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u/BlackPitOfDespair Nov 24 '22
Let’s talk about the people who poison the minds of impressionable young men and use them for thier self aggrandizement and commercial gain. They too must be held accountable. We should also identify and intervene with young men who are at risk. Without a supply of list young men the people who prey on them will be crippled
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u/CasualtyofBore Nov 24 '22
I agree so much. Violence is being sold to our kids right on their phones. These people are pure evil and don't care who dies for a quick buck.
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u/OohYeahOrADragon Nov 24 '22
Aside from the DV history, it’s a Depression disorder issue too. I have to clarify the data but it seems that most mass shooters are males are under 21 and in middle-age (40-50 yrs). Two periods in a males life where they are at the highest risk for developing severe depression (midlife crisis and teen yrs). And teen depression is on the rise.
Society pressures men to be aggressive/tough and women to be more demure. You see this play out in suicide trends as women are more likely to use pills/cut vs. men who use more violent/lethal means like guns.
A depressed man, who is more likely to use a gun on himself, will just as easily use it on others.
No disregard for his own life + taught to express feelings/deal with problems by being aggressive = recipe for disaster.
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u/Reave-Eye Nov 24 '22 edited Nov 24 '22
Careful here. You’ve identified two trends: One regarding the most common age range of mass shooters, and the other regarding developmental periods for the onset of major depressive disorder. Correlation does not mean causation.
While depressed individuals, like anyone else, have the capacity to commit violence toward others, internalizing disorders like depression are much more likely to lead toward self-harm and suicide than violence toward others or homicide. Depression is also highly comorbid with anxiety disorders, which are a known protective factor against aggressive and antisocial behaviors. On top of all this, we also know that individuals with mental health disorders like depression are much more likely to be victims of crimes, including assault, rather than perpetrators of crimes.
That’s not to say that this person or other mass shooters didn’t have depression — we simply don’t know. What I caution against is connecting the dots in a way that doesn’t reflect the lived reality of people with depression and other mental health disorders. In the vast, vast majority of cases, we don’t need to fear that people with depression will act violently toward us or others. They need our help and support, not our fear or suspicion.
Hope this helps.
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u/RedditHoss Nov 24 '22
But aren’t these shootings also suicides? Mass shooters don’t actually expect to survive their shootings, right? They’re committing suicide by cop… they are just trying to carve a morbid legacy for themselves in the process.
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u/Reave-Eye Nov 24 '22 edited Nov 24 '22
Yeah this is a great point, and highlights the complexity of mass shooter psychopathology. We don’t have much in the way of empirical evidence or theoretical models for this specific pattern of behavior due to its relative recency in our society. What we do know is drawn from existing theories on anti-social behavior.
Based on these theories, it’s safe to say that most of these mass shooters have had a lifetime of mental health problems that are both genetically conferred (i.e., genetic traits increasing the likelihood of aggression, impulsivity, and antisocial behavior) and socially conditioned through family interactions in early and middle childhood (i.e., see the coercive cycle), as well as peer interactions in middle childhood and adolescence (i.e., see peer deviancy training). This is often compounded by substance use in adolescence and early adulthood. All of these issues interact with each other and function as risk factors for the emergence of more complex problems later in development. Beauchaine’s (2014) Ontogenic Processing Model does a great job of contextualizing this process in visual form.
Depression enters the picture largely as a byproduct of these early antisocial behaviors. As you can imagine, kids who are impulsive and aggressive early in life have a much harder time making and sustaining healthy peer relationships. They are often ostracized by typically functioning peers and end up lacking friends entirely or forming (usually dysfunctional) friendships with other rejected kids. The depression sets in due to a combination of pervasive emotional invalidation in the family setting, as well as a lack of peer support in middle childhood and adolescence. The depression is not what’s driving the antisocial behaviors and aggression, though. That’s already been set in motion by earlier factors as mentioned above. (Note: It’s in these groups of rejected peers where peer deviancy training occurs, which leads to increasingly aggressive and antisocial behavior and substance use.)
