Gender and Education

Vol. 19, No. 6, November 2007, pp. 729737

ISSN 09540253 (print)/ISSN 13600516 (online)/07/06072909
2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09540250701650672
Boys, masculinity and school violence:
reaping what we sow
Sandy White Watson*
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA
Taylor and Francis CGEE_A_264909.sgm 10.1080/09540250701650672 Gender and Education 0954-0253 (print)/1360-0516 (online) Original Article 2007 Taylor & Francis 19 6000000November 2007 Associate Prof. SandyWatson Sandy-watson@utc.edu
In this paper the author explores the relationship between masculinity and violence. She begins by
pointing out that although all of the recent school shootings in the US have been perpetrated by
boys, very few are associating the acts with the gender of the offenders. Perhaps this connection is
not made because society is so conditioned to the fact that men and boys have always made up the
preponderance of violent offenders in the US. In this paper the attitudes and behaviors associated
with the socially constructed culture of masculinity that lend themselves to male violence and
aggression are explored. It includes a discussion of a Freirean approach to the problem and
concludes with practical suggestions for transformation.
19 February 1997: Bethel, Alaska: Evan Ramsey, 16, shoots and kills his
high school principal and a classmate and wounds two others (Rage: a look at a
teen killer, 2001, March 7).
1 October 1997: Pearl, Mississippi: Luke Woodham, 16, opens fire at his high
school, killing three and wounding seven after fatally shooting his mother (Teen
guilty in Mississippi shooting rampage, 1998, June 12).
1 December 1997: West Paducah, Kentucky: Michael Carneal, 14, shoots and kills
three at a high school devotional meeting (Bradis, 1997, December 2).
15 December 1997: Stamps, Arkansas: Joseph Todd, 14, shoots and wounds two
students (Two students wounded, 1997).
24 March 1998: Jonesboro, Arkansas: Mitchell Johnson, 13 and Andrew Golden,
11, gun down four classmates and a teacher (White & Cofer, 1998, April 1).
24 April 1998: Edinborough, Pennsylvania: Andrew Wurst, 14, shoots and kills a
teacher who was chaperoning a school dance (Ramsland, 2007).
19 May 1998: Fayetteville, Tennessee: Jacob Davis, 18, opens fire at his high
school, killing a classmate (School killer described by witnesses as Asian male,
around 19 years old, 2007).
*University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 615 McCallie Ave., Dept. 4154, Chattanooga, TN
37403, USA. Email: Sandy-watson@utc.edu
730 S. White Watson
21 May 1998: Springfield, Oregon: Kip Kinkel, 15, opens fire at his high school,
wounding 22 and killing two after fatally shooting his parents (Daw, 1998, August/
September).
15 June 1998: Richmond, Virginia: Quinshawn Booker, 14, opens fire in his high
school, wounding a teacher and a volunteer (Daw, 1998, August/September).
20 April 1999: Littleton, Colorado: Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, shoot
and kill 12 students and a teacher and then kill themselves (Daw, 1998, August/
September).
20 May 1999: Conyers, Georgia: Thomas Solomon, 15, opens fire at Heritage
High School, wounding six students (Four shot, 1999).
6 December 1999: Fort Gibson, Oklahoma: Seth Trickey, 13, opens fire at his
school and wounds four students (Ruble, 1999, December 6).
29 February 2000: Mount Morris, Michigan: A 7-year-old boy shoots and fatally
wounds a 6-year-old classmate (Dickerson, 2000, March 6).
26 May 2000: Lake Worth, Florida: Nathaniel Brazill, 13 kills his English teacher
after he was refused admission to the class to speak to friends (Gandhi, 2000,
September/October).
24 April 2003: Red Lion, Pennsylvania: 14-year-old James Sheets shoots and kills
five classmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard at his rural high school, then takes
his own life (Toiv, 2003).
21 March 2005: Red Lake Indian Reservation, Minnesota: Student Jeff Weise
shoots and kills five classmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard at his rural high
school, then takes his own life (Gunderson, 2005).
29 September 2006: Cazenovia, Wisconsin: Eric Hainstock, 15, retaliates for
receiving a tobacco disciplinary referral and shoots and kills the principal (Erskine,
2006).
