I understand it often quite...
I do see the value in what you propose. But the fact that every culture and every civilization in history has, seemingly independently, produced gender roles (as I understand it often quite similar ones), implies to me that they are in some way an inevitable consequence of human society.
Is it truly independent if humans aggregating and socializing can be traced back to a single location? We're influenced by what is around us, what we grow up with, what we observe. I'm not so...
Is it truly independent if humans aggregating and socializing can be traced back to a single location? We're influenced by what is around us, what we grow up with, what we observe. I'm not so certain their similarity tells us much of anything.
If I may probe your position a little to gain a better understanding of it - your belief is that if we could 'press F5' a few times on the Great Rift Valley 300,000 years ago, then in some such...
If I may probe your position a little to gain a better understanding of it - your belief is that if we could 'press F5' a few times on the Great Rift Valley 300,000 years ago, then in some such instances we would be left with a world in which gender roles were massively reversed from what we see today, effectively by random chance?
Fair enough. I think we reach an impasse here - but an interesting one. Thank you for giving me enough of your time to allow me to understand your point of view better.
Fair enough. I think we reach an impasse here - but an interesting one. Thank you for giving me enough of your time to allow me to understand your point of view better.
That's pretty fundamental to just about every culture. Even ones where queer, trans, or intersex people were traditionally recognized and respected still broadly had a sense of gender norms with...
Fuck ascribing anything as masculine or feminine
That's pretty fundamental to just about every culture. Even ones where queer, trans, or intersex people were traditionally recognized and respected still broadly had a sense of gender norms with the individuals who don't quite fit being carved out as special cases.
People are socialized from birth to how they're supposed to perform and a big part of that is learning how to perform their social role as a man or as a woman. On some level, the entire concept of being trans is based on this. These are people born as a specific biological sex but more closely identify with the gendered performance and roles of the other sex. If there was no such thing as gendered traits, being trans stops making sense as a thing and functionally becomes just a preference. The fact that it is a thing kind of suggests this is probably something that's pretty hard coded in the human psyche.
Hard disagree, non-binary individuals (not to mention gender queer, gender nonconforming, gender fluid, bigender, etc.) exist. Or they feel that their body does not match what they feel their body...
On some level, the entire concept of being trans is based on this.
Hard disagree, non-binary individuals (not to mention gender queer, gender nonconforming, gender fluid, bigender, etc.) exist.
These are people born as a specific biological sex but more closely identify with the gendered performance and roles of the other sex.
Or they feel that their body does not match what they feel their body should match and how they wish to be perceived.
Or any other number of issues that come with gender identity disorders.
And they're even rarer than trans individuals, so that's hardly a strong argument for gender normativity not being a pretty deeply encoded part of human nature. "should" and "perceived" are the...
Hard disagree, non-binary individuals exist.
And they're even rarer than trans individuals, so that's hardly a strong argument for gender normativity not being a pretty deeply encoded part of human nature.
should match and how they wish to be perceived.
"should" and "perceived" are the key words there. These are subjective assessments, which is indicative of a socially constructed performance. As the most fundamental definition, a woman is someone who lives their lives as a woman. That's all we can really say because chromosomal makeup and phenotypes and all that other stuff are weaker predictors of whether you identify as a woman than just the performance of femininity is.
You're the one who put forth the argument, I'm just poking holes in it. If your argument was simply "hormones affect behavior" or "genetics affect behavior" I would agree, since we have science to...
And they're even rarer than trans individuals, so that's hardly a strong argument for gender normativity not being a pretty deeply encoded part of human nature.
You're the one who put forth the argument, I'm just poking holes in it. If your argument was simply "hormones affect behavior" or "genetics affect behavior" I would agree, since we have science to support that.
As the most fundamental definition, a woman is someone who lives their lives as a woman.
Then why even socially construct the idea of a woman? Why not just have everyone be people? What does woman really tell us that we absolutely need as a society to know?
chromosomal makeup and phenotypes and all that other stuff are weaker predictors of whether you identify as a woman than just the performance of femininity is.
Which points out exactly what I was saying in the first place - it's a social construct that serves us no purpose so lets fucking get rid of it already.
Edge cases don't actually poke holes in arguments about population dynamics. Populations are all about clustering around a normal distribution. My example of trans people is pointing out a...
You're the one who put forth the argument, I'm just poking holes in it. If your argument was simply "hormones affect behavior" or "genetics affect behavior" I would agree, since we have science to support that.
Edge cases don't actually poke holes in arguments about population dynamics. Populations are all about clustering around a normal distribution. My example of trans people is pointing out a specific type of edge case that differs from the norm and the nature of that difference that might offer some clarity into what makes a more typical human being tick. It's basically using trans folks as a treatment group to understand something about the control-group, being people who aren't trans.
Then why even socially construct the idea of a woman? Why not just have everyone be people? What does woman really tell us that we absolutely need as a society to know?
This question assumes an intelligent designer, in which case you'll have to take it up with them.
Human beings are social animals, our social constructs aren't pulled out of the air for fun, they evolve through selective pressures. Some are more teachable than others, and most of the anthropological evidence suggests that the concept of gender norms and gender dimorphism is a pretty deeply embedded one.
You should never use someone many standard deviations from the mean to draw any conclusions about the population they are many standard deviations away from, this is just a bad idea. Influenced by...
the nature of that difference that might offer some clarity into what makes a more typical human being tick
You should never use someone many standard deviations from the mean to draw any conclusions about the population they are many standard deviations away from, this is just a bad idea.
the concept of gender norms and gender dimorphism is a pretty deeply embedded one.
Influenced by genetics and hormones, sure, but still constructed and reinforced by society. We have the choice of reinforcing this behavior or not, I think it's a lot less set in stone than you think.
That’s basically how most anthropology works though, you study some random tribe with interesting social norms or dynamics and draw insight about what that means for the rest of humanity. This...
You should never use someone many standard deviations from the mean to draw any conclusions about the population they are many standard deviations away from, this is just a bad idea.
That’s basically how most anthropology works though, you study some random tribe with interesting social norms or dynamics and draw insight about what that means for the rest of humanity.
Influenced by genetics and hormones, sure, but still constructed and reinforced by society. We have the choice of reinforcing this behavior or not, I think it's a lot less set in stone than you think.
This just isn’t borne out by any empirical observations. It’s nice to want that, but “is” and “ought” are different things and it’s important focus on the world as it really exists rather than as we wish it to be.
Not sure I agree here. Sure, some anthropology would be studying fringe/odd/interesting tribes but a good deal of it is studying "normal" civilizations. You need both to properly frame any insight...
That’s basically how most anthropology works though, you study some random tribe with interesting social norms or dynamics and draw insight about what that means for the rest of humanity.
Not sure I agree here. Sure, some anthropology would be studying fringe/odd/interesting tribes but a good deal of it is studying "normal" civilizations. You need both to properly frame any insight you should be drawing.
it’s important focus on the world as it really exists rather than as we wish it to be.
The way the world really exists is what this article points out - "lonely men" causing violence. We can't fix this problem without thinking about how we wish it to be, a place where "lonely men" don't cause violence. If we're already going to be focusing on how the world should be, why must we constrain our thoughts?
Sure. But what part of my argument didn’t factor in both? Well for one thing, embarking on a grand social engineering campaign to deprogram people out of having the concept of gender sounds like...
Not sure I agree here. Sure, some anthropology would be studying fringe/odd/interesting tribes but a good deal of it is studying "normal" civilizations. You need both to properly frame any insight you should be drawing.
Sure. But what part of my argument didn’t factor in both?
If we're already going to be focusing on how the world should be, why must we constrain our thoughts?
Well for one thing, embarking on a grand social engineering campaign to deprogram people out of having the concept of gender sounds like something out of an Orwellian dystopia.
There is a G. K. Chesterton quote out there about how the trouble with liberals is that any time they suspect their normative ideas about how the world “ought to work” might conflict with basic human wants and desires, they’d rather change the nature of humanity than change their normative beliefs.
The deal with toxic masculinity and isolated, violent young men is that it’s not only a problem for society, but it’s a problem for those young men themselves. Talking about changing the norms is about figuring out ways to deal with things that make people more happy and more comfortable being their authentic selves instead of suffering under the dissonance caused by restrictive and anti-social cultural norms. But arguing we should remove the concept of norms altogether doesn’t really address this.
The whole “get rid of all the rules and expectations and we’ll be fine” approach is fundamentally misguided. It’s trying to avoid doing any of the hard work of answering questions about how we ought to live because those are flashpoints for conflict. But the fact is that people desperately want guidance about how they ought to live. We’re social creatures and we are at our happiest when we feel like we’re fulfilling our role. The roles we have don’t work for a lot of people, but that’s an argument for more or different roles, not the elimination of them altogether. Otherwise what is it all even for? Half the reason these dudes are so lost and in need of guidance is specifically because they don’t get any. They have no constructive model for how to be good men.
Apologies if I was unclear in my intentions. My goal is not to deprogram, it's simply that if we are going to educate people on "correct" or "right" or "moral" or "good" or "desirable" behavior,...
Well for one thing, embarking on a grand social engineering campaign to deprogram people out of having the concept of gender sounds like something out of an Orwellian dystopia.
Apologies if I was unclear in my intentions. My goal is not to deprogram, it's simply that if we are going to educate people on "correct" or "right" or "moral" or "good" or "desirable" behavior, that we should educate to behavior, not to "male behavior" or "female behavior". There's no need to gender it. We can absolutely tailor it so that people who identify as male get educated differently than those who identify as female, but the education itself does not need to be gendered. It's not so much an attack on gender itself as it is doing our best to remove anyone's preconceived notions of gendered behavior simply by removing it from education.
But arguing we should remove the concept of norms altogether doesn’t really address this.
While I do think we should remove the concept or norms, my argument was for divorcing the concept of norms when it comes to figuring out how to deal with this specific problem. That our education to these "lonely men" should not be gendered, even though the problem it is solving is heavily driven by gendered norms.
The whole “get rid of all the rules and expectations and we’ll be fine” approach is fundamentally misguided.
When did I say it would solve our problem? I was merely pointing out that it contributes to the problem so we might as well start to tackle it now, especially since it's contribution is leading to an undesirable outcome.
We’re social creatures and we are at our happiest when we feel like we’re fulfilling our role.
That's an interesting take. Why do you think this is the case for social creatures? Can you define "role" for me in this context?
They have no constructive model for how to be good men.
But they do have constructive models on how to be a good person which are at times at odds with the constructive models on how to be a man. To me that seems like a flaw with the construction of gender roles in the first place.
I just don't think they can be divorced in this way. People identify by their gender as a fundamental part of who they are. Modeling behavior is going to have to conform to which kinds of behavior...
My goal is not to deprogram, it's simply that if we are going to educate people on "correct" or "right" or "moral" or "good" or "desirable" behavior, that we should educate to behavior, not to "male behavior" or "female behavior".
I just don't think they can be divorced in this way. People identify by their gender as a fundamental part of who they are. Modeling behavior is going to have to conform to which kinds of behavior people want to see modeled. It's kind of similar to the argument about why representation matters. People need to be able to see themselves reflected in the models they want to emulate or it won't have any resonance with them.
When we want to address the norms around templates for masculinity, trying to divorce the gender element from it comes across as wishful thinking to eliminate the concept of masculinity. Their inability to develop constructive ways to perform the role of being male is the main reason it's manifesting in such negative behaviors. They're actively searching for a template for masculinity that can make them feel whole. The fact that they can't get one that fits is why they end up subsuming their identities into fascistic ideologies (which are inherently self-abnegating) or indulging in violent fantasies of self-destruction (or direct that self-destructive drive outwards).
The solution to that, if you actually want to reach them, is showing them how that male role can be fulfilled more productively. If you have a similar problem with women you need to do the same and approach them in a way that will click for them. For example, the movie Mean Girls was inspired by a self-help/anthropological book called Queen Bees and Wannabes that studied the patterns of tribalism and and low-key aggressive behaviors that define social relationships among school aged girls. The movie is a long process of showing that behavior through from a spectator's perspective and also resolving it by providing an alternative model for femininity where, rather than ruling over your clique through subtle manipulation and gossip you foster a culture of vulnerability and respect for each other. The whole thing is pretty well done and this moral messaging is very sharply targeted at school aged girls.
That's an interesting take. Why do you think this is the case for social creatures? Can you define "role" for me in this context?
The best analogy is probably language, which is also a socially constructed thing. Human brains are literally wired to be able to form symbolic associations to sounds and deal with abstract concepts. It's an inherent part of being human and it's why we're so good at communication and logic. While those are the basic building blocks of how language works that are wired into us, what languages are can vary significantly and all the ensuing second or third order effects that come downstream (like writing systems) can vary even more.
Social constructions and roles are similar. As social animals we're also wired to have a general sense of community, to seek them out if we don't, to pick up and absorb the norms and expectations of those communities, and to understand the specialized expectations that apply to you so you can understand how you fit into the whole big picture. What those roles are and how they should be structured can vary dramatically from one society or culture to the next, but the intrinsic need to have a sense of belonging and understand what your community is along with your place is in it, that's all pretty innate.
And just like how there are some hard-coded things about how language works (like, there is apparently a fairly fixed order in terms of which parts of the visual spectrum get named as colors), it would be hard to imagine there aren't similarly deeply-encoded things in how social structures work. And if anything is deeply encoded, it's of course going to be gender since we're a sexually dimorphic species. You might be able to coach some people out of this stuff some of the time, but you're always going to be going against the grain if you try and no system or institution is going to be able to stand up to entropy if they're trying to work against stuff that's this fundamental.
