masculinity or whatever

Out of all of the texts that we've read for class, I think this one--Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia and Violence: Random School Shootings by Michael Kimmel and Matthew Mahler--is the one that I identified the most. I'm 'bout to get real personal with y'all, so I hope you can handle this.

I don't think that I've ever fit the stereotypical identity of a masculine boy/teen/young adult/man. Obviously when I was younger, I did certain things that in the end would deem me masculine, but at the end of the day I never got into a fight, I was never good at sports, I never liked sports, I never spoke about girls, I never had a girlfriend, and I was bullied (but not to an extreme extent and it only lasted through middle school - but I had friends that sometimes defended me. Well, not friends but ~peers or whatever.

I thought it was really interesting to read about resilience and what may stop those who are bullied from acting on such extreme thoughts. I had never thought about it, but I know for a fact that murder or harm to others ever crossed my mind. But then again, I've never believed that violence is a good solution for anything, regardless of how many movies I had seen where the only solution was violence. I don't know what to say in terms of this because I think that the way I was raised had a big impact on this. I don't know what the psychology behind this is, but I just have a feeling that something about being brought up the way I did had something to do with the fact that I never had ~bad thoughts about my classmates.

I still don't very much fit the image of masculinity as an adult (lol I'm an adult?), and I could not care less about about that. Something that I think we have to start deconstructing--and soon--is this idea of masculinity and femininity and how these binaries are often the cause of so much bullying in opposite genders. And the thing is that it shouldn't be that hard? I'm not saying it won't be, but I don't think it's impossible if we start teaching kids at a young age.

I don't mean to digress (except I totally do), but I had a problem with this article that I wish to discuss with the class slash I hope you guys can enlighten me because yeah... I did think it was an interesting study, and I'm glad that it focused on masculinity because it IS something that we often overlook. But I felt like this article also discredited mental illness as a whole and I don't think you can discuss one without the other. And obviously family matters as well, but that's not about the "content" as this study put it. I think mental illness is, in fact, part of the content, even if it's not exactly THE content, you know? I think that how young boys see themselves has something to do with their self esteem and how they decide to act on it.

Again, I know that this study is speaking on the CONTENT of the shootings, but something that we have to start talking about in this country is mental illness because this can play a big part of the way a violent teen thinks.

Ugh, I can't articulate what I had thought about while I was reading the article, but I just feel like we can't talk about one thing without talking about the other? I felt like this article should have hit more points. It felt short and rushed and it would have been nice to read about how some of these issues over lapped.

This is nonsense and I'm sorry I wish I could've articulated my thoughts better in order to have a better discussion on it.