Dickinson College Dickinson Scholar Student Honors Theses By Year Student Honors Theses 5-22-2016 Entitlement and Anguish: An Analysis of Masculinity and Misogyny in American School Shootings Sara Aubrey Tyberg Dickinson College Follow this and additional works at: http://scholar.dickinson.edu/student_honors Part of the Gender and Sexuality Commons, and the Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons Recommended Citation Tyberg, Sara Aubrey, "Entitlement and Anguish: An Analysis of Masculinity and Misogyny in American School Shootings" (2016). Dickinson College Honors Theses. Paper 224. This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Dickinson Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Entitlement and Anguish: An Analysis of Masculinity and Misogyny in American School Shootings By Sara Tyberg Submitted in partial fulfillment of Honors requirements for the Department of Sociology Professor J. Daniel Schubert, Advisor Professor Susan Rose, Reader Professor Amy Farrell, Reader May 16, 2016 Tyberg 1 Table of Contents 1. Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................2 2. Introduction ................................................................................................................................4 3. Literature Review ....................................................................................................................11 a. Understanding the Social Construction of Gender.........................................................11 b. What Masculinity Means for Young Men .....................................................................16 c. Masculinity in Post-World War II and Post-Vietnam America .....................................19 d. Defining Violence and Understanding Violent Men .....................................................22 e. Explaining School Shootings: A Review of the Literature ............................................24 4. Methodology .............................................................................................................................34 a. Understanding Qualitative Case Study Analysis ...........................................................36 b. Creating My Qualitative Case Study Sample ................................................................42 c. My School Shootings Sample ........................................................................................44 5. Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................54 a. Gender Conflict: Women’s Social Progress and Men’s Sexual Inadequacy .................54 b. Physical Strength and Violence: An “Inadequate” Man’s Solution ..............................57 c. Condemning Women: Casualties of Unfulfilled Entitlement and Misplaced Blame ....64 6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................70 7. Appendix A ...............................................................................................................................77 a. America’s Pervasive Gun Culture ..................................................................................77 b. Gun Violence: An American Problem ...........................................................................80 8. Resources ..................................................................................................................................86 Tyberg 2 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the many people who contributed both directly and indirectly to the completion of this thesis. Without all of the following people, this accomplishment would not have been possible. First of all, I thank Professor Schubert for all of his incredible support as both my Professor as well as Academic Advisor. His careful guidance of my work, dedication to my wellbeing as a student, and passion for sociological theory have helped me immensely this semester. I want to also thank Professor Rose, who oversaw the beginning of this research last fall and provided me with innumerable resources for studying this topic. Her passion for helping students including myself has made all of the difference throughout my time at Dickinson. I also want to thank her as well as Professor Farrell for agreeing to serve as readers as I submit my thesis for Honors. Additionally, I strongly believe I wouldn’t be graduating with a B.A. in Sociology without the support of Professor Farrell, who was my First-Year Seminar professor and first Academic Advisor and who encouraged me to enroll in my first course in the department three years ago. It was a perfect match. I would like to thank Professor Steinbugler and Professor Oliviero for their help in the early stages of writing, when this was a different project altogether. Their generous advice and resources were so appreciated, even after my project changed course during the semester. I must thank Dickinson’s Social Science Liaison Librarian Anna Kozlowska for taking time to double-check my bibliography and citations on a sunny Friday afternoon. I also owe thanks to the audiences at the Central Pennsylvania Consortium’s Annual Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Conference at Gettysburg College on April 2nd, 2016, and at the Research on Women and Gender by Students Symposium at Dickinson College on April 21st, 2016, for their thoughtful comments, questions, and positive support of my research. Tyberg 3 I thank my peers who also endured SOCI 405 for all of their helpful advice and comments on my drafts throughout this semester. I thank the best Writing Associate I could have asked for, Olivia Migliori, for her careful critiques of my work and warm reassurance whenever I had specific concerns. I also want to thank the friends who have been there endlessly for me this semester—staying up late, providing pep talks, and listening to my research presentations more than once—you know who you are. And, last but not least, I thank the members of my family who have graciously provided me with the financial ability to attend Dickinson as well as ample support in pursuing my academic passions. Tyberg 4 Why does it have to be this way? I ask all of you. All I ever wanted was to love women, and in turn be loved by them back. Their behavior towards me has only earned my hatred, and rightfully so! I am the true victim in all of this. I am the good guy. Humanity struck at me first by condemning me to experience so much suffering. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t start this war… I wasn’t the one who struck first… But I will finish it by striking back. I will punish everyone. And it will be beautiful. Finally, at long last, I can show the world my true worth (Rodger 2014:137). It was a balmy and cloudy spring day on Friday, May 23rd, 2014, in Isla Vista, California. The spring semester at the University of California, Santa Barbara was a few weeks away from ending, and students were awaiting this Memorial Day weekend for much-needed relaxation before the final academic push preceding summer vacation. UCSB’s reputation as a party school translated to Friday evenings full of spontaneous nightlife and boisterous house parties. Members of the Alpha Phi Sorority house were getting ready to enjoy the night when at 9:15pm, they heard aggressive knocking at their front door (Brown 2014:8-9). Although several young women were present in the house that night, miraculously, no one decided to answer. Minutes later, the sound of gunshots and terrified screams filled the air. The sisters of the Alpha Phi sorority were safe, but just outside their home, three other UCSB sorority girls were shot multiple times with a semi-automatic pistol. One of them was 20-year-old Bianca de Kock. As her friends died beside her, de Kock looked into the eyes of her attacker as he smirked, shooting with purpose and shooting to kill (Sullivan 2014). Fortunately, de Kock survived her five bullet wounds. Others were not so lucky; Elliot Rodger killed a total of six people and wounded fourteen others that day in Isla Vista. After shooting the three sorority sisters, he continued a drive-by rampage through the city, hitting some civilians with his BMW and shooting others through his open passenger-side window before following through with his own suicide. Days after the shooting, United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called the event a “senseless tragedy” (Jaschik 2014). Yet, this attack Tyberg 5 was anything but senseless. In fact, every detail was part of Rodger’s plan, including the decision to target sorority girls. In his 137-page autobiography and manifesto, he wrote, “I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts. I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest sorority of UCSB” (Rodger 2014:132). In his writing and in video recordings, Rodger described his lifelong feelings of sexual frustration and social rejection by women as well as his hatred for men engaged in successful heterosexual relationships. Rodger’s (2014:136) autobiography culminates in a graphic description of his “ideal world,” in which women are quarantined in concentration camps where “the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved