Suicide by mass murder: Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and rampage school shootings

Kalish, Richard A.; Kimmel, Michael S.

doi:10.5172/hesr.2010.19.4.451

Cited by 168 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…In particular, if suicidal motives indeed play a major role in the behavior of many mass murderers -as the present study's findings and much prior research suggests (Kalish & Kimmel, 2010;Lester et al, 2004;Newman et al, 2004;Newman & Fox, 2009;Palermo & Ross, 1999) -a side-benefit to more effective suicide prevention strategies may be a partial reduction in the occurrences of this high-fatality crime.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 51%

Mass murderers in the United States: predictors of offender deaths

Lankford

2015

The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology

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Objective: many mass murderers appear to care more about harming others than they do about protecting themselves, and they often commit suicide or refuse to surrender and are killed by police. The present study offers the first in-depth investigation of differences between mass murderers who live and die as a direct result of their offenses. Method: data on 308 offenders in the United States from January 2006 to May 2014 are subjected to quantitative analysis, including logistic regression. Results: findings suggest that those who die are older, less likely to have co-offenders, and more likely to commit public mass killings or family killings, which corresponds with Durkheim's theories of suicide in numerous ways. Conclusion: ultimately, several specific improvements in suicide prevention strategies could potentially help to reduce the prevalence of these high-fatality crimes.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 51%

Mass murderers in the United States: predictors of offender deaths

Lankford

2015

The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology

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“…Others have found aggrieved entitlement (Kalish & Kimmel, 2010) and profit (Fox & Levin, 2003) as motives for spree 384 C.L.S. Pury et al…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Is courage always a virtue? Suicide, killing, and bad courage

Pury

Starkey

Kulik

et al. 2015

The Journal of Positive Psychology

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“…While Kalish and Kimmel (2010) attribute this to assuming that African American youth were considered culpable for their actions, it is possible to understand this within the context of American race relations that perpetuates racist discourses that do not treat African American men as rational but, as Morgan (1999) notes, hyperphysical and violent. This evident in Fox and Levin (2001: 73-89), who have a chapter titled "The coming and goings of the young superpredators [sic]", which hinges on a dehumanising animalistic metaphor that evokes both hyperphysicality and violence, and is applied to primarily urban, poor, African American youth.…”

Section: Exceptionality Masculinity and Mass Shootingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This evident in Fox and Levin (2001: 73-89), who have a chapter titled "The coming and goings of the young superpredators [sic]", which hinges on a dehumanising animalistic metaphor that evokes both hyperphysicality and violence, and is applied to primarily urban, poor, African American youth. While the African American shooter could be othered through a racist discourse, the 'suburban, white boy', as described by Kalish and Kimmel (2010), is universalised as 'anyone's son' (though with implied class, race and family structure bias) within the same problematic race relations. 8 To envisage 'anyone's son' as someone who commits an extraordinary act of violence elicits fear; emphasising difference through cognitive distortion allows a separation based on presumed pathology.…”

Section: Exceptionality Masculinity and Mass Shootingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fragile masculinity: social inequalities in the narrative frame and discursive construction of a mass shooter’s autobiography/manifesto

Myketiak

2016

Contemporary Social Science

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Mass shootings, where four or more people are injured or killed, are widely constructed as a contemporary American social problem. This article uses critical discourse analysis guided by thematic analysis to examine the text written and distributed by a mass shooter in California in 2014. Analysis of the narrative frame and discursive construction shows that the author is motivated by a precarious or 'fragile' relationship to masculinity that involves positioning himself against both women and other minority ethnic men in a way that underscores multiple social inequalities. This work contributes to the social science of narrative by building on the connections between positioning theory and framing, which are applied to a text that contributes to debates in feminist linguistics and broader discussions of mass shootings. The findings contribute to feminist linguistics by demonstrating how a mass shooter uses language to rationalise his actions through a frame of hegemonic masculinity based on social inequalities, namely gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and social class. Finally, this work contributes to broader discussions of mass shooters by demonstrating how this mass shooter does not construct or position himself in a way that is exceptional or extraordinary but rather hinges on a fragile form of contemporary masculinity that uses violence as a way to prove self-worth, dominance, and superiority.

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Suicide by mass murder: Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and rampage school shootings

Cited by 168 publications

References 2 publications

Mass murderers in the United States: predictors of offender deaths

Mass murderers in the United States: predictors of offender deaths

Is courage always a virtue? Suicide, killing, and bad courage

Fragile masculinity: social inequalities in the narrative frame and discursive construction of a mass shooter’s autobiography/manifesto

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