Although few people seemed to have noticed it, a very clear and frightening pattern
has emerged among the incidents of violence taking place in Americas schools. The
pattern is so disturbing that it demands serious explanation and intensive study. The
startling commonality among all of these senseless and tragic incidents of school
violence is that each and every one was perpetrated by one or more boys. (And in
almost every case the offender or offenders are also White and middle class.) These
are not cases of kids killing kids. These are cases of boys killing boys and boys killing
girls and boys killing teachers (Katz & Jhally, 1999, May 2). Katz and Jhally (1999)
raise an interesting question when they ask what the publics reactions would be if
these crimes had been committed by girls rather than boys. Make no mistake about
it, the public would immediately connect gender with the crimes. We would all be
questioning how it could possibly be that girls would commit such heinous acts. As it
stands, very few people are asking what is happening to our boys to cause such violent
behavior. Also, are we not surprised that these crimes have been perpetrated by White
males rather than Black males? Havent we all seen that representations of violence
are largely portrayed through forms of racial coding that suggest violence is a Black
problem, a problem outside White suburban America? (Giroux, 1996, p. 66). I, for
Boys, masculinity and school violence 731
one, could easily imagine the publics immediate determination of a racial common
denominator among the acts of school violence. But because the offenders are middle
class, White males, the general public cannot seem to make the connection between
the masculine culture and the crimes. Perhaps it is because we are so used to the fact
that males have always made up the preponderance of violent offenders. Hall (2002)
states The claim that men commit most acts of physical violence is possibly the near-
est that criminology has come to producing an indisputable fact (p. 36). According
to the National Committee on Violence 1990, men are responsible for 80% of homi-
cides (Ollis & Tomaszewski, 1993) and men and boys are responsible for 95% of all
violent crimes in this country (Kimmel, 1999). So we are now witnessing this violent
behavior in adolescent or even younger males. And we are blaming the violent acts of
these boys on the easy accessibility of guns, the lack of parental supervision, the
culture of peer-group exclusion and teasing, or the prevalence of media violence
(Katz & Jhally, 1999). Girls have the same accessibility to guns, are exposed to the
same media violence, undergo their own form of peer-group exclusion and teasing
and also experience a lack of parental supervision, but are they bringing guns to
school and gunning down teachers and classmates? Not that I can see. Could it truly
be that this trend among boys is emerging because they are boys?
There are those of us who will point to the biological differences between boys and
girls as culprits of the male violence phenomenon. According to Kindlon and
Thompson (2000), testosterone has become the buzzword for masculinity and a
popular explanation for all boy attributes (p. 13). However, they go on to say that a
recent review of scientific studies of preadolescent and early adolescent boys
concludes that the research literature provides no evidence of an association
between testosterone and aggressive behavior (p. 13, Tremblay et al. as cited in
Kindlon & Thompson, 2000). Further evidence has been obtained by numerous
other researchers who have examined various culturally distinct groups such as the
Amish, the Semoi of Malaysia and the Hutterite brethren, who have reputations for
nonviolence and peacefulness. The men of these groups have virtually no history of
aggression or violence (Kindlon & Thompson, 2000). These studies can only lead us
to believe that boys and men are not destined to be aggressive because they are males,
but rather they become so because they are raised to be so.
We are all aware of the segregation of boys and girls that now begins even before
they are born. We want to know what the sex of our child is before he or she is born
so that we can begin thinking about how we are going to treat him or her. Boys and
girls are given masculine and feminine names, clothing styles and toys. Step into
any toy store and the male/female dichotomy is clearly evident. The girls section
contains dolls, dishes, irons, brooms and other items designed to reflect and main-
tain the traditional domesticated behaviors and attitudes assigned to females while
the aisles housing toys for boys resemble arsenals with vast arrays of toy guns, knives,
handcuffs, soldiers, wrestlers and monsters. Many of us continue to teach our daugh-
ters to be passive, noncompetitive and ladylike while we teach our sons to be
aggressive, competitive and unemotional. We envision young boys as being mischie-
vous, rowdy and rambunctious. We chuckle as we watch them rough house, play in
732 S. White Watson
the dirt, track mud in the house and wear holes in their clothes. As they grow, we
encourage them to hunt and fish, get involved in sports, ride bikes and four wheelers.
And finally they reach the teenage years. Pollack (1998) describes the typical mythi-
cal teenaged boy as one who is obsessed with himself, sports, cars, sex, andabove
allbeing cool (p. xxiii). Being cool to many boys means breaking the rules and
challenging authority. And so we have trained our sons and daughters, from birth, to
assimilate the practiced cultural attitudes and behaviors according to gender.
