The German Wings Catastrophe: Why are we STILL not talking about masculinity and depression induced suicide?

On 24 March a Germanwings plane en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf carrying 149 passengers and crew crashed in the French Alpes. It has since transpired that one of the co-pilots, Andreas Lubitz, deliberately crashed the plane in an act of murder-suicide. In order to try and explain this tragedy there has been an on-going investigation into the life and mind of Andreas Lubitz to try and understand what would possess someone to kill 150 innocent people and themselves. Whilst much of the French and German press has speculated about the pilot’s history of depression, little of said analysis has pointed towards his gender. What seems evident is that he was diagnosed as depressed and had been deemed unfit to fly by two doctors. Yet even his own girlfriend and parents had very little knowledge of how serious the problem really was. That is not to say that those with mental illnesses cannot hold and thrive in full time employment. Or that depression is necessarily associated with murder suicide. It is extremely significant that media sensationalism and the further stigmatisation of depression and mental illness does not become the legacy of this disaster.

Suicide and as a corollary murder suicide is gendered. Murder suicide figures are much harder to disaggregate and find patterns for as a result of their rarity, particular in this case. However, in the UK 75% of suicides are committed by men. This is a staggering percentage and it can absolutely be attributed to difficultly men face in tackling mental illness. In western society, certain ideals of masculinity are vigorously and subtly enforced upon men from their very first breath and they are extremely damaging. Phrases such as ‘be a man’ and ‘don’t be such a wuss/pussy/girl’ are flung around by parents/family members/friends/teachers/peers/colleagues and the like throughout childhood and into adulthood. Is it any wonder that men struggle to reach out for emotional support or ask for help when struggling with depression? To be a ‘real man’ is the relentless rejection of what it is to be a ‘real woman’ and these damaging gender roles fundamentally exercise themselves in the lived experiences of gendered individuals. Connell (1987) compiled these ideas into an umbrella framework titled ‘hegemonic masculinity’ which literally refers to the most dominant and prized yet coercively consensual way of performing masculinity in a certain time or place. I will post a couple of essays on this subject at the end of this academic year once they have been marked as it is something I have written a lot about in the last year.

Depression and mental health is fundamentally gendered and when it looks to have caused the innocent murder of 150 people, how can we sit back and not address the correlation between (hegemonic) masculinity and suicide? For the families of those innocent lives, this can serve as no justification for such a dreadful act but to see the bigger picture here is to see the inescapable problem of the pressure we place on men to perform their gender in a certain way and how this results in their quashing of emotions. If there was ever a case for men’s ‘embrace of feminism’ and rejection of gender norms (Kimmel, 2011) this is it.

Helpful Sources

Experts Reaction to Mental State of A320 Crash Co-Pilot http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-mental-state-of-a320-crash-co-pilot/ Particularly Ali Haggert’s Comment.

Owen Jones (2014) Suicide and silence: why depressed men are dying for somebody to talk to: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/15/suicide-silence-depressed-men

More on Hegemonic Masculinity

Alsop, R., Fitzsimons, A. and Lennon, K. (2002). Theorizing Men and Masculinities. In Alsop, R., Fitzsimons, A. and Lennon, K. (2002). Theorizing Gender. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Bird, S. (1996). Welcome to the Men’s Club: Homosociality and The Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity. Gender & Society 10(2): 120-132.

Carrigan, T., R.W. Connell and J. Lee (1985). Towards a New Sociology of Masculinity. Theory and Society 14(5): 551–604.

Connell, R.W. (1987). Sexual Character. in Gender and power. Stanford, California. Stanford University Press: pp. 167-183.

Connell, R. W. (2005a) Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender & Society 19(6): 829-859.

Connell, R.W. (2005b) Masculinities. 2nd Edition. Cambridge, United Kingdom. Polity Press.

Demetriou, D. Z. (2001). Connell's Concept of Hegemonic Masculinity: A Critique. Theory and Society 30 (3): 337-361.

Donaldson, Mike. (1993). What is Hegemonic Masculinity? Theory and Society 22(5):643-657.

Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Hearn, J. (2004). From Hegemonic Masculinity to the Hegemony of Men. Feminist Theory 5 (1): 49-72.

Joe Ehrmann. (2013, February 20) Be A Man: Joe Ehrmann at TEDx Baltimore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVI1Xutc_Ws [Accessed: 6 Feb 2015]

Kaufman, M (1994) Men, Feminism and Men’s Contradictory Experiences of Power. In Theorizing Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, California. Sage Publications.

Kaufman, M. and Kimmel, M. (2011). The Guy's Guide to Feminism. Berkeley, California: Seal Press.

Kimmel, M (1994) Masculinity as Homophobia in Brod, H. and Kaufman, M. (1994). Theorizing Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, California. Sage Publications.

The Representation Project (2015) Films: The Mask You Live In. http://therepresentationproject.org/films/the-mask-you-live-in/ Accessed: 10/02/15