It’s been nearly two months since the NM Healthy Masculinities Collaborative launched our NM Healthy Masculinities Toolkit. We believe this body of work is a seed—an attempt to respond to the violence and emotional distress both perpetrated and experienced by men and boys. In this time of anguish following the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, we must be explicit about how patriarchy and white supremacy fuel this.
We know from decades of research that men and boys who “feel that their masculinity is being threatened or ‘lost’ will resort to violent tactics to recuperate their lost identities.” Dominant culture equates violence with masculinity. This intersects with racist, white supremacist ideologies such as the essentially considers people of color as “enemies of the state.” The shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde must be understood as acts of political violence and located within this context that produces and funds violence and creates policies that codify and enable it at multiple levels—from permissive gun legislation, to educational policies that prevent us from teaching the truth about our history, to our continued funding of violent and ineffectual policing, to our unending support of the military industrial complex.
These tragedies are not isolated incidents, nor are they somehow mysterious or unavoidable. They are where patriarchy and white supremacy meet a policy context that continues to value monetary profit for the few over human life and the greater good of our entire society.
Simultaneously, earlier this week, The Washington Post reported that, “Across the United States, men accounted for 79 percent of suicide deaths in 2020… More and more, theories about the gender gap in suicides are focused on the potential pitfalls of masculinity itself.” Patriarchy is literally killing us—not only are men hurting others at epidemic rates, but they also harming themselves.
This work is inter-generational and multi-leveled. NMW.O is determined to build pathways to nonviolent and healthier masculinities for self-identified men and boys. This is an essential component of gender justice and healing—not in the abstract, but tangibly about saving our lives. In that vein, we continue to build on and share about this work through the NM Healthy Masculinities Toolkit. Read our recent op-ed here, listen to members of the collaborative on the radio here, watch our recent video here. And, most importantly, download the toolkit and find out more about the ongoing work, here.