We’ve heard it all. It’s the Republicans. It’s the NRA. It’s Trump’s fault. But feminists are again haranguing that they know the ailment that has plagued Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz. Of course, it’s “toxic masculinity”.

While Cruz may in fact be mentally ill, using his alleged mental illness as the sole motive for his rampage is not only stigmatizing the millions of people who are mentally ill and are not violent, but also leaves out a big piece of the puzzle, a piece that connects many of these mass murderers: Toxic masculinity.-Ashley Alese Edwards, Refinery 29

Yes, this is actually (still) a thing:

really really tired of these mental illness takes that appear by the dozen every time there's a mass shooting. what you're really trying to reference is how white male privilege and toxic masculinity kills, but you refuse to acknowledge it

— amrita 🌺 (@marigoldlight) February 18, 2018

We need to dismantle toxic masculinity and the culture that supports it in order to solve this mass shooting problem. Also, if you have a gun, that means you have a small penis.

— TOTILA'S WAR DANCE (@MikeMacRaeMike) February 17, 2018

Does that go for us women, too?

ok y'all no one wants to talk about toxic masculinity as a player in the mass shooting epidemic. so am i wrong?? or??

— Han 🤙🏽 (@Hannah_Troyer_) February 18, 2018

I’m going to go with this: WRONG!

I know this is nothing new. Toxic masculinity was to blame for Sandy Hook. And for Orlando. And for San Bernardino, Charleston and for Vegas. It is easy to point fingers. In a culture where a man is not supposed to be inherently male, toxic masculinity (in addition to other political platforms) have continued to be scapegoats for what some fail to acknowledge. Our culture has taken a detour.

The “toxic masculinity” these women refer to and argue as the key component of these shootings falls back on the argument that only angry men carry guns and their sole purpose is to inflict terror on those they come into contact with because of a violent propensity towards women. Cruz felt wronged in a relationship. Cruz had no family life to speak of. However, Cruz did not target just women on his shooting spree. He did not discriminate in his desire to be a “school shooter”.

Perhaps the true toxins lie within our culture. We have sexual images of women thrown at our girls and boys at a very young age. We have a pop culture that embraces this. We have a steady stream of violent television, movies and video games. Sometimes, this sexual imagery and violence is mixed into a lethal cocktail-repetitive to the point of desensitizing its subjects…young and old. If your 13 year-old boy sees no problem in stealing cars and soliciting prostitutes in a video game, we’ve got problems. We have rappers talking about violence on the streets, calling women bitches and hoes and laughing all the way to the bank and their houses in the Hollywood Hills. What? You think they actually live in Compton? Women claim to value the human life and mourn the loss of it at a candlelight vigil but claim “my body, my choice” at a march days afterward. We contradict ourselves on the daily. We have been shamed out of practicing our faith by loud, obnoxious toxic people who say our “thoughts and prayers” do not matter or our prayers are just an avenue to push our faith on others. We have been told our faith is the problem-that we “cling to God and guns”. We have become so agenda-obsessed to the point of individuals not sounding very “individual” to the point that we have lost a grip on the very reality that brought us all here in the first place.

Toxic masculinity hurts women, it hurts men, and it is responsible for the deaths of innocent children, women, and men in these mass shootings. -Hannah Cranston, The Huffington Post

No, Feminists, #Parkland was not a case of toxic masculinity. This atrocity is just another illustration of our toxic human condition.