Masculinity Data Lab - Testing Mahler

As you enter, review your reading about masculinity and school shootings.

If you are unsure of the answers to the quiz,  here is an annotated version of the Mahler article.  Use it to help guide you, if you need it.


Part 1:  What does the Mahler research find about school shootings?  Can We replicate the qualitative research data?

Today we will attempt to replicate and update the qualitative research from Mahler and Kimmel.   Mahler and Kimmel did a qualitative analysis of existing data on school shooters.  They examined random school shootings in major print media outlets (Time, Newsweek, US News, USA Today, NY Times, LA Times).

Second, divide up the shooters to research so you do not examine the same data as the rest of the group.   Below are two lists of school shootings to get started.  Be sure to use only random school shootings after 2001.

• Wikipedia list of school shootings since 2000 
• MotherJones data set of all mass shootings (under the "location" column, see schools) 

Use major news outlets to gather data about some of the school shooters from 2001-present.
Make a note of the shooter's:

• gender, 
• race, 
• state (red or blue in 2001), 
• community: urban, suburban, rural
• other qualitative info about them such as music, video games, movies, parent status, mental illness, social status/teased, et al...

You may want to use the ILC Newspaper search to find info about the shooters, or Google their names.  Here are a few other websites to help you find info:
GunViolence.org
Everytown research
Mass Shooting Tracker
TheTrace compiles articles and data related to shootings at thetrace.org
NRA gun law tracker

Maps for comparing red/blue states:

Results of 2000 election.

The map above shows current laws for carrying firearms.

Does Mahler's Research still hold up?

Part 2:  After you have gathered data for a number of school shooters, as a small group answer this question.  Use data from your group to support your claim.

Then, discuss as a class:

• Does your small group data correlate with what the rest of the class found?
• What do you think of the findings?
• Is this data interesting/insightful?  Why/why not?
• Can you see the connection between masculinity and violence?
• Do you think that the average American would have trouble understanding the connection?  Why?
• What questions do you still have?

Does the research apply to other random shootings?

In your groups, search other random shootings and see if the research applies beyond schools.

Masculinity in the binary

HW: Please read Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence Random School Shootings, 1982-2001.  It is a qualitative study in American Behavioral Scientist about who randomly shoots up schools and why.  Students can access it here.  Publicly it is also available here.  DUE in 3 days.


Before we begin, please answer the following questions.  Answer each quickly with the first words that come to mind.  Please don't worry about foul language, just write the words that come to mind:

Question 1: What are three words that describe what it means to be a man?

Question 2:  What are three words that describe someone who is not a real man?

How are males at risk because of masculinity norms?

Use the chart of gendered values below to assess each of the three areas that males are at-risk.

Males and school

In school, boys are 30% more likely to flunk, 250% more likely to be suspended and 300% more likely to be diagnosed with learning and emotional disabilities.

Males are less likely than females to go to college and to earn a bachelor's degree (women earned 57% of B.A.'s in 2012), a master's degree or a PhD.

What is your hypothesis about why this is so?  How can these be related to the binary?

Males and health risks

Young men are much more likely to die from accidental death than women:  Males 20-24 are 3 times more likely to to die as a result of accidents, 4 times more likely to die from suicide and 6 times more likely to be murdered than women.  (Ferris and Stein pg 256)

What is your hypothesis about why this is so?  How can these be related to the binary?

"...in the United States, where men have higher rates of life-threatening health conditions than women — including uncontrolled high blood pressure and heart disease — changing eating habits may be important for their health."
Why is this so?

Researchers Sandra Nakagawa and Chloe Hart conducted a study examining how gender identity influences eating habits.  

Hypothesize why this might be.

That study explained here in Contexts.

Males and violence

40% of teenage girls 14-17yrs say they know someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend.

1 of 5 college females will experience some form of dating violence from their male partner.

1 in 3 High School students have been or will be in an abusive relationship.

These stats come from the Zacariah Foundation which is a local organization that will confidentially help individuals deal with sexual and domestic abuse.

What is your hypothesis about why this is so?  How can these be related to the binary?


Males and work
Some jobs are genderized and males are limited by the sexist socialization messages about gender. 

It is ironic, but misogyny actually hurts males.  Below is evidence about how gender inequality is limiting the jobs that males will do and the feminizing whole industries.  Males don't want to take jobs that they label as feminine.  Because of this, males are passing on some of the fastest-growing industries, like home healthcare.

• Why Men Don’t Want the Jobs Done Mostly by Women (2017)
• Job Listings That Are Too ‘Feminine’ for Men (2017)
• Contexts, The Pushes and Pulls of Gendered Occupations (2018)

In Gender & Society, Latonya Trotter finds that it’s not just exclusion from men’s professions, but the inclusionary policies of women’s professions that maintain distinctly gendered fields.

•  Here is an article in Harvard Business Review written by Janette Dill, an assistant professor in the sociology department at The University of Akron in Ohio:

The Entry-Level Health Care Jobs Men Are (and Are Not) Taking (2017)

This all signals that men, and particularly white men who are able to gain additional training, may be defining some health care occupations as more technical and masculine, preserving the conventional understandings of masculinity within the health care sector. Unfortunately, this also means that women and minority men may continue to be clustered in lower-paying direct-care occupations, where the “dirty work” remains stigmatized as “women’s work.”

And supporting professor Dill's work is this research about gendered language in job postings.

This shows both the ratio of
males to females and gendered language
for the fastest growing jobs.

One example of the gendered language in job ads.

Washington Center for Equitable Growth provides this fact sheet (2017) about occupational segregation.

The genderization of jobs includes some of the following examples (Ferris and Stein 2018, 269-71):

Many jobs still highly genderized: nurses, early education (97%), dental hygenists, secretaries (94%), paralegals, housekeepers are highly female while pilots, carpenters, mechanics (98%), and firefighters (94%) are highly male.

Besides applicants self-selecting jobs based on gender, employers also select based on gender.  This research (2019) documented in Contexts shows that employers hire applicants by gender, based on their perception of what the gender of the job should be.