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toxic masculinity
What Bondi Beach and Brown University Reveal About Stopping Gun Violence
Australia’s response to a December 14 mass shooting reminds us that violence is not an inevitability to be endured; it is a problem to be confronted.
Dec 19, 2025
Days ago, two tragedies unfolded on opposite sides of the world—each marked by gun violence and grief, yet met with starkly different national responses.
On December 14, on the first night of Hanukkah, a gathering on Bondi Beach in Sydney turned into horror when a father and son opened fire during a “Hanukkah by the Sea” celebration, killing 15 people and wounding 40 in what Australian authorities called an antisemitic terrorist attack. The carnage would have been much worse were it not for the heroic act of Ahmed al-Ahmed, an Australian citizen who migrated from Syria two decades ago.
The day before in Providence, Rhode Island, a shooter opened fire at Brown University during finals, killing two students and wounding nine. As of this writing, authorities are actively searching for a suspect—and a motive.
These shootings—one at a beloved public beach, the other on an Ivy League campus—expose not only shared grief but radically different understandings of responsibility. In Australia, sorrow was quickly followed by collective resolve. The US followed a familiar ritual: shock, condolences, and political paralysis. If I had a dollar for every politician’s “thoughts and prayers,” I could join the billionaire class those officials so eagerly protect.
If we are serious about honoring the victims and survivors in Sydney, at Brown, and everywhere else touched by mass shootings, expressing grief is not enough.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the Bondi Beach massacre as an act of “evil beyond comprehension,” pledging solidarity with the Jewish community and signaling renewed efforts to strengthen gun laws: tougher licensing, tighter oversight, and renewed limits on gun ownership.
Australians remember what followed the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Within days, the country banned rapid-fire weapons, bought back and destroyed nearly 1 million firearms, and created a national gun registry. The result? Decades with virtually no similar mass shootings.
In the US, by contrast, each new tragedy yields the same results: more guns, more shootings, more grief; this in a country with more guns than people! And once again, the gendered reality of this violence is almost entirely ignored. There's a reason we never hear the phrase, gunwoman.
The overwhelming majority of US mass shooters are male—frequently young, usually white, and commonly driven by grievance, isolation, and entitlement. This is not incidental. It’s a pattern demanding honest cultural reckoning. For decades, we’ve failed to challenge destructive norms of masculinity. No surprise that those norms keep finding their most lethal expression through guns.
Let’s be clear: This is not about demonizing men. It’s about telling the truth. We train boys to suppress vulnerability, to equate manhood with dominance, and to interpret frustration as humiliation. When that script collides with easy access to weapons designed to kill many people quickly, the outcome is predictable. Every time. Full stop.
Australia acted on that reality. After Port Arthur, it banned fully automatic weapons, semi-automatic rifles, and pump-action shotguns—and treated firearms not as sacred objects, but as regulated tools with enormous public risk. Rather than deny their grief, Australians transformed it into collective responsibility, identifying gun violence as a systemic problem requiring systemic solutions.
In the US, mass shootings are still framed as isolated incidents—acts of deranged individuals—or worse, as unavoidable features of national life: school shootings; movie theater shootings; grocery store shootings; church, mosque, and synagogue shootings. Together they form a normalized nightmare we refuse to confront honestly, ignoring the 393 mass shootings so far in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
At Brown University, students and families are now living with the trauma of a field of learning turned into a killing field. Final exams meant to test academic mastery became tests of life and death. The remainder of the semester was canceled, and students headed home to process a violent assault rather than celebrating the end of the semester.
And yet, even as Brown students grieve, politicians employ familiar distractions—talking about mental health or spiritual resilience—anything to avoid confronting easy access to weapons of mass destruction.
Australia’s response reminds us that violence is not an inevitability to be endured; it is a problem to be confronted. Their approach is not perfect; nor is their country. Their strategy reflects a fundamental belief: Government exists to protect lives, not to fetishize weapons. The US, trapped in a twisted love affair with the Second Amendment, continues to block meaningful reform.
Still, this country has a choice. We can center honest conversations about masculinity and how we raise boys. We can invest in early interventions for alienated youth. We can regulate weapons of mass killing. Or we can keep normalizing trauma and, laughably, calling it freedom.
When Brown students return to campus, many will have already spent weeks organizing for tougher gun laws. I predict students across the country will join them.
If we are serious about honoring the victims and survivors in Sydney, at Brown, and everywhere else touched by mass shootings, expressing grief is not enough. Action—the antidote to despair—is required. Now.
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Trump Won't Make America Safe Again By Minimizing Domestic Violence
The president’s remarks come at a time when he and his enablers celebrate toxic masculinity while cutting services for the most vulnerable, including domestic violence prevention and support for Survivors.
Sep 13, 2025
For those of us who work to prevent domestic violence and support survivors, it was beyond disheartening to hear the president of the United States, one of the most powerful men in the world, say, “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say, 'This was a crime,' see?" His off-the-cuff remark was in regard to the crime rate in DC and is hard not to interpret as downplaying domestic violence.
It was notable to me that these remarks were made at the Bible Museum, at a conference for the freedom of religious education. Sadly, organized religions have too often been places that have turned a blind eye toward domestic violence, with an attitude that things that happen in the home should stay private or are to be worked out in the home. This, of course, minimizes the power and coercion behind domestic violence. Every day I speak to victims who are in situations where they cannot get help because the violence is happening at home, whether it is because they know what will happen when their abuser posts bail or they will have no place to live, or they do not want to disrupt their children’s lives and pull them out of school. The list goes on and on.
