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SOCI210F2019Week10_ViolentCrime1.pdf
Masculinity, Rape Culture, and Violent Crime SOCI 210 Winter 2021
Rape Culture
● Society where rape is common & mostly unchallenged ● Victim Blaming: Dominant beliefs around sexual assault
that cast suspicion on women and question their life histories
● Slut Shaming: accusing women of being sexually promiscuous or wearing inappropriate clothing that led men to commit rape
Hegemonic Masculinity
1. Based on ability to shape the world according to one’s desires/will.
2. Others are understood as objects that need to be coerced to following male desires
3. Ability to control environment becomes masculine ideal.
John Oliver
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. 30 September 2018
Judge Brett Kavanaugh
Nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States.
Accused of multiple accounts of sexual assault and rape.
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/25/metoo_ founder_tarana_burke_on_sexual
Aggrieved Entitlement
The benefits that you (the white male) believed were yours by a promise, but were snatched away by unseen forces.
● Belief that following the rules should be rewarded ● Belief that there is a new, unjust system that
bypasses white male ‘merit’ in favor of women and non-whites
Haider & the Feminine (559)
“Male violence functions ... guardianship and policing [of a] patriarchal order.”
● “When that violence is challenged...it produces a disillusionment with the normative apparatus of power…[which] transforms masculinity into something toxic...Rage is the praxis of toxic masculinities.” Haider, 559.
● Brett Kavanaugh. Senate Judiciary Hearings, Sept. 27, 2018.
Orlando Shooting
Democracy Now! With Amy Goodman and Soraya Chemaly. 14 June, 2016.
Hyper- Masculinity
An embrace of physical strength and gender role aspects of hegemonic masculinity
Aggrieved Entitlement & Men’s Rights
● Belief that men are suffering from ‘feminazis’ and from non-whites ○ Feminazis: feminist attempt to take power from men, and a belief
system based in misandry (term coined by Rush Limbaugh) ● Alan Baron, Men’s Manifesto, 2001
○ Men must defend male domination/patriarchy as the natural order of things
Rush Limbaugh
The “feminazi” and men’s penis size
Men are victims of feminism, which is taking their “natural” claims to power
Red Pill Philosophy
Belief that only a special class of men see the truth of a feminized society
Keanu Reeves & Laurence Fishburne. The Matrix. 1999.
Manosphere
Internet and media as home to extensive misinformation about the ‘suffering of men’ E.g. The belief that men suffer from an
‘invisible’ forms of domestic violence
Ian Ironwood. The Manosphere: A New Hope for Masculinity (2013).
Toxic Masculinity: Debbie Ging, pg. 3
● Subordinate (gay) and marginalized (geek/nerd) masculinities perceived as having no impact, power or threat, when they often hold anti-feminist & misogynistic outlooks.
● Marginalized: Believe they are the “nice guys,” but that women only reward “Alpha males” who are “not nice/womanizers”
Marginalized Masculinity and Entitlement
● Negotiation: reject parts of hegemonic masculinity (the alpha male), but embrace others
● Claim a right to sex and thus to women’s bodies ● Inability to secure sex is a violation of their rights ● Produces a form of toxic masculinity/hatred of
women
Geek Masculinity. Debbie Ging, pg. 5
● Rejection of aspects of hegemonic masculinity ○ “The Alpha Male” and the “Gentlemen, Elliott Rodger”
● Often targeted and bullied by alpha males, they are unable to recognize their own negotiated use of hegemonic masculinity
● Use of misogynistic language (9) and attacks online ● Intention & effect of reasserting masculine dominance 11
Antifeminism & Toxic Masculinity “Decline of Males” rhetoric confronts institutionalization of feminism. Alek Minassian (2018),
Elliott Rodger (2014), & #Gamergate/Anita Sarkeesian (2014).
Gamergate 2012
Toxic Online Environment of Harassment, Threats, and Masculine Entitlement
Rebecca Solnit 2014
Elliott Rodger
Full Version: https://www.dem ocracynow.org/20 14/5/27/yesallwo men_rebecca_sol nit_on_the_santa
Special K’s “Own It”
Empowerment- Advertising Campaigns: Constant marketing churn urging women to love themselves
Charlottesville, 2017 and El Paso, 2019
White Supremacist Violence
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/14/corne l_west_rev_toni_blackmon_clergy
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/13/ibra m_x_kendi_guns_in_america
Utoeya. 22 July 2011
Warning: Video includes descriptions of a massacre. Please feel free to leave class if you don’t want to watch
Utoeya, Norway
Anders Breivik kills 69 people, mostly youths members of the Labour party
Anders Breivik
Identified multiculturalism and Islam as a threat to European civilization
Targeted what he called “cultural Marxists and feminists
Breivik: Defend White Society from “Cultural Marxists”
● Feminism seen as a threat to society ● Synonym for “political correctness”: a “suicidal ideology
based on appeasement of Islam” ● Must defend the nation against the genocide of whites ● Portrays the 1950s as a golden age when “men treated
women like ladies, and ladies devoted their time and effort to making good homes, [and] rearing their children”
Belief that Feminism Harms Social Order
● Women “want it all. They want more benefits and rights for themselves. They have been awarded with everything they could ever dream of achieving. They now have complete matriarchal supremacy domestically and exercise substantial influence in politics”
Women as the Enemy
Breivik continues: “you must embrace and familiarise yourself with the concept of killing women, even very attractive women” since they make up the majority of the “cultural Marxists”
We must “reintroduce the father as the authority figure and family head”
Jihadism or Christian Patriarchy?
His vision of a restored social order looks exactly like his portrayal of jihadism and Islamic society.
He discusses how his “knights” and jihadists share similar aims, and how they should negotiate a dividing up of the world into separate spheres: what the far right in America now calls “racialism”