Just think of social conditioning for war. The inherent empathy people have for their fellow humans is pretty strong and it takes a LOT of training to make a person feel okay about killing another person. And the very act of doing so seems to cause real psychological damage to lots of people.
But they do have constructive models on how to be a good person which are at times at odds with the constructive models on how to be a man.
The models exist, but I don't think the individuals in question "have them." Like they don't see themselves in it and there's too much counter-programming for it to break through.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that how we implement education doesn't necessarily include some aspect of this. But if we don't even bother to test whether degendered education on toxic behavior...
It's kind of similar to the argument about why representation matters. People need to be able to see themselves reflected in the models they want to emulate or it won't have any resonance with them.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that how we implement education doesn't necessarily include some aspect of this. But if we don't even bother to test whether degendered education on toxic behavior reaches these individuals, we are potentially depriving ourselves of a better solution to the problem. My issue is that people in this thread seem unwilling to challenge the assumption that while the presentation is unique masculine, that does not necessarily mean that the education needs to be. We simply don't know until we ask the question and I want us to ask the question rather than just assuming the answer.
Their inability to develop constructive ways to perform the role of being male is the main reason it's manifesting in such negative behaviors
And my hot take question is why does the role of male and female need to exist? Why can't we have roles that aren't gendered? We have professions which tend to lean male or female which do not directly discourage certain genders from entering them. For example, male nurses. We all know male nurses. Male nurses are not any less of a nurse than female nurses.
And this line of questioning leads me directly to another quote in your comment
What those roles are and how they should be structured can vary dramatically from one society or culture to the next, but the intrinsic need to have a sense of belonging and understand what your community is along with your place is in it, that's all pretty innate.
Which begs the question what is special about the roles of male and female?
if anything is deeply encoded, it's of course going to be gender since we're a sexually dimorphic species
We're also an incredibly diverse species and both gender and sexual identity fall upon a much larger spectrum than simply 1 or 0. The 1 or 0 doesn't inform me of practically anything.
The models exist, but I don't think the individuals in question "have them." Like they don't see themselves in it and there's too much counter-programming for it to break through.
Is there too much counter-programming needed? Where's the proof? I think we need to stop making assumptions about how things are without testing it first.
Like I said, representation matters and people need to be able to see themselves reflected in the role models you want them to have. Again this is thinking like a designer. Whether it "needs" to...
My issue is that people in this thread seem unwilling to challenge the assumption that while the presentation is unique masculine, that does not necessarily mean that the education needs to be.
Like I said, representation matters and people need to be able to see themselves reflected in the role models you want them to have.
And my hot take question is why does the role of male and female need to exist?
Again this is thinking like a designer. Whether it "needs" to be is irrelevant and doesn't really make sense when we're talking about biology. The contention is that it does.
We're also an incredibly diverse species and both gender and sexual identity fall upon a much larger spectrum than simply 1 or 0. The 1 or 0 doesn't inform me of practically anything.
The 1 or 0 should inform you of a lot. There being edge case exceptions to the general sexual dimorphism doesn't negate the rule. At some point the argument that because lines get fuzzy on the margins means all lines are mere illusions just starts to lose its practical utility. There is a wide spectrum of diversity between two species of birds as well, but it's still useful to understand the concept of species and it would be incorrect to talk as if the concept of speciation doesn't have an impact on the real world behaviors and traits of those birds.
Is there too much counter-programming needed? Where's the proof? I think we need to stop making assumptions about how things are without testing it first.
We are talking about psychologically damaged human beings here. Adhering to conventional standards of "scientific" proof would literally be unethical and if you're going to stake out the claim that you won't be convinced by anything less it starts to sound like you're just being stubborn and trying to create impossible standards before you'll entertain the thought.
And I'm not arguing against this, I'm talking about how we approach the design of these educational materials and studies we need to conduct to understand the best approach. The end result might...
Like I said, representation matters and people need to be able to see themselves reflected in the role models you want them to have.
And I'm not arguing against this, I'm talking about how we approach the design of these educational materials and studies we need to conduct to understand the best approach. The end result might be exactly the same, or it could be wildly different, we won't know however, if we go in with blinders on.
doesn't really make sense when we're talking about biology. The contention is that it does.
Let's be careful not to mix the social concept of male with the biological concept of sex.
There being edge case exceptions to the general sexual dimorphism doesn't negate the rule.
I heavily disagree that it's all edge cases. The behavior of individuals who identify as male is extremely different from person to person to the point that if presented with two individuals who identify as male that there are very few if any things you could say about the two that would almost always be correct.
There is a wide spectrum of diversity between two species of birds as well, but it's still useful to understand the concept of species and it would be incorrect to talk as if the concept of speciation doesn't have an impact on the real world behaviors and traits of those birds.
I'm curious what your take on ethnicity, race, etc. are given this statement. Do you think knowing someone's race or ethnicity has real world impact on the behaviors and traits of those humans? Do you treat race and ethnicity with the same weight as sex or gender?
We are talking about psychologically damaged human beings here. Adhering to conventional standards of "scientific" proof would literally be unethical and if you're going to stake out the claim that you won't be convinced by anything less it starts to sound like you're just being stubborn and trying to create impossible standards before you'll entertain the thought.
I'm not saying we need to create an unethical study in order to prove my point, all I'm saying is that given the information we have we need to not assume. We need to take the context of the information we do have and ensure that when designing for the future we don't draw the wrong conclusions from this information.
The word "almost" is doing a lot of work here. And we don't really apply this level of hair splitting in just about any other case. Yes there may not be any platonic ideal concept of "male" in the...
almost always be correct.
The word "almost" is doing a lot of work here. And we don't really apply this level of hair splitting in just about any other case. Yes there may not be any platonic ideal concept of "male" in the world, but neither is there a platonic ideal of an apple. But it doesn't really make senes to say apples aren't real. Insofar as the socially constructed idea of an "apple" is relevant to how people interact with produce, we have a general symbolic idea of what an apple is. It's the same way with gender. Just because the definitional lines are fuzzy on the margins doesn't mean the general symbolic idea isn't there.
Do you think knowing someone's race or ethnicity has real world impact on the behaviors and traits of those humans? Do you treat race and ethnicity with the same weight as sex or gender?
I'm not sure I understand the question. I think certain things about racial or ethnic classifications do affect behaviors and worldviews, but it's messy because people's "formal" racial or ethnic designations don't actually correlate to their actual cultural upbringings in plural societies. These borders change and flow too rapidly over time to actually pin down as specific things so I don't think there is a strong argument for this being as immutably coded as gender.
all I'm saying is that given the information we have we need to not assume.
I'm just not seeing a strong argument for why this assumption isn't valid. We have to make tons of assumptions just to move through the world and we tend to reexamine them when there is some compelling evidence to do so, which I'm not really seeing here.
I think we just fundamentally disagree on how solid the concept of gender is. Assumptions in science are extremely dangerous. It costs us almost nothing to ask the question and failing to do so...
It's the same way with gender. Just because the definitional lines are fuzzy on the margins doesn't mean the general symbolic idea isn't there.
These borders change and flow too rapidly over time to actually pin down as specific things so I don't think there is a strong argument for this being as immutably coded as gender.
I think we just fundamentally disagree on how solid the concept of gender is.
We have to make tons of assumptions just to move through the world and we tend to reexamine them when there is some compelling evidence to do so, which I'm not really seeing here.
Assumptions in science are extremely dangerous. It costs us almost nothing to ask the question and failing to do so often taints our view of the world. Fundamental biases in science have caused us to have to undo years of experiments and start over at ground zero an uncomfortable number of times throughout modern (let alone all) history.
That much is obvious, but I don't think you're doing a great job of advancing or supporting your case. I'm telling you that based on what I know about neurology, biology, sociology, anthropology,...
I think we just fundamentally disagree on how solid the concept of gender is.
That much is obvious, but I don't think you're doing a great job of advancing or supporting your case. I'm telling you that based on what I know about neurology, biology, sociology, anthropology, and comparative studies across the cultures with which I'm familiar it seems to be a very deeply coded thing. I feel like your argument is kind of picking at the seams in language's inadequacy of explaining concepts rather than addressing those concepts themselves.
Assumptions in science are extremely dangerous.
This is a fairly naive view of how science works. Science is rife with assumptions that structure the hypothesis being tested, this is a fundamental fact about how research and analysis is done. The way to identify a good analyst is one who is able to parse reasonable assumptions that are consistent and well-founded due to their background knowledge from ones that are unproductive and poorly supported.
Besides, talking about social constructivism isn't hard "science" anyway. It is as much marketing and communications as anything else.
And this is why we're hitting an impasse. We're not talking science, we're talking our beliefs on how things are. We simply don't have the science, and when I ask for it or challenge the...
it seems to be a very deeply coded thing.
And this is why we're hitting an impasse. We're not talking science, we're talking our beliefs on how things are. We simply don't have the science, and when I ask for it or challenge the assumptions of the poor quality science we do have we keep running into the same problem.
This is a fairly naive view of how science works.
Yeah no we're not going to go there.
You're the one who stated that ethnicity and background were far more mutable and changeable than gender, and yet we have plenty of historical examples of people taking the assumption that it's not it's not mutable and ending up with bunk shitty science about how certain ethnicities are biologically stupider than their white European counterparts. At the same time you're making the argument that it's safe to say there's an assumption that gender is immutable and we should also make assumptions about this immutability and proceed to study gender scientifically in the same fashion.
I'm urging caution because it's exactly these kinds of assumptions that got us into bad science that has taken decades to undo and we've still got assholes pointing to this shitty science as proof that racism is justified. Let's not do the same with gender and transgender individuals, shall we?
I'm not just saying it though. I've justified it with quite a bit of evidence and background information. I didn't say it's an assumption, I said there is very strong evidence against what you're...
You're the one who stated that ethnicity and background were far more mutable and changeable than gender, and yet we have plenty of historical examples of people taking the assumption that it's not it's not mutable and ending up with bunk shitty science about how certain ethnicities are biologically stupider than their white European counterparts. At the same time you're making the argument that it's safe to say there's an assumption that gender is immutable and we should also make assumptions about this immutability and proceed to study gender scientifically in the same fashion.
I'm not just saying it though. I've justified it with quite a bit of evidence and background information. I didn't say it's an assumption, I said there is very strong evidence against what you're suggesting. It’s basically uniform across societies. It’s deeply physically rooted. The species itself is sexually dimorphic. The bodies are literally different. And the exceptions you’re raising are vanishingly small percentages on balance..
While I agree with you here, the whole concept of being "transgender" is kinda predicated on the belief in existance of genders. The same goes for gender nonconforming, gender fluid, and bigender....
Hard disagree, non-binary individuals (not to mention gender queer, gender nonconforming, gender fluid, bigender, etc.) exist.
While I agree with you here, the whole concept of being "transgender" is kinda predicated on the belief in existance of genders. The same goes for gender nonconforming, gender fluid, and bigender. The individuals themselves are not necessarily part of the binary, but the language suggests the existence of the binary.
non-binary falls under the umbrella of transgender nonconforming and fluid both do not necessarily mean that only two genders exist honestly this is a lot more complicated than we need to be going...
non-binary falls under the umbrella of transgender
nonconforming and fluid both do not necessarily mean that only two genders exist
honestly this is a lot more complicated than we need to be going into at this point, as people can be transgender for a LOT of reasons and many of them do not require the existence of a binary
That's true. I didn't mean to imply that these things necessarily indicate the existence of a binary, just that they imply the existence of gender. I consider myself anti-gender, but I suppose...
That's true. I didn't mean to imply that these things necessarily indicate the existence of a binary, just that they imply the existence of gender. I consider myself anti-gender, but I suppose believing in a sufficiently large number of genders is roughly equivalent to my idea of a gender free paradise.
You can't just throw this out there just like that without any proper proofs, my friend. And that proofs should be genetics studies, not some statistics that only tell about the situation and that...
This has little and less to do with social conditioning and has more to do with genetic factors.
You can't just throw this out there just like that without any proper proofs, my friend. And that proofs should be genetics studies, not some statistics that only tell about the situation and that can tell nothing about what causes what.
It might well be a combination of societies teaching men violence as a method of some pseudo-survival as a remnant of our past millennia within our cultures while teaching women to be obedient and fragile dolls and not giving them the platform to be violent.
I don't need to prove anything given I did not make any claims. That is not what Gaywallet said. They simply said that it is wrong to gender these traits, and did not make the claim that simply...
I don't need to prove anything given I did not make any claims.
I was responding to the absolutely ridiculous assertion that we can solve the radicalism of lonely young men by simply de-gendering traits.
That is not what Gaywallet said. They simply said that it is wrong to gender these traits, and did not make the claim that simply de-gendering them will solve things once and for all. You misunderstood the comment.
Correlation is not causation, you should be careful with what you are stating. How do you know this? What society exists where the social roles are reversed and the incidence rates of violence can...
Throughout human history those born of what we currently describe as the male gender have typically acted more violently than those born what we typically describe as "female". This has little and less to do with social conditioning and has more to do with genetic factors. The majority of violent revolutionaries, terrorists, criminals and professional warriors are male or a reason.
Correlation is not causation, you should be careful with what you are stating.
"Lonely women", don't tend to turn to violence, regardless of whether or not they, or the trait itself has been gendered.
How do you know this? What society exists where the social roles are reversed and the incidence rates of violence can be compared?
This isn't going away by destroying toxic masculinity, or de-gendering social conditioning or what other utopic idea is suggested.
