“The greatest risk factor in school violence is masculinity.”

Writing about school shootings, Kimmel underscores the fact that all the school shootings in the U.S. have been committed by male students. This uniformity, Kimmel explains, cuts across all other differences among the shooters – they come from different backgrounds, such as from intact families, single-parent homes, violent homes, or what appears to be happy families. Yet, the one thing all the school shooters have in common is being male. Kimmel urges us to consider what this means about masculinity in school and how it can manifest into school violence.

I think it is so important for schools today to be aware of the local gender culture. Are boys teasing each other about masculinity? Do boys have safe spaces to talk about what they are experiencing? Adolescence is a time of so much change. The pressure to always appear masculine, I can only imagine, must be suffocating. We need to teach boys that it is okay to be vulnerable, it is okay to cry, and to not look less upon another man who dares to show he has feelings or emotions. If we don’t create these spaces for our young boys, when their manhood is questioned, we cannot by too surprised that violence is the reaction. This reaction is a way to show they are in fact masculine. I think it could be really powerful to critically analyze gender roles with students through literature in the classroom, or even through videos and movies. This way they are not speaking directly about the pressures they feel, but discussions could evolve around what it means to be a man and how this can be problematic or limiting for different characters. In this way, we can start to have conversations with students about how damaging it can be to police other people’s masculinity and ask them to reflect on ways they may have experienced or witnessed this in their lives.

*Kimmel, M. S. (2008). Adolescent masculinity, homophobia, and violence.