Tough Guise

To me, I find it difficult to really believe that there is a direct link between violence in the media, and violence in children.  It's not the violence that is making kids more aggressive and mean, it's the way that they are taught they have to act to get respect from other boys. Men and boys often use violence to hide their vulnerability, but in reality...nobody is 100% "tough". No matter who you are, whether you're a murderer or a bully at school, there is SOMETHING that will trigger you and that gets to you. I just watched the newest Friday the 13th movie the other day and in that movie Jason kills people because of his mother. She was crazy and killed a bunch of camp councelors and this one girl eventually killed her. So Jason goes on a rampage. But in the movie, there is this one girl that he runs into, he doesn't kill her because she finds this necklace of his mothers and wears it, and he softens up. My whole point is that no matter who you are, how tough you think you are, there is something that you will or have gone through that you cry.

But that leads to the next problem that I see in that movie and lots of other slasher movies. For some reason, there ALWAYS has to be a vulnerable beautiful women either get naked or take a shower or something right before she dies. That is also the case in Friday The 13th. There is a man and women having sex right on the screen, clear as day, and you can see her full out breasts and everything, and then 2 minutes after, she gets killed. I don't understand why these movies are like that. Its like they arouse every man out there watching the movie and before you know it, they're dead in the goriest way. It's sick. No wonder we have men who love crazy sh** like bondage and gaggers and whips. It's like our society has no problem how we sexualize violence.

In the Tough Guise movie, Jackson Katz tries to help us understand masculinity. In the media, the bodies of superheroes has changed dramatically.  The body has become a killing machine in itself. (ie: RAMBO) It also shows how men of color are thought to be scarier and not mess with them, so then white guys will try to act like them. Being a "real man" is taugh to be related to the black urban style. The irony of it all is that black men get their ideas of masculinity from the Italian mobster movies like the Godfather, and white guys get their ideas of masculinity from the black guys who in turn are getting their ideas from white guys. It's all just a big circle. The reason that school shootings happen is because of the kids that get bullied. They get fed up with being pushed around and picked on that they just snap. They are generally the scrony, nerdyish kids, so they make up for not having a strong body to fight back, by having a gun as their power. 

The whole thing is that violence is not the problem...violent MASCULINITY is the problem. Its boys and men thinking that they need to fight eachother to show who's the bigger man. But honestly, who are they trying to impress? I speak for myself saying that if a guy gets into a fight with another guy, it's definately a turn off. I've had guys get in fights over me before and guess which guy I always chose...the one who didn't fight back. To me, fighting is just a sign of immaturity. If you are confident in yourself that you think you have to prove yourself to me by FIGHTING, then you still have the mindset of a 12 year old.

Killings have always been a problem between boys, but it was always in the "urban areas" that these things were happening, which is what is expected in our society. We think that socioeconomic status has everything to do with shootings and gang fights. Now that their is "normal" boys bringing guns to SCHOOL it's a different story. We need to take our focus off of the pathological killers and focus more on "normal" kids gone bad because they can do the most damage. This leads to the topic of men having depression. Men have a problem with having the mindset that they are "fine" and "I don't want to talk about it". Men tend to think that if they express their feelings to anyone that they are showing weakness. Look at the kids who were involved with the Columbine shooting, or Virginia Tech. These are "normal" men who for some reason or another killed others and themselves. To me, that is depression at it's finest. These men are emotionally immature and don't know what to do with themselves so they decide not to deal with it anymore by killing the ones that hurt them, and themselves. 

There has to be something that we can do to stop the violence of men against women, and other men.