Protecting Manhood: Race, Class, and Masculinity in Men’s Attraction to Guns and Aggression

Abstract

Using an original self-report survey of 18- to 30-year-old men, this study aims to understand gendered processes underlying men’s attitudes toward guns and aggressive behavior through two types of threats. We find that acceptance threat, a threat to an individual man’s sense of masculinity, and status threat, the belief that societal changes disadvantage men as a group, are positively associated with both men’s attraction to guns and their aggressive reactions to perceived disrespect. The effect of acceptance threat is amplified when a strong sense of status threat is also present, including attraction to guns and aggressive reaction to disrespect. These patterns are more pronounced among economically advantaged white men due to their precarious position in the race, class, and gender hierarchies. The racial and classed intersections amplify beliefs of status and acceptance threat for white men, channeling these threats into aggression and attraction to guns. We discuss how men’s economic and racial locations shape their responses to threats, and ultimately the consequences for men’s violence.

The precarious masculinity of firearm ownership.

“…For example, Stange and Oyster (2000) argued that firearms are a symbol for men's "power, force, aggressiveness, decisiveness, deadly accuracy, [and] cold rationality" (p. 22). Similar arguments have been made connecting firearms as symbols of masculine aggression, self-reliance, and domination (Melzer, 2009;O'Neill, 2007;Scaptura & Boyle, 2021;Stroud, 2012), themes conceptually similar to those commonly understood to comprise traditional masculine ideology (Levant et al, 2013;Levant & Richmond, 2016).…”

“…Mencken & Froese, 2019) is positively associated with masculine role attitudes. Similarly, Scaptura and Boyle (2021) findings suggest the connection between masculinity and firearms to be fear based (e.g., men's loss of traditional privilege). Moreover, research from masculine contingency has shown that masculine threats compared to masculine boosts are more strongly related to dysfunctionality such as gender role conflict, hostile sexism, homophobia, while also being significantly inversely related to self-esteem (Burkley et al, 2016).…”

“…Given the precarious nature of trying to maintain masculinity and the wealth of possible threats both internal (doing something one perceives to not be masculine) and external (being accused of not being masculine), it is possible that some men turn to firearms to reestablish their masculinity. Indeed, recent findings suggest that constructs such as status threat and beliefs that social changes disadvantage men as a group are positively associated with men’s interest in firearms (Scaptura & Boyle, 2021). Some researchers have also speculated that one appeal of owning a firearm for men is the ability to perform masculinity or prove their masculinity (Stroud, 2012).…”

“…Within the academic literature, authors have long documented and reported the connections between firearms and masculinity (O’Neill, 2007; Scaptura & Boyle, 2021; Stroud, 2012). However, novel applications of theory, may continue to yield importance social applications.…”

Expanding the work of developing healthy masculinities: Reply to Griffith (2022), Liang (2022), and Rogers (2022).

“…Continuing to draw from feminist traditions, we recognize this conversation is inherently political (Hanisch, 1970), and that restructuring society requires not only individually redefining masculinity, but a reorientation of mainstream political values. For example, we can apply our framework to better understand the “politics of domination” (hooks, 1994, p. 289) where hegemonic, White masculinity holds sway in the U.S. political arena (DiMuccio & Knowles, 2020), and is framed as a threatened status which must then be reasserted violently (Harrison & Michelson, 2019; Helms, 2016; Scaptura & Boyle, 2021), as compared to a politics of care and connection that uses power to protect the vulnerable and change unjust systems.…”