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Missing fathers and America's broken boys - the vast majority of mass shooters come from broken homes

JohnKimble111

February 20, 2018

117 upvotes

/r/MensRights

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Title	Missing fathers and America's broken boys - the vast majority of mass shooters come from broken homes
Author	JohnKimble111
Upvotes	117
Comments	39
Date	February 20, 2018 8:17 AM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/7yucfx/missing_fathers_and_americas_broken_boys_the_vast/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/missing-fathers-and-americas-broken-boys-the-vast.1179382 https://theredarchive.com/post/1179382

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[–]allthewayup0000 7 points8 points9 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

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[–]Sarin_G_Series 1 point2 points3 points 8 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

Yeah. I'm not sure if other cultures, in the developed world, foster the same drive to assert one's self in all cases and mock concession. I think the perceived need to "win at all costs" is fairly toxic. Sure, other cultures may demand a male be a provider and don't assign them any intrinsic value, but I also think they likely allow room to learn from mistakes whereas my country stigmatizes failure hyperbolically.

America definitely hates a "loser." That same attitude has driven a lot of innovation in decades past, however. I think it's a double-sided coin, and part and parcel to the American Way.

I admit that I have limited first-hand knowledge of the rest of the world, but I definitely didn't sense the same stigma in Korea, Romania, or Israel.

Edit: The lack of a real rolemodel would definitely encourage extreme responses to perceived sleights, though. I have a narcissistic, abusive, addict of a dad and only learned grace and humility thanks to my grandfather. If it hadn't been for him; I definitely would've acted out way worse than I did as a younger man.

[+]ShepardCommandActual -14 points-13 points-12 points 8 years ago (26 children) | Copy Link

[–]EasternChildhood 15 points16 points17 points 8 years ago (21 children) | Copy Link

[–]ShepardCommandActual -5 points-4 points-3 points 8 years ago (20 children) | Copy Link

[–]EasternChildhood 10 points11 points12 points 8 years ago (13 children) | Copy Link

do they? that's a presumption.

Biological mothers commit the majority of child abuse, followed by non-biological fathers with whom they choose to cohabitate. Biological fathers commit the least amount of child abuse. Mothers also commit the majority of infanticides. Boys are abused significantly more often than girls, both by men and women.

But let's face it, most violence is committed by men

No. The majority of homicides are committed by men. Women are equally violent. They are more likely to hit their partners; they are more likely to initiate unilateral violence against their partners; they are more likely to hit their children (which has a massive force multiplier effect in the level of violence society wide); they are equally likely to coerce people into sex; they are more likely to use emotional violence; they are more likely to use proxy violence (which can involve extreme forms of violence, such as falsely accusing a man of rape and having him forcibly confined/tortured for decades); etc. etc.

Violence by women simply isn't punished very often, and tends to be less dramatic.

for no reason other than to spread the suffering they themselves endured.

That's an utterly bizarre claim. I imagine that would be one of the least likely motivations for violence in general.

Also, you failed to answer my other question: why do women hardly ever risk their lives to save others during times of crisis?

If you are going to blame masculinity for things like school shootings you also have to praise masculinity for male heroics. You can't have it both ways.

[+]ShepardCommandActual -6 points-5 points-4 points 8 years ago* (12 children) | Copy Link

[–]EasternChildhood 3 points4 points5 points 8 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

You edited your post.

and i don't know the answer why women don't risk themselves in a crisis as often, often times a result of men going on some sort of killing rampage.

No, not "oftentimes." Killing sprees are exceedingly rare. When a man risks his life to safe others -- oftentimes women and children -- it's usually during a natural or manmade disaster.

sure, it's a bizarre claim, but men commit a vast majority of violence, across culture. That's a claim i don't need to present evidence for as it's a well established law of existence.

No. It's only a "law of existence" in your own head. The data says otherwise.

It's why the phrase "toxic masculinity" exists. clearly there's something about masculinity that drives the urge to commit violence.

The phrase "toxic masculinity" exists because of man-hating feminists and no other reason.

