Older White Men: We are the Danger
We become the danger because of how we view manhood.
The archetypal old white dude once screaming “get off my lawn” at the neighborhood kids is now opening fire on innocent people. How did we get here? We got here because of a toxic mix of fear-inducing right wing media, gun culture, and our dominance-based culture of masculinity, which isolates older white men following a lifetime of training us to bully and dominate others.
Yes, far too many older white men are afraid, not only of the unarmed people in our driveways, but of something that frightens us much more. Loss of our status in Man Box culture. In our dominance-based culture of masculinity, boys and men are trained to validate their masculinity by dominating those around them. Failing to do so comes at a high price. Among those prices are ever increasing levels of insignificance, invisibility, failure. But here is the real fear, lose enough status as a boy or man in Man Box culture and you become a target.
This culture of dominance includes the mutual enforcement of the rules of Man Box culture. These rules include things like don’t show our emotions, always be tough, never ask for help, have lots of sex, have control over women and girls, make tons of money, talk about sports or cars, never anything deep.
