Boys, Masculinity, and School Violence

Understanding the Link between Masculinity and Violence

In this paper the author explores the relationship between masculinity and violence. She begins by pointing out that although all of the recent school shootings in the US have been perpetrated by boys, very few are associating the acts with the gender of the offenders. Perhaps this connection is not made because society is so conditioned to the fact that men and boys have always made up the preponderance of violent offenders in the US. In this paper the attitudes and behaviors associated with the socially constructed culture of masculinity that lend themselves to male violence and aggression are explored. It includes a discussion of a Freirean approach to the problem and concludes with practical suggestions for transformation.

1. 19 February 1997: Bethel, Alaska: Evan Ramsey, 16, shoots and kills his high school principal and a classmate and wounds two others (Rage: a look at a  teen killer, 2001, March 7).

2. 1 October 1997: Pearl, Mississippi: Luke Woodham, 16, opens fire at his high  school, killing three and wounding seven after fatally shooting his mother (Teen guilty in Mississippi shooting rampage, 1998, June 12).

3. 1 December 1997: West Paducah, Kentucky: Michael Carneal, 14, shoots and kills three at a high school devotional meeting (Bradis, 1997, December 2).

4. 15 December 1997: Stamps, Arkansas: Joseph Todd, 14, shoots and wounds two  students (‘Two students wounded’, 1997).

5. 24 March 1998: Jonesboro, Arkansas: Mitchell Johnson, 13 and Andrew Golden, 11, gun down four classmates and a teacher (White & Cofer, 1998, April 1).

6. 24 April 1998: Edinborough, Pennsylvania: Andrew Wurst, 14, shoots and kills a teacher who was chaperoning a school dance (Ramsland, 2007).

7. 19 May 1998: Fayetteville, Tennessee: Jacob Davis, 18, opens fire at his high school, killing a classmate (School killer described by witnesses as Asian male, around 19 years old, 2007).

8. 21 May 1998: Springfield, Oregon: Kip Kinkel, 15, opens fire at his high school, wounding 22 and killing two after fatally shooting his parents (Daw, 1998, August/ September).

9. 15 June 1998: Richmond, Virginia: Quinshawn Booker, 14, opens fire in his high school, wounding a teacher and a volunteer (Daw, 1998, August/September).

10. 20 April 1999: Littleton, Colorado: Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, shoot  and kill 12 students and a teacher and then kill themselves (Daw, 1998, August/ September).

Exploring Attitudes and Behaviors Contributing to Male Aggression

11. 20 May 1999: Conyers, Georgia: Thomas Solomon, 15, opens fire at Heritage High School, wounding six students (‘Four shot’, 1999).

12. 6 December 1999: Fort Gibson, Oklahoma: Seth Trickey, 13, opens fire at his school and wounds four students (Ruble, 1999, December 6).

13. 29 February 2000: Mount Morris, Michigan: A 7-year-old boy shoots and fatally wounds a 6-year-old classmate (Dickerson, 2000, March 6).

14. 26 May 2000: Lake Worth, Florida: Nathaniel Brazill, 13 kills his English teacher after he was refused admission to the class to speak to friends (Gandhi, 2000, September/October).

15. 24 April 2003: Red Lion, Pennsylvania: 14-year-old James Sheets shoots and kills five classmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard at his rural high school, then takes his own life (Toiv, 2003).

16.21 March 2005: Red Lake Indian Reservation, Minnesota: Student Jeff Weise shoots and kills five classmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard at his rural high school, then takes his own life (Gunderson, 2005).

17. 29 September 2006: Cazenovia, Wisconsin: Eric Hainstock, 15, retaliates for receiving a tobacco disciplinary referral and shoots and kills the principal (Erskine, 2006).