I wasn't suggesting that those should be the only steps
These boys need one or all of three things:
I would argue that all humans need these things, and we should identify high risk individuals by their traits. One of these traits might be which gender society they have been exposed to or identify with for the majority of their life, I don't know - but we shouldn't be treating the problem like it's isolated to one gender and if we treat it like such we are biasing ourselves and how we investigate the problem and that might end up with us creating a much worse solution than if we had thrown those biases out at the beginning.
100% of males are born and grow up in a male society. Once again, correlation is not causation. We cannot divorce gender from societal role. I'm not saying we should stick our head in the sand,...
stats
100% of males are born and grow up in a male society. Once again, correlation is not causation.
It is isolated to one gender all the data bears that out. Sticking your head in the sand and decrying gender roles will not change that.
We cannot divorce gender from societal role. I'm not saying we should stick our head in the sand, and at no point did I argue that we shouldn't be primarily targeting people who identify as male or are genetically male. I simply said that we should not limit our focus by applying an artificial lens to how we are examining the problem.
A word I don't see anywhere in this article but is kind of danced around is "empathy." I think we're in a perfect storm for mass shooters to occur as we dry up the opportunities for people to...
A word I don't see anywhere in this article but is kind of danced around is "empathy."
I think we're in a perfect storm for mass shooters to occur as we dry up the opportunities for people to interact with others outside of their demographic. Capitalism is squeezing more resources from parents away from their kids. Accessible mobile games are getting configured to be as addicting as possible. Technology is (understandably) getting used as a parenting tool, and if kids are spending time on for-profit websites with algorithms that lead them down rabbit-holes, they're going to discover and lean into things that are either affirming or building upon their worldview.
So with those in place, you're spending less time paying attention or being around others. Pair this with the predatory Mercer/Koch/Theil powers who're more than willing to utilize those automated algorithms to further their agenda, the pushing of private schools, systemic racism, and the messaging sent by the NRA, and you've got this narrative that everything you're experiencing it someone else's fault-- who just so happen to be of some other demographic than your own. And because this narrative was pushed to you remotely, and because you're remote from the people the blame is being cast on, your empathy is especially detached, resulting in you being more likely to think less of them as people.
From the article:
The cultural conversation since the 1980s is really about the image of the ‘real’ man. And yet we haven’t focused on what it means to be a good man, whether that’s in TV shows, games or movies
A lot of my favorite movies and video games are all about men learning and acting on their empathy: Life is Beautiful, Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, The Last of Us, Logan. Learning and acting on empathy makes for a great message, I think it needs to come back into culture fast.
I also hope more augmented reality games like Pokemon Go get out there, as those have done some wonderful things in breaking down social barriers.
As a brief anecdote: I remember my 2009 realising there was a large number of very angry, disconnected, disaffected young men online. Echoing the article, what I was seeing was people awakening,...
As a brief anecdote: I remember my 2009 realising there was a large number of very angry, disconnected, disaffected young men online. Echoing the article, what I was seeing was people awakening, realising "shits fucked" --- employment, purpose, girls. Everyone felt like they had been lied too. You can't just work hard and do well. You can't be anything you want. You can't get the girl just by being nice.
At the time it wasn't clear what it would lead too; I recall having discussions that maybe some constructive societal changes might happen. Unfortunately this anger has wandered down a dark and violent path.
And honestly I don't feel like anything can be done. Shit really is fucked. Raising class consciousness may have some value: unfortunately most leftist propaganda and protests are stuck decades in the past. Better stories and solutions could help. Meeting girls is hard. In the past, there were large social clubs with regular events and dances. Universities ran mixers. In the US, fraternities had a role teaching boys how to man --- how to dress, how to talk, what to say, to be confident etc. Yes, there were problems with all of these, but it would be nice to see them updated.
But we can't just bring the jobs back. Make life stable again. Poof! Bring communities from nowhere. These issues reflect deep structural flaws in Western societies and collective action is required to build a new system.
(of course, regulating weapons helps with the immediate problem of violence. But not with everything else)
To be honest, I disagree entirely. A lot of what you explained still exists. Fraternies, mixers, social clubs. The people perpetuating the violence are ostensibly the people that do /not/ use...
To be honest, I disagree entirely.
A lot of what you explained still exists. Fraternies, mixers, social clubs. The people perpetuating the violence are ostensibly the people that do /not/ use those various events. If you've ever taken a look into the incel communities, they're groups of people that actively shun those events, and increasingly it's members of the incel communities that are committing such wanton acts of violence.
And mind you, from what I've seen these are not people that are disproportionately affected by problems that affect the underemployed, those in poverty etc. These tend to be people that generally had a privileged upbringing, even in comparison to their peers. Why is it that it's predominately white men that commit mass murder in comparison to minorities? Or why is it that people that buy into the idea of white supremacy doing such a thing?
People talk about solving these problems as if it would suddenly make the disaffected white male suddenly stop radicalizing and becoming violent. But the reality is that they've already bought into an incredibly toxic ideology: That every problem they face is the result of The Other. If they can't 'get the girl' (read: an entirely subservient woman), then they become Nice Guys or radicalized like Elliot Rodgers. If they can't get a job, then it's the result of immigrants or minorities taking advantage of equal opportunity programs. And if they can't find a purpose, then their purpose becomes eradicating anyone who isn't white.
These are deep, structural problems that are a result of people suddenly having to come to grips that they might lose something to The Other and their reaction is explosively violent. These can't just be solved by giving them better healthcare or social events or women, because what they want isn't any of those things and they actively shun them. What they want is to exert their dominance.
Oh boy is that true. I have a co-worker with really extreme reactions to anything regarding politics and race because of this. If he comes across a Hispanic person with the slightest hint of an...
But the reality is that they've already bought into an incredibly toxic ideology: That every problem they face is the result of The Other.
Oh boy is that true. I have a co-worker with really extreme reactions to anything regarding politics and race because of this. If he comes across a Hispanic person with the slightest hint of an accent, he instantly regards them to be an illegal immigrant who is here to destroy the country. All of his politics are based on this. He blames his current cash-strapped situation on immigrants, even though it is clear that it is because of his poor life decisions. He doesn't trust Democrats in general simply because he groups them all together and says they are all for Open Borders.
But the worst thing about this way of thinking is that it is fundamentally linked to his negative experiences - something I have gotten to only after months of conversations with him. That means that there is no way to challenge those beliefs without causing him some emotional distress.
And I guess that's the greatest problem. The basis of hate is fear. These people have built their lives around that fear. So the only way I can see to help them see how much of a problem their actions are is to give them all therapy. And that's not exactly a scalable solution.
That's an interesting perspective. I think to some extent I agree, and I suspect we could explain differences in our conclusions from differences in the specifics of who we're observing and the...
That's an interesting perspective. I think to some extent I agree, and I suspect we could explain differences in our conclusions from differences in the specifics of who we're observing and the communities we're in. For example, here in Aus there are very few socialisation opportunities for nerdy guys, especially outside the major cities.
I'd like to emphasise my observations have been (informally so) over a decade or so. People don't just wake up and become an incel, or a white nationalist, or whatever toxic ideology. I would like to argue that what's happening now has been brewing for years. And likely exacerbated by the usual laundry list of politicians and Internet celebrities pushing a bigoted agenda.
I suppose it's really not too surprising young American men are shooting up places. As the article points out people socialize less in school. Religion is bogus, so there's no community there....
I suppose it's really not too surprising young American men are shooting up places. As the article points out people socialize less in school. Religion is bogus, so there's no community there. Technology seems to isolate us more than bring us together. Social Media consistently depresses us, and modern dating often involves climbing a mountain of rejection. Put that together with gun loving American culture, disillusionment with our leaders, and republicans being hate filled assholes. Young men are practically destined to become radicalized and violent. There's nobody to support them and easy to access "communities" such as incels that let hate fester.
As for what to do with them I imagine you can improve all sorts of things and young men's hate would at least fall below the threshold of constantly shooting up places. But good luck improving the government, creating more humane technology, or giving people access to a new social support structure. These were long problems in the making and they will take long term cultural and political changes to fix. So for the foreseeable future there will continue to be shootings.
I'm reminded of the famous study conducted in like 1980 that followed the disintegration of bowling clubs around the US. "Bowling Alone." As our technology as allowed us more and more choice about...
I'm reminded of the famous study conducted in like 1980 that followed the disintegration of bowling clubs around the US. "Bowling Alone." As our technology as allowed us more and more choice about who we associate with, people are getting left out and behind. People who maybe in 1950 wouldn't have had to choose what group to associate. Their choice would've been made for them by their parents and by their school and by their zip codes.
In one sense it's not surprising that a class of young people coming up radicalize as they choose associations that radicalize and prey on people's worst impulses toward their fellow neighbors. In another sense, it's kind of surprising that it clusters the way it has. That suggests that the transition we've been going through as a society over the past few decades is leaving people out based on a particular demographic: young men, many of whom are white.
Some people are going to hate others no matter what we do. That much is pretty much like giving uphill against an avalanche. But if there's a clear demographic trend involved, that gives us a different set of issues to try to address. Maybe there's some sort of storycrafting we can do for young men that can help make sure less of them are so disillusioned with the broader society that they believe going out with a bang is preferable to the malaise they might otherwise feel caught in.
Not much, IMO. Well, at a mental / social level, not much apart from breaking up patriarchy and freeing men and women from it, that is. And that is where we'll eventually end up, but there is no...
Not much, IMO. Well, at a mental / social level, not much apart from breaking up patriarchy and freeing men and women from it, that is. And that is where we'll eventually end up, but there is no way that'll happen in a revolutionary manner: we'll need time, as change spreads and as generations are replaced. No shortcuts there.
The most important, easiest, and most effective thing to do is to just not let people have firearms. Yes, there will always be illegal trafficking, but in comparison with grabbing a gun from some relative's or friend's house, that's good enough a barrier for a large enough a group of potential murderers. Next up might be the authorities becoming a bit more stingy when it comes to spewing out driver's licences. I struggle to see much good reason letting this many people have big huge metal projectiles that they run around in freely.
I think that's a large part of it, but not the root cause. I think the internet is a powerful tool and that it is being used to influence the minds of people. Influence is an age old practice and...
I think that's a large part of it, but not the root cause. I think the internet is a powerful tool and that it is being used to influence the minds of people. Influence is an age old practice and it has been refined into a razors edge with the internet.
Any discussion about gun control is simply attacking the symptom and not the cause. Moving deeper into the issue you see that mental health is the soil that the seed of radicalization is planted in. Someone can't flip his shit if they're balanced on the inside.
So I think we need to take it another step further by asking a couple questions. Why are people so angry? And who is nurturing the ideas of violence in the minds of these radicalized and unbalanced young men?
In my opinion, although some of the anger comes from isolated situations, the major source of the anger is like @Happy_Shredder said, "shits fucked"! He's right in many ways. The Great Recession showed us how corruption was rampant and will continue to go unchecked at the expense of the masses. But I also think the reason for this anger goes on and on if we take a good look at our government.
As for "Who is nurturing this radicalization?" I'm afraid to really put a finger on this for the sake of sounding crazy and conspiratorial, but there are powers in this world that have mastered the art of sewing discord in target groups (ie CIA & KGB).
By the way, I love the paradox of your name and how it uses observer bias.
I very much disagree there. IMO radicalization can happen to even perfectly "sane/balanced" people through enough exposure to propaganda designed to scapegoat and dehumanize the "others" in...
Moving deeper into the issue you see that mental health is the soil that the seed of radicalization is planted in. Someone can't flip his shit if they're balanced on the inside.
I very much disagree there. IMO radicalization can happen to even perfectly "sane/balanced" people through enough exposure to propaganda designed to scapegoat and dehumanize the "others" in societies. We have seen that play out time and time again in genocides, pogroms, and the like, throughout history. And while mental health certainly plays a part, so too does social isolation, lack of education/critical thinking skills, income inequality/economic instability leading to despair, etc.
And as someone who struggles with mental illness myself, I am especially wary of any suggestions that single it out and thus further the stigma against the mentally ill, especially when study after study has shown that people living with mental health conditions are no more likely to engage in violent behaviour than the general population, and in fact those suffering from serious mental illness are actually much more likely to be the victims of violence. -Source (which also discusses the various factors which are know to contribute to violent behavior)
They've always been angry and the internet nurtures these feelings to an extend not previously possible? I mean, it's always valuable not to jump to conclusions but I'm not seeing a lot of...
Why are people so angry? And who is nurturing the ideas of violence in the minds of these radicalized and unbalanced young men?
They've always been angry and the internet nurtures these feelings to an extend not previously possible? I mean, it's always valuable not to jump to conclusions but I'm not seeing a lot of jumping, to be honest. It seems to me a lot of people who spend time on websites like Tildes still have a very idealistic, defensive stance when it comes to "blaming the internet" and I would include myself in that group (kinda playing devil's advocate, here).
So I'd say it's kinda the outsider opinion to genuinely, as someone who is kinda familiar with the positives and negatives of internet communities, blame the very concept of the internet for a lot of weird trends that have a net negative impact on society. The Russian fake news wave is a mainstream example but having places like 8chan, incel forums and whatnot might be another thing that's not really compatible with a healthy society and needs actual counter-measures. The end game is government regulation, which is already happening, and that's dangerous and probably driven by reactionary, populists pushes. So I think Cloudfare dropping their hosting service is a better signal. At one point, you can smoke out communities like that as they depend on hosting companies, advertising companies or even services like Patreon or Kickstarter.
