SansPretense

This is basically a personal reflection and essay on the ideas presented in the commentary found at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1686784.ece, titled “American Psycho” and published in the U.K.’s The Sunday Times on April 22, 2007. I do not wish to discuss the tragedy or give Mr. Cho anymore publicity. I do, however, want to look at the role of masculinity in this tragic event and society in general as discussed by those quoted in the article.

The horrific events at VT is still very firmly on our minds and will remain there for some time. According to Sarah Baxter and others quoted in the article linked above, it is an indication of a crisis among young males in a “feminised society.” This is not a very popular line of thinking - it implies that modern feminism is very harmful to the male psyche in ways not based in some misogynistic mindset, but in a subconscious manner. The article makes some good points, I think, and goes far into shedding light on some of the issues facing young men and women today. None of this is an excuse for what Cho did, but it does shed light on some of the issues the young man faced…

To begin, it is important to note that a major change in society from even 50 years ago is the number of young men and women choosing to go to college and graduate schools is much higher than anytime in the past. I cannot count the number of times I have heard many of my peers say “I’m not ready to settle down yet.” There is an effort to prolong the carefree days of youth, and often college students (even some graduate students) are thought of as “just kids” even if by historical standards these “kids” were old enough and responsible enough to be married and have a house full of kids of their own. Not only do parents and society support this image of the 20-something “kid,” but it is reflected in the youth as well:

The baby-faced Cho was 23, an adult by most people’s reckoning. In any other era it is doubtful he would have thought of himself as a boy or described his fellow students at Virginia Tech as “brats”. Trapped in the perpetual adolescence of the student, he has become a new monstrous poster child for boys who would rather kill themselves and others than grow up.

Whether this “prolonged youth” is a good thing or not depends on one’s views. However, it is an important backdrop to the larger problems that young adults are facing. It often makes for a longer part of one’s life devoid of direction.

In this backdrop, where clear, defined roles between the sexes are often blurred into a mix of sexuality and gender issues. As society is coming to grips with the concepts of gender equality, debating whether masculinity and femininity are social constructs or something more ingrained and whether homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism should be an accepted part of our society, men and women are often very confused about where they fit in.

In particular, the question of what it means to “be a real man” is very much alive today even with the efforts by feminists and those on the Left of the political spectrum to make the question meaningless. According to Paglia, they may be making the question even more important:

Camille Paglia, professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and author of Sexual Personae, believes Cho is emblematic of the crisis of masculinity in America. “Women have difficulty understanding the mix of male sexual aggression with egotism and the ecstasy of self-immolation,” she says. Or to quote Martin Amis on that other killer, Fred West: he became “addicted to the moment where impotence becomes prepotence”.

And also,

Paglia, who has taught in American universities for 35 years, describes America’s residential campuses as vast “islands of green and slack conformity where a strange benevolent and tyrannical paternalism has taken over. It’s like a resort atmosphere”.
Paglia believes the school Cho attended would have been no better equipped to deal with frustrated young males. “There is nothing happening educationally in these boring prisons that are fondly called suburban high schools. They are saturated with a false humanitarianism, which is especially damaging for boys.”

So what does it mean to be a man? Are the needs of men unique to those of women? Research shows that men learn and think differently - a biological trait as opposed to a learned one. It makes sense that we would also have a need to express ourselves differently. One can argue whether this need is biological or social, but it is clear that men today are often lacking some of the traits that men in the past had - as if they didn’t form. It is also clear that men today are showing more frustration than in the past:

“Young men have enormous energy. There was a time when they could run away, hop on a freighter, go to a factory and earn money, do something with their hands. Now there is this snobbery of the upper-middle-class professional. Everyone has to be a lawyer or paper pusher.”

How many men in this middle-class world can’t create anything, especially with their hands? How many men must rely on the working-class to do basic maintenance and work on their cars or houses, that in the past could be done by even the most educated men? Yet, as a society, we often look up to the professional men that “make things happen” in the world, while looking down on the men that just live day by day, doing whatever they can to make ends meet for their families as opposed to their careers - and in turn, keeps society running.

This blurring of the male psyche is very related to the blurring of the female psyche. Once, it was the men that ran wild only to be caught and settled down by a strong woman - having to choose between a life of meaningless lust, or the love and comfort that only a good woman can give. In short, it was a choice between the anchors of love and the meaningless of lust. Now, the stabilizing factors in society - strong women - have been uprooted. Men no longer have to make a clear choice between love and lust. Love has been dehumanized - degraded into animalistic lust. With this new-found, false freedom, men and women become lost in a meaningless existence, where sexuality is no longer rooted in the spirit. The consequences can be devastating:

Cho is a classic example of “someone who felt he was a loser in the cruel social rat race”, Paglia says. The pervasive hook-up culture at college, where girls are prepared to sleep with boys they barely know or fancy, can be a source of seething resentment and alienation for those who are left out. “

Paglia goes on to write that,

“Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again.”

