Orlando: Men

We may never know exactly why Mateen did this or the extent to which “radical Islam” played a role, but the very next day a white Christian male was arrested with explosives in his car driving towards LA Pride. Religion, with its aggressively strict concentration on traditional and conservative values, is a place to which men in crisis can turn.

For thousands of years, faith has been used to keep straight men at the top of the ladder, but religion itself not the actual problem. It is masking the fact that masculinity is failing to adapt to the changing world where women are breadwinners and gay couples can start families. Since Sandy Hook, there have been an astonishing 998 mass shootings in America. Two of the perpetrators were Muslim, but all were men. Surely this suggests that this is a wider problem with masculinity. Until we reassess what it means to be a “real man” then men will continue to beat their wives and murder LBGT people to ease their own self-loathing.

Toxic masculinity was just as much to blame for the Orlando shootings as radical Islam, Louis Staples, Independent Voices.

Yup.

Mind you, there's much that could be said about the nexus between radical Islam and machismo, particularly in the West.

PS This is kinda connected, I guess; Shame And Sexuality: What is internalised homophobia?, BBC News magazine.

It's not really, I just thought it was interesting and don't know where else to put it.