The only real argument against banning hateful communities is that it's "useless", i.e. that they'd just open up in a different spot, under a different name or hosting service, maybe eventually as some dark web place or something. But there's a signal in forcing them underground. A lot of people seem to be coming into these communities just feeling curious, probably a lot of teenagers, college age guys looking for something edgy, etc, and get radicalized over time. It's absurdly easy to find a place on the internet where incels openly discuss their arguments for murdering women. I partially arrived at this stance from an article on incel forums that was posted on Tildes once, which linked one of their sites and it's absolute bizarro land. Like, every other poster has the image of a serial killer. Which also brings us to how news organizations report on these incidents: I know the faces of many of the most notorious mass shooters out there because their names and faces get plastered everywhere. Maybe we could start with a policy forbidding news organizations from releasing the names and images of shooters so they can't be idolized so easily.
Anyway, I'm just kinda disturbed by the openness with which the internet allows mass shooters to be publicly praised and encouraged. That will have consequences. And I'd rather see some self-regulation by companies who have the power to do so than seeing it going on for long enough to provoke short sighted laws that deal with it through sweeping bans and mass surveillance. I think it's inevitable that the internet gets some blame in this and will be forced to change, one way or another.
This, exactly, is why this is so important. I feel like this was a fantasy now, but when I was a kid, it was basically a mortal sin to express racist sentiment. Why isn't that the case now? My...
The only real argument against banning hateful communities is that it's "useless", i.e. that they'd just open up in a different spot, under a different name or hosting service, maybe eventually as some dark web place or something. But there's a signal in forcing them underground.
This, exactly, is why this is so important.
I feel like this was a fantasy now, but when I was a kid, it was basically a mortal sin to express racist sentiment. Why isn't that the case now?
My theory is that the world changed when the internet became commonplace. Racism was not as taboo across the globe as it was in my local society. Of course, the internet as a whole isn't the problem, it was the shocking number of people who were willing to accommodate racist speech. Most provider of internet services and access do not require antiracist action, after all.
Perhaps the worst part of it all are these large social media platforms that are unable or unwilling to properly moderate their forums. And even then I think that moderation should go further than it usually does; content should not only be removed, but a public notice should be posted explaining who is being punished for what. People behave better in real life because they are ultimately socially accountable for their actions; the internet should not be any different.
It's because the internet has basically eliminated the "social shame" aspect of it by enabling insular communities to form around ideas that previously would have been shot down mercilessly. To...
It's because the internet has basically eliminated the "social shame" aspect of it by enabling insular communities to form around ideas that previously would have been shot down mercilessly.
To use a less fraught example, take flat-earthers. Previously, if you somehow came up with the idea that the earth was actually flat, whenever you tried to bring that up to someone they probably would have laughed at you and/or explained to you why it's a completely ridiculous belief. After a few attempts, most people would realize that the idea is nonsense and isn't accepted. They'd probably give up on it, or at least learn that it's something they have to keep to themselves and be somewhat ashamed of. They'd also never see it being treated seriously anywhere on TV, in newspapers, etc.
But now with the internet, that person can just go immediately find some flat-earth Facebook group or subreddit, and they're immediately surrounded by hundreds or thousands of other people that validate their belief. It doesn't matter if the group is made up of 0.01% of people around the world, only that there are "enough" people in the community that it feels like the idea must be reasonably accepted. If anyone tries to come in and contradict them, they'll be swarmed by the whole group, and often just banned entirely.
The group all builds off each other and it becomes harder to ever see any contradicting evidence than to just keep the mistaken belief. People's identities often end up getting tied together with being a part of the community too, which makes them even more unlikely to look at anything opposed to it. See the recent When Having Friends is More Alluring Than Being Right article I posted, which I think is a good coverage of it.
Flatearthers are an excellent example! I saw that documentary on Netflix “Behind the Curve” and it was eye opening. I honestly expected to just laugh at people who think the earth is flat but...
Flatearthers are an excellent example! I saw that documentary on Netflix “Behind the Curve” and it was eye opening. I honestly expected to just laugh at people who think the earth is flat but there was a surprisingly strong message about the power of belonging. It explains so many baffling trends.
But if someone does flip their shit, do you want them turning violent with an AK-47 or a hunting knife? I agree that mental illness is an important contributor to mass shootings, and that we all...
Any discussion about gun control is simply attacking the symptom and not the cause. Moving deeper into the issue you see that mental health is the soil that the seed of radicalization is planted in. Someone can't flip his shit if they're balanced on the inside.
But if someone does flip their shit, do you want them turning violent with an AK-47 or a hunting knife?
I agree that mental illness is an important contributor to mass shootings, and that we all (Americans and Australians and others) need to put more money and time and effort into helping people maintain and restore their mental health.
However, I'd rather face a crazy person with a knife than a crazy person with a machine gun.
Well, although I agree that someone going postal with a bowie knife is less a threat than an AK-47, I feel that your example is not a fair assessment of what can happen even if we remove all 400...
Well, although I agree that someone going postal with a bowie knife is less a threat than an AK-47, I feel that your example is not a fair assessment of what can happen even if we remove all 400 million guns out of the US (that alone is almost impossible).
People don't stop taking out their anger on others just because guns aren't available. The Palestinian suicidal bombers come to mind immediately, and they weren't one off occurrences either. They spanned from the late 1980's to the late 2000's and happened at bus stations, in crowded busses (one was a school bus), at airports, train stations, check points, by people just riding bikes along a crowded street, in schools, at busy street markets, at restaurants, shopping malls, hotel lobbies, medical centers, universities, hospitals, durring religious ceremonies, and even intensified with cars packed with explosives.
But even if we think that bombings like what happens in Israel and of the like we saw in Oklahoma City, in the lower garage of the World Trade Towers in 93, and the Boston Marathon are not probable. Then we should keep in mind that people get creative and remember that 10 people died in the Toronto Van Ramming attack.
Removing guns will not solve the cause of the attacks. People will still flip their shit one way or another. Gun control will just change the method of attacks. And in my opinion, the idea of people in a mall wearing explosives, or vans blowing up like in Oklahoma City is far scarier than a gun.
You're absolutely, totally, entirely right: removing guns will not solve the cause of the attacks. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. I totally agree. However, people with guns kill more...
You're absolutely, totally, entirely right: removing guns will not solve the cause of the attacks. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. I totally agree. However, people with guns kill more people than people without guns. Removing guns - or just reducing guns - will make it harder for people to commit mass murder.
Fixing the societal and psychological issues which cause someone to flip their shit, as you say, will take years if not decades. It might even take a generation or two. Some people believe that it is the structure of our society itself which is causing a general increase in mental illness throughout the western world. We're not going to change that overnight. That's a long-term mission.
And, if you're talking about it being difficult to remove Americans' hold on guns, imagine how difficult it would be to get them to make their society fairer and more inclusive! Getting the Americans to reduce income inequality and eliminate racism will not be an easy task.
However... while they (and we other westerners) undertake that long-term mission to reform society... people are still going to be damaged by society's problems. People are still going to flip their shit. People are still going to want to commit mass murder.
What do you propose Americans should do for that 30-50 year period while they're reforming their society to reduce the psychological pressure on their citizens which causes some of them to flip their shit? Should they just continue to endure the regular mass murders that will continue to happen (almost literally every day) until the long-term problem is solved? Or should they also look for a quick fix to reduce the number of mass murders in the short term?
To use an analogy: if you have a long-term chronic illness which is causing you a lot of pain, would you want to take painkillers while the months of treatment are taking place to cure you, or would you continue to endure the pain until the treatment is complete?
it won't, but the purpose of such a measure isn't to solve the cause, which i think is what you're missing. it's to make it harder to kill people, which is easy to accomplish if you make it much...
Removing guns will not solve the cause of the attacks. People will still flip their shit one way or another. Gun control will just change the method of attacks. And in my opinion, the idea of people in a mall wearing explosives, or vans blowing up like in Oklahoma City is far scarier than a gun.
it won't, but the purpose of such a measure isn't to solve the cause, which i think is what you're missing. it's to make it harder to kill people, which is easy to accomplish if you make it much harder to access guns. sure, someone can theoretically get explosives and suicide bomb a mall or something in place of using a gun--but do you know how hard it is to get explosives to begin with, much less learn how to: (1) create any type of explosive device powerful enough to do significant damage to a target; (2) successfully wire up and rig that explosive powerful; (3) do all of this without also attracting three letter agency attention? there's a reason suicide bombers and bombers in the west in general are usually well connected and have institutional backing, and it's because those kinds of attacks are hard to pull off.
gun are almost as easy to get as water in some parts of america and easy to retrofit for maximum killing potential in a way that won't get any attention, and that's why it's so easy to kill people in attacks like this. conversely, it becomes exponentially harder to commit mass murder like this if you don't have a gun on hand.
Again, I can't deny the fact that easy access to guns is a serious problem. And I agree that making it harder to get guns is a very important aspect of providing a comprehensive solution to this...
Again, I can't deny the fact that easy access to guns is a serious problem. And I agree that making it harder to get guns is a very important aspect of providing a comprehensive solution to this mass shooting epidemic. But my point is that focusing solely on gun control as the main solution is missing the forest for the tree. Gun control is needed, but that alone will just make this problem evolve into some other form of domestic terrorism.
One, you are completely right about bombings being far more difficult to perform and realistically will be far fewer than mass shootings. I only mentioned the sucide bombing as a possible alternative to mass shooting because it was the extreme opposite option of the alternative option of bowie knife attacks you mentioned. Realisticly, people will find easier ways, maybe something in the middle. Because even if we remove all the guns and accept that bombing will not be as prevalent, it still doesn't change the fact that people will constantly find ways to do these terrible mass killings. It's just human nature to find a way to achieve their goal. For instance, I mentioned earlier about the Toronto Van Ramming attack and I looked into it to learn a little more about the the incident. And I was actually really surprised that vehicle based attacks has been happened through the years. Looking into that Toronto event led me to this Wikipedia page where I learned not only that it's been a thing since 1973, but that it's an occurrence that is on the rise. In fact, the FBI is quoted as saying "Vehicle ramming offers terrorists with limited access to explosives or weapons an opportunity to conduct a homeland attack with minimal prior training or experience." in Israel. Also, this tactic makes it easy for "lone wolf" attacks. Actually, the entire section titled Causes propelling the rise of the tactic pretty much explains and gives examples of how alternative terrorist attacks are currently on the rise and will be on the rise in places where other terrorist attack methods have been controlled.
Two, that wiki section alone shows that we should look deeper into the causes of these attacks. We crucially need to look into and understand what is flipping the switch in the minds of these individuals to do these things. We need to take a step back and lean more about the problem instead of knee-jerk reactions like all out gun control. Only then can we really put together an effective plan of action. I just listened to an intering news segment on NPR about copycat terrorism. They postulated that one cause of these attacks is the media coverage and that these events are contagious. I think that's obvious and the reason we have the adage of "Monkey see, monkey do". But that leads to my point thst mental health is at least a good start in the right direction for solving these mass shootings.
Three, removing guns or severely restricting guns in America is recipe for disaster. But first, let me be clear. Some type of sensible gun law reform is necessary, and also that I'm not a pro-gun owner that believes everyone should have a handgun or rifle. Everyone having a gun is the worst idea ever. There are so many people that should never even be close to a gun. But that's where I'm going with this. Some are so mentally ill prepared, unstable, or simply so ardent for gun ownership that I can see hold-outs happening where groups of people will defend their "right to keep and bear arms" and die for that right. Especially in this current state of American culture. I can conceivably see the rumblings of civil war in rural America if we tighten the strings of gun control too hard. But what I really fear is more probable is the slow degradation of the American Bill of Rights. America was, after all, founded by radicals and militants that forcibly took their right to self govern from another country and saw it fit to make the rights we now have as constitutional law. Guns in particular were at the center of that revolution and those American Founding Fathers were willing to die for that freedom. They also realized that the final check and balance to absolute and tyrannical rule was the civilian with a gun that can form a "well regulated malitia". Seriously, this is such a complex and heavy issue to unpack. Personally, I still wonder how relevant that idea is today. I wonder if our government ever does become oppressive, would we even be able to defend ourselves with just a handful of guns? Geez, that's unbelievably terrifying. But let's all hope our government never gets as bad as China and what we saw in Tiananmen Square. As a side note, I pray Hong Kong resolved their protests peaceable. But back to our issue, even if our government never becomes tyrannical, and we never need or can realisticly use guns to put the government in check, changing the Bill of Rights, or severely restricting guns can create precedent for other changes and can cause a cascade of unintended problems. This is not an unrealistic fear if rights are beginning to be erroded. Sooo... back to gun-control legislation. This is a crucial and complex issue to resolve just on its own and not even taking consideration of the actual cause of domestic terrorism.
Curtailing gun access, even eliminating guns, will only change the nature of the attacks. We can not get stuck on gun control as the main answer to our problem. Spending more time discussing how to restrict access to guns is necessary, but a red herring, and takes away valuable time and efforts from addressing the root cause. I am not pro Trump. I am not pro Republican. I just want the truth and the facts so we can figure out the best future for us all.
...again, the purpose of such a measure isn't to solve the cause. i don't know why you're talking about stopping the problem at its roots when the point of gun control isn't to literally stop the...
But my point is that focusing solely on gun control as the main solution is missing the forest for the tree. Gun control is needed, but that alone will just make this problem evolve into some other form of domestic terrorism.
