What kind of impact do prescribed gender roles play in exhibitions of violence in our societies? As more and more organisations such as White Ribbon work hard to support young men to define their identities as “men” in healthy and nurturing ways, what role has feminism played in causing a displacement of masculine identity and how do we support our men to define themselves with love, rather than resentment and rage? This is not a generalisation to men in general, as the majority are loving, nurturing and stable, but the statistics are horrifying and we need to take pause to consider the social pressures we’ve contributed to, that lead to such acts of violence. With mass murder on the rise, and increases in reported domestic violence, with the majority of perpetrators in these scenarios being men, perhaps our men are crying out for help?
