Maddening

I recently stumbled on this article: “It’s Maddening Gender is Still Not Central in Mass Shooting Debate.” It started with “how many more lonely, alienated, disconnected, (usually) white males perpetrating murder and then suicide need we witness before admitting the irrefutable fact that the shooters are all male?“

The article goes on to say, “we have to start in preschool, carefully attending to how boys are socialized. We must cultivate their emotional intelligence. Who would deny the value of educating boys to examine their inner lives; to talk about their feelings?”

I could feel my chest tighten with familiar anger; the pervasive refusing to educate boys on emotional intelligence is indeed maddening — and the consequences are catastrophic.

Rob Okun, the article’s author introduced an interesting and timely concept- how we treat our boys, the narrow male gender role we brutally enforce, is a virus. A virus that needs a vaccine. “The young men who slaughtered children in Uvalde, and African Americans in Buffalo, were raised in a society ill-equipped to prevent them from being infected with a virulent strain of TGV, tough guy virus. Any vaccine being developed to treat it must include healthy male antibodies if we’re ever to reach herd immunity and prevent mass shootings. And, in order to create those antibodies, the CDC must be authorized to lead a national campaign to reinvent manhood, beginning with boys.”

Onward to spreading a vaccine.