August 6, 2012 • 26 mins
In the Aurora, Co., shooting, some men sacrificed their lives to save women. Is this misguided chivalry or bona fide heroism? Are men the more expendable gender? Tune in to learn more about heroism and gender with Cristen and Caroline.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From housetop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin Uh. In the wake of
(00:21):
the Batman shooting at the Aurora, Colorado Theater last month, UM,
a lot of discussion has come up about heroism and
who is a hero, what makes you a hero, what
makes you a coward? Um? A lot of really personal,
touching stories came out of this national tragedy. Yeah, and
(00:43):
a lot of times in the podcast, we don't focus
on very specific and timely events like this, but someone
had brought this up on our Facebook page, and there's
a lot of conversation, like you mentioned, Caroline, happening online
about three men who were killed in the Aurora shooting. UM.
John Blank who was six, Alex Teva's who's twenty four,
(01:07):
and Matt McQuinn who was seven. And all three of
these guys have something in common aside from being very young, Um,
they all essentially sacrificed their lives to save their girlfriends
who were at the theaters with them, right, And it
raised a lot of debate about um, they're real men.
(01:28):
Well what is a real man? Are you only a
real man if you sacrifice your life in such a situation?
Does it take a tragic situation like this to make
someone a hero? Um? Why didn't other people do the
same things that these men did? And we will touch
on the debate, but I think we should just say
a little bit about these men. Um. John Blank was
(01:50):
a security guard at Target. He'd served eight years in
the Navy and was in the process of re enlifting
in the hopes of becoming a Navy steal Uh. Not
only did he leave behind the girlfriend, aunts, and young
who he saved, but he also left behind an ex
wife and two children. When his girlfriend actually was trying
to pull him off the floor. This this is detail
(02:11):
that she revealed in the interviews. Um, she actually tried
to convince herself that he was wet because he'd been
hit by a water balloon. Um. And she said that,
I think John just took a bullet for me. He
provided me the opportunity to survive. Yeah. And then, UM,
we have Alex the year old. He had earned a
master's degree in counseling psychology and he dove on top
(02:32):
of his girlfriend, Amanda Lyndgren when the shooting started. Yeah.
And then there's Matt McQuinn who's an Ohio native, and
he was sitting with girlfriend Samantha Yowler, who uh, he
saved her. She actually was shot in the leg um,
and I believe they were with her brother also in
the theater, who was not shot. And I think that
we should before we go any further, we should say
(02:53):
that any conversation UM that we have from here on
out about the conversation said it's raised about heroism and
masculinity UM, is not ever meant to detract it all
from what these guys did, which in all three cases
that is incredibly brave. I mean, considering the circumstances, I
(03:15):
have no idea what I would have done, um, and
it is very laudable. So it's a situation the conversation
is connected to them, but not in a way judging
at all what they did exactly, because you can't really
negatively judge them saving someone else's life precisely. One person
(03:36):
whose column in Slate has attracted quite a bit of
criticism is author Hannah Rosen, who wrote the article The
End of Men for the Atlantic. We've talked about her before.
Rosen pointed out that basically, you know, Aurora has been
portrayed during this tragedy as kind of an all American
town that lost its innocence, and she's pointing out that, um,
(03:58):
maybe that's not quite the case because in the wake
of all these recessions, a lot of towns, Aurora included, UM,
have seen employment decrease. People have really been struggling. And
she says that many men in Aurora and nationally aren't
working as steadily. And she points out that as a
security guard at Target UH, John Blunt couldn't have been
(04:19):
making enough to support a family. Meanwhile, his girlfriend had
just earned her veterinarian degree. So she's using them as
kind of an example of how, you know, things are
changing in the professional world, right UM. She sort of
sees it as a microcosm of UM the changing gender
roles that have in a lot of ways been induced
(04:42):
by the recession. UM. But at the same time, while UM,
Rosen talks about how the scales have tipped in terms
of a lot of women, especially from lower and middle
income backgrounds, are now being um more educated than men
and also are out earning men but at the same time,
(05:05):
even in those situations, women still and we're speaking very
heteronormatively right now. You know, in these um male female
relationships where women still want to see men as protectors,
and men still need to be seen as protectors, even
if they might not be the breadwinners as have been
(05:27):
the traditional role, there's still that issue of protection, right
And in her research for the End of Men, her project,
she found that there was an effort across middle class
American towns to redefine the roles of men, because, like
we said, things are changing a lot. She said that
in many areas they're they're no longer the breadwinners, like
(05:48):
Kristen said, nor they always study fathers quote, because couples
don't get married all that much anymore. And so she
found an enduring need for men to think of themselves
and women to think of them as the protectors. And
she also goes on to say that this is not
just a thing about chivalry. And we did a podcast
a long long time ago now UM on gender and
(06:11):
chivalry and whether or not this idea of chivalry should die.
