Analysis Of Rodger's Guns: Masculinity In A Culture Of Violence

Siavash Zohoori was out on his bicycle in Isla Vista, near the University of California Santa Barbara campus where he goes to school, when he saw people 20 feet from him go down. They had been shot during a drive-by perpetrated by Elliot Rodger, who, it was later revealed, had planned to target sorority members at UCSB to "punish" them for all the times he had been rejected by women. Six people died and 14 others were injured in Rodger's misogynistic attack.

Following the attack, Zohoori confided in his sociology professor Victor Rios, and the two discussed creating a project in response to the shooting. As details began to emerge about Rodger's misogynistic motivations, they decided to focus on masculinity for a project titled "Boys 'n' Guns: Masculinity in a Culture of Violence."

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Narrowing in on what it means to be masculine, he and others argue, could start addressing a number of other problems like hazing, stress, depression and even mass school shootings.

"The Single Most Important Factor"

"Working on a college campus for 27 years, I know there are a lot of men who want to help but no one's asked them to help," Chris Kilmartin, a psychology professor at the University of Mary Washington, said. "We cannot expect people to contribute to a culture of respect and inclusion if we don't teach them how to do it."

The fact that nearly all mass shootings are committed by men, save for a handful of incidents involving fewer people, reinforces his argument for the need to talk about masculinity, Katz said. That some deceased shooters left behind manifestos, which complain of not living up to society’s expectation of being a man and rejections from women, only adds to it.

"We have to talk about gender, it’s the single most important factor," Katz said. "If it wasn't, 50 percent [of mass shootings] would be done by