If women are behaving like men, why does this send mixed signals? Shouldn’t we, as a society be more happy since we don’t have the efforts of commitment? It is a mistake to believe that promiscuity is a uniquely masculine trait - as research with sociology has shown. On the contrary, promiscuity undermines the masculine psyche. It is a rejection of the fundamental traits that separate men and women, masculine and feminine. Men have a fundamental desire to commit to a single woman, spurned by our subconscious desire to protect and nurture a family. In the past, as men gave in to the desires of the flesh, it was always the call to return to monogamy - to be a “real man” that led them back to a monogamy. Now, this is gone - or at least prolonged as women, too, or giving in to the same base desires.

This leads to a blurring between the erotic and the pornographic:

The sex, Paglia argues, “is everywhere but it is not erotic”, as can be seen by the sad spectacle of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears flashing their lack of underwear during a night on the town. “It’s not even titillating. It’s banal and debasing.”

Often, it is the Puritans amongst us that clumps the erotic and the pornographic. They are different. The world of the erotic strives to connect beauty to the most intimate moments between a man and a woman, while the pornographic dehumanizes these moments into lustful desires. In the promiscuous activities of today, the erotic is replaced with the pornographic, and every effort to fool the participants into a false-love ends in failure. Love is the complete giving of one’s self to another. The premature giving of one’s physical self to the other without a complete giving of one’s heart to another undermines the whole effort.

The very real and strong link between the pornographic (lust) and violence is very apparent in sex crimes and in literature and movies (not to be confused with the link between pleasure and pain often found in erotica). Lust is deeply connected to a power struggle between the participants - a selfish desire to exploit another. Rape is one of the many possible crimes associated with this link. Mass murder, it seems, is another:

But the plays show he was preoccupied not just with girls but with paedophilia and sodomy.
In Richard McBeef, a drama about child abuse, a stepson rants, “I will not be molested by an aging, balding, overweight pedophile [sic]stepdad named Dick”, before threatening to shove the television remote control “up his ass”. It concludes: “I hate him. Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill Dick.”
Dr James Gilligan, a former prison psychiatrist who teaches at New York University, believes that misogyny and homophobia are a central component of the make-up of violent criminals, who often fear they have homosexual tendencies.
“An underlying factor that is virtually always present is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood and the way to do that, to gain respect, is to commit a violent act,” he says. “It is tremendously tempting to use violence as a means of trying to shore up one’s sense of masculine self-esteem.”

The idea is that since what it means to be a man is no longer clear, men are finding a new, violent outlet for their masculine issues. For some, rape is no longer enough. They must take away the very objects of their hatred - by murdering them. Since they include themselves in this downward spiraling society, the only escape for them is death as well.

However, if Cho was confused on his masculinity, what about the students (especially the men) in the line of fire?

In a twist to the debate on masculinity, some commentators have complained that the terrified Virginia Tech students were no Rambos when it came to defending themselves. John Derbyshire, a right-wing British writer based in America, wondered, “Why didn’t anyone rush the guy? Yes, I know it is easy to say these things, but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything?” — a reference to the passengers fighting back in the 9/11 hijacked plane.
The columnist Mark Steyn took up the theme with an essay on the “culture of passivity” that is overtaking America. In his view, students are becoming so infantilised that they have lost their capacity to take responsibility.
“In a horrible world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself and others,” he believes. “It is a poor reflection on us that in those critical first seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor understood instinctively the obligation to act.” Librescu, 75, forced his body against the door to prevent Cho storming his classroom, gaining time for some of his students to escape. He was shot dead. But there were younger heroes, too, such as Derek O’Dell, who was shot in the arm but managed to wedge his foot in the door and prevent Cho from re-entering the classroom.
Another student, realising that a friend was playing dead, was said to have deliberately drawn Cho’s attention to himself as the gunman searched the room for survivors — and sacrificed his own life.

The heroes of the tragedy give us hope that real men are still out there and that what it means to be a real man has not died along with chivalry. However, in the past, when men were bred to face danger to protect others, would there have been more heroes? Would Cho have been rushed and tackled? Paglia suggests that the semiautomatic guns prevented this since they could be fired so quick (see article for direct quote). It seems unlikely that we can rid ourselves of semi-automatic weapons at this point (even with legislation), however, is this really a necessity?

The article and Paglia’s comments struck me hard, as I see much of myself in her description of Cho. The frustration that she describes men feeling in such a promiscuous culture is very much apart of me. The difference, however, is that I don’t feel any desire to violently lash out at the men and women engaging in such a meaningless lifestyle. I see the hurt and the pain that it causes, and my masculine instincts lead me to want to protect these women more. To take them into my arms and my heart as they begin seeing the effects of their actions, and to hold them until the pain goes away without judgement or resentment. I believe that’s the way the way a true man should react. I say this not to “advertise myself” as the role model - I’m far from it, but to demonstrate that there are some men out there with a different attitude than the jerks in the bars…