And she concludes that this goes way beyond and I agree,
this goes way beyond chivalry, the the acts of bravery
and heroism that happened at Um that Aurora movie theater,
because she defines chivalry as a code of conduct connected
(06:33):
to social propriety. That is not what throwing your body
in front of someone to take a bullet for them is. Yeah,
she calls it an instinct that's basic and deeper. So
I think she got a little bit of criticism for
pointing out these these personal details about these men, and
people felt that she was criticizing, you know, men who
(06:55):
were losing their position in society. But she, you know,
is not trying to say that. I think she was
talking more about how, even as our society evolves, changes,
you know, recessions affect different towns and cities differently, we
still have a common thread of, especially in a tragedy,
wanting things to be comfortingly familiar and normal according to
(07:20):
the scripts that we are familiar with well, and it's
also reflective of this internal caricature and caricature character trait
that has still been preserved through all of this of Um,
of that bravery and that extinct instinctual desire to protect.
But Jessica Wakeman over at the Frisky would caution with
(07:45):
all of this discussion of these men's heroism to not
make it a gendered conversation, to not say, like, oh,
what an incredible masculine act of bravery, this one is right.
She asked what masculinity has to do with heroic behavior,
(08:05):
and she says the implication and a lot of these
discussions surrounding the Aurora shooting um is that heroism is
a gendered concept. She says that you know, the Night
and Shining Armor narrative is a feel good story, and
like I just touched on one that's familiar and comforting
in the wake of a national tragedy when we feel
like we we see a story that's familiar. I mean,
(08:26):
the men's these these individual sacrifice was incredible and so
we see that, and of course we want to report it.
We want to report the good that comes out of
a terrible situation like this. But it's part of it.
It fits into um ideas about our culture that we
already have, right, and it also offers us some hope
that there is some good out there, that there is
(08:48):
that basic instinct to do good. Even though on the
flip side of these stories of heroism there have there
have also been at least one story that's come out
of Aurora about one and who left the theater, left
his girlfriend and his kid to the theater to supposedly
go get help, but it's now turning out that he
(09:10):
was fleeing because he was terrified, and that, I mean,
let's be honest. It's also understandable and well, I mean,
he that man is being called all sorts of names
all over the internet. You know, people are really criticizing
him for not acting like these three men that we
talked about earlier. Um. But as Wakeman says, basically, like
who are we to judge? She was also criticized for
(09:33):
saying that people were like, well, you know, where is
your moral base? Obviously this guy as a coward because
he didn't stick around and protect his loved ones like
these other three men did. But again, like Kristen said,
who knows what we would do in that situation? Um,
and I think that is also worth mentioning a very
(09:54):
inflammatory tweet from a Wall Street Journal columnust saying, well,
I hope those women were worth it. And it's just
I mean, I only mentioned that because it's it is
kind of fascinating to see how people are interpreting this
how they're we're so protective of these heroes, but also
(10:15):
you know, ready to to tear down someone who was
so terrified that he left as well. But you know
that's it's not an up for debate of saying, you know,
like who's a better person or not? Right. I did
think that tweet was pretty ridiculous, and I mean, I
think I'm not in the minority there to say that.
He got a lot of flak online for that and
(10:38):
ended up calling his tweet challenging, like he was just
trying to provoke some some debate and thought right, and
I I mean that could start a whole other topic
about how if someone acts in a heroic manner, does
it matter if the recipient of that deserved it, you know,
(10:58):
because then you have to talk about get into the
whole philosophical debate of who deserves uh life? And my friend,
I'm not going to get into that. I'm not touching
that with a ten football um. But going back to
this idea of women and children first, which certainly ties
into the gendered concept of heroism as this masculine thing.
(11:24):
There was a study that was published as July in
the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences UM and
to Swedish economists found that women and children first, not
so much, at least in the case of shipwrecks. Yeah.
They looked at survival data for some of history's worship
(11:45):
wrecks dating back to the eighteen fifties and he he
they the two of them. The pair found that women
and children were only half as likely as crew members
and captains to survive maritime disasters. They say that there's
little evidence that men were in climbed to surrender their
survival advantage, and so they point out some survival rates
here for the crew captain's forty four male passengers, women
(12:12):
twenty seven and children just fifteen, Which I mean, of course,
if you are on a ship, and you have worked
on a ship, and you have experience with ship related
things and know where the poop deck is and such, yeah,
you probably have a much better chance of survival than
if um, you are completely unfamiliar with it. Not to
(12:34):
say women never work on ships, but you know what
I mean. Although the two exceptions that the Swedish economists
found were the Titanic, where the women's survival rate, including
Kate Winslet was three times higher. Why couldn't she let
him on the door? I know, why couldn't she get
him on? There was enough door for Leo. That's all
we're gonna say. Um. But on the Titantic, the women's
(12:56):
survival rate was three times higher than men's um but
that was also because the captain was insistent about getting
the women and children off. And on the Birkenhead, which
sank off the South African coast in eighteen fifty two
and actually gave rise to this concept of women and
children first. And there are a lot of arguments in
(13:20):
the article we read in the l A Times about
this study, there are a lot of arguments about whose
life is worth more and why? And there are there
are all these arguments why women are more valuable, why
men are more valuable, why children should get off first,
why the elderly should survive a shipwreck. And so yeah,
(13:41):
we're not going there either. Well and and again, like
we're not pointing out this study as we're not trying
to debunk the fact that, yes, men often step up
to the plate and male heroes certainly exists. It's not that,
but it's more. Again, I find all of these the
fact that we automatically go to debates about who deserves
(14:03):
what is very interesting just about human nature in general. Um.