...again, the purpose of such a measure isn't to solve the cause. i don't know why you're talking about stopping the problem at its roots when the point of gun control isn't to literally stop the problem at its roots, it's to make sure when it is a problem 50 people aren't getting cut down like cordwood because any dipshit with a few thousand to blow can buy a semi-auto and retrofit it to fire 100 bullets a minute and accordingly mow down any gathering of people. now, are there people who present it that way? sure, but those people are in the minority from my experience. most people just want to make it so that we don't have 200 mass shootings, 14,000 homicides and 30,000 suicides by gun a year, and the obvious way to do that is gun control.
Because even if we remove all the guns and accept that bombing will not be as prevalent, it still doesn't change the fact that people will constantly find ways to do these terrible mass killings. It's just human nature to find a way to achieve their goal.
sure, but again most people don't know how to make a truck bomb and would be on a list if they tried to make one, most people aren't going to be able to drive a car into a crowd like someone can bring a gun into a crowd and start spraying, and you're certainly not going to be able to cut people down with a knife like you can with a semi-auto. people might always try to commit mass murder, but there are quantitative measures that can be taken to mitigate the possibility and severity of such events, and the obvious solution in most regards is again gun control because guns are far and away the most common weapon used in attacks like this because of their ability to murder large numbers of people with ease and the convenience of getting one.
We need to take a step back and lean more about the problem instead of knee-jerk reactions like all out gun control.
you know, people like to trot this out but i have never understood why exactly it's a knee-jerk reaction to mitigate the possibility of someone capable of committing such an act of violence from being able to do so by taking out of their hands the vector through which they do so. that "knee-jerk reaction" worked pretty well for australia, because the last time they had a mass shooting with more than 5 fatalities was over a decade ago, and there have been less than five in the UK and scotland since they took similar actions. if anything, it's knee-jerk to act like it's acceptable for this state of affairs to continue when we know such punitive actions against guns work to mitigate these tragedies in other countries because "we need to know more about the underlying problems" as if we can't do that while also ensuring that, while we figure out the causes of such things, they don't continue to occur.
But back to our issue, even if our government never becomes tyrannical, and we never need or can realisticly use guns to put the government in check, changing the Bill of Rights, or severely restricting guns can create precedent for other changes and can cause a cascade of unintended problems.
aside from the fact that this is a meme which has been dunked on repeatedly because the american government is the most complex and powerful military in the world and would realistically annihilate any sort of armed resistance to the government (unless it itself was leading said resistance), the current interpretation of the second amendment by the supreme court is mostly based on two court rulings from 2008 and 2010 so, not exactly a long standing precedent here. also it's very strange to take issue with "changing the bill of rights" when the constitution is explicitly designed to be a living document to be amended and reinterpreted as necessary--like, being changable is the point of the constitution, and it's why it's amendable (hence the 27 amendments to the bill of rights original articles, including... the second amendment) and part of why the supreme court even exists (to interpret what its clauses mean among other things, which is how things like desegregation were won).
Curtailing gun access, even eliminating guns, will only change the nature of the attacks. We can not get stuck on gun control as the main answer to our problem.
this does not follow inherently, and people are not especially stuck on gun control as the main answer to the problem. it is, again, meant to curtail the damage that can be done by such attacks in the first place.
Hot take time:
Make it much more clear, socially, what "positive masculinity" entails and separate "masculinity" from toxic behaviors as much as possible.
I recognize this issue is much more complex than that, and cannot be solved with one suggestion from a rando on the internet, but that's kind of the point of a hot take. I expect a lot of people are going to take umbrage with what I said in some capacity. If so, all I ask is that you at least lube yourself up before you fuck me with your knowledge dick because I assure you that you know more about this than I do.
Ultra hot take time:
Fuck ascribing anything as masculine or feminine, how about we just focus on positive traits in general. Why is it that we need to focus on "lonely men" and not "lonely women"? Gendering traits and perceived norms of gender behavior only perpetuate the problem. I suspect a good deal of these "lonely men" might not have ended up in the same boat if gender wasn't so closely tied with behavior due to social conditioning.
We should worry about lonely men and not lonely women because lonely men are radicalizing each other into violence on the internet, lonely women are posting on Tumblr.
And do you really think that what is considered "acceptable" or socially reinforced behavior is not at least part of this problem?
Think about it for a second - do you think a woman would be chastised for posting on tumblr? What about a man? Are men generally chastised for talking about violence or wishing to instill violence in response to a negative stimulus? What about women?
Social constructs of what is acceptable for a man and for a woman to be doing (or thinking) directly affect what kind of behaviors they participate in.
That's basically the entire premise of 'toxic masculinity' - the traits that men are taught give them value are unrealistic and can have harmful effects in practice.
So how about we just call it toxic behavior and roll in the negative "feminine" traits and then rid ourselves of the idea that these traits are inherent to male or female society?
By ascribing the term "masculine" we are implying that there are masculine traits and that men should act a specific way because they are men. This inherently discourages some of the stereo-typically "feminine" traits like "posting on tumblr" which could be serving as a replacement for violence for some of these men.
Why don't we just call it what it is? The point of language is to communicate thoughts and ideas, and describe things. Nobody using the term toxic masculinity is saying that all men do x, or all women do y. Rather, it describes the negative effects when social pressure is applied to make men conform to traits traditionally considered masculine. Like dealing with racism, pretending the problem doesn't exist isn't going to help.
Correct. And when taken to extremes, this behavior becomes toxic. I don't really see the disconnect here, other than being uncomfortable with words, for reasons.
Yeah, that kind of discouragement sounds pretty toxic, doesn't it?
As I said, it's my ultra hot take. I'm a bit of a gender anarchist and I think we do more harm than good by applying gender to anything. I see no reason why it needs to be labeled "toxic masculinity" as opposed to "toxic behavior".
Color blindness, for example, is not a gendered trait but it's presence is also much higher among genetically male individuals. Just because the term doesn't involve gender does not mean the identification, treatment, and resources shouldn't be targeted to the appropriate population.
I never argued with the fact that it's toxic behavior or that it falls under the umbrella of the defined term "toxic masculinity". I simply stated that we should divorce gender from this problem because it biases how we approach the problem and blinds us to problems we will need to eventually tackle anyways.
I probably agree with you on more than we disagree on, gendering definitely goes too far a lot of the time.
Maybe it's a good bias, though? You can't ignore the fact that all these mass shootings are men, predominantly white men, who are using these assault style weapons that have been marketed as a way to get your man card back. Women participate in gun culture here in the US too, but they're not massacring innocents left, right, and center. Why? Society doesn't treat men and women the same, even if that is our eventual goal it makes no sense to me as to why you would act like that's the case now.
Here's my defense of the term toxic masculinity. It's a useful term, and that's why the various proponents of the patriarchy have tried so hard to attack it. Toxic masculinity is what makes intersectional feminism relevant to men. Toxic masculinity is not, as some will try to suggest, an innate characteristic of manhood. Rather, it is a set of births and behaviors forced upon us from birth to reinforce the patriarchy. Identifying one's own toxicly masculine traits is how a man can be a real ally of feminist causes. I know some people just have a bad gut reaction to the term, but it is useful and meaningful.
It should absolutely shape how we implement, but it shouldn't shape how we approach - we should keep the lens as wide as possible until we can define the scope most appropriately, as sometimes we miss out on important pieces of information when we toss it out because it doesn't fit into our model of how we think the problem arose.
In general I do not have a bad gut reaction to the term and I am a proponent of more research and more targeted resources to tackle the problem.
I'm mostly posting this as my hot take, for the gender anarchist reasons I've already mentioned. I think we aren't questioning the affect of societal roles as much as we should be, and because of this we're missing out on some opportunities to improve everything by getting rid of ideas that persist simply because no one is questioning them.
Alright, right here is where you convinced me:
And to add another point: I've seen many a dude get really mad about the term "toxic masculinity", they read it backwards like "masculinity is toxic". That's not what's meant by the term, but if you have a whole lot of people who don't understand your term then maybe it's time to consider a new name.
Because it's occurring in men, due to how we present masculinity, and how boys absorb that message. “Gender anarchy” may sound nice in theory but, in practice, this is a male problem. We're not going to solve this problem if we define it wrongly.
I agree with you ideologically but if our goal is to expediently stop violence then the deconstruction of what exactly masculity and femininity are, and decoupling the conditioning of social behavior in respect to gender might not be the best approach. That sort of stuff takes a long time.
Teaching people to recognize and diffuse toxic behavior is no different whether you call it toxic masculinity or toxic behavior. I see no reason why we can't work on both at the same time without compromising either. In fact, one might argue that the effects of each are synergistic on each other.
That's totally fair, and I agree. I just think sometimes people can get too optimistic in what they can accomplish, which leads to failure.
Social conditioning isn't the reason men commit mass shootings. I know it'd be nice if everyone was born a uniform blank slate but that just isn't the case. Men are biologically more aggressive and that is the key reason why we see exclusively men don combat gear and pick up assault rifles with the aim of killing innocent people. To try and minimize that facet of the problem is, in my view, anti-intellectual.
Be careful correlating behavior influenced by society with that of biology. Please provide a source for the "biological" aggression of male humans.
The tendency for males to engage in more aggressive behavior is widely supported in many, many different species, including birds, monkeys and chimps. The going hypothesis seems to be that this is related to male-vs-male competition for access to mating females. In humans, males are far more likely to be the victims of homicide than females. This suggests that the burden of proof should rather be on the person claiming that in humans, this aggression is uniquely tied to human social norms and not caused by more general mechanisms that generate such aggression in other species.
I would never go so far as claiming that society has no influence on rates and forms of violence, but the biological basis of male aggression is not something that can be denied.
A fair point, however it make me wonder that if the hypothesis is that it's related to male-vs-male competition for access to mating females, then what would happen if we fix this socially?
I also think it's important to point out that it's a "tendency" - it's not a guarantee. Humans could be one of the groups in which it's not a given truth for the same reasons it is in other observed animals. We should be cautious about inferring the reason for a specific sample within a larger sample size without more information.
To be clear, I do believe that hormones and genetics absolutely affect aggression and that while we have yet to really prove it, testosterone is likely one of the biggest contributors. I only ask these questions to get people thinking scientifically. It's very easy to say "this is what we always see, so it must be the case here too" and have that bias us.
If in theory we somehow eliminate male-vs-male competiton socially, we would be removing certain selective pressures off of males that lead to this behaviour. This is assuming that there are no other selective pressures that favour these traits, in which case, over hundreds of thousands of years, this tendency will naturally get diluted and eventually disappear, provided society keeps a negative outlook on violence. It won't happen within the next millennium though.
What about men committing the vast majority of violent crime in pretty much every single society in history?
And male/female society has nothing to do with this?
Sorry, I don't understand your meaning here.
We have no way of knowing how much is influenced by society and how much has to do with hormones and genetics
Is {virtually every society in history for which we have recorded crime statistics} not a large enough sample space?
It's not about the sample size it's that we can't divorce the factors from each other
Should it not be the case that as society has become more equal and less severe in its enforcement of gender roles, we should be seeing a more equal split between the genders of mass shooters - if we accept the premise that social factors are the predominant ones? And yet, shooters are just as male today as they have always been.
Mass shooters are just one form of violence. The incidence of violence in general has been going down among both genders. Social pressures affect male society to a larger degree than female society. There's a lot to unpack here, it's not just a simple if>then problem.
But this is an article - and a discussion - specifically about why mass shooters are male.
Yes and I'm trying to say we need to think of this from as broad a perspective as possible. Current average male society has a lot to contribute to and shape why this has happened and I'm not convinced that we wouldn't have the same problem with women if we reversed male and female societal pressures. If the problem is a societal one, and we have the freedom to construct the society, why not entirely destroy the concept of gender roles and simply reinforce good behavior and chastise toxic behavior? We'll end up solving this problem and a lot more at the same time.
Because most of society, myself included, believes that at least some gender roles are to some extent founded in immutable biological truths.
and I'm asking you to challenge that assumption
I do see the value in what you propose. But the fact that every culture and every civilization in history has, seemingly independently, produced gender roles (as I understand it often quite similar ones), implies to me that they are in some way an inevitable consequence of human society.
Is it truly independent if humans aggregating and socializing can be traced back to a single location? We're influenced by what is around us, what we grow up with, what we observe. I'm not so certain their similarity tells us much of anything.
If I may probe your position a little to gain a better understanding of it - your belief is that if we could 'press F5' a few times on the Great Rift Valley 300,000 years ago, then in some such instances we would be left with a world in which gender roles were massively reversed from what we see today, effectively by random chance?
I think that's entirely plausible yes
Fair enough. I think we reach an impasse here - but an interesting one. Thank you for giving me enough of your time to allow me to understand your point of view better.
[offtopic]
Spent the whole day arguing with people on Reddit, seeing this kinda discoursemakes me feel a little better about humanity.
Solid point.
That's pretty fundamental to just about every culture. Even ones where queer, trans, or intersex people were traditionally recognized and respected still broadly had a sense of gender norms with the individuals who don't quite fit being carved out as special cases.
People are socialized from birth to how they're supposed to perform and a big part of that is learning how to perform their social role as a man or as a woman. On some level, the entire concept of being trans is based on this. These are people born as a specific biological sex but more closely identify with the gendered performance and roles of the other sex. If there was no such thing as gendered traits, being trans stops making sense as a thing and functionally becomes just a preference. The fact that it is a thing kind of suggests this is probably something that's pretty hard coded in the human psyche.
Hard disagree, non-binary individuals (not to mention gender queer, gender nonconforming, gender fluid, bigender, etc.) exist.