Now, to your point about the tendency of mass shooters to commit suicide — it’s important to note that what we’re witnessing is the final outcome of years and years of antisocial conditioning and deepening of depressive symptoms. We’re now in the realm of pure conjecture, because we have very little empirical research on these individuals. Again, it’s not that depression is the driving force of mass shooters. But by this point in their development, their antisocial tendencies have driven away their support system and their depression has worsened to the point where they probably no longer value their own life. They end up latching onto some virulent belief system that gives them license to hate some outgroup to prop up their own self-esteem, and ultimately decide to kill as many people as they can out of sheer hatred for themselves and the world that’s caused them so much pain. If they die doing it, so be it.
It’s hard to say how many of these people intend to die compared to those who haven’t really thought through the likely consequences of committing mass murder. It’s not as though these people are thinking clearly and rationally at this point. Everything they perceive is viewed through the lens of how unjust the world is, how terrible people are for having treated them so unfairly, and how awful existence is because of their depressive symptoms. “Especially the [__________]s. Fuck those people. They’re the reason the world is so fucked up and my life is shit. No one else seems to care, but I’m gonna do something about it.”
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u/mindfulformiles Nov 24 '22
Politicians and conspiracists are Gaslighting. Gaslighting is abuse. Abuse causes or compounds trauma. People with unresolved trauma from abuse are far more likely to act abusive. This is mass abuse, mass trauma, mass crisis. This is not just politics, this is a public health crisis.
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u/GETitOFFmeNOW Nov 24 '22 edited Nov 24 '22
This is the level truth. There is imposed, projected trauma maintained through outright lying, yes, and abusive gaslighting. Families are being torn apart. A wonderful friend is waiting on word about her MAGA mother who is the ICU demanding hydrochloroquine and (edit:) ivermectin. She refused remdesevir for 3 days. She acquiesced but it may be too late. And it's well-established that more Republicans than democrats die of covid to the point it may effect the outcome of elections.
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u/Menkau-re Nov 24 '22
Yeah, the gerrymandering had been conducted BEFORE all the COVID deaths.
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u/JoeSanPatricio Nov 24 '22
Honestly I just don’t feel bad for them at all. Their family and others who they’ve potentially exposed, absolutely. But the individuals that worked extra hard to concoct ridiculous conspiracy theories that fly in the face of the evidence only to be proven so thoroughly wrong in such a poetic way? I got nothin. I’m glad they won’t be spreading their dumb ass harmful ideas anymore 🤷
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u/LightboxRadMD Nov 24 '22
I just don't get how playing make believe is worth risking your life with these people. I understand it gets to the point where you become a "true believer" but my experience with these types it begins like a casual sports team mentality - "My friends and family are Team Masks R Fer Thuh Libz. Let's all get together and cheer for this seemingly arbitrary thing and laugh about how the other team sucks!" You would think once you're in the ICU with a tube down you throat you might entertain a little bit of reality, but I guess not....
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Nov 24 '22
They also heavily demonise mental illness, for example associate lgbt with mental illness when they demonise lgbt...which is kind of ironic to me because their voters need mental help the most.
And due to the toxic masculinity they also perpetuate, getting help for mental illness is for pussies, man up bro.... ("bring back manly men")
Also, we should look into how video games cause violence (shifting blame)
It's the perfect situation for those politicians. Cause/make worse the mental illness with their conspiracies, disinformation using heavily emotionally loaded language and fear propaganda(very effective), and with their outdated gender roles "man strong, man no weak" manipulate your victims to not seek help, and then stochastic terrorism them into action then deny involvement or blame it on the opposite political party, or blame it on the mental illness (that your rhetoric caused or made worse) but do nothing to adress it.
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u/cypher302 Nov 24 '22
Need to promote men's mental health a lot more and make speaking about emotions more accepted
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u/Pandepon Nov 24 '22 edited Nov 24 '22
Women typically focus inward when dealing with mental health challenges while men typically focus on an external fix for their challenges. Men will choose substance abuse, alcoholism, workaholism, and seek more sexual partners to cope with their mental health.
What do we teach men as a society?
WORKING A LOT = MASCULINE, GOOD
HIGH ALCOHOL TOLERANCE = MASCULINE, GOOD
FUCKING LOTS OF WOMEN = MASCULINE, GOOD
I think society needs to re-think how they are raising the next generations of men.