One thing that that I think is interesting to point
out is the whole trope of men are the more
expendable gender in the media, in movies and literature. This
is from the very entertaining website TV trips dot org.
They point out that in media, female characters have automatic
(14:25):
audience sympathy because women are seen as moral, innocent, beautiful,
et cetera, whereas male characters have to earn audience sympathy
by acting appropriately manly and heroic, which often involves saving
the damsel in distress. Although I take issue with this
because I think there are plenty of male characters who
aren't all like beefy meatheads, weightlifting masculine guys who are
(14:48):
plenty sympathetic. But the trope does exist, and you know,
and we can also say, hey, well, maybe um, women
need to be saved because we propagate species. Maybe that's
where it comes from or something like that. But yeah,
it does the trope of the hero saving the damsel
in distress. If anything, it just gets tired. Yeah. Well,
(15:11):
and so they do say that, you know, once a
man or a male character has earned the audience sympathy,
he loses it if he can't take care of himself
or others. So maybe this is some stereotype that we
all have that we perpetuate even in the wake of tragedy.
But here is the thing that we must also acknowledge
(15:31):
as well, and everybody knows this. I hope women can
be heroes too. And there are two people we would
like to call out as well from um the Aurora incident.
These are best friends Ali Young who's nineteen, and Stephanie
Davies Um, who essentially like got through the shooting together.
(15:54):
After the gunman throw canisters, Ali stood up and was
immediately shot and she punctured a vein in her neck.
But when she fell, twenty one year old Stephanie pulled
her away and applied pressure to the wound, and even
though injured, Ali said, save yourself, just get out of here.
Instead Stephanie stayed. She called and then helped carry her
(16:18):
best friend across two parking lots to an ambulance and
helped save her life. And Ali is going to be fine. Yeah,
And I thought it was really amazing that in his
UM post Aurora address, President Obama called these two women
out for for their bravery. Right. I mean, it's interesting, this,
(16:40):
this whole situation is so tragic, but we end up,
like I said, end up having these stories of incredible
human behavior where we're willing to really stick it out
for each other and do things that we might not
do normally or we wouldn't think that we are capable
of doing. Yeah, I mean, it's that that fight or
flight instinct, and you know, it's it's almost our animal
nature that comes out at that moment and determines what
(17:03):
we will do stay or will we go well. So,
you know, we talked about how women can be heroes too.
But the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission UM has a list
they on June they awarded medals to twenty three people
who risked or gave their lives for others. Just three
out of those we're women, and we're not We're not
(17:26):
trying to say that the men who received the awards
were not deserving of them. It's just interesting to point
out and it raises the question of why are more
women not on the list like these. Are they not
taking risks? Are they not putting themselves in harm's way
for someone else because, um, the previous awards from this commission,
given in March, recognized twenty one individuals, only five of
(17:48):
whom were women. Yeah. Overwhelmingly the Carnegie Hero Medal goes
to or the Carnegie Medal, I think it's just the
Carnegie Medal, um go to men, you know. And I
was looking at the acts of bravery that the women
were awarded for, and I mean it is amazing stuff
like women literally pulling elderly people from floodwaters and um,
(18:12):
there's actually uh the episode of Radio Lab I think
the title is good, and they interview some of these
Carnegie Metal recipients about why they did what they did.
Like one woman, um, saved this other woman whose car
broke down on a train track while the train was
coming and it was not able to stop soon enough
(18:33):
the woman would have died. I mean, it's it's amazing,
but yes, overwhelmingly it is men who are jumping to
the rescue. And perhaps that might have to do with
a little bit of biological differences in risk taking behavior. Yeah,
I thought this was fascinating. We I feel like we've
touched on this before a little bit in various episodes
(18:54):
about you know, men and women reacting to things differently.
