The article titled “Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence” by Michael Kimmel and Matthew Mahler can be found in the American Behavioral Scientist journal. The article discusses the 28 random school shootings from 1982-2001 and describes the overall patterns the authors collected from the research. They discovered that most of the boys who opened fire were mercilessly and routinely teased and bullied, the violence was retaliatory against the threats of manhood, more white young boys opened fire, and the specific content of the teasing and bullying is homophobia. The topic of the article is the relationship between masculinity, bullying, and violence. The proposed research question by the authors is “How does gender and homophobia contribute to mass school shootings perpetrated by males?” Since the researchers wanted to discover the relationship between masculinity and homophobia to violent school shootings, the logical structure of this research is ex post facto. The researchers are seeking the causes of violent mass shootings and use existing data to answer their research question. The researchers use multiple types of data to demonstrate how bullying affects a young boy’s masculinity, such as demographic data and survey data. They use aggregate data to portray that school shootings do not occur uniformly or evenly in the U.S., proving that school shootings are not a national trend. The researchers use survey data to show that students suggest that peer harassment is the most significant cause of school shootings. To understand the causes, the researchers suggest that gun culture, local school culture, and local gender culture must be examined. To analyze culture, the type of data needed is hidden social patterns. An analysis of secondary media reports, such as weekly news magazines and daily newspapers was conducted to discover social and cultural patterns in the lives of the perpetrators. The data collection methods of content and discourse analysis are necessary to discover the pattern of bullying and the role masculinity plays in young boys’ lives. The data analysis method is thematic analysis and coding because the researchers analyze different forms of media to trace the relationships and tie them to wider social patterns. I think this research successfully supports the claim of the researchers that being constantly threatened, bullied, and the desire to regain their manhood, by using more than one type of data. An interesting aspect of this research is the identification that media influence, drugs and alcohol, Internet usage, father absence, and parental neglect show weak or no correlation to violent school shootings.

Kimmel, M. S., & Mahler, M. (2003). Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence           Random School Shootings, 1982-2001. American Behavioral Scientist, 46(10), 1439 1458.