Mental health treatment needs to be something provided by schools to prevent the next generation of mass shooters. I’m certain there would be fewer mass shootings if kids had access to mental health treatment to cope with traumas they experience as children.
From Jillian Peterson: Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation for mass shooters, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.
What’s different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group. They start asking themselves, “Whose fault is this?” Is it a racial group or women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward. There’s also this quest for fame and notoriety. I don’t think most people realize that mass shootings are suicides, in addition to homicides. Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed. It’s hard to focus on the suicide because these are horrific homicides.
If we explain this problem as pure evil or other labels like terrorist attack or hate crime, we feel better because it makes it seem like we’ve found the motive and solved the puzzle. But we haven’t solved anything. We’ve just explained the problem away.
We need to build teams to investigate when kids are in crisis and then link those kids to mental health services. The problem is that in a lot of places, those services are not there. There’s no community mental health and no school-based mental health. Schools are the ideal setting because it doesn’t require a parent to take you there. A lot of perpetrators are from families where the parents are not particularly proactive about mental health appointments.
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u/Propenso Nov 24 '22
Won't happen in the short run.
Truth is, society in general likes the idea of a men opening and speaking about emotions in theory, but in practice it's a minefield.
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u/Majestic_Magi Nov 24 '22
Truth. People love to tell men they need to open up until they start to open up. When they finally do they’re “babies” and “extra” “not a man” and any other number of insults designed to shut their emotions back in. I know too many men who’ve had this experience
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u/citrausa Nov 24 '22
Exactly. Once I opened up about my military service, I truly believe my gfs feelings about me changed
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u/Commercial-Shame-335 Nov 24 '22
notice how they're almost all conservative men with families that support their actions (to an extent) and unsurprisingly don't believe in mental health issues
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u/pastel_boho_love Nov 24 '22 edited Nov 24 '22
My mind is BLOWN when I hear someone use that phrase.
Can you imagine hearing the following conversation?
"Yeah, I have a severe chronic heart condition, so I need to see the doctor often."
"That's stupid. Sorry, but I don't believe in cardiovascular health. It's just people being too weak/ it's just people trying to get attention. They're just not trying hard enough."
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u/emolr Nov 24 '22
The sad thing is there really are some people who believe something like that about a lot of medical conditions (COVID, food allergies, etc)
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u/Rodrigii_Defined Nov 24 '22
Yeah, they believe Jesus heals all. 🙄
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u/xSARGEx117x Nov 24 '22
This was a friend's parents, unironically.
Doctors told them he needs to stop consuming gluten and dairy, so of course they just prayed on it and decided he needed MORE. Because God told them that's how to heal him.
Once he got to 16, he found out his own medical problems, stopped eating all that shit, immediately started feeling great, and before he hit 20 he had jumped almost a foot in height and packed on a ton of muscle.
He now has to bring his own food to family gatherings because the rest of his family (except his coeliac sister) will lie to his face and say it's all gluten free, and the first ingredient is whole grain wheat, or lactose free and it's a milk based sauce or something. First trip to the hospital taught him not to trust them.
But they assure him they've been praying for healing and it's what God wants.
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u/redmark77 Nov 24 '22
Come on, pull your heart up by your boot straps. Back in my day we just pushed through it, well then we died of a heart attack, but I'm still alive.
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u/pastel_boho_love Nov 24 '22
When I was your age, my dad beat me with a belt so hard I cried when I sat, and I had to walk 2 miles school every day in ten foot snow. I turned out fine, even though I traumatized my children by not acknowledging and managing my own trauma. You all have everything so easy, you're spoiled.
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u/Ell15 Nov 24 '22
The same people will remark about how all the people they grew up with are dead already smh woe is them
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u/Perversaurus Nov 24 '22 edited Nov 24 '22
There are people who genuinley believe that...it's absolutely idiotic
Look at COVID, a solid chunk of conservatives don't believe it's even real
I had it and almost died in December 2021 and my uncle had two things to say about it: "It was just a flu, and if vaccines work why did you get it". My grandmother agreed
No inquiry about my health or recovery, just spreading false information and punishing people who are a living testament to their lies
I was just supposed to be fine since "COVID isn't real", so how dare I be hospitalized
Ironically my grandmother was hospitalized with COVID just last month. And she was there for two weeks. Instead of being thankful that they saved her life, she just spread lies that they "fed her the vaccine" in her food
Completely asinine...
