It's Maddening Gender is Still Not Central in Mass Shootings Debate

It’s Maddening Gender is Still Not Central in Mass Shootings Debate


How many more lonely, alienated, disconnected, (usually) white males perpetrating murder and then suicide need we witness before admitting the irrefutable fact that the shooters are all male?
Rob Okun
May 27, 2022


I’m beyond fed up that the gender of the murderers is still mostly under the radar in confronting America’s mass shootings crisis. In Uvalde, Texas, just as in Buffalo, N.Y., the shooters were both 18 year-old males. As of this writing, the motive in the Uvalde rampage hasn’t been determined; in Buffalo, the racism and white supremacy were explicit. In either case, we ignore the shooters’ gender at our peril.

Yes, let’s tighten restrictions on poisonous hate speech on social media, and it’s imperative we conduct threat assessment evaluations. It’s also urgent that we enact gun control regulations. We must also deconstruct racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynist, white supremacist manifestos. But if we do all that—and continue to minimize or ignore how these killers were socialized as boys and men—mass shootings will continue to plague us. We have to start in preschool, carefully attending to how boys are socialized. We must cultivate their emotional intelligence. Who would deny the value of educating boys to examine their inner lives; to talk about their feelings?

Who in Congress is going to introduce legislation calling on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to conduct a nationwide study on how we socialize boys? Who is going to push for a comprehensive, multiyear pilot program with preschool boys in Head Start? The data amassed will help not only reshape our understanding of boys and men, but also could ultimately transform masculinity.

The shooters’ gender has been woefully underrepresented in the national conversation about mass shootings. But it’s not for lack of effort. Consider this small sampling:

. . . . . .

The young men who slaughtered children in Uvalde, and African Americans in Buffalo, were raised in a society ill-equipped to prevent them from being infected with a virulent strain of TGV, tough guy virus. Any vaccine being developed to treat it must include healthy male antibodies if we’re ever to reach herd immunity and prevent mass shootings. And, in order to create those antibodies, the CDC must be authorized to lead a national campaign to reinvent manhood, beginning with boys.

https://womensenews.org/2022/05/its-maddening-gender-is-still-not-central-in-mass-shootings-debate/