Although few people seemed to have noticed it, a very clear and frightening pattern has emerged among the incidents of violence taking place in America’s schools. The pattern is so disturbing that it demands serious explanation and intensive study. The startling commonality among all of these senseless and tragic incidents of school violence is that each and every one was perpetrated by one or more boys. (And in almost every case the offender or offenders are also White and middle class.) These are not cases of kids killing kids. These are cases of boys killing boys and boys killing girls and boys killing teachers (Katz & Jhally, 1999, May 2). Katz and Jhally (1999) raise an interesting question when they ask what the public’s reactions would be if these crimes had been committed by girls rather than boys. Make no mistake about it, the public would immediately connect gender with the crimes. We would all be questioning how it could possibly be that girls would commit such heinous acts.

As it stands, very few people are asking what is happening to our boys to cause such violent behavior. Also, are we not surprised that these crimes have been perpetrated by White males rather than Black males? Haven’t we all seen that ‘representations of violence are largely portrayed through forms of racial coding that suggest violence is a Black

A Freirean Approach to the Problem of School Violence

problem, a problem outside White suburban America?’ (Giroux, 1996, p. 66). I, forBoys, masculinity and school violence 731 one, could easily imagine the public’s immediate determination of a racial common denominator among the acts of school violence. But because the offenders are middle class, White males, the general public cannot seem to make the connection between the masculine culture and the crimes. Perhaps it is because we are so used to the fact that males have always made up the preponderance of violent offenders.

states ‘The claim that men commit most acts of physical violence is possibly the nearest that criminology has come to producing an indisputable fact’ (p. 36). According to the National Committee on Violence 1990, ‘men are responsible for 80% of homicides’ (Ollis & Tomaszewski, 1993) and ‘men and boys are responsible for 95% of all violent crimes in this country’ (Kimmel, 1999). So we are now witnessing this violent behavior in adolescent or even younger males. And we are blaming the violent acts of these boys on ‘the easy accessibility of guns, the lack of parental supervision, the culture of peer-group exclusion and teasing, or the prevalence of media violence’ (Katz & Jhally, 1999). Girls have the same accessibility to guns, are exposed to the same media violence, undergo their own form of peer-group exclusion and teasing and also experience a lack of parental supervision, but are they bringing guns to school and gunning down teachers and classmates? Not that I can see. Could it truly  be that this trend among boys is emerging because they are boys?

There are those of us who will point to the biological differences between boys and girls as culprits of the male violence phenomenon. According to Kindlon and Thompson (2000), testosterone has become the ‘buzzword for masculinity and a popular explanation for all boy attributes’ (p. 13). However, they go on to say that ‘a recent review of scientific studies of preadolescent and early adolescent boys concludes that the research literature “provides no evidence of an association between testosterone and aggressive behavior”’ (p. 13, Tremblay et al. as cited in Kindlon & Thompson, 2000). Further evidence has been obtained by numerous other researchers who have examined various culturally distinct groups such as the Amish, the Semoi of Malaysia and the Hutterite brethren, who have reputations for nonviolence and peacefulness. The men of these groups have virtually no history of aggression or violence (Kindlon & Thompson, 2000). These studies can only lead us to believe that boys and men are not destined to be aggressive because they are males, but rather they become so because they are raised to be so.

We are all aware of the segregation of boys and girls that now begins even before they are born. We want to know what the sex of our child is before he or she is born so that we can begin thinking about how we are going to treat him or her. Boys and girls are given ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ names, clothing styles and toys. Step into any toy store and the male/female dichotomy is clearly evident. The girls’ section contains dolls, dishes, irons, brooms and other items designed to reflect and maintain the traditional domesticated behaviors and attitudes assigned to females while the aisles housing toys for boys resemble arsenals with vast arrays of toy guns, knives, handcuffs, soldiers, wrestlers and monsters. Many of us continue to teach our daughters to be passive, noncompetitive and ‘ladylike’ while we teach our sons to be aggressive, competitive and unemotional. We envision young boys as being mischievous, rowdy and rambunctious.