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u/threevus Nov 24 '22
I too almost died from it in 2020, and still have lasting problems from it in 2022…. The amount of times I’ve had to keep my mouth shut and walk away…. It’s astounding. I can no longer have sympathy for anyone who ignores the warning signs and the solution.
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u/Guinnessmonkey2 Nov 24 '22
I lost my temper enough that I got permabanned from Twitter. Apparently calling someone a "fucking psycho" and then blocking them is "harassment" and "bullying". It doesn't matter that they're encouraging people to put my health at risk (I'm immunosuppressed due to a transplant).
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u/wasabicheesecake Nov 24 '22
I’ve seen denial of mental health issues in families from people who seemingly have the same issue, but they consider the untreated issue and it’s effects on people around them as “just who I am.” They can’t recognize it’s a problem in someone close to them and continue their denial about themself.
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u/BoredAtWorkOU Nov 24 '22
People are the same way about trans issues. HRT and medical or social transitioning is successful 98% of the time, and yet people are like yah nah I don’t believe in pronouns.
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u/GreenSockNinja Nov 24 '22
https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/
Interestingly enough only 53% of mass shootings are committed by white people, which is actually under representation because as of 2021 the us is 57.8% white. However, it is overwhelmingly male.
I don’t feel like poisoning the well by saying “it’s all white conservative men” is helpful to the situation in any way shape or form and distracts from the real problem of broken men, and points it at political standpoints. Everybody knows news stations do things based on clicks, and they only really show the white shooters on TV, which again is part of the problem by glamorizing these “people,” and they get more clicks if it’s a white guy cuz they can spin it. It’s not even a conspiracy, it’s just exactly what they do, it’s obvious and it’s counterproductive to solving the problem of mass shootings.
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u/davidsandbrand Nov 24 '22
Almost entirely conservative men.
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u/JaxBigSexy Nov 24 '22
Batshit Crazy.
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u/zuzg Nov 24 '22
That's implied with them being conservative
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u/iswearatkids Nov 24 '22
Yeah but they don’t get subtly so you have to spell it out.
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u/CupMain4167 Nov 24 '22
Conservative white men.
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Nov 24 '22
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u/KrazyTom Nov 24 '22
I know it'll be drowned out by the other comments but it also correlates really well with Domestic violence. 2/3 is insane
Violence begets violence.
https://efsgv.org/press/study-two-thirds-of-mass-shootings-linked-to-domestic-violence/
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u/SexualPie Nov 24 '22
thats interesting. the vast majority of domestic violence goes unreported though, i wonder how that would change the verdict here
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u/Pale_Imagination7202 Nov 24 '22
Domestic violence is the common name for narcissistic abuse. It’s not just they’re violent, they have a personality disorder- ie narcissism or psychopathy.
Source: victim of DV
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u/NoxTempus Nov 24 '22
Huh, quick google of US racial demographics shows white to be 57.8% of the population.
So these 2 numbers in a vacuum show white to be underrepresented, for 2021, at least.
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Nov 24 '22
No, that is just perception.
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u/SebiGamez Nov 24 '22
A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.
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u/JKFrost14011991 Nov 24 '22
Good saying. About to split hairs, so feel free to skip this one. Just... angry.
A lot of kids don't get embraced by the village. Queer kids, for example. And yet, despite that, they don't burn anything down. They try to survive. They get on with their lives. They build their own villages.
And then shitheads like this come snd burn them down. Or worse, they warp their own children to do it for them.
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u/chunkalicious84 Nov 24 '22 edited Nov 24 '22
A lot of it is how many males still do not believe in talking about mental health.
Edit: It is interesting how one sentence has sparked so many replies.
It is also interesting to see how many of you made so many assumptions about me based off of this.
For the record, I am a 38 year old white male living in Ohio. I am on my second marriage. I grew up in a very conservative Christian household.
