Guns and sex

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This article in the NY Times by Bob Herbert http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/opini ... rbert.html
indicates there was a sexual component in the mass gun murderers psychology in recent news reports which leads me to suspect that perhaps Freud’s outlook on sex and guns is not totally obsolete.

Although many objections to the restrictions of gun ownership are indicated from the point of view of self protection from either criminals or an over dominating government the objections have always presented the powerful visceral impact of something much more primitive and fundamental and I have the suspicion that somehow the sex drive may be involved since the gun is an obvious phallic symbol of power and domination.

The powerful resistance to the removal of guns by gun owners is very much in line with the fear of and resistance to castration.

It is very noticeable in Arab communities in the middle east that the chauvinist male is frequently displaying and popping off guns to indicate power and basic enthusiasm and this seems to fit well with Freudian theories.

Complete and total BULLSHIP! Biggest load of crap i have ever read.

most weapons ARE phallic, spears, arrows, clubs, guns, rifles, cannons, even aircraft, then need to be elongated to work but YES i think we recognize the shape subconciously, and wielding our organ-extension to kill others, usually competing males, or shooting up into the sky to show off, absolutely. its very phallic and very male indeed.

I don't think it applies to axes, amusingly. Although it does work for other bladed weapons, such as the sword.... But not to thrown weapons :p (such as shurikens).

I would tend to agree with this theory, weather you consider the phalic like shape to be important or not is probably irrelivent though. Weapons tend to be symbols of power whatever they look like, and this attracts a certain type of male, in my experience especially one who has failed to mark their dominance in other ways.

However in the interests of being fair I would also suggest that the need to post smart assed comments on wrongplanet and win otherwise pointless aurguments with people they will never meet is created by a similar sort of motivation.

I think if we can take anything from freud it's that desire for sexual dominance can help explain all sorts of behavious, but people would generaly rather not hear this.

I dunno, so many objects are phalllically shaped I think such theories can border on (or be) free-association. Maybe there is some truth to it, and it's interesting to speculate, but it's hard to imagine a practical vagina-shaped weapon. (Maybe a plastic bag to suffocate with?)

...wait a second, actually a gun could be described as a cavity that envelopes & contains the bullet, like a womb. So take that Freud.

More seriously, I think it's mostly that power, masculinity, domination, sex, and social rank are culturally strongly associated with each other, so that anything that correlates with loss of power equals "loss of maleness" or "castration." I just think it has very little to do with actual genitals or thoughts about them, and more to do with the social construct called "male" and way it's set up to function in society.

And the current American state filled with phallic-symbol loving men obsessed with their testosterone and self-gratification of their fertility exists in contrast to the America where men overcame their need to be such knuckle-dragging neanderthals and just let the male phallic-loving chest beating behavior reside in government.

The basic thrust of my proposal has a small and perhaps indicative reference to the actual shape of weapons but far more to the actual psychological functional congruence of weapons and male sexual instruments. References concur far more on size and power and social approbation and specific to this discussion in the extremely highly emotional charge to the coincidence of feeling to the control of guns and the removal of sexual potency. The total rage of gun owners at the thought that restrictions on their possession of guns would deprive them of something psychologically vital is far closer to basic responses on sex rather than something to do with actual weaponry. The firing of a gun has an obvious parallel in sexual ejaculation and to carry this even further into governmental psychology the possession of frightfully powerful nuclear armed rockets magnifies the phallic parallel to dinosauric proportions. These weapons are the phalluses of gods and, in a wry form of perverse psychological humor totally unusable in sane policies. Sanity, in this context, therefore castrates, and deprived enthusiasts like our friend ruveyn who are completely frustrated by a sane comprehension that they are basically infertile. Nevertheless governments around the world are obviously eager to possess these powerful weapons, as basically useless as they are, and the parallel to sexual power seems insistent.

This concept seems to be confirmed in a peripheral way in the actual use of sex in warfare. In the many places of world conflict it is now a commonplace that both men and women are regularly raped to demonstrate total dominance and the militaristic policies of many dominant nations are no doubt driven by economic motivations but I wonder if inherent sexual drives are involved.

I never much cared for Freud's association of sex with most everything. I sometimes wonder if it was more of a projection of his own fixations rather that what he perceived in his patients.