{"id":53126,"date":"2012-12-20T12:30:19","date_gmt":"2012-12-20T17:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=53126"},"modified":"2017-07-03T12:24:59","modified_gmt":"2017-07-03T17:24:59","slug":"the-transformative-potential-of-technology-the-bushmaster-223","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/12\/20\/the-transformative-potential-of-technology-the-bushmaster-223\/","title":{"rendered":"The Transformative Potential of Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Global Policy TV<\/a>\u00a0and The Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The refrain — “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” — does an injustice to the complicated homotechnocultural phenomenon that we call a massacre.\u00a0Evan Selinger, at The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, does a wonderful job taking apart the “guns don’t kill people”\u00a0phrase. \u00a0It assumes an instrumentalist<\/em> view of technology, where we bend it to our will. \u00a0In contrast, he argues in favor of a transformative<\/em> view: when humans interact with objects, they are transformed by that interaction. \u00a0A gun changes how a person sees the world. \u00a0Selinger writes:<\/p>\n

To someone with a gun, the world readily takes on a distinct shape. It not only offers people, animals, and things to interact with, but also potential targets.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, if you have a hammer, suddenly all the world’s problems look like nails to you (see Law of the Instrument<\/a>). \u00a0The wonderful\u00a0French philosopher\u00a0Bruno Latour<\/a>\u00a0put it this way:<\/p>\n

You are different with a gun in your hand; the gun is different with you holding it. You are another subject because you hold the gun; the gun is another object because it has entered into a relationship with you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, that’s the homotechnological part of the story. \u00a0What of the cultural?<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on SocImages, Michael Kimmel observes<\/a> that the vast majority of mass killings in the U.S. are carried out by middle-class, white males. \u00a0“From an early age,” he writes, “boys learn that violence is not only an acceptable form of conflict resolution, but one that is admired.” \u00a0While the vast majority of men will never be violent, they are all exposed to lessons about what it means to be a real man:<\/p>\n

They learn that if they are crossed, they have the manly obligation to fight back. They learn that they are entitled to feel like a real man, and that they have the right to annihilate anyone who challenges that sense of entitlement…\u00a0They learn that \u201caggrieved entitlement\u201d is a legitimate justification for violent explosion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Violence is culturally<\/em> masculine. \u00a0So, when the human picks up the object, it matters whether that person is a man or a woman.<\/p>\n

Bushmaster, the manufacturer of the weapon used by Lanza, was explicit in tying their product to masculinity. Though it has now been taken down, before the shooting visitors to their\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0could engage in public shaming of men who were insufficiently masculine, revoking their man card and branding them with the image of a female stick figure (top center) (via Buzzfeed<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In one case, a person with the name “Colin F” is described as “just unmanly” because he “avoids eye contact with tough-looking 5th graders.” He is rebuked with the announcement: “Man Card Revoked.”<\/p>\n

Bushmaster has just the solution. \u00a0Ads featuring an image of their Bushmaster\u00a0.223 caliber Remington semiautomatic (see an example\u00a0here<\/a>), originally appeared in Maxim<\/em> magazine, include the copy: “Consider your Man Card reissued.”\u00a0Manliness is tied to gun ownership (and, perhaps, gun use). Whatever it is that threatens his right to consider himself a man, a gun is an immediate cure.<\/p>\n

Many people are calling on politicians to respond to this tragedy by instituting stricter gun control laws and trying to reduce the number or change the type of guns in American hands. \u00a0That’ll help with the homotechnological part. \u00a0But, as Kimmel argues, we also need to address the cultural part of the equation. We need to change what it means to be a man in America.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Thomas G., Andrew L., and @josephenderson for the tips.<\/p>\n

Lisa Wade and Gwen Sharp are the founders and principle writers for Sociological Images. \u00a0You can follow Lisa\u00a0on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and you can follow Gwen on Twitter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Global Policy TV\u00a0and The Huffington Post. The refrain — “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” — does an injustice to the complicated homotechnocultural phenomenon that we call a massacre.\u00a0Evan Selinger, at The Atlantic, does a wonderful job taking apart the “guns don’t kill people”\u00a0phrase. \u00a0It assumes an instrumentalist view of technology, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,55,2087,2090,250,290,293],"class_list":["post-53126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-gender","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-gender-violence","tag-guns","tag-sciencetechnology","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53126"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70392,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53126\/revisions\/70392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}