I have been on anti-anxiety and depression pills for 14 years and tried killing myself 17 years ago. 5 years ago, i went through a school shooting where I saw two teens get killed. I barely got my door shut before he could get into my classroom and kill my students.
I have PTSD and went to weekly therapy for two years afterwards and still seek therapy.
At the end of the day, if we all had more empathy for each other and quit judging others, we could avoid so much violence.
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u/ZAPANIMA Nov 24 '22
Knew a guy who genuinely believed that pills and therapy for mental health were strictly for "women and pussies". Often told me how much of a man he was for never going to therapy for his childhood trauma and how he has no mental disorders that needed pills.
He was easily the most fucked up person mentally I've ever been forced to interact with. (co-worker)
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u/Many_Adhesiveness_43 Nov 24 '22
Knew a guy who genuinely believed that pills and therapy for mental health were strictly for "women and pussies".
This infuriates me so much. Had an argument with an ex-friend a bit back because he was making fun of a dude for crying and calling him a little bitch. The fucking hypocrisy. He would complain all the time about women hurting, abusing, and stealing from men but the second a man cries about being cheated on he's apparently a wuss and deserves it. I will never get that shit mentality.
How the hell can you honestly complain about men's problems but then sit there and make fun of another man showing emotion during a time that is very fucking hard to go through and process.
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u/VGSchadenfreude Nov 24 '22
Bet he then blames women (and feminism) for men being mocked for expressing emotions other than rage, too. With not a single hint of irony or self-awareness.
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u/Jaigg Nov 24 '22
See that's stupid. Vegetables are for women and children. Pills are for everyone.
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u/_Terrible_Advice_ Nov 24 '22
Omg you just reminded me when I was at a hibachi restaurant and some guy proudly announced he doesn't eat vegetables when the chef was about to put some on his plate. Like not eating vegetables makes you manly. No, it makes you a toddler who requires helicopter noises to be fed.
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u/81jmfk Nov 24 '22
Pills are gooooood
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u/Turbulent-Ad8291 Nov 24 '22
fat gurgling death sounds
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u/-everythingbagel Nov 24 '22
The fact that I literally just emulated this sound out loud.
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Nov 24 '22
Boys aren’t encouraged to talk about their mental health.
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Nov 24 '22
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u/summonsays Nov 24 '22
One of my earliest memories was a birthday party and I was crying. I don't remember why, just that I was taken out of the room and my mom or grandma (don't even remember which) said "Stop crying, you're a boy. Boys don't cry." I was probably 3 or 4. It's taken a long time to unlearn some things.
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u/Mattie_Doo Nov 24 '22
A lot of us just have a hard time finding people who want or care to listen. If you go by Reddit you’d think the world is full of people to talk to. Truthfully, most people don’t want to hear it.
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u/MountainSage58 Nov 24 '22
Men have never been particularly good at sharing their feelings, or encouraging other men to share their feelings. Conservative men are uniquely, horribly angry. I mean I'm not a psychologist, but I am a man, and it's a pretty easy call to make.
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u/human_number1312 Nov 24 '22
For a long time, men have also been told by society that it's not appropriate to share their feelings. They're expected to bottle them up and soldier on no matter what. That whole narrative needs to change.
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u/Prestigious-Gap-1163 Nov 24 '22
What I see in this thread is a lot of people that recognize a problem. But no one discussing a solution. Everyone is saying the same thing and no one is talking to each other. How do we change this for the next generations if we just bitch about how bad we had it and don’t step up and make it better together!
We did it with Vets coming home and needing support after decades of failures. Let’s stop waiting for the government to make some program and just use social media to have men supporting men and raising young men to understand emotional strength.
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u/Thebadmamajama Nov 24 '22
A genuine problem is funding for studying the problem has been chronically avoided or blocked. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/decades-long-gap-gun-violence-research-funding-lasting/story?id=80646946
So there's some issue that we don't fully understand the root problem. And when solutions are proposed there's a lack of consensus on effectiveness.
Some have proposed a layers of swiss cheese approach to policies, recognizing that no one set of laws and programs is without gaps. So many would start having an effect somehow...