Barquet (2000) states that the aggression and violence portrayed by boys and men is
the direct result of learned behavior. We reap what we sow. Barquet goes on to
proclaim that the very first messages parents transmit to their children are extremely
powerful. All of these early messages arise from cultural norms that teach males to be
aggressive, powerful, unemotional, and controlling and that contribute to a social
acceptance of men as dominant (Hanson & McAuliffe, 1997). Silverstein (1988)
states that boys are shamed into early separation from their mothers and subse-
quently cut off from their own expression of sadness and vulnerability in favor of
anger and detachmentall in order to prove their manhood (p. 166). Pollack
(1998) claims that among boys anger and rage are perceived emotions of strength
and even powerwhile sadness, fear and loneliness are considered weak. He further
states that boys are in the midst of a national crisis of boyhood. What does this
mean? Pollack implies that the traditional American culture of masculinity has
created a gender straitjacket for boys and that this gender straitjacket leaves boys
no avenues to safely express emotions. Many interpretations of Pollacks national
crisis claim in the US, Canada, UK and Australia have been that boys are the latest
victims of schooling (Hawley, 1993; Kindlon & Thompson, 2000; Sommers, 2000;
Thompson, 2000). This claim received considerable criticism and Pollacks data,
methodology and ethics in his research has also been subject to scrutiny. Sommers
received the research paper and found irregularities such as the lack of parental
consent for the participants, the lack of anonymity on the surveys the boys completed
and the fact that Pollack failed to release the results of his study and several details of
the study (Sommers, 2000). Pollacks study had not even been peer reviewed,
sections of it instead were released to the media.
Despite the criticisms, Pollacks boy code is an unwritten guide of outmoded rules
by which we have raised our sons. The boy code does not stop with parents, but
rather is perpetuated by schools, communities and society in general.
I can give personal testimony to the fact that the boy code is alive and well in
America today. My youngest son showed an interest in the martial arts so I enrolled
him in local karate classes. During the first couple of months, he would be dropped
off and then picked up as the class ended. A few times he seemed upset when I picked
him up, saying the instructors were calling the students names so I decided to sit in
on one of his classes. The class was quite large, with probably 5060 students taught
by two male instructors and one female instructor. Most of the students were in the
5- to 10-year age group and most were boys. As the class began, I was shocked to see
that the two male instructors regularly and publicly shamed the boy students anytime
they seemed to display anything less than what they (the instructors) thought was
Boys, masculinity and school violence 733
masculine behavior. They did not hesitate to isolate and ridicule any boy whom they
saw as not performing up to their masculine standards. Taunts included You kick
like a girl! Sissy! Are you going to let a girl beat you? and, during sparring: If you
let a girl beat you Im going to put you up on the stage and make everyone call you a
sissy. Not only did these taunts serve to humiliate and embarrass the boys they were
directed against, but they also served to demean the girl students. My immediate reac-
tion was one of intense discomfort. I looked around the room to see if other observing
parents (and there were many) looked disturbed. No one else seemed to be upset at
all (at least by outward appearances). Most of them regularly sat in on the karate
classes and were accustomed to how the classes were taught. I chose not to talk to
anyone at that point, but rather to sit in again on the following weeks class. The same
behavior took place again with an added twist. Toward the end of the session one boy
was pulled out of the class and addressed for getting into trouble at school. His punish-
ment was to be put into a ring to fight three other boys of higher rank. What subse-
quently took place was the approved beating of one boy by three others until he could
no longer stand, was sobbing, and could hardly breathe. The entire time, the boys
father was watching and did nothing to come to the aid of his son. My discomfort
was bordering on actual physical sickness. During the punishment I asked several
parents sitting near me, both mothers and fathers what they thought of it. The general
consensus was that although the parents were a little disturbed, they supported the
teachers and felt the training they provided for their sons was necessary and beneficial
in their sons transition from boyhood to manhood. This example illustrates the use
of misogyny and homophobia as a means of policing masculinity that in turn serves
to benefit men as a social group. I am proud to report that my young son recognized
the inappropriate behavior of his instructors and opted out of the class.
Pollack claims that no one is immune, that masculinitys associated behaviors and
attitudes are so ingrained within each of us that even those of us who are aware of it
often find ourselves unwittingly adhering to it. Boys are under tremendous pressure
to adhere and conform to the boy code, which is so narrowly defined and strict, that
most boys fall short of the ideal presented by the code. Furthermore, the code is
extremely strong, while at the same time so subtle, that boys may not even know that
they are following it until they deviate from it, in which case, society (most often
male) swiftly rebukes them whether it be in the form of a taunt by a sibling, a rebuke
by a parent or a teacher, or ostracism by classmates (Pollack, 1998, p. 7). As a result,
they become, at the very least, frustrated and depressed and suffer low self-esteem,
and at the most, become angry and turn violent (Pollack, 1998). In any case, almost
all boys learn to develop a mask, which prevents them from showing emotion. The
mask is a barrier. It prevents others from seeing in, and it does not allow emotions to
escape. The mask is like an emotional pressure cooker with no steam outlet. It is no
wonder that many boys are becoming killers.
