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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• gender
• ethnicity
• feminism
• critical discourse analysis
• mass shootings
• power
• social analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Chrystie Myketiak is Senior Lecturer in English Language at the University of Brighton, where she researches the relationship between language, power and inequalities, specifically discourses of gender and sexualities in text. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Computer Science from the University of London and was previously an EPSRC postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary University of London.

Notes

1. While Rodger refers to appointments with psychiatrists and counselors, he glosses over his health when discussing his counselors, both men and women. He frames them in relation to dynamics of heterosexuality, race and materialism that he uses in the text more generally. Health providers who are women are treated as potential (sexual) material goods that can improve his status. Meanwhile, health providers who are men are seen as competition for women and their perceived heterosexual success is contrasted with his failure.

2. The FBI considers mass shootings as a sub-type of active shootings. The definition of active shooter used by American government agencies is ‘an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined or populated area’ (FBI, 2013, p. 5).

3. The Guardian and The Washington Post, for example, have published multiple news stories that use these data (e.g., Ingraham, 2015a, 2015b; Teague, 2015; Woolf, 2015).

4. When www.shootingtracker.com joined the Gun Violence Archive, the Gun Violence Archive’s methodology was adopted, which means that the shooter is not counted among the dead/injured. The Gun Violence Archive defines a single event as an incident occurring ‘at the same general time and location’ (www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology, Retrieved July 1, 2016).

5. Combining a mass shooting with other violence is not unusual. For example, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold set two bombs that failed to detonate at the Columbine shootings (Kellner, 2008; Tonso, 2009), while Anders Breivik was successful with his bomb, which killed eight people, before shooting 69 teenagers at a youth summer camp in Norway (Seierstad, 2016).

6. It is not clear how Fox and DeLateur (2014) define ‘white’. The US Census uses the definition of people who identify their ‘origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa’ (Humes et al., 2011, p. 3).

7. The FBI (2013) reports that 96.2% of mass shooters are men. The statistics for rape arrests are only slightly higher at 97.2%; the next most segregated crimes are other sex offenses (excluding prostitution) at 92.3% and weapons crimes (including carrying and possessing) at 91.2% (FBI, 2014).

8. This argument is an inversion of Caputi (1989, p. 447), who discusses how American serial killer Ted Bundy’s white, young, middle class victims were universalised as ‘anyone’s daughters’.

9. Evidence that Rodger wrote the text with readers in mind includes a statement on the first page of MTW proclaiming, ‘[t]his is the story of how I, Elliot Rodger came to be’ (Rodger, 2014, p. 1) and in the text’s penultimate paragraph he addresses readers directly with the use of a second-person pronoun: ‘[w]hy was I condemned to live a life of misery and worthlessness while other men are able to experience the pleasures of sex and love women? Why do things have to be this way? I ask all of you’ (Rodger, 2014, p. 137). Other news organisations, including the New York Times and the Mirror, followed; as of July 2016 the text remains available at both websites.

10. Since the second anniversary of the École Polytechnique de Montréal shooting, 6 December has been recognised as the National Day of Remembrance and Action of Violence Against Women in Canada, thus formalising an emphasis on the victims.