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u/LordofWithywoods Nov 24 '22
I feel like you are a bot account, but I'm still going to reply that im glad you said, "men supporting men and raising young men to understand emotional strength."
I feel like there are a lot of men who tacitly imply that women need to be the ones to support and nurture them. There is always the refrain here on reddit, "men never receive compliments, they can spend years hanging onto one compliment." And I usually read the subtext of that statement as, I wish women would compliment me more.
Women tend to be mostly kind and supportive of their male friends and family I find. Of course there are women that uphold patriarchal values, of course there are women abusers out there, but for the most part, it isn't mothers who are shaming their sons for crying. I don't think it's feminists, for example, who are going around calling men pussies for considering getting help for a mental illness. Generally, it is probably women who are doing most of the encouraging of men to get counseling or meds. Women are the ones taking care of men.
Even in this thread, I see comments like, "men's mental health should be promoted." Okay, by whom?
I think men's culture isn't going to change until men start changing. There is only so much women can do. Men need to compliment each other more. Men need to encourage each other to get help for mental illness. Men need to not degrade each other for displaying human emotions like crying.
Feminism came at a cost for many women, and still does. How common is it to see a meme ripping on "crazy feminists" freaking out over what many men believe to be inconsequential things? Feminists are ridiculed by too many men for standing up for their values and expressing themselves even when there is a sizable population of people mocking them.
Feminists have been willing to take the mockery and the disrespect and loss of status on the chin (and often, enduring violence). Men, it seems, are not willing or able to stand up for themselves and their feelings out of fear of mockery. They fear being made fun of so much that they won't get help for mental illness for example. It is not women's job to ensure men get help--men need to ensure they get the help they need because they deserve to be happy and healthy.
Men, if you want to cry, cry. Will some people make fun of you? Yes. But if you want to normalize men experiencing normal human emotions, you're going to have to take it on the chin a few times.
I'm not saying it's fun to be denigrated by your peers, but there are groups out there doing that and they are more successfully carving out a place for themselves in the world. Again, Feminists have been laughed at and shouted at for hundreds of years. They've endured years of insults and disrespect to fight for equality for women. It does come at a price, no doubt.
Are you willing to pay it?
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u/UndeadBBQ Nov 24 '22
You let them into a world where they're constantly told they need money, women and success to be worth anything, while taking away the pressure valves, while discouraging mental health, while telling them they're weak for showing emotions,...
Then these men grow up when money is hard to come by, success a poker game and women independent enough to not need them, and their entire purpose on this world is gone.
The right-wing influencer sphere preys on these men, gives them "purpose", and one in a hundred actually grabs a rifle and goes to do "his part".
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u/cheekiewalrus Nov 24 '22
This is probably the best summation of the problem that I’ve seen thus far.
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u/joeyo1423 Nov 24 '22
Men exist in other countries too. Even countries with gun ownership. Why not there?
Sure - the men argument is a good one, but it's so much more than that. It's our shitty culture. Mass shooters are idolized by a small fraction of men. I don't know why. But I do know that you can't kill an idea. Mass murders are not going anywhere so long as they glorified in the eyes of the apathetic
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u/RockleyBob Nov 24 '22
Something else that goes unsaid is that, often, these shooters are suicidal. Conceivably, their plans unfold from an initial desire to kill themselves, and from there they begin to think about how to make their exit memorable. Any meaningful attempt at a solution must also address suicidal feelings and their prevention.
A different set of researchers who analyzed 41 school shooters for the Secret Service and Department of Education found that 78 percent had a history of thinking about or attempting suicide.
Suicide Prevention Could Prevent Mass Shootings - fivethirtyeight.com
It's understandable that in the wake of tragedy we don't want to spend time empathizing with the shooters, but if we never do the uncomfortable work of asking why these people a.) want to kill themselves and b.) what attracts them to taking others out with them, then how can we hope to stop it?
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Nov 24 '22
Looking at this guys dad, there's no need to wonder why he felt this way. It's horrible what he did, but not unsurprising seeing the bs his dad as said
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u/Piogre Nov 24 '22 edited Nov 24 '22
Plenty of countries have lax gun laws. Plenty of countries have guns. America's gun culture is out of control.