Men have that whole fight or flight response, whereas women
are just gonna bond over it. Um And in a
February article from this year published in Current Directions and
Psychological Science, they found that when men are under stressed,
they become even more willing to take risks, while women
(19:14):
are the opposite, they become less willing. And they say
that this ties into the whole fight or flight or
bonding responses to stress divided by gender. So the men
tend towards the fight or flight response while the women
might go tend and befriend, so they're the ones kind
of waiting and the wings once the after the tragedy
and studs it helps mend everything back together. For an
(19:38):
incredibly gendered construct explanation of this um and it also
seems uh this idea of being faced with death also
seems to provoke risk taking activity. UM. There was a
two thousand to study from researchers at the University of
Colorado and bar A Lawn University in Israel. Men find
(19:59):
risk taking activities more appealing when primed with thoughts of
their own death. And if you think about battle fields
and you know the purple hearts that are given out
for acts of bravery out there. I mean, your mortality
is right in front of your eyes, and that might
provoke UM more rescue. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting
(20:21):
that the researchers said that people may be motivated by
potential subjective gains when engaging in risk. In other words,
risk taking behavior may offer men immediate relief from existential
anxieties and may serve as a buffer against the terror
of death, of course, all the while actually exposing themselves
to the possibility of real danger. So you know, they
(20:42):
the researchers were saying, people obviously have this ingrained interest
in keeping themselves alive and out of harm's way. But
there is sort of a gender division as far as
you know, men rushing in when faced with the idea
of death, or the thought of death, or the fear
of death, they're going to put themselves in harm's way,
(21:03):
whereas women maybe just might not be as likely. But
I also wonder if we can step back a little
bit from you know, splitting it down a gendered line
to a more individual difference in how that existential anxiety
UM is handled. Whereas, like some people I know in
christis situations or after personal tragedies that have happened. I've
(21:28):
known people who need to do something hands on, They
must be involved. The only way that they feel that
they get any kind of relief is is getting involved
directly with the situation. And then people who must retreat completely.
So I wonder if, um if maybe that's that has
(21:50):
more to do with it than whether you're a guy
or a gal. This has definitely sparked interesting debates and
some pretty heated debates as well. Uh, not only these
three men who sacrifice their lives, but the whole shooting
in general. Um. And I think yet, men and women
(22:11):
can both be heroes. I don't think it's just limited
to men. It could be very personal, like you said,
as to whether one person is going to Russian and
and save someone as opposed to someone else who doesn't. Yeah,
and this is not also an argument of saying like
we need more female heroes, because that's tantamount to saying
we need more horrible circumstances so that women can step
(22:33):
up to be heroes. Um, that's kind of like the
the catch twenty two of heroism is that it is
preceded by something awful, So it's just a tricky subject
in general to talk about, which is why why don't
we leave this conversation now up to our listeners? Um,
what would you do in these kinds of situations? Do
(22:54):
you are are? Does heroism have a gender? I mean
we often and to link it to men and masculinity,
but is that completely misguided? So let us know your
thoughts on this very complex issue. Mom. Stuff at Discovery
dot com is where you can send your letters, and
(23:15):
we have a couple of letters to share today on
our episode about book banning. Now. This's first one comes
from James, and he is a bibliophile and a literature teacher.
He writes, to keep this letter short, I'll simply say
that I always encourage parents and others to allow literature
(23:39):
that is contrary to your own personal beliefs. Make you
reflect inward and challenge your own views to make sure
they're accurate and proper. This is especially needed for teenage
students who are trying to figure out who they are,
what the world really is, and where their place is
in that world. Combine the struggle for meaning with the
sexual angst that every per so I must deal with
(24:00):
during that phase of life, and literature can become a
powerful tool for self actualization. Even though I'm a strong conservative,
I feel that many books that are banned are useful because,
more than anything else, it gets students to read. In
a world where information is cheap and easy to access,
the love of literature is in decline, and many times
the controversial book will get someone's nose back in between
(24:22):
the pages to see just what all the fuss is about.
Trying to find the balance between what is appropriate and
what is useful is very hard. But if we take
away the opportunity altogether, then what are we denying the
students in our nation? So thanks James. This one's from Annie.
She's a high school English teacher down in North Carolina,
and she says, during the first semester, when I was
(24:43):
teaching sophomore English, I decided we would read a couple
of short stories from uwam Ak Ponds Stay He're one
of them, a book I had read before it ended
up on Oprah's Book book Club list, just to keep
my credit and check. The first story we read was
a Christmas Feast, and it's all about this poor family
living in a flum The mother and father are incredibly
unsympathetic and the oldest sisters a prostitute. The second story
(25:04):
we read, My parents Bedroom, takes place during the Rwandan
genified and has extremely graphic violence. It wasn't until we
had started reading A Christmas Feast that I thought, should
we be reading a story about prostitution? Am I going
to get in trouble? Every day I felt like I
was getting away with something, but no one ever complained,
not administration and no parents. The best part was that
it was a huge hit with the kids. Working with
(25:26):
tenth graders with the reading skills averaging to the fifth
grade level, I wasn't sure they'd really get it, but
they got it, and they made all sorts of connections
to their own worlds, which sadly aren't as dissimilar as
we wish they'd be. When we got to the climax
of my parents Bedroom, where this incredible act of violence
takes place, they were riveted. So maybe it takes a
little sex and violence to get kids, particularly kids who
(25:48):
don't like to read, to read, and you can bet
I'm whipping out say you're one of them to read
with my seniors next year. Thanks San, and thanks to
everyone who has written into us. Moms Stuff at Discovery
dot com is where you can send your letters, and
you can also leave us a comment, and like us
on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast,
(26:09):
and you can always see what we're up to during
the week at our website, It's how Stuff works dot com.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
(26:29):
It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From housetop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin Uh. In the wake of
(00:21):
the Batman shooting at the Aurora, Colorado Theater last month, UM,
a lot of discussion has come up about heroism and
who is a hero, what makes you a hero, what
makes you a coward? Um? A lot of really personal,
touching stories came out of this national tragedy. Yeah, and
(00:43):
a lot of times in the podcast, we don't focus
on very specific and timely events like this, but someone
had brought this up on our Facebook page, and there's
a lot of conversation, like you mentioned, Caroline, happening online
about three men who were killed in the Aurora shooting. UM.
