Worth a reminder: Almost all violent extremists share one thing: their gender

    Article @ The Guardian from April of by Michael Kimmel  who is the author of Guyland and Angry White Men. He directs the center for the study of men and masculinities at New York's Stony Brook University:

    Almost all violent extremists share one thing: their gender

    Most people who commit acts of terrorist violence are young men. We overlook their gender to our peril

    ‘Young men often come into extremist movements because they experience downsizing in specifically gendered ways.’ 

    According to an ever-growing number of young men in Europe, the United States and across the Muslim world, we are at the beginning of a war. And no one knows how it will end.

    To me, what is interesting in the paragraph you just read is not the indeterminacy of the outcome. All crises are like that. No, it is the fact that “ever-growing number of young men” probably does not seem notable to most readers.

    The fact is that virtually all of those mobilizing on all sides of this growing clash are young men – whether right-wing extremists, anti-immigrant zealots, anti-Muslim skinheads and neo-Nazis or young Muslims readying for jihad.

    It’s so obvious, it barely needs noting.

    And so it isn’t noted.

    If we imagine for a moment that all those amassing on all the different sides of this looming cataclysm, all those drifting to the edges of the political spectrum and toward violent extremism, were female, would there be any other story? Wouldn’t magazines be filled with individual profiles, TV news shows highlighting the relationship between femininity and violence, bookshelves sagging from the weight of the “gender” analysis?

    Yet the fact that virtually every single violent extremist is male creates hardly a ripple.

    It can be easy to think: “But wait, what about those female suicide bombers? What about those skinhead girls? Those women of the Klan?”

    This proves my point [....]

    Comments

    Testosterone's better than crack cocaine. Testes envy, that's what it comes down to.


    Related, but also lots of other favorite dagblog memes here, and much sounds familiar, highly recommended:

    One Legacy of Merkel? East German Men Voting for the Far Right
    Germany is again divided between east and west. To understand why, it helps to understand the many grievances of men in the former Communist East.

    By Katrin Bernhold from Ebersbach-Neugersdorf for NYTimes.com, Nov. 5


    Just saw Steve Schmidt on MSNBC say he sees a real clear message from the elections of an extreme hardening of the forlorn rural mouse vs urban/surburban mouse, as in the above, as in angry tribalist populism. Remains to be seen whether that means that the suburban soccer moms dragged (fairly happily) married hubby over to the other side of the divide, leaving the lusers behind, also as in the above.

    There was a comment to the above article that I found quite striking, a one liner, I can't find it now, too many to scroll through, it was something like  Incels blackmail the world!


    Extremists who take intractable unreasonable positions blackmail thethe world. The whole Tea Party was based on that, as was Erdogan's rise over 10 years, Brexit, etc.




    Yeah, that'll end well. "That Ms Ratched, she's a real ball-cutter, ain't she?"


    Boys just wanna have violence?


    This guy has his testosterone totally under control, totally:


    A real good reminder that most violent extremists are quite a different thing than plain vanilla hatred of the other and prejudice. It's just that they seek out amenable groups and hatreds, and just happen to find one more to their liking for stoking the personal anger they already have. It's rarely the other way around:

    If anger at Muslims and immigration wasn't a major populist topic right now, these guys would pick something else. Should the world be so lucky as to have this kind of hate fall back, they'd just find something else! So solving the problem of these violent guys with personal grievance is not like tied to getting rid of Trump stoking this or that. Not going to work, they will just find another issue they find simpatico.


    Gender equality progress?

    Two 9-Year-Old Girls Terrorize Australian Shopping Center

    By Madeline Aggeler @ TheCut.com, March 28, 2019 WITH VIDEO

    Two tiny, 9-year-old agents of chaos terrorized a Helensvale, Australia, shopping center on Monday afternoon, jumping on top a car, shouting obscenities, and threatening security guards. Videos taken by passersby captured their expletive-laden rampage.

    “This is our car, so get fucked!” one girl can be seen shouting at security while the two danced on a white Toyota sedan in the Westfield parking lot.

    As security guards tried to diffuse the situation, the girls kicked at and spat on them.  When one guard yanked away the girls’ scooter, one shouted, “If you take it, I’ll bloody kill you,” and the second leaped off the car, shouting “Give me my fucking scooter.” Moments later, video shows the second girl speeding away on the recovered vehicle, and doing a sweet ollie.

    According to 9News Gold Coast, the girls reportedly started acting out in the parking lot after getting into a fight about cigarettes, and abusing an elderly woman inside the shopping center. [....]


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