Violent Masculinities as Tropes for School Shooters

The Montréal Massacre, the Columbine Attack, and Rethinking Schools

Bibliographic Data

ID3756404
AuthorsKaren L Tonso (Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan,, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume52
Issue9
Pages1266-1285
Publication date2009-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0002764209332545
OpenAlexW2009230404
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited17

Attacks at Montréal École Polytechnique and Columbine High frame a decade of school shootings and may offer insights into some other rampages. Though times, rationales, and sites of peer-group production differed at these two sites, "school shooter" encoded ways to react in situations where some young men felt unfairly subordinated in society; shooters used deadly violence to assert and reclaim the "rightful" places they felt denied. "School shooter" seemed to borrow from violent masculinities, common socioculturally produced images, or tropes, for acting, implicating not only shooters (who take up extreme versions of these tropes), but also simultaneously everyday sociocultural contexts where violent masculinities are produced, reinforced, and valorized. This article suggests the importance of context to the production of shooters and as such competes with attempts to develop remedies to school shootings grounded in de-contextualized, individualistic approaches that focus only on shooters

Context (archaeology) · Criminology · Individualism · Masculinity · Political science · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropology · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression · Gender Studies · Gun Ownership and Violence Research · History · Intimate Partner and Family Violence · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub