The Angry Young Man Problem
Violence is an overwhelmingly male endeavor. Is there any way to fix that?
This weekend, three horrific crimes have stunned the American public: The anti-Semitic massacre of at least 15 Jews during a Hannukah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney; the mass shooting at Brown University, which killed two students and injured nine more; and the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, a crime for which their son Nick has been arrested.
These killings have one thing in common, and it’s something they share with the large majority of murders worldwide: They were committed by men.
A suspect has yet to be apprehended in the Brown university shooting, which is scary and, in a modern era of cameras and policing, surprising. But witnesses have universally described the gunman as just that – a man. The men who carried out the Bondi Beach massacre are a father-son duo. Nick Renner is the 32-year-old son of Rob and Michele.
It is not particularly shocking that these killers are men, because most killers are men. It’s a fact so widely understood it seems silly to even point out that men make up 90% of murderers. But as we talk about the “boy crisis” and crises of masculinity and the rise of the reactionary male right – not to mention the politics and meaning of gender itself – it behooves us to understand why violence is such a male endeavor, and what we might be able to do to lessen it.