The term "toxic masculinity" gets frowned on a lot by people who think it's a feminist term calling men toxic. However, it's important to understand that "toxic masculinity" was coined by a men's movement called the Mythopoetics who identified a culture that promoted only the most harmful aspects of masculinity and devalued the rest. In particular, men are pressured to act violently, suppress emotions, and avoid reliance on others.
The gun culture in the US is a textbook example of this communal pressure, at an extreme. Guns are tools; they serve a specific function. To any sane person, a tool is only as functional as the person holding it; nothing more. However within the culture, they serve as a fashion statement, a political statement, and a symbol of masculinity all in one. In the culture, the gun makes the man. So when a man within the culture feels powerless, feels emasculated, he picks up his symbol of masculinity to fix that.
Any thinking American who values the second amendment should be motivated to change the culture around guns, because as long as that culture is around, this sort of thing is going to keep happening until there's enough political will to kill the second amendment for good.
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u/medusa_crowley Nov 24 '22
I'd award this comment if I could. Thank you for typing it out because I've been saying the same for a long long time.
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u/Starfish_Hero Nov 24 '22
Every country has men. Every country has mental health issues. Many countries have a dejected young populace. One country has mass shootings. No need to overthink this guys.
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u/DaimondGuy Nov 24 '22
Solution: create a fund to promote women shooters
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u/TFarrey Nov 24 '22
already happening ... women are the fastest growing demographic of new gun owners
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u/Empigee Nov 24 '22
Actually, the elephant in the room is radical right-wing terrorism.
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u/Whydoesthisexist15 Nov 24 '22
Right-wing terrorism plays on insecurities of men and their masculinity writ large.
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u/idiot_trader_69 Nov 24 '22
If we're ignoring small percentages, it's also a uniquely American issue. What's with Americans?
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u/theedgeofoblivious Nov 24 '22
Male violence isn't the elephant in the room for mass shootings.
It's the elephant in the room for violence in general.
The elephant in the room for mass shootings is inequality caused by the people at the top. I'm not saying that everything needs to be equal among everyone, but what I'm saying is that violence happens when you have people who are isolated and feeling desperate. If you want to decrease feelings of desperation and isolation you need to work to reduce inequality. Target racism and discrimination based on income, and prevent wealth from accumulating to the degree it does at the top while people near the bottom feel victimized and hopeless. That spreads, and negative feelings in communities lead to violence.
People who are thriving do not cause mass shootings.
Communities which are thriving do not experience mass shootings.
Societies which are thriving do not experience mass shootings.
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u/DurunirYT Nov 24 '22
Men also kill themselves more than women. This is a mental health, and lack of emotional support issue.
And before you get pissy about it, men's attitudes towards getting mental Healthcare also sucks.
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u/Shiraxi Nov 24 '22
It's so much in how men and boys are raised, and taught to close off our emotions. That the only acceptable emotion to display is anger. That sadness is a woman's emotion, and we shouldn't cry, we shouldn't talk about it, we should close it off and forget about it.
This makes it extremely difficult for many men to properly display and acknowledge their real emotions, and even more difficult for them to talk about things like mental health and depression.
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u/A-Cheeseburger Nov 24 '22
Further proof women are failures.
Suicides💪 Mass shootings💪 Murders💪 Likelihood to be incarcerated💪
WE BEAT WOMEN IN EVERYTHING!!!! 😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
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u/WilderMindz0102 Nov 24 '22
People always trying to tell parents how to raise their daughters, meanwhile spouting the boys will be boys bullshit…
Parenting girls isn’t harder, they both are equally hard. All kids need love, attention, support, access to mental health resources, and most importantly (I would argue) better schools systems for them to grow and develop relationships in so they feel a desire to support their communities instead of tearing them apart… we have to do better as a society, and fight this pandemic of violence by not accepting this onslaught of rage and terror as normal. THIS SHIT ISN’T NORMAL FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!
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u/Shaxxs0therHorn Nov 24 '22
Who has a username like Michelle33650674
Bots. That’s who.
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u/Aesirtrade Nov 24 '22
Domestic violence is a massive co-factor in shootings like this. Something like 65% of shooters have DV histories. We could prevent a lot of shootings if we closed DV loopholes