Or they feel that their body does not match what they feel their body should match and how they wish to be perceived.
Or any other number of issues that come with gender identity disorders.
And they're even rarer than trans individuals, so that's hardly a strong argument for gender normativity not being a pretty deeply encoded part of human nature.
"should" and "perceived" are the key words there. These are subjective assessments, which is indicative of a socially constructed performance. As the most fundamental definition, a woman is someone who lives their lives as a woman. That's all we can really say because chromosomal makeup and phenotypes and all that other stuff are weaker predictors of whether you identify as a woman than just the performance of femininity is.
You're the one who put forth the argument, I'm just poking holes in it. If your argument was simply "hormones affect behavior" or "genetics affect behavior" I would agree, since we have science to support that.
Then why even socially construct the idea of a woman? Why not just have everyone be people? What does woman really tell us that we absolutely need as a society to know?
Which points out exactly what I was saying in the first place - it's a social construct that serves us no purpose so lets fucking get rid of it already.
Edge cases don't actually poke holes in arguments about population dynamics. Populations are all about clustering around a normal distribution. My example of trans people is pointing out a specific type of edge case that differs from the norm and the nature of that difference that might offer some clarity into what makes a more typical human being tick. It's basically using trans folks as a treatment group to understand something about the control-group, being people who aren't trans.
This question assumes an intelligent designer, in which case you'll have to take it up with them.
Human beings are social animals, our social constructs aren't pulled out of the air for fun, they evolve through selective pressures. Some are more teachable than others, and most of the anthropological evidence suggests that the concept of gender norms and gender dimorphism is a pretty deeply embedded one.
You should never use someone many standard deviations from the mean to draw any conclusions about the population they are many standard deviations away from, this is just a bad idea.
Influenced by genetics and hormones, sure, but still constructed and reinforced by society. We have the choice of reinforcing this behavior or not, I think it's a lot less set in stone than you think.
That’s basically how most anthropology works though, you study some random tribe with interesting social norms or dynamics and draw insight about what that means for the rest of humanity.
This just isn’t borne out by any empirical observations. It’s nice to want that, but “is” and “ought” are different things and it’s important focus on the world as it really exists rather than as we wish it to be.
Not sure I agree here. Sure, some anthropology would be studying fringe/odd/interesting tribes but a good deal of it is studying "normal" civilizations. You need both to properly frame any insight you should be drawing.
The way the world really exists is what this article points out - "lonely men" causing violence. We can't fix this problem without thinking about how we wish it to be, a place where "lonely men" don't cause violence. If we're already going to be focusing on how the world should be, why must we constrain our thoughts?
Sure. But what part of my argument didn’t factor in both?
Well for one thing, embarking on a grand social engineering campaign to deprogram people out of having the concept of gender sounds like something out of an Orwellian dystopia.
There is a G. K. Chesterton quote out there about how the trouble with liberals is that any time they suspect their normative ideas about how the world “ought to work” might conflict with basic human wants and desires, they’d rather change the nature of humanity than change their normative beliefs.
The deal with toxic masculinity and isolated, violent young men is that it’s not only a problem for society, but it’s a problem for those young men themselves. Talking about changing the norms is about figuring out ways to deal with things that make people more happy and more comfortable being their authentic selves instead of suffering under the dissonance caused by restrictive and anti-social cultural norms. But arguing we should remove the concept of norms altogether doesn’t really address this.
The whole “get rid of all the rules and expectations and we’ll be fine” approach is fundamentally misguided. It’s trying to avoid doing any of the hard work of answering questions about how we ought to live because those are flashpoints for conflict. But the fact is that people desperately want guidance about how they ought to live. We’re social creatures and we are at our happiest when we feel like we’re fulfilling our role. The roles we have don’t work for a lot of people, but that’s an argument for more or different roles, not the elimination of them altogether. Otherwise what is it all even for? Half the reason these dudes are so lost and in need of guidance is specifically because they don’t get any. They have no constructive model for how to be good men.
Apologies if I was unclear in my intentions. My goal is not to deprogram, it's simply that if we are going to educate people on "correct" or "right" or "moral" or "good" or "desirable" behavior, that we should educate to behavior, not to "male behavior" or "female behavior". There's no need to gender it. We can absolutely tailor it so that people who identify as male get educated differently than those who identify as female, but the education itself does not need to be gendered. It's not so much an attack on gender itself as it is doing our best to remove anyone's preconceived notions of gendered behavior simply by removing it from education.
While I do think we should remove the concept or norms, my argument was for divorcing the concept of norms when it comes to figuring out how to deal with this specific problem. That our education to these "lonely men" should not be gendered, even though the problem it is solving is heavily driven by gendered norms.
When did I say it would solve our problem? I was merely pointing out that it contributes to the problem so we might as well start to tackle it now, especially since it's contribution is leading to an undesirable outcome.
That's an interesting take. Why do you think this is the case for social creatures? Can you define "role" for me in this context?
But they do have constructive models on how to be a good person which are at times at odds with the constructive models on how to be a man. To me that seems like a flaw with the construction of gender roles in the first place.
I just don't think they can be divorced in this way. People identify by their gender as a fundamental part of who they are. Modeling behavior is going to have to conform to which kinds of behavior people want to see modeled. It's kind of similar to the argument about why representation matters. People need to be able to see themselves reflected in the models they want to emulate or it won't have any resonance with them.
When we want to address the norms around templates for masculinity, trying to divorce the gender element from it comes across as wishful thinking to eliminate the concept of masculinity. Their inability to develop constructive ways to perform the role of being male is the main reason it's manifesting in such negative behaviors. They're actively searching for a template for masculinity that can make them feel whole. The fact that they can't get one that fits is why they end up subsuming their identities into fascistic ideologies (which are inherently self-abnegating) or indulging in violent fantasies of self-destruction (or direct that self-destructive drive outwards).
The solution to that, if you actually want to reach them, is showing them how that male role can be fulfilled more productively. If you have a similar problem with women you need to do the same and approach them in a way that will click for them. For example, the movie Mean Girls was inspired by a self-help/anthropological book called Queen Bees and Wannabes that studied the patterns of tribalism and and low-key aggressive behaviors that define social relationships among school aged girls. The movie is a long process of showing that behavior through from a spectator's perspective and also resolving it by providing an alternative model for femininity where, rather than ruling over your clique through subtle manipulation and gossip you foster a culture of vulnerability and respect for each other. The whole thing is pretty well done and this moral messaging is very sharply targeted at school aged girls.
The best analogy is probably language, which is also a socially constructed thing. Human brains are literally wired to be able to form symbolic associations to sounds and deal with abstract concepts. It's an inherent part of being human and it's why we're so good at communication and logic. While those are the basic building blocks of how language works that are wired into us, what languages are can vary significantly and all the ensuing second or third order effects that come downstream (like writing systems) can vary even more.
Social constructions and roles are similar. As social animals we're also wired to have a general sense of community, to seek them out if we don't, to pick up and absorb the norms and expectations of those communities, and to understand the specialized expectations that apply to you so you can understand how you fit into the whole big picture. What those roles are and how they should be structured can vary dramatically from one society or culture to the next, but the intrinsic need to have a sense of belonging and understand what your community is along with your place is in it, that's all pretty innate.
And just like how there are some hard-coded things about how language works (like, there is apparently a fairly fixed order in terms of which parts of the visual spectrum get named as colors), it would be hard to imagine there aren't similarly deeply-encoded things in how social structures work. And if anything is deeply encoded, it's of course going to be gender since we're a sexually dimorphic species. You might be able to coach some people out of this stuff some of the time, but you're always going to be going against the grain if you try and no system or institution is going to be able to stand up to entropy if they're trying to work against stuff that's this fundamental.
Just think of social conditioning for war. The inherent empathy people have for their fellow humans is pretty strong and it takes a LOT of training to make a person feel okay about killing another person. And the very act of doing so seems to cause real psychological damage to lots of people.
The models exist, but I don't think the individuals in question "have them." Like they don't see themselves in it and there's too much counter-programming for it to break through.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that how we implement education doesn't necessarily include some aspect of this. But if we don't even bother to test whether degendered education on toxic behavior reaches these individuals, we are potentially depriving ourselves of a better solution to the problem. My issue is that people in this thread seem unwilling to challenge the assumption that while the presentation is unique masculine, that does not necessarily mean that the education needs to be. We simply don't know until we ask the question and I want us to ask the question rather than just assuming the answer.
And my hot take question is why does the role of male and female need to exist? Why can't we have roles that aren't gendered? We have professions which tend to lean male or female which do not directly discourage certain genders from entering them. For example, male nurses. We all know male nurses. Male nurses are not any less of a nurse than female nurses.
And this line of questioning leads me directly to another quote in your comment
Which begs the question what is special about the roles of male and female?
We're also an incredibly diverse species and both gender and sexual identity fall upon a much larger spectrum than simply 1 or 0. The 1 or 0 doesn't inform me of practically anything.
Is there too much counter-programming needed? Where's the proof? I think we need to stop making assumptions about how things are without testing it first.
Like I said, representation matters and people need to be able to see themselves reflected in the role models you want them to have.
Again this is thinking like a designer. Whether it "needs" to be is irrelevant and doesn't really make sense when we're talking about biology. The contention is that it does.
The 1 or 0 should inform you of a lot. There being edge case exceptions to the general sexual dimorphism doesn't negate the rule. At some point the argument that because lines get fuzzy on the margins means all lines are mere illusions just starts to lose its practical utility. There is a wide spectrum of diversity between two species of birds as well, but it's still useful to understand the concept of species and it would be incorrect to talk as if the concept of speciation doesn't have an impact on the real world behaviors and traits of those birds.
We are talking about psychologically damaged human beings here. Adhering to conventional standards of "scientific" proof would literally be unethical and if you're going to stake out the claim that you won't be convinced by anything less it starts to sound like you're just being stubborn and trying to create impossible standards before you'll entertain the thought.
And I'm not arguing against this, I'm talking about how we approach the design of these educational materials and studies we need to conduct to understand the best approach. The end result might be exactly the same, or it could be wildly different, we won't know however, if we go in with blinders on.
Let's be careful not to mix the social concept of male with the biological concept of sex.
I heavily disagree that it's all edge cases. The behavior of individuals who identify as male is extremely different from person to person to the point that if presented with two individuals who identify as male that there are very few if any things you could say about the two that would almost always be correct.
I'm curious what your take on ethnicity, race, etc. are given this statement. Do you think knowing someone's race or ethnicity has real world impact on the behaviors and traits of those humans? Do you treat race and ethnicity with the same weight as sex or gender?
I'm not saying we need to create an unethical study in order to prove my point, all I'm saying is that given the information we have we need to not assume. We need to take the context of the information we do have and ensure that when designing for the future we don't draw the wrong conclusions from this information.
The word "almost" is doing a lot of work here. And we don't really apply this level of hair splitting in just about any other case. Yes there may not be any platonic ideal concept of "male" in the world, but neither is there a platonic ideal of an apple. But it doesn't really make senes to say apples aren't real. Insofar as the socially constructed idea of an "apple" is relevant to how people interact with produce, we have a general symbolic idea of what an apple is. It's the same way with gender. Just because the definitional lines are fuzzy on the margins doesn't mean the general symbolic idea isn't there.
I'm not sure I understand the question. I think certain things about racial or ethnic classifications do affect behaviors and worldviews, but it's messy because people's "formal" racial or ethnic designations don't actually correlate to their actual cultural upbringings in plural societies. These borders change and flow too rapidly over time to actually pin down as specific things so I don't think there is a strong argument for this being as immutably coded as gender.
I'm just not seeing a strong argument for why this assumption isn't valid. We have to make tons of assumptions just to move through the world and we tend to reexamine them when there is some compelling evidence to do so, which I'm not really seeing here.
I think we just fundamentally disagree on how solid the concept of gender is.
Assumptions in science are extremely dangerous. It costs us almost nothing to ask the question and failing to do so often taints our view of the world. Fundamental biases in science have caused us to have to undo years of experiments and start over at ground zero an uncomfortable number of times throughout modern (let alone all) history.
That much is obvious, but I don't think you're doing a great job of advancing or supporting your case. I'm telling you that based on what I know about neurology, biology, sociology, anthropology, and comparative studies across the cultures with which I'm familiar it seems to be a very deeply coded thing. I feel like your argument is kind of picking at the seams in language's inadequacy of explaining concepts rather than addressing those concepts themselves.
This is a fairly naive view of how science works. Science is rife with assumptions that structure the hypothesis being tested, this is a fundamental fact about how research and analysis is done. The way to identify a good analyst is one who is able to parse reasonable assumptions that are consistent and well-founded due to their background knowledge from ones that are unproductive and poorly supported.
Besides, talking about social constructivism isn't hard "science" anyway. It is as much marketing and communications as anything else.
And this is why we're hitting an impasse. We're not talking science, we're talking our beliefs on how things are. We simply don't have the science, and when I ask for it or challenge the assumptions of the poor quality science we do have we keep running into the same problem.
Yeah no we're not going to go there.
You're the one who stated that ethnicity and background were far more mutable and changeable than gender, and yet we have plenty of historical examples of people taking the assumption that it's not it's not mutable and ending up with bunk shitty science about how certain ethnicities are biologically stupider than their white European counterparts. At the same time you're making the argument that it's safe to say there's an assumption that gender is immutable and we should also make assumptions about this immutability and proceed to study gender scientifically in the same fashion.
I'm urging caution because it's exactly these kinds of assumptions that got us into bad science that has taken decades to undo and we've still got assholes pointing to this shitty science as proof that racism is justified. Let's not do the same with gender and transgender individuals, shall we?
