There may be too much to say about the piece below, but it’s going to percolate through some of our culture. So let’s consider the floor open for questions and comments.
And I’ll start. I’m pretty sure she’s wrong to say mass murder is a young man’s crime. I saw something – probably in the NYTimes – that shows this false. Secondly, the idea that initiation ceremonies are ways to deal with young men’s supposedly violent tendencies is a fairly questionable interpretation, I would have thought.
The silence around the gendering of violence is as inexplicable as it is indefensible. Sex differences in other medical and social conditions — such as anorexia nervosa, lupus, migraines, depression and learning disabilities — are routinely analyzed along these lines….
For millennia, human society has struggled with what to do with young men’s violent tendencies. Many cultures stage elaborate initiation ceremonies, presided over by older men, which help channel youthful aggression into productive social roles. But in contemporary society, we have trouble talking about the obvious: The transition from boy to man is a risky endeavor, and there can be a lot of collateral damage…
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Our refusal to talk about violence as a public health problem with known (or knowable) risk factors keeps us from helping the young men who are at most risk and, of course, their potential victims. When we view terrible events as random, we lose the ability to identify and treat potential problems, for example by finding better ways to intervene with young men during their vulnerable years. There is so much more we need to learn about how to prevent violence, but we could start with the sex difference that is staring us in the face.