John Blank who was six, Alex Teva's who's twenty four,
(01:07):
and Matt McQuinn who was seven. And all three of
these guys have something in common aside from being very young, Um,
they all essentially sacrificed their lives to save their girlfriends
who were at the theaters with them, right, And it
raised a lot of debate about um, they're real men.
(01:28):
Well what is a real man? Are you only a
real man if you sacrifice your life in such a situation?
Does it take a tragic situation like this to make
someone a hero? Um? Why didn't other people do the
same things that these men did? And we will touch
on the debate, but I think we should just say
a little bit about these men. Um. John Blank was
(01:50):
a security guard at Target. He'd served eight years in
the Navy and was in the process of re enlifting
in the hopes of becoming a Navy steal Uh. Not
only did he leave behind the girlfriend, aunts, and young
who he saved, but he also left behind an ex
wife and two children. When his girlfriend actually was trying
to pull him off the floor. This this is detail
(02:11):
that she revealed in the interviews. Um, she actually tried
to convince herself that he was wet because he'd been
hit by a water balloon. Um. And she said that,
I think John just took a bullet for me. He
provided me the opportunity to survive. Yeah. And then, UM,
we have Alex the year old. He had earned a
master's degree in counseling psychology and he dove on top
(02:32):
of his girlfriend, Amanda Lyndgren when the shooting started. Yeah.
And then there's Matt McQuinn who's an Ohio native, and
he was sitting with girlfriend Samantha Yowler, who uh, he
saved her. She actually was shot in the leg um,
and I believe they were with her brother also in
the theater, who was not shot. And I think that
we should before we go any further, we should say
(02:53):
that any conversation UM that we have from here on
out about the conversation said it's raised about heroism and
masculinity UM, is not ever meant to detract it all
from what these guys did, which in all three cases
that is incredibly brave. I mean, considering the circumstances, I
(03:15):
have no idea what I would have done, um, and
it is very laudable. So it's a situation the conversation
is connected to them, but not in a way judging
at all what they did exactly, because you can't really
negatively judge them saving someone else's life precisely. One person
(03:36):
whose column in Slate has attracted quite a bit of
criticism is author Hannah Rosen, who wrote the article The
End of Men for the Atlantic. We've talked about her before.
Rosen pointed out that basically, you know, Aurora has been
portrayed during this tragedy as kind of an all American
town that lost its innocence, and she's pointing out that, um,
(03:58):
maybe that's not quite the case because in the wake
of all these recessions, a lot of towns, Aurora included, UM,
have seen employment decrease. People have really been struggling. And
she says that many men in Aurora and nationally aren't
working as steadily. And she points out that as a
security guard at Target UH, John Blunt couldn't have been
(04:19):
making enough to support a family. Meanwhile, his girlfriend had
just earned her veterinarian degree. So she's using them as
kind of an example of how, you know, things are
changing in the professional world, right UM. She sort of
sees it as a microcosm of UM the changing gender
roles that have in a lot of ways been induced
(04:42):
by the recession. UM. But at the same time, while UM,
Rosen talks about how the scales have tipped in terms
of a lot of women, especially from lower and middle
income backgrounds, are now being um more educated than men
and also are out earning men but at the same time,
(05:05):
even in those situations, women still and we're speaking very
heteronormatively right now. You know, in these um male female
relationships where women still want to see men as protectors,
and men still need to be seen as protectors, even
if they might not be the breadwinners as have been
(05:27):
the traditional role, there's still that issue of protection, right
And in her research for the End of Men, her project,
she found that there was an effort across middle class
American towns to redefine the roles of men, because, like
we said, things are changing a lot. She said that
in many areas they're they're no longer the breadwinners, like
(05:48):
Kristen said, nor they always study fathers quote, because couples
don't get married all that much anymore. And so she
found an enduring need for men to think of themselves
and women to think of them as the protectors. And
she also goes on to say that this is not
just a thing about chivalry. And we did a podcast
a long long time ago now UM on gender and
(06:11):
chivalry and whether or not this idea of chivalry should die.
