Young Guns, Wet Dreams, Parenting, and Ammosexuality

What’s wrong with young men? Why are they so violent (but remember: our nation is enjoying a long-term decline in violent crime that has revitalized urban life) that even Al Novstrup admits that guys like Drew Dennert should be stopped and frisked without any reason other than that they look like troublemakers?

Aberdeen American News columnist Lawrence Diggs thinks the problem is that we don’t talk about wet dreams:

The media is improving, but we still don’t see articles about the sexual dreams boys and men are plagued with. This omission makes most of the other banter about male sexuality much less meaningful. Most men will experience these bizarre dreams, often accompanied by flashbacks during the day. Because conversations about such dreams are pretty much nonexistent, we don’t have a way to integrate these powerful dreams into conversations. Since discussions about these dreams are not likely to come from pulpits, and one would be hard pressed to even find references to them in holy books, the resulting moral conflicts and confusion are likely to continue to silently plague boys and men.

These conflicts and confusion might play a significant role in the difficulties men have in managing their sexuality. This needs more research [Lawrence Diggs, “‘Ick Factor’ Limits Our Talk,” Aberdeen American News, 2018.02.23].

Speaking more specifically to youth violence, AAN columnist Gerald Krueger says we need to parent differently:

One great advancement toward stopping school shooting is to practice good/great parenting. Stop trying to be your child’s best friend. He/she has good/best friends enough in school or at their jobs. Be the guide they actually want in a parent without asking. They want discipline, they need adult guidance in their journey to adulthood. They need to be shown the way, not as a friend, but as a parent.

We have evolved over the decades into trying to become some sort of partner with our children when we should be practicing good parenting instead of providing every want our child has and that has ended in selfishness and expecting more than adult life can offer [Gerald Krueger, “Stopping Gun Violence Starts with Family,” Aberdeen American News, 2018.02.26].

Fargo columnist Jane Ahlin notices that mass shooters are almost always male and says the problem is our culture’s pervasive promotion of ammosexuality:

Whatever we think we are teaching boys in this country, through cultural saturation too many are learning that violently asserting power and control over someone else is a sign of manliness. Whether it is video games, where nobody even pretends the story lines are about anything but violence, or social media that exults in trolling and bullying, or advertising that suggests sexual pleasure for men is tied to domination, the takeaway is the same: masculinity demands violence.

According to good old Wikipedia, the “norms” of toxic masculinity “include traits of dominance, devaluation of women, extreme self-reliance, and the suppression of emotion.” In this realm, to be emotionally hardened and indifferent is to be strong. (Be silent and violent.) Domination becomes domestic violence or sexual assault; misogyny and homophobia are simply necessary attitudes for maintaining a sense of power. And guns? Well, there’s nothing like a gun to make somebody who feels like an outcast feel instead like a tough guy.

Not surprisingly, boys and men enthralled by guns and violence tilt towards “alt right” and white nationalist themes (note: about 60 percent of mass shooters are white). The upshot is that violence is seen both as inevitable and as imbued with the noble purpose of protecting white America from the onslaught of the likes of Muslims, immigrants, feminists and Jews [Jane Ahlin, “Toxic Masculinity and Mass Shooters,” Fargo Forum, 2018.02.25].

Parents, tackle wet dreams as you see fit. But we all need to deprogram the ammosexuality of our culture that equates guns with manliness. Among other actions on policy and principle, teachers should universally reject the wrongheaded ammosexual suggestion that we have to carry guns in classrooms to keep children safe. Rather than drafting our schools into preaching ammosexuality, we need to reverse the tide and teach boys that they can be good guys without a gun.