Men and Violence

As we have been discussing a lot lately in class, I wanted to talk about violence and males. It really is astonishing if you think about nearly all of the violence cases in the past 30 years or so, and consider how many of them have been committed by females? How many school shootings have occurred because 3 female students woke up that morning and decided that they wanted to kill innocent classmates? The answer is very few. As Sal mentioned in class, one example of a girl who was involved in a school shooting (which the plan was actually constructed with male students), the girl surrendered herself to the police without going through with the plan. The question is why? Why do males commit so many more acts of violence then females? There are many reasons, but in my opinion the main reason is because of our society and how we portray men. Men and all males for that matter are seen as strong, fearless, courageous. Therefore, when their masculinity are questioned, as many school shootings begin, males feel they need to prove themselves. Unfortunately, they do this in violent ways that harm and often kill other people. If society portrayed women as tough and strong, would the amount of women who commit acts of violence increase?