I'm not just saying it though. I've justified it with quite a bit of evidence and background information. I didn't say it's an assumption, I said there is very strong evidence against what you're suggesting. It’s basically uniform across societies. It’s deeply physically rooted. The species itself is sexually dimorphic. The bodies are literally different. And the exceptions you’re raising are vanishingly small percentages on balance..
While I agree with you here, the whole concept of being "transgender" is kinda predicated on the belief in existance of genders. The same goes for gender nonconforming, gender fluid, and bigender. The individuals themselves are not necessarily part of the binary, but the language suggests the existence of the binary.
non-binary falls under the umbrella of transgender
nonconforming and fluid both do not necessarily mean that only two genders exist
honestly this is a lot more complicated than we need to be going into at this point, as people can be transgender for a LOT of reasons and many of them do not require the existence of a binary
That's true. I didn't mean to imply that these things necessarily indicate the existence of a binary, just that they imply the existence of gender. I consider myself anti-gender, but I suppose believing in a sufficiently large number of genders is roughly equivalent to my idea of a gender free paradise.
You can't just throw this out there just like that without any proper proofs, my friend. And that proofs should be genetics studies, not some statistics that only tell about the situation and that can tell nothing about what causes what.
It might well be a combination of societies teaching men violence as a method of some pseudo-survival as a remnant of our past millennia within our cultures while teaching women to be obedient and fragile dolls and not giving them the platform to be violent.
I don't need to prove anything given I did not make any claims.
That is not what Gaywallet said. They simply said that it is wrong to gender these traits, and did not make the claim that simply de-gendering them will solve things once and for all. You misunderstood the comment.
Correlation is not causation, you should be careful with what you are stating.
How do you know this? What society exists where the social roles are reversed and the incidence rates of violence can be compared?
I wasn't suggesting that those should be the only steps
I would argue that all humans need these things, and we should identify high risk individuals by their traits. One of these traits might be which gender society they have been exposed to or identify with for the majority of their life, I don't know - but we shouldn't be treating the problem like it's isolated to one gender and if we treat it like such we are biasing ourselves and how we investigate the problem and that might end up with us creating a much worse solution than if we had thrown those biases out at the beginning.
100% of males are born and grow up in a male society. Once again, correlation is not causation.
We cannot divorce gender from societal role. I'm not saying we should stick our head in the sand, and at no point did I argue that we shouldn't be primarily targeting people who identify as male or are genetically male. I simply said that we should not limit our focus by applying an artificial lens to how we are examining the problem.
That's wassup.
Wait, I actually need Viagra...
types "masculinity" into Wikipedia
A word I don't see anywhere in this article but is kind of danced around is "empathy."
I think we're in a perfect storm for mass shooters to occur as we dry up the opportunities for people to interact with others outside of their demographic. Capitalism is squeezing more resources from parents away from their kids. Accessible mobile games are getting configured to be as addicting as possible. Technology is (understandably) getting used as a parenting tool, and if kids are spending time on for-profit websites with algorithms that lead them down rabbit-holes, they're going to discover and lean into things that are either affirming or building upon their worldview.
So with those in place, you're spending less time paying attention or being around others. Pair this with the predatory Mercer/Koch/Theil powers who're more than willing to utilize those automated algorithms to further their agenda, the pushing of private schools, systemic racism, and the messaging sent by the NRA, and you've got this narrative that everything you're experiencing it someone else's fault-- who just so happen to be of some other demographic than your own. And because this narrative was pushed to you remotely, and because you're remote from the people the blame is being cast on, your empathy is especially detached, resulting in you being more likely to think less of them as people.
From the article:
A lot of my favorite movies and video games are all about men learning and acting on their empathy: Life is Beautiful, Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, The Last of Us, Logan. Learning and acting on empathy makes for a great message, I think it needs to come back into culture fast.
I also hope more augmented reality games like Pokemon Go get out there, as those have done some wonderful things in breaking down social barriers.
As a brief anecdote: I remember my 2009 realising there was a large number of very angry, disconnected, disaffected young men online. Echoing the article, what I was seeing was people awakening, realising "shits fucked" --- employment, purpose, girls. Everyone felt like they had been lied too. You can't just work hard and do well. You can't be anything you want. You can't get the girl just by being nice.
At the time it wasn't clear what it would lead too; I recall having discussions that maybe some constructive societal changes might happen. Unfortunately this anger has wandered down a dark and violent path.
And honestly I don't feel like anything can be done. Shit really is fucked. Raising class consciousness may have some value: unfortunately most leftist propaganda and protests are stuck decades in the past. Better stories and solutions could help. Meeting girls is hard. In the past, there were large social clubs with regular events and dances. Universities ran mixers. In the US, fraternities had a role teaching boys how to man --- how to dress, how to talk, what to say, to be confident etc. Yes, there were problems with all of these, but it would be nice to see them updated.
But we can't just bring the jobs back. Make life stable again. Poof! Bring communities from nowhere. These issues reflect deep structural flaws in Western societies and collective action is required to build a new system.
(of course, regulating weapons helps with the immediate problem of violence. But not with everything else)
To be honest, I disagree entirely.
A lot of what you explained still exists. Fraternies, mixers, social clubs. The people perpetuating the violence are ostensibly the people that do /not/ use those various events. If you've ever taken a look into the incel communities, they're groups of people that actively shun those events, and increasingly it's members of the incel communities that are committing such wanton acts of violence.
And mind you, from what I've seen these are not people that are disproportionately affected by problems that affect the underemployed, those in poverty etc. These tend to be people that generally had a privileged upbringing, even in comparison to their peers. Why is it that it's predominately white men that commit mass murder in comparison to minorities? Or why is it that people that buy into the idea of white supremacy doing such a thing?
People talk about solving these problems as if it would suddenly make the disaffected white male suddenly stop radicalizing and becoming violent. But the reality is that they've already bought into an incredibly toxic ideology: That every problem they face is the result of The Other. If they can't 'get the girl' (read: an entirely subservient woman), then they become Nice Guys or radicalized like Elliot Rodgers. If they can't get a job, then it's the result of immigrants or minorities taking advantage of equal opportunity programs. And if they can't find a purpose, then their purpose becomes eradicating anyone who isn't white.
These are deep, structural problems that are a result of people suddenly having to come to grips that they might lose something to The Other and their reaction is explosively violent. These can't just be solved by giving them better healthcare or social events or women, because what they want isn't any of those things and they actively shun them. What they want is to exert their dominance.
Oh boy is that true. I have a co-worker with really extreme reactions to anything regarding politics and race because of this. If he comes across a Hispanic person with the slightest hint of an accent, he instantly regards them to be an illegal immigrant who is here to destroy the country. All of his politics are based on this. He blames his current cash-strapped situation on immigrants, even though it is clear that it is because of his poor life decisions. He doesn't trust Democrats in general simply because he groups them all together and says they are all for Open Borders.
But the worst thing about this way of thinking is that it is fundamentally linked to his negative experiences - something I have gotten to only after months of conversations with him. That means that there is no way to challenge those beliefs without causing him some emotional distress.
And I guess that's the greatest problem. The basis of hate is fear. These people have built their lives around that fear. So the only way I can see to help them see how much of a problem their actions are is to give them all therapy. And that's not exactly a scalable solution.
That's an interesting perspective. I think to some extent I agree, and I suspect we could explain differences in our conclusions from differences in the specifics of who we're observing and the communities we're in. For example, here in Aus there are very few socialisation opportunities for nerdy guys, especially outside the major cities.
I'd like to emphasise my observations have been (informally so) over a decade or so. People don't just wake up and become an incel, or a white nationalist, or whatever toxic ideology. I would like to argue that what's happening now has been brewing for years. And likely exacerbated by the usual laundry list of politicians and Internet celebrities pushing a bigoted agenda.
I suppose it's really not too surprising young American men are shooting up places. As the article points out people socialize less in school. Religion is bogus, so there's no community there. Technology seems to isolate us more than bring us together. Social Media consistently depresses us, and modern dating often involves climbing a mountain of rejection. Put that together with gun loving American culture, disillusionment with our leaders, and republicans being hate filled assholes. Young men are practically destined to become radicalized and violent. There's nobody to support them and easy to access "communities" such as incels that let hate fester.
As for what to do with them I imagine you can improve all sorts of things and young men's hate would at least fall below the threshold of constantly shooting up places. But good luck improving the government, creating more humane technology, or giving people access to a new social support structure. These were long problems in the making and they will take long term cultural and political changes to fix. So for the foreseeable future there will continue to be shootings.
I'm reminded of the famous study conducted in like 1980 that followed the disintegration of bowling clubs around the US. "Bowling Alone." As our technology as allowed us more and more choice about who we associate with, people are getting left out and behind. People who maybe in 1950 wouldn't have had to choose what group to associate. Their choice would've been made for them by their parents and by their school and by their zip codes.
In one sense it's not surprising that a class of young people coming up radicalize as they choose associations that radicalize and prey on people's worst impulses toward their fellow neighbors. In another sense, it's kind of surprising that it clusters the way it has. That suggests that the transition we've been going through as a society over the past few decades is leaving people out based on a particular demographic: young men, many of whom are white.
Some people are going to hate others no matter what we do. That much is pretty much like giving uphill against an avalanche. But if there's a clear demographic trend involved, that gives us a different set of issues to try to address. Maybe there's some sort of storycrafting we can do for young men that can help make sure less of them are so disillusioned with the broader society that they believe going out with a bang is preferable to the malaise they might otherwise feel caught in.
Just to let you know, this was a great comment. Thinking of reading Bowling Alone when I get the chance. Thanks.
Not much, IMO. Well, at a mental / social level, not much apart from breaking up patriarchy and freeing men and women from it, that is. And that is where we'll eventually end up, but there is no way that'll happen in a revolutionary manner: we'll need time, as change spreads and as generations are replaced. No shortcuts there.
The most important, easiest, and most effective thing to do is to just not let people have firearms. Yes, there will always be illegal trafficking, but in comparison with grabbing a gun from some relative's or friend's house, that's good enough a barrier for a large enough a group of potential murderers. Next up might be the authorities becoming a bit more stingy when it comes to spewing out driver's licences. I struggle to see much good reason letting this many people have big huge metal projectiles that they run around in freely.
Maybe it's the internet's fault? I'm not being sarcastic, by the way.
I think that's a large part of it, but not the root cause. I think the internet is a powerful tool and that it is being used to influence the minds of people. Influence is an age old practice and it has been refined into a razors edge with the internet.
Any discussion about gun control is simply attacking the symptom and not the cause. Moving deeper into the issue you see that mental health is the soil that the seed of radicalization is planted in. Someone can't flip his shit if they're balanced on the inside.
So I think we need to take it another step further by asking a couple questions. Why are people so angry? And who is nurturing the ideas of violence in the minds of these radicalized and unbalanced young men?
In my opinion, although some of the anger comes from isolated situations, the major source of the anger is like @Happy_Shredder said, "shits fucked"! He's right in many ways. The Great Recession showed us how corruption was rampant and will continue to go unchecked at the expense of the masses. But I also think the reason for this anger goes on and on if we take a good look at our government.
As for "Who is nurturing this radicalization?" I'm afraid to really put a finger on this for the sake of sounding crazy and conspiratorial, but there are powers in this world that have mastered the art of sewing discord in target groups (ie CIA & KGB).
By the way, I love the paradox of your name and how it uses observer bias.
I very much disagree there. IMO radicalization can happen to even perfectly "sane/balanced" people through enough exposure to propaganda designed to scapegoat and dehumanize the "others" in societies. We have seen that play out time and time again in genocides, pogroms, and the like, throughout history. And while mental health certainly plays a part, so too does social isolation, lack of education/critical thinking skills, income inequality/economic instability leading to despair, etc.
And as someone who struggles with mental illness myself, I am especially wary of any suggestions that single it out and thus further the stigma against the mentally ill, especially when study after study has shown that people living with mental health conditions are no more likely to engage in violent behaviour than the general population, and in fact those suffering from serious mental illness are actually much more likely to be the victims of violence. -Source (which also discusses the various factors which are know to contribute to violent behavior)
They've always been angry and the internet nurtures these feelings to an extend not previously possible? I mean, it's always valuable not to jump to conclusions but I'm not seeing a lot of jumping, to be honest. It seems to me a lot of people who spend time on websites like Tildes still have a very idealistic, defensive stance when it comes to "blaming the internet" and I would include myself in that group (kinda playing devil's advocate, here).
So I'd say it's kinda the outsider opinion to genuinely, as someone who is kinda familiar with the positives and negatives of internet communities, blame the very concept of the internet for a lot of weird trends that have a net negative impact on society. The Russian fake news wave is a mainstream example but having places like 8chan, incel forums and whatnot might be another thing that's not really compatible with a healthy society and needs actual counter-measures. The end game is government regulation, which is already happening, and that's dangerous and probably driven by reactionary, populists pushes. So I think Cloudfare dropping their hosting service is a better signal. At one point, you can smoke out communities like that as they depend on hosting companies, advertising companies or even services like Patreon or Kickstarter.