The president’s remarks come at a time when he and his enablers celebrate toxic masculinity while cutting services for the most vulnerable, including domestic violence prevention and support for Survivors. Recently Housing Urban Development funding has been cut, even though the connection between homelessness and domestic violence is clear. The California Inter Agency Council on homelessness reported that 74,779 survivors and 24,721 children of survivors experienced homelessness in 2024, that survivors had a higher rate of return to homelessness after exiting homeless services, that 14% of survivors returned to homelessness versus 10% of the overall homeless population, and that Survivors had a lower rate of exits to permanent housing—14% among survivors versus 18% among the overall homeless population. Yet funding for homelessness prevention at organizations, like the Survivor Justice Center that I run, are being cut.
Just last week I was interviewed about a hand signal that went viral that started when people were trapped at home with their abusers during the pandemic and need a nonverbal way to get help. Many of us are also standing in solidarity with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and their re-traumatization by the ongoing dismissal of his crimes by the powers that be.
We must stop minimizing abuse just because it happened with someone you know.
Next month is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, where advocates, survivors, and supporters across the nation come together to commemorate those lives that have been lost to intimate partner violence and to continue the work to end domestic violence. I hope we can come together this month to commemorate those lives, and to raise awareness that this is not just a little fight that happens between a husband and a wife at home.
Every day, a friend, colleague, neighbor, community supporter, a good Samaritan, whomever asks me how this could still be happening, how could these ingrained power and control and coercive and abusive behavior be happening. They ask how they can help.
This is why I wrote earlier this year about the blame game. And about the burden that is placed on the survivor. We must stop minimizing abuse just because it happened with someone you know.
You can help. You can recognize the hand signal. You can say “a little fight with the wife” is wrong for so many reasons—even the reference to “the wife” removes agency from the victim spouse and makes it sound like a reference to property. As if we are returning to a far-off time from the 1950s, when domestic violence was not discussed and women were not seen as equal partners, but people that should know their place and be barefoot in the kitchen. We won’t go back.
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Suicide Rates Among Young Men Are On the Rise; Toxic Masculinity May Be To Blame
Masculine representations rooted in ideals that reward toughness, emotional suppression, and dominance are quietly accelerating a mental health crisis among young men.
Sep 02, 2025
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is now the second leading cause of death among males aged 15-29, and suicide rates among young men in the US have risen by roughly a third since 2010. Across much of Africa, where I work as a public health and gender equality practitioner, men make up the vast majority of suicide deaths, and in Lesotho, the country with the highest suicide rate globally, men are dying at three times the rate of women.
Rigid gender roles may be to blame. Masculine representations rooted in ideals that reward toughness, emotional suppression, and dominance are quietly accelerating a mental health crisis among young men. These rigid norms don’t simply discourage boys from seeking help; they actively shame vulnerability, equate emotional expression with weakness, and isolate those who are struggling. In cultures where being “a real man” means staying silent, mental distress festers in the dark. Unless we confront and transform these harmful ideals, any global response to youth mental health will be incomplete—and too late for many.
In many parts of Africa, young men grow up under intense pressure to become providers, protectors, and problem-solvers. These roles and expectations are deeply tied to their perceived worth. But when systemic barriers like poverty, unemployment, or lack of education make these ideals unreachable, the emotional toll can be devastating. With mental health services scarce and stigma-free spaces almost nonexistent, many suffer in silence.
Instead of seeking support through therapy or confiding in someone they trust, many young men cope with inner distress by turning to alcohol, aggression, or silent withdrawal. These internalized ideals of “staying strong” act like slow-burning fuses. Left unaddressed, emotional strain builds until it erupts often into breakdowns, which spiral into isolation, and eventually, into tragedy. Many of these young men appear perfectly “fine” on the surface, attending school, church, or work, making it easy for their pain to go unnoticed, even by those closest to them. While many girls and young women are increasingly accessing mental health resources even in under-resourced settings, young men remain notably absent from these services. In Rwanda, a study revealed that girls are more likely to utilize youth health friendly services than their counterpart boys. This disparity is not unique to Rwanda; similar trends are observed in west African regions, where mental health services for adolescents are limited, and boys often do not seek help due to societal expectations and stigma.
To be sure, women and girls continue to face serious mental health challenges, often exacerbated by gender-based violence and limited access to care. Recognizing their struggles does not diminish the urgent need to address the silent crisis among young men. Both require focused attention if we are to improve youth mental health across societies. Yet ignoring the silent struggles specific to young men is costing lives worldwide.
To effectively tackle this issue, we must address the needs of all adolescents, with attention to those most at risk. This means introducing gender-transformative education that teaches emotional literacy and normalizes help seeking as strength. We need male-friendly, culturally grounded safe spaces in schools, sports clubs, faith groups, and online where boys can be vulnerable without judgment. Mental health professionals must adopt gender transformative approaches that understand masculinity’s impact on behavior.
Above all, media and storytelling must shift the narrative so boys grow up knowing that feeling is not failure. Imagine a generation of boys brave enough to ask for help, a future where strength includes compassion, and manhood means connection, not isolation. This is the future we owe boys and men. No young man should have to choose between silence and survival.
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