TOUGH IT OUT

"Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."— Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird

There might be lots of ways of being tough. Shrug off an insult. Think before reacting. Allow for a difference of opinion. Or maybe it only means getting in the first punch?

Characters played by John Wayne set the paradigm in the last generation for what it means to be a "real man": tough, strong, slow to talk, fast to shoot and hit, protective of helpless women and his dignity, determined not only to win but to beat opponents into the earth. The Duke's professional persona represented other qualities too, but today I'm thinking of the way he won with his fists or a gun.

A conservative think tank study based on data from Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, and Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, 2011, shows how U.S. patterns of violence have been changing. It's only statistics, but the numbers are compelling. Men have historically been responsible for most crime and nearly all violent crime in our country. But since the 70s, studies show that men, in particular, are becoming less violent, that while men are still more likely to commit crimes and to be imprisoned, the difference in rates of offenses between  Blacks and Whites, and between men and women have declined since the start of the feminist movement four decades ago. Black Americans still are at a disadvantage in our country, but the situation is surely better than it was in the 60s. I would suggest that as roles for both women and men have opened up and the stereotype of the tough man has somewhat faded, so has the frightening relationship between men and crime.

Apparently we’re not out of the woods yet. According to a recent essay, "The Unbearable Whiteness of Suicide-By-Mass-Murder," on the HuffPost crime blog, most mass murders in these same recent decades are still committed by citizens who are male… and white. Michael Kimmel and Cliff Leek review the contributing factors most often discussed—guns, violent media, and mental illness—and then insist there’s more: “There are at least two more elements of this equation of what can only be described as ‘suicide by mass murder’ that have to be weighed judiciously alongside guns, mental illness and violence in media. These often unspoken elements are gender and race.” For too long we’ve ignored the obvious, that the killers are usually white and male.

These two (male) writers aren't talking about the past or the Congo. They aren't saying mass murder is something new or something unique to the US. They are reviewing statistics of recent events here in our country and in similar cultures showing that nearly every mass killing in recent decades has been committed, like most serial killings, by white males. And, like the fact that most child molesters are heterosexual white males, and that nearly all domestic violence comes from men, this statistical evidence suggests that we, as a society should consider what might be going wrong for some people. Until recently we have been unwilling to acknowledge this pattern might also suggest a problem.

Are the figures cited by the authors the result of manipulation or a statistical anomaly? Remember Twain's "three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." In this case, no, the numbers aren't being manipulated. It's pretty straight forward reporting. I don't think Kimmel and Leek propose "solutions" (though I might), but their observations do suggest a connection between encouraging boys to respond with anger and glamorizing "retribution" as a response to any offense, as possible contributors to “suicide by mass murder”. They find evidence that our culture not only tolerates violence from boys and men but actually encourages it. They are arguing not that there is anything wrong with white men in our culture, but that the culture itself is probably doing something unhealthy to white boys and men.

I see that connection. In fact, I see other connections beyond what the authors explore. For example, Stiffed by Susan Faludi examines about how much harder it is for a group to find their position in society dropping from the penthouse to the middle of the building while others are crawling up from the basement to the first floor. Even though it is still not a level playing field, one demographic senses itself losing power, while the other is gaining. This might explain why so many men take their anger, fear, and resentment out on women, but it might also might explain the observations of  Kimmel and Leek, who point out something similar. While as a society we understand a repressed group expressing their anger in violence, we have failed to acknowledge that the dominant group also is acting out. That is, for example, while we recognize some black anger as the result of societal pressure, we have failed to recognize that white violence might also be the result of societal pressure.

A five-year government study of violence in schools K-college shows almost 70% of offenders were aged 13-18 years of age and nearly 77% were male. Most were also white, about 71%, though this is not disproportionate to their percentage of the population, as it is in the study of Kimmel and Leek. Blacks were 24% of offenders and all other races comprised only 2% of offenders. While the relationship between offender and victim is not usually reported, among these where it is, offenses against strangers are rare, a little over 7%. It’s the enemy we know. Young children were rarely offenders, and older people also represented a much smaller percentage, but most were committed by males.

A study from Australia looks at “What Causes Crime” and concludes that there “is no single factor or set of factors which causes an individual to become involved in crime. Being a criminal is not like having a disease.” But they do find contributing factors including parenting, “association with delinquent peers and alcohol,” and location in “crime-prone neighborhoods with poverty, unemployment, and income inequality.” The researchers fail to point out the obvious: as in the United States, the majority of crime in Australia, especially violent crime, is committed by men. White men.

And that looks bad for men, if we think about it. 

Perhaps we are unwilling to look at the correlation between men and violent crimes because we assume that correlation is natural and immutable.

Are men incapable of behaving properly and only woman are kind and gentle? Some people believe we are born with such sex-linked proclivities. As a feminist, I object. I see human potential as more variable. Men can be more than what the old stereotype of John Wayne-toughness depicts. Heck, even John Wayne was more than that in real life. Much of what we see as sex-linked behavior, especially when it comes to violence, is taught. We don’t deliberately raise our boys to be violent offenders, but I think we’ve managed to accomplish it anyway. All my life through personal communication and through the media, in every avenue my culture has of instilling values, I’ve watched boys being deliberately taught to tough it out, settle it once and for all, hit back...harder, and get even. Manliness, according to some = being tough and by that is meant to be willing to use violence to settle a problem. Maybe that problem is a verbal disagreement, or insults, or unfairness, or maybe it's just disappointment or depression. Girls are told to talk things out, to think before acting. Boys often receive a somewhat different lesson, that they must act and act quickly. If that’s the role we want our boys to swallow, maybe it’s time to admit that such a meal comes with a nasty sideorder of violence.

Unless we want to write off half the human population as inherently criminal, we might want to consider that we aren’t doing boys any favors by raising them to be that kind of tough. We might even choose to point to a popular fictional character, Atticus Finch, as a finer model of toughness.