And she concludes that this goes way beyond and I agree,
this goes way beyond chivalry, the the acts of bravery
and heroism that happened at Um that Aurora movie theater,
because she defines chivalry as a code of conduct connected
(06:33):
to social propriety. That is not what throwing your body
in front of someone to take a bullet for them is. Yeah,
she calls it an instinct that's basic and deeper. So
I think she got a little bit of criticism for
pointing out these these personal details about these men, and
people felt that she was criticizing, you know, men who
(06:55):
were losing their position in society. But she, you know,
is not trying to say that. I think she was
talking more about how, even as our society evolves, changes,
you know, recessions affect different towns and cities differently, we
still have a common thread of, especially in a tragedy,
wanting things to be comfortingly familiar and normal according to
(07:20):
the scripts that we are familiar with well, and it's
also reflective of this internal caricature and caricature character trait
that has still been preserved through all of this of Um,
of that bravery and that extinct instinctual desire to protect.
But Jessica Wakeman over at the Frisky would caution with
(07:45):
all of this discussion of these men's heroism to not
make it a gendered conversation, to not say, like, oh,
what an incredible masculine act of bravery, this one is right.
She asked what masculinity has to do with heroic behavior,
(08:05):
and she says the implication and a lot of these
discussions surrounding the Aurora shooting um is that heroism is
a gendered concept. She says that you know, the Night
and Shining Armor narrative is a feel good story, and
like I just touched on one that's familiar and comforting
in the wake of a national tragedy when we feel
like we we see a story that's familiar. I mean,
(08:26):
the men's these these individual sacrifice was incredible and so
we see that, and of course we want to report it.
We want to report the good that comes out of
a terrible situation like this. But it's part of it.
It fits into um ideas about our culture that we
already have, right, and it also offers us some hope
that there is some good out there, that there is
(08:48):
that basic instinct to do good. Even though on the
flip side of these stories of heroism there have there
have also been at least one story that's come out
of Aurora about one and who left the theater, left
his girlfriend and his kid to the theater to supposedly
go get help, but it's now turning out that he
(09:10):
was fleeing because he was terrified, and that, I mean,
let's be honest. It's also understandable and well, I mean,
he that man is being called all sorts of names
all over the internet. You know, people are really criticizing
him for not acting like these three men that we
talked about earlier. Um. But as Wakeman says, basically, like
who are we to judge? She was also criticized for
(09:33):
saying that people were like, well, you know, where is
your moral base? Obviously this guy as a coward because
he didn't stick around and protect his loved ones like
these other three men did. But again, like Kristen said,
who knows what we would do in that situation? Um,
and I think that is also worth mentioning a very
(09:54):
inflammatory tweet from a Wall Street Journal columnust saying, well,
I hope those women were worth it. And it's just
I mean, I only mentioned that because it's it is
kind of fascinating to see how people are interpreting this
how they're we're so protective of these heroes, but also
(10:15):
you know, ready to to tear down someone who was
so terrified that he left as well. But you know
that's it's not an up for debate of saying, you know,
like who's a better person or not? Right. I did
think that tweet was pretty ridiculous, and I mean, I
think I'm not in the minority there to say that.
He got a lot of flak online for that and
(10:38):
ended up calling his tweet challenging, like he was just
trying to provoke some some debate and thought right, and
I I mean that could start a whole other topic
about how if someone acts in a heroic manner, does
it matter if the recipient of that deserved it, you know,
(10:58):
because then you have to talk about get into the
whole philosophical debate of who deserves uh life? And my friend,
I'm not going to get into that. I'm not touching
that with a ten football um. But going back to
this idea of women and children first, which certainly ties
into the gendered concept of heroism as this masculine thing.
(11:24):
There was a study that was published as July in
the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences UM and
to Swedish economists found that women and children first, not
so much, at least in the case of shipwrecks. Yeah.
They looked at survival data for some of history's worship
(11:45):
wrecks dating back to the eighteen fifties and he he
they the two of them. The pair found that women
and children were only half as likely as crew members
and captains to survive maritime disasters. They say that there's
little evidence that men were in climbed to surrender their
survival advantage, and so they point out some survival rates
here for the crew captain's forty four male passengers, women
(12:12):
twenty seven and children just fifteen, Which I mean, of course,
if you are on a ship, and you have worked
on a ship, and you have experience with ship related
things and know where the poop deck is and such, yeah,
you probably have a much better chance of survival than
if um, you are completely unfamiliar with it. Not to
(12:34):
say women never work on ships, but you know what
I mean. Although the two exceptions that the Swedish economists
found were the Titanic, where the women's survival rate, including
Kate Winslet was three times higher. Why couldn't she let
him on the door? I know, why couldn't she get
him on? There was enough door for Leo. That's all
we're gonna say. Um. But on the Titantic, the women's
(12:56):
survival rate was three times higher than men's um but
that was also because the captain was insistent about getting
the women and children off. And on the Birkenhead, which
sank off the South African coast in eighteen fifty two
and actually gave rise to this concept of women and
children first. And there are a lot of arguments in
(13:20):
the article we read in the l A Times about
this study, there are a lot of arguments about whose
life is worth more and why? And there are there
are all these arguments why women are more valuable, why
men are more valuable, why children should get off first,
why the elderly should survive a shipwreck. And so yeah,
(13:41):
we're not going there either. Well and and again, like
we're not pointing out this study as we're not trying
to debunk the fact that, yes, men often step up
to the plate and male heroes certainly exists. It's not that,
but it's more. Again, I find all of these the
fact that we automatically go to debates about who deserves
(14:03):
what is very interesting just about human nature in general. Um.
