Thread by @JYSexton

I wrote about this in my new book The Man They Wanted Me To Be, but we have to look at this epidemic of mass shootings and see what's at the heart of it, that it's not just a random assortment of tragedies.

It's white men. White men are the problem. 1/

amazon.com/Man-They-Wante…

In this country we have a terrible, racist habit of blaming every crime involving minorities on their race or groups. But even as it's readily apparent that white men are the reason for these shootings, we continue to treat them like "isolated incidents."

They're not. 2/

We live in a culture where white men are raised to believe they have inherent power and privilege, and that if they don't live the lives they want, if they don't always get what they want, then they declare war on the world. That's what's happening right now. 3/

White male aggrievement is way, way more of a danger than terrorism or immigrants. It's the heart of a public health crisis the likes of which this country has never seen before. It has endangered countless lives and virtually destructed the idea of an open and free society. 4/

What's happening is that men are brought up to believe they should react to any frustration with anger or violence. They're taught not to express themselves in any other way lest they lose their masculinity. They're taught to embrace guns as projections of power. 5/

The man is supposed to express himself through open aggression and take what he wants. When they feel challenged, when they feel powerless, they grab a gun and they "assert" themselves. It's easy, terrible math, and we have to look at it and diagnose it. 6/

If any other group killed on a level like this, if any other group killed so consistently, if anyone besides white men did this we would have a national crisis, round-the-clock coverage. But instead we embrace the "lone nut" mythology. It's so, so dangerous. 7/

The dots are so unbelievably easy to connect here, and yet hardly anyone dares to. We have see this for the public crisis that it is. Until men are taught to express themselves, until we realize white masculinity enables mass violence, we're not going to be safe. 8/

Unfortunately, that male insecurity is a gateway to radicalization. The internet is just festering with groups of white men who radicalize one another in the exact same way ISIS radicalizes its members. It's point by point, and they're not playing around. They're killing. 9/

But because this country has a blindspot the size of centuries in regard to looking at the dangers of white men, we continue to act like this is just a continuing phenomenon instead of the predictable and preventable crisis it is. 10/

Our children are endangered. Our loved ones are endangered. We're all endangered. And it can be prevented and eradicated, but we're more than happy to continue living in fear of our lives if it doesn't mean questioning masculinity and whiteness, and that's a sad truth. 11/

We have to change how we view all of this, how we react to it, how we perceive masculinity and its inherent fragility, because men are going to continue killing as long as they believe the myth of masculinity and continue with their murderous privilege. 12/12