Misogynistic Males: Mass Murders, the Incel Subculture, and Ways to Assess Risk

Masculinity In Crisis?

Theorists have postulated that a “crisis of masculinity” has been caused by a destabilizing paradigm shift in gender roles (Clare, 2000; Jefferson, 2002). When talking about gender roles, Goffman (1979, p. 8) argued there is a “schedule” for the portrayal of masculinity and femininity. Measures like the Bern Sex Role Inventory (1974) have been used to calculate how masculine, feminine or androgynous one is. For instance, scores on the submissiveness scale correlate positively with femininity and negatively with masculinity. This highlights the idea that such a measure is a “conglomerate of stereotypes” (Yonge, 1978, p. 1245); thus, rendering it reductive and not representative of the genders. It is more accurate to instead view masculinity as a descriptive element of the cultural ideologies and observed behaviors of men. Conceptually, however, it is ill-defined because masculinity is often conceived of differently, frequently within the same text (Collier, 1998, pp. 16, 84). This means that Treadwell and Garland’s (2011, p. 3) assertions that “masculinity is multidimensional, varied and malleable” and there exists a “multiplicity of masculinities” are credible.