[–]ShepardCommandActual -2 points-1 points0 points 8 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

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[–]WikiTextBot 1 point2 points3 points 8 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Sex differences in crime

Sex differences in crime are differences between men and women as the perpetrators or victims of crime. Such studies may belong to fields such as criminology (the scientific study of criminal behavior), sociobiology (which attempts to demonstrate a causal relationship between biological factors, in this case biological sex and human behaviors), or feminist studies. Despite the difficulty of interpreting them, crime statistics may provide a way to investigate such a relationship from a gender differences perspective. An observable difference in crime rates between men and women might be due to social and cultural factors, crimes going unreported, or to biological factors (for example, testosterone or sociobiological theories).

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Im assuming you want to have a discussion but I have to preface by saying I honestly dont know....and I dont think anyone else does either.

Why do men and not women commit mass shootings?

First I think there is a physiological difference. I think women mentally mature a little bit faster than young men. I think young men are also hormonally prone to take more risks. Since we're looking at population wide events...mass shootings...it would not take a very big difference between the populations of young men and young women to see young men being reckless and doing stupid shit. My car insurance assures me every fucking year that these are their findings as well.

So biologically we can start on the not so shaky ground that young men are naturally prone to risk and poor decisions.

Then I think we can add onto that some things we arent doing for boys biologically.

His birth mother gave him up for adoption. I would bet money (and this is all just conjecture and I have absolutely no proof, just a hunch), my hunch is this young man was born definitely without proper pre-natal care and I highly suspect his mother was either drinking or on drugs while he was in-utero. The system frankly is overwhelmed with babies born addicted to meth or opiates or herion etc. We lose our fucking minds about the rights of the child to child support but nobody bats an eye about drug babies and the right to have a fully developed brain. Im not going to dwell on this because its just speculation but IF I was a betting man Id hedge a not small amount of money on this.

His adopted parents died and we already know he suffered from some kind of mental illness. I mention all this sob story bullshit because mental health in young men (even in better circumstances) is poor...its very poor. And young men are the least likely to seek help. Why? We dont know. My hunch tells me because they know nobody will give a shit. Suicide is still one of the main cause of death in young men aged 20 to 24, maybe the main I dont know.... its up there. Do I think the shooter had poor mental health? Oh yeah, definitely. I absolutely think it was a major contributing factor. I strongly suspect his counselors did not give a shit.... Now Im not a pyschologist and this is just going to be speculative but let me share an article from someone that is a psychologist that is apparently concerned about young men and women. That article pretty much sums up my experience with how psychology treats men's problems vs women's problems.... young men are spoiled, are playing too many video games and smoking too much marijuana and their parents are enabling them and thats why they're losers... I mean "failing to launch". Thats alot of empathy for a young man struggling, Im surprised someone would shoot themselves instead of opening up about their problems to this guy.... this guy whose job and training is to be empathic. I find that this is pretty consistent....BUT again.... this is just conjecture. So to summarize I think the shooter absolutely had poor very poor mental health... and I postulate that nobody gave a shit.

Finally I can think of one more sociological factor that may play in to wayward young men being drawn to guns. First...I agree with the author they dont have fathers or male role models or probably almost any positive male figure in their life at all. They may well have had several toxic masculinity thrown in their faces and seen all kinds of bad things men do though.

But I also think young men are finding out that society isnt going to help them. If they have needs emotional needs, intimacy needs, if they need to feel love then they are going to have to steer their own ship, they're on their own and today what seems to be the most effective way to draw love to you is money and power. They dont know where to get either of those things but to a teen I could see how a gun or even a car could represent both.

Anyways those are my thoughts, mostly conjecture because I dont know....soft sciences werent my field because honestly they really arent even science. They're so overwhelmed with poor scholarship that even a published paper is little better than toilet paper. Your ability to replicate any of their findings depends more on how you hold your mouth while fudging the data in a statistics package than any kind of study design or academic rigor, but thats all we have.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 8 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

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