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Guy walks into a bar. Only this isn’t a joke. He pulls out a gun, kills five people, wounds 18. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, more than 600 times this year. We’re heading for a mass-shooting record.
Saturday’s massacre in Colorado Springs, followed days later by another at a Walmart in Virginia that killed six people and wounded six more are the latest signs that something is truly amiss.
But America doesn’t have just a gun problem. It also has a guy problem. In these two cases, as in more than 95 percent of all mass shootings — and homicides generally — the perp is a man.
What is it about guys and violence? Sure, we’ve been the stronger, more aggressive sex since ours days as cave men. But lately we’ve gotten out of control. We commit most violent crimes, and we’re also the most frequent violent-crime victims. Except when it comes to domestic violence, where we’re on the receiving end only 12 percent of the time.
Men are physically less healthy than we’ve been in years. Our incomes are stagnating. We’re more likely to be jobless, homeless and incarcerated (94 percent of state and federal inmates are men). We have higher rates of cancer, heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver and serious accidents than women do.
Ah, women. It’s tempting to blame them for our sorry state. They’re gaining on us in the workplace, the professions, sports and the military. Most college enrollees nowadays are female, as are most law and medical school students. Black women ages 25 to 29 are more likely to have advanced degrees than their white male cohorts.
With the economy’s shift from manufacturing to white-collar work, employers now value communicating, networking and other “female” skills more than such “male” attributes as hand-eye coordination and muscle. Typical male traits like self-reliance and risk-taking have been devalued in the new, more collaborative and bureaucratized workplace.
Even the rules of sex and dating have changed, and not in our favor. Just ask Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken and other important men brought low by allegations of behavior that not long ago went unpunished.
All this upheaval has left men feeling threatened and angry. We’ve responded not just with guns and violence, but also with alcohol, opioids, conspiracy theories and political extremism. We’re easy marks for politicians who indulge our grievances. We’re a mess.
Maybe it’s time for a redefinition of masculinity, a new kind of manliness with fewer self-defeating features. That doesn’t mean we have to become more “feminine.” On the contrary, it means building on some traditional manly strengths.
First, we need to talk. More. Holding it all in, he-man style, doesn’t get us anything except ulcers. Conversation, even about our feelings and frustrations, is good for mental health, romantic lives and even our careers. Talking works, experts agree. Guys appreciate stuff that works.
Second, we need to be more realistic about our situation. The world is never going back to the Flintstone era. Nor can the laws of biology be reversed. Because of childbirth, women are still at a relative disadvantage career-wise and in many other respects. They have problems too. They just seem to cope better than we do.
One way to catch up would be to revive and expand chivalry, that manly medieval code of honor, gallantry and courtesy. The concept can easily accommodate generosity, empathy and thoughtfulness — not just toward women, but also strangers and colleagues. Civility usually gets better results than being a jerk. Guys like results.
We need to leverage our masculine respect for competence to include the basics. You know: housecleaning, childcare, food preparation. Like most guys, I’m deficient in these fields. But when we take on a task, we do it right.
Perhaps the most effective thing men can do to regain lost ground is stay in school longer. Nearly all our problems — health, wealth, relationships, criminality — correlate with our generally lower education levels.
Think of these ideas as a preliminary punch list for a rehab project. We can make additions and adjustments as we go along, as any good workman would.
And I think we will. Because guys like to make things, fix things, solve problems. Right now, the problem is us. Let’s git ’r done.
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