The only real argument against banning hateful communities is that it's "useless", i.e. that they'd just open up in a different spot, under a different name or hosting service, maybe eventually as some dark web place or something. But there's a signal in forcing them underground. A lot of people seem to be coming into these communities just feeling curious, probably a lot of teenagers, college age guys looking for something edgy, etc, and get radicalized over time. It's absurdly easy to find a place on the internet where incels openly discuss their arguments for murdering women. I partially arrived at this stance from an article on incel forums that was posted on Tildes once, which linked one of their sites and it's absolute bizarro land. Like, every other poster has the image of a serial killer. Which also brings us to how news organizations report on these incidents: I know the faces of many of the most notorious mass shooters out there because their names and faces get plastered everywhere. Maybe we could start with a policy forbidding news organizations from releasing the names and images of shooters so they can't be idolized so easily.
Anyway, I'm just kinda disturbed by the openness with which the internet allows mass shooters to be publicly praised and encouraged. That will have consequences. And I'd rather see some self-regulation by companies who have the power to do so than seeing it going on for long enough to provoke short sighted laws that deal with it through sweeping bans and mass surveillance. I think it's inevitable that the internet gets some blame in this and will be forced to change, one way or another.
This, exactly, is why this is so important.
I feel like this was a fantasy now, but when I was a kid, it was basically a mortal sin to express racist sentiment. Why isn't that the case now?
My theory is that the world changed when the internet became commonplace. Racism was not as taboo across the globe as it was in my local society. Of course, the internet as a whole isn't the problem, it was the shocking number of people who were willing to accommodate racist speech. Most provider of internet services and access do not require antiracist action, after all.
Perhaps the worst part of it all are these large social media platforms that are unable or unwilling to properly moderate their forums. And even then I think that moderation should go further than it usually does; content should not only be removed, but a public notice should be posted explaining who is being punished for what. People behave better in real life because they are ultimately socially accountable for their actions; the internet should not be any different.
It's because the internet has basically eliminated the "social shame" aspect of it by enabling insular communities to form around ideas that previously would have been shot down mercilessly.
To use a less fraught example, take flat-earthers. Previously, if you somehow came up with the idea that the earth was actually flat, whenever you tried to bring that up to someone they probably would have laughed at you and/or explained to you why it's a completely ridiculous belief. After a few attempts, most people would realize that the idea is nonsense and isn't accepted. They'd probably give up on it, or at least learn that it's something they have to keep to themselves and be somewhat ashamed of. They'd also never see it being treated seriously anywhere on TV, in newspapers, etc.
But now with the internet, that person can just go immediately find some flat-earth Facebook group or subreddit, and they're immediately surrounded by hundreds or thousands of other people that validate their belief. It doesn't matter if the group is made up of 0.01% of people around the world, only that there are "enough" people in the community that it feels like the idea must be reasonably accepted. If anyone tries to come in and contradict them, they'll be swarmed by the whole group, and often just banned entirely.
The group all builds off each other and it becomes harder to ever see any contradicting evidence than to just keep the mistaken belief. People's identities often end up getting tied together with being a part of the community too, which makes them even more unlikely to look at anything opposed to it. See the recent When Having Friends is More Alluring Than Being Right article I posted, which I think is a good coverage of it.
Flatearthers are an excellent example! I saw that documentary on Netflix “Behind the Curve” and it was eye opening. I honestly expected to just laugh at people who think the earth is flat but there was a surprisingly strong message about the power of belonging. It explains so many baffling trends.
But if someone does flip their shit, do you want them turning violent with an AK-47 or a hunting knife?
I agree that mental illness is an important contributor to mass shootings, and that we all (Americans and Australians and others) need to put more money and time and effort into helping people maintain and restore their mental health.
However, I'd rather face a crazy person with a knife than a crazy person with a machine gun.
Well, although I agree that someone going postal with a bowie knife is less a threat than an AK-47, I feel that your example is not a fair assessment of what can happen even if we remove all 400 million guns out of the US (that alone is almost impossible).
People don't stop taking out their anger on others just because guns aren't available. The Palestinian suicidal bombers come to mind immediately, and they weren't one off occurrences either. They spanned from the late 1980's to the late 2000's and happened at bus stations, in crowded busses (one was a school bus), at airports, train stations, check points, by people just riding bikes along a crowded street, in schools, at busy street markets, at restaurants, shopping malls, hotel lobbies, medical centers, universities, hospitals, durring religious ceremonies, and even intensified with cars packed with explosives.
But even if we think that bombings like what happens in Israel and of the like we saw in Oklahoma City, in the lower garage of the World Trade Towers in 93, and the Boston Marathon are not probable. Then we should keep in mind that people get creative and remember that 10 people died in the Toronto Van Ramming attack.
Removing guns will not solve the cause of the attacks. People will still flip their shit one way or another. Gun control will just change the method of attacks. And in my opinion, the idea of people in a mall wearing explosives, or vans blowing up like in Oklahoma City is far scarier than a gun.
You're absolutely, totally, entirely right: removing guns will not solve the cause of the attacks. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. I totally agree. However, people with guns kill more people than people without guns. Removing guns - or just reducing guns - will make it harder for people to commit mass murder.
Fixing the societal and psychological issues which cause someone to flip their shit, as you say, will take years if not decades. It might even take a generation or two. Some people believe that it is the structure of our society itself which is causing a general increase in mental illness throughout the western world. We're not going to change that overnight. That's a long-term mission.
And, if you're talking about it being difficult to remove Americans' hold on guns, imagine how difficult it would be to get them to make their society fairer and more inclusive! Getting the Americans to reduce income inequality and eliminate racism will not be an easy task.
However... while they (and we other westerners) undertake that long-term mission to reform society... people are still going to be damaged by society's problems. People are still going to flip their shit. People are still going to want to commit mass murder.
What do you propose Americans should do for that 30-50 year period while they're reforming their society to reduce the psychological pressure on their citizens which causes some of them to flip their shit? Should they just continue to endure the regular mass murders that will continue to happen (almost literally every day) until the long-term problem is solved? Or should they also look for a quick fix to reduce the number of mass murders in the short term?
To use an analogy: if you have a long-term chronic illness which is causing you a lot of pain, would you want to take painkillers while the months of treatment are taking place to cure you, or would you continue to endure the pain until the treatment is complete?
it won't, but the purpose of such a measure isn't to solve the cause, which i think is what you're missing. it's to make it harder to kill people, which is easy to accomplish if you make it much harder to access guns. sure, someone can theoretically get explosives and suicide bomb a mall or something in place of using a gun--but do you know how hard it is to get explosives to begin with, much less learn how to: (1) create any type of explosive device powerful enough to do significant damage to a target; (2) successfully wire up and rig that explosive powerful; (3) do all of this without also attracting three letter agency attention? there's a reason suicide bombers and bombers in the west in general are usually well connected and have institutional backing, and it's because those kinds of attacks are hard to pull off.
gun are almost as easy to get as water in some parts of america and easy to retrofit for maximum killing potential in a way that won't get any attention, and that's why it's so easy to kill people in attacks like this. conversely, it becomes exponentially harder to commit mass murder like this if you don't have a gun on hand.
Again, I can't deny the fact that easy access to guns is a serious problem. And I agree that making it harder to get guns is a very important aspect of providing a comprehensive solution to this mass shooting epidemic. But my point is that focusing solely on gun control as the main solution is missing the forest for the tree. Gun control is needed, but that alone will just make this problem evolve into some other form of domestic terrorism.
One, you are completely right about bombings being far more difficult to perform and realistically will be far fewer than mass shootings. I only mentioned the sucide bombing as a possible alternative to mass shooting because it was the extreme opposite option of the alternative option of bowie knife attacks you mentioned. Realisticly, people will find easier ways, maybe something in the middle. Because even if we remove all the guns and accept that bombing will not be as prevalent, it still doesn't change the fact that people will constantly find ways to do these terrible mass killings. It's just human nature to find a way to achieve their goal. For instance, I mentioned earlier about the Toronto Van Ramming attack and I looked into it to learn a little more about the the incident. And I was actually really surprised that vehicle based attacks has been happened through the years. Looking into that Toronto event led me to this Wikipedia page where I learned not only that it's been a thing since 1973, but that it's an occurrence that is on the rise. In fact, the FBI is quoted as saying "Vehicle ramming offers terrorists with limited access to explosives or weapons an opportunity to conduct a homeland attack with minimal prior training or experience." in Israel. Also, this tactic makes it easy for "lone wolf" attacks. Actually, the entire section titled Causes propelling the rise of the tactic pretty much explains and gives examples of how alternative terrorist attacks are currently on the rise and will be on the rise in places where other terrorist attack methods have been controlled.
Two, that wiki section alone shows that we should look deeper into the causes of these attacks. We crucially need to look into and understand what is flipping the switch in the minds of these individuals to do these things. We need to take a step back and lean more about the problem instead of knee-jerk reactions like all out gun control. Only then can we really put together an effective plan of action. I just listened to an intering news segment on NPR about copycat terrorism. They postulated that one cause of these attacks is the media coverage and that these events are contagious. I think that's obvious and the reason we have the adage of "Monkey see, monkey do". But that leads to my point thst mental health is at least a good start in the right direction for solving these mass shootings.
Three, removing guns or severely restricting guns in America is recipe for disaster. But first, let me be clear. Some type of sensible gun law reform is necessary, and also that I'm not a pro-gun owner that believes everyone should have a handgun or rifle. Everyone having a gun is the worst idea ever. There are so many people that should never even be close to a gun. But that's where I'm going with this. Some are so mentally ill prepared, unstable, or simply so ardent for gun ownership that I can see hold-outs happening where groups of people will defend their "right to keep and bear arms" and die for that right. Especially in this current state of American culture. I can conceivably see the rumblings of civil war in rural America if we tighten the strings of gun control too hard. But what I really fear is more probable is the slow degradation of the American Bill of Rights. America was, after all, founded by radicals and militants that forcibly took their right to self govern from another country and saw it fit to make the rights we now have as constitutional law. Guns in particular were at the center of that revolution and those American Founding Fathers were willing to die for that freedom. They also realized that the final check and balance to absolute and tyrannical rule was the civilian with a gun that can form a "well regulated malitia". Seriously, this is such a complex and heavy issue to unpack. Personally, I still wonder how relevant that idea is today. I wonder if our government ever does become oppressive, would we even be able to defend ourselves with just a handful of guns? Geez, that's unbelievably terrifying. But let's all hope our government never gets as bad as China and what we saw in Tiananmen Square. As a side note, I pray Hong Kong resolved their protests peaceable. But back to our issue, even if our government never becomes tyrannical, and we never need or can realisticly use guns to put the government in check, changing the Bill of Rights, or severely restricting guns can create precedent for other changes and can cause a cascade of unintended problems. This is not an unrealistic fear if rights are beginning to be erroded. Sooo... back to gun-control legislation. This is a crucial and complex issue to resolve just on its own and not even taking consideration of the actual cause of domestic terrorism.
Curtailing gun access, even eliminating guns, will only change the nature of the attacks. We can not get stuck on gun control as the main answer to our problem. Spending more time discussing how to restrict access to guns is necessary, but a red herring, and takes away valuable time and efforts from addressing the root cause. I am not pro Trump. I am not pro Republican. I just want the truth and the facts so we can figure out the best future for us all.
...again, the purpose of such a measure isn't to solve the cause. i don't know why you're talking about stopping the problem at its roots when the point of gun control isn't to literally stop the problem at its roots, it's to make sure when it is a problem 50 people aren't getting cut down like cordwood because any dipshit with a few thousand to blow can buy a semi-auto and retrofit it to fire 100 bullets a minute and accordingly mow down any gathering of people. now, are there people who present it that way? sure, but those people are in the minority from my experience. most people just want to make it so that we don't have 200 mass shootings, 14,000 homicides and 30,000 suicides by gun a year, and the obvious way to do that is gun control.
sure, but again most people don't know how to make a truck bomb and would be on a list if they tried to make one, most people aren't going to be able to drive a car into a crowd like someone can bring a gun into a crowd and start spraying, and you're certainly not going to be able to cut people down with a knife like you can with a semi-auto. people might always try to commit mass murder, but there are quantitative measures that can be taken to mitigate the possibility and severity of such events, and the obvious solution in most regards is again gun control because guns are far and away the most common weapon used in attacks like this because of their ability to murder large numbers of people with ease and the convenience of getting one.
you know, people like to trot this out but i have never understood why exactly it's a knee-jerk reaction to mitigate the possibility of someone capable of committing such an act of violence from being able to do so by taking out of their hands the vector through which they do so. that "knee-jerk reaction" worked pretty well for australia, because the last time they had a mass shooting with more than 5 fatalities was over a decade ago, and there have been less than five in the UK and scotland since they took similar actions. if anything, it's knee-jerk to act like it's acceptable for this state of affairs to continue when we know such punitive actions against guns work to mitigate these tragedies in other countries because "we need to know more about the underlying problems" as if we can't do that while also ensuring that, while we figure out the causes of such things, they don't continue to occur.
aside from the fact that this is a meme which has been dunked on repeatedly because the american government is the most complex and powerful military in the world and would realistically annihilate any sort of armed resistance to the government (unless it itself was leading said resistance), the current interpretation of the second amendment by the supreme court is mostly based on two court rulings from 2008 and 2010 so, not exactly a long standing precedent here. also it's very strange to take issue with "changing the bill of rights" when the constitution is explicitly designed to be a living document to be amended and reinterpreted as necessary--like, being changable is the point of the constitution, and it's why it's amendable (hence the 27 amendments to the
bill of rightsoriginal articles, including... the second amendment) and part of why the supreme court even exists (to interpret what its clauses mean among other things, which is how things like desegregation were won).this does not follow inherently, and people are not especially stuck on gun control as the main answer to the problem. it is, again, meant to curtail the damage that can be done by such attacks in the first place.