One thing that that I think is interesting to point
out is the whole trope of men are the more
expendable gender in the media, in movies and literature. This
is from the very entertaining website TV trips dot org.
They point out that in media, female characters have automatic
(14:25):
audience sympathy because women are seen as moral, innocent, beautiful,
et cetera, whereas male characters have to earn audience sympathy
by acting appropriately manly and heroic, which often involves saving
the damsel in distress. Although I take issue with this
because I think there are plenty of male characters who
aren't all like beefy meatheads, weightlifting masculine guys who are
(14:48):
plenty sympathetic. But the trope does exist, and you know,
and we can also say, hey, well, maybe um, women
need to be saved because we propagate species. Maybe that's
where it comes from or something like that. But yeah,
it does the trope of the hero saving the damsel
in distress. If anything, it just gets tired. Yeah. Well,
(15:11):
and so they do say that, you know, once a
man or a male character has earned the audience sympathy,
he loses it if he can't take care of himself
or others. So maybe this is some stereotype that we
all have that we perpetuate even in the wake of tragedy.
But here is the thing that we must also acknowledge
(15:31):
as well, and everybody knows this. I hope women can
be heroes too. And there are two people we would
like to call out as well from um the Aurora incident.
These are best friends Ali Young who's nineteen, and Stephanie
Davies Um, who essentially like got through the shooting together.
(15:54):
After the gunman throw canisters, Ali stood up and was
immediately shot and she punctured a vein in her neck.
But when she fell, twenty one year old Stephanie pulled
her away and applied pressure to the wound, and even
though injured, Ali said, save yourself, just get out of here.
Instead Stephanie stayed. She called and then helped carry her
(16:18):
best friend across two parking lots to an ambulance and
helped save her life. And Ali is going to be fine. Yeah,
And I thought it was really amazing that in his
UM post Aurora address, President Obama called these two women
out for for their bravery. Right. I mean, it's interesting, this,
(16:40):
this whole situation is so tragic, but we end up,
like I said, end up having these stories of incredible
human behavior where we're willing to really stick it out
for each other and do things that we might not
do normally or we wouldn't think that we are capable
of doing. Yeah, I mean, it's that that fight or
flight instinct, and you know, it's it's almost our animal
nature that comes out at that moment and determines what
(17:03):
we will do stay or will we go well. So,
you know, we talked about how women can be heroes too.
But the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission UM has a list
they on June they awarded medals to twenty three people
who risked or gave their lives for others. Just three
out of those we're women, and we're not We're not
(17:26):
trying to say that the men who received the awards
were not deserving of them. It's just interesting to point
out and it raises the question of why are more
women not on the list like these. Are they not
taking risks? Are they not putting themselves in harm's way
for someone else because, um, the previous awards from this commission,
given in March, recognized twenty one individuals, only five of
(17:48):
whom were women. Yeah. Overwhelmingly the Carnegie Hero Medal goes
to or the Carnegie Medal, I think it's just the
Carnegie Medal, um go to men, you know. And I
was looking at the acts of bravery that the women
were awarded for, and I mean it is amazing stuff
like women literally pulling elderly people from floodwaters and um,
(18:12):
there's actually uh the episode of Radio Lab I think
the title is good, and they interview some of these
Carnegie Metal recipients about why they did what they did.
Like one woman, um, saved this other woman whose car
broke down on a train track while the train was
coming and it was not able to stop soon enough
(18:33):
the woman would have died. I mean, it's it's amazing,
but yes, overwhelmingly it is men who are jumping to
the rescue. And perhaps that might have to do with
a little bit of biological differences in risk taking behavior. Yeah,
I thought this was fascinating. We I feel like we've
touched on this before a little bit in various episodes
(18:54):
about you know, men and women reacting to things differently.