Hanson and McAuliffe (1997) claim that:
Through this socialization process, children internalize the rules for masculinity and
femininity and because they are learned at a very early age, the meanings attached to
gender definitions seem natural, rather than socially constructed.
734 S. White Watson
Feminists have already recognized that this apparent dichotomy between male and
female mores only exists because we have constructed the notion of gender (Harding,
1991). I support Simone de Beauvoirs claim that women and men are not biological
constructs, but have instead arisen from social origins (in Harding, 1991). Perhaps
there is salvation in recognizing what we have done. Paulo Freire (1987) states that:
As conscious human beings, we can discover how we are conditioned by the dominant
ideology. We can gain distance on our moment of existence. Therefore, we can learn how
to become free through a political struggle in society. (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 13)
We can apply Shor and Freires wisdom to this dilemma. Once we become aware
that our masculinity or femininity associated with gender has been constructed, we
become liberated, thus opening the door to deconstruction of those long-held cultural
norms. But by no means is this an easy task, as it requires denouncing and working
against the reproduction of the dominant ideology (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 36). If
the general public has yet to recognize that we should be questioning why boys are
turning our schools into killing fields, it will probably be extremely difficult to convince
them that this behavior is a direct result of what we have been teaching our children.
Pollack (1998) believes in the importance of first recognizing the myths of boyhood
before one can take steps toward the elimination of those myths. The first of three
myths he mentions is the myth that boys will be boys: nature and testosterone win
out over nurture (p. 52). When one believes this particular myth, he or she falsely
feels that he or she has little or no influence upon a boys emotional, behavioral or
personality development. The second myth is that boys should be boys. This myth
insists that boys subscribe to the boy code because it is the natural path to follow,
even though it may feel anything but natural. According to Pollack, there is no ideal
way to be a boy, rather masculinity can be and is very diverse. Pollacks third myth is
that boys are toxic, that there is something within them that they cannot control that
makes them psychologically unaware, emotionally unsocialized creatures (p. 62). In
other words, boys are uncivilized beings, requiring stricter control and tighter rules.
In truth, boys have the capacity to be highly empathic, sensitive, caring individuals if
they are freed from the boy code.
Of course since the cultural training of masculinity and femininity begins at home,
parents must be the first in the chain of people involved in the transformation process.
Mothers must learn to stand their ground and stay infinitely but flexibly connected
with their sons. As Pollack states, Far from making boys weaker, the love of a mother
can and does actually make boys stronger, emotionally and psychologically (p. 80).
Perhaps the most difficult task is one faced by fathers as a direct result of the myths
we have already mentioned. Many fathers resist the urge to become emotionally close
to their sons and leave the role of nurturer to the mothers because they fear that by
not acting macho around their sons, the boys might grow into something less than
real men. (Homophobia rears its ugly head.) They must first let go of their traditional
masculine attitudes and behaviors before they can foster the development of health-
ier, happier and better adjusted sons who do not have to resort to violence because
they have not been taught appropriate ways of communicating feelings and emotions.
Boys, masculinity and school violence 735
Once again, this is not an easy step to take because in order to change how some
fathers raise their sons, they must first become conscious of the existence of the social
construction of masculinity and then they must change that very part of themselves.
Schools must also become part of the transformation process because they are
direct reflections of our society. Teachers and administrators must be made aware of
the boy code and be willing to address issues related to it; they must either model
the undoing of the boy code or aid in the creation of a new code (Pollack, 1998).
They need to learn how to get around the masks of boys and they need to become
sympathetic to, and knowledgeable of, the specific emotional and social problems
boys face.
And finally, society in general must stop sending the wrong messages to our sons.
Gilbert and Gilbert (1998) provide a list of T-shirt slogans that included the following
in your face kinds of hegemonic masculine sayings:
1. Guts is good. Balls is better.
2. A true test of ones courage lies not only in the heart but directly between ones
legs.
3. Life is a contact sport.
4. No scars. No proof.
5. No such thing as unnecessary roughness.
6. Balls a.k.a. cojones. You should have several. Preferably brass or steel. Extra
large.
Not only are the designers of these T-shirts sending the wrong messages concerning
masculinity, but they are also obviously convinced that only outrageous and shocking
masculinity is marketable (Gilbert & Gilbert, 1998). Film-makers are also guilty of
glamorizing violence as they produce movies that depict tough, macho, aggressive
and violent males as those who get the prettiest girls and who always come out on
top. And finally, musicians and song-writers must stop producing lyrics that promote
male violence and aggression as a natural and winning combination.
It is clear that this is not an issue that only one segment of society, or only a narrow
group of people need address, but rather it is a universal problem of great magnitude
that all of us must consider and immediately act upon to prevent further tragedies and
to liberate our sons.
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