Interesting take on violence

[cattygurl]

This does not take into account the racial aspects to the VA case, but a very interesting read from a very different angle.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041907P.shtml

[nskripchun]

Interesting article, catty... thx for posting it.

The part I zoomed in on:

But a close look at the patterns of murderous violence in the U.S. reveals some remarkable consistencies, wherever the individual atrocities may have occurred. In case after case, decade after decade, the killers have been shown to be young men riddled with shame and humiliation, often bitterly misogynistic and homophobic, who have decided that the way to assert their faltering sense of manhood and get the respect they have been denied is to go out and shoot somebody.

Dr. James Gilligan, who has spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts, and as a professor at Harvard and now at N.Y.U., believes that some debilitating combination of misogyny and homophobia is a "central component" in much, if not most, of the worst forms of violence in this country.

"What I've concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal," he said, "is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one's manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act."

Violence is commonly resorted to as the antidote to the disturbing emotions raised by the widespread hostility toward women in our society and the pathological fear of so many men that they aren't quite tough enough, masculine enough - in short, that they might have homosexual tendencies.

I think it's a pretty accurate generalization that many killers / rapists engage in violent acts because of their own feelings of powerlessness / victimization - there's a twisted logic to their idea that self-empowerment can be achieved by taking another person's life / inflicting harm.

It seems that's it's a bit more of a stretch of logic to conclude that many killers / rapists are acting out on feelings of homophobia, tho. I think it's maybe just as valid to theorize that their thinking might fall along the lines that "I'm supposed to be a 'man', but I'm not... what does that make me? Inhuman? A monster? Nothing at all?"

[cattygurl]

I think homophobia is mentioned because generally, homophobia is often a byproduct of misogyny, and often, although not always, come hand-in-hand.

I found the article interesting because this angle is rarely discussed in the major arena, and i think it deserves discussion at the very least.

[theme]

I'm not sure how prevalent the notion is, but I first heard them try to connect the rampant violent shootings and etc. with the perp's struggles with their own masculinity when that guy shot up the Amish school. At the time i just thought some guy was trying to hype up an impending book release, but it seems like a more and more accepted 'theory'.

It's still really hard to grasp, but considering that the great majority of violent crimes, and especially true of mass murders, have been committed by males. Thus it's very easy to conclude that these crimes and masculinity, or a lack thereof, is a big factor.