Men have that whole fight or flight response, whereas women
are just gonna bond over it. Um And in a
February article from this year published in Current Directions and
Psychological Science, they found that when men are under stressed,
they become even more willing to take risks, while women
(19:14):
are the opposite, they become less willing. And they say
that this ties into the whole fight or flight or
bonding responses to stress divided by gender. So the men
tend towards the fight or flight response while the women
might go tend and befriend, so they're the ones kind
of waiting and the wings once the after the tragedy
and studs it helps mend everything back together. For an
(19:38):
incredibly gendered construct explanation of this um and it also
seems uh this idea of being faced with death also
seems to provoke risk taking activity. UM. There was a
two thousand to study from researchers at the University of
Colorado and bar A Lawn University in Israel. Men find
(19:59):
risk taking activities more appealing when primed with thoughts of
their own death. And if you think about battle fields
and you know the purple hearts that are given out
for acts of bravery out there. I mean, your mortality
is right in front of your eyes, and that might
provoke UM more rescue. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting
(20:21):
that the researchers said that people may be motivated by
potential subjective gains when engaging in risk. In other words,
risk taking behavior may offer men immediate relief from existential
anxieties and may serve as a buffer against the terror
of death, of course, all the while actually exposing themselves
to the possibility of real danger. So you know, they
(20:42):
the researchers were saying, people obviously have this ingrained interest
in keeping themselves alive and out of harm's way. But
there is sort of a gender division as far as
you know, men rushing in when faced with the idea
of death, or the thought of death, or the fear
of death, they're going to put themselves in harm's way,
(21:03):
whereas women maybe just might not be as likely. But
I also wonder if we can step back a little
bit from you know, splitting it down a gendered line
to a more individual difference in how that existential anxiety
UM is handled. Whereas, like some people I know in
christis situations or after personal tragedies that have happened. I've
(21:28):
known people who need to do something hands on, They
must be involved. The only way that they feel that
they get any kind of relief is is getting involved
directly with the situation. And then people who must retreat completely.
So I wonder if, um if maybe that's that has
(21:50):
more to do with it than whether you're a guy
or a gal. This has definitely sparked interesting debates and
some pretty heated debates as well. Uh, not only these
three men who sacrifice their lives, but the whole shooting
in general. Um. And I think yet, men and women
(22:11):
can both be heroes. I don't think it's just limited
to men. It could be very personal, like you said,
as to whether one person is going to Russian and
and save someone as opposed to someone else who doesn't. Yeah,
and this is not also an argument of saying like
we need more female heroes, because that's tantamount to saying
we need more horrible circumstances so that women can step
(22:33):
up to be heroes. Um, that's kind of like the
the catch twenty two of heroism is that it is
preceded by something awful, So it's just a tricky subject
in general to talk about, which is why why don't
we leave this conversation now up to our listeners? Um,
what would you do in these kinds of situations? Do
(22:54):
you are are? Does heroism have a gender? I mean
we often and to link it to men and masculinity,
but is that completely misguided? So let us know your
thoughts on this very complex issue. Mom. Stuff at Discovery
dot com is where you can send your letters, and
(23:15):
we have a couple of letters to share today on
our episode about book banning. Now. This's first one comes
from James, and he is a bibliophile and a literature teacher.
He writes, to keep this letter short, I'll simply say
that I always encourage parents and others to allow literature
(23:39):
that is contrary to your own personal beliefs. Make you
reflect inward and challenge your own views to make sure
they're accurate and proper. This is especially needed for teenage
students who are trying to figure out who they are,
what the world really is, and where their place is
in that world. Combine the struggle for meaning with the
sexual angst that every per so I must deal with
(24:00):
during that phase of life, and literature can become a
powerful tool for self actualization. Even though I'm a strong conservative,
I feel that many books that are banned are useful because,
more than anything else, it gets students to read. In
a world where information is cheap and easy to access,
the love of literature is in decline, and many times
the controversial book will get someone's nose back in between
(24:22):
the pages to see just what all the fuss is about.
Trying to find the balance between what is appropriate and
what is useful is very hard. But if we take
away the opportunity altogether, then what are we denying the
students in our nation? So thanks James. This one's from Annie.
She's a high school English teacher down in North Carolina,
and she says, during the first semester, when I was
(24:43):
teaching sophomore English, I decided we would read a couple
of short stories from uwam Ak Ponds Stay He're one
of them, a book I had read before it ended
up on Oprah's Book book Club list, just to keep
my credit and check. The first story we read was
a Christmas Feast, and it's all about this poor family
living in a flum The mother and father are incredibly
unsympathetic and the oldest sisters a prostitute. The second story
(25:04):
we read, My parents Bedroom, takes place during the Rwandan
genified and has extremely graphic violence. It wasn't until we
had started reading A Christmas Feast that I thought, should
we be reading a story about prostitution? Am I going
to get in trouble? Every day I felt like I
was getting away with something, but no one ever complained,
not administration and no parents. The best part was that
it was a huge hit with the kids. Working with
(25:26):
tenth graders with the reading skills averaging to the fifth
grade level, I wasn't sure they'd really get it, but
they got it, and they made all sorts of connections
to their own worlds, which sadly aren't as dissimilar as
we wish they'd be. When we got to the climax
of my parents Bedroom, where this incredible act of violence
takes place, they were riveted. So maybe it takes a
little sex and violence to get kids, particularly kids who
(25:48):
don't like to read, to read, and you can bet
I'm whipping out say you're one of them to read
with my seniors next year. Thanks San, and thanks to
everyone who has written into us. Moms Stuff at Discovery
dot com is where you can send your letters, and
you can also leave us a comment, and like us
on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast,
(26:09):
and you can always see what we're up to during
the week at our website, It's how Stuff works dot com.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
(26:29):
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Samantha McVey
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