Avoiding the Trap of Individualism: Personal Thoughts on Gender Violence and the Recent Shenzhen Incident

Another incident of gender-based violence has surfaced, this time in Shenzhen, China. Here is an overview of what happened:

According to the official police report, the man has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and is now in custody. I took this response as an example of individualized attribution.

Questioning Individualistic Thinking

Recently, I have been reading Allan Johnson’s The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy. One of the central messages of the book is the importance of questioning individualistic thinking when we try to understand gender issues. This type of thinking tends to explain deeply rooted problems by focusing on a person’s character, mental illness, or temporary loss of control, rather than looking at broader social patterns.

Describing the attacker as “suffering from schizophrenia” may seem to offer an answer to why the violence occurred. However, this explanation may avoid our attention from more fundamental questions, such as why do such acts of violence keep happening? why do some men respond with aggression when women set boundaries or say no?

To be clear, this is not an argument that men are inherently violent, nor is it an attempt to blame men as a group. As Allan Johnson explains, we do not assume that soldiers are born to kill just because they fire guns on the battlefield. A more important question is what kind of system places them in those situations and tells them that violence defines their duty and identity.

Patriarchy as Structure, Not Individuals

In the same way, Johnson reminds us that patriarchy is not about a handful of “bad men.” It is a larger social structure that promotes and reinforces harmful expectations. One of the most dangerous aspects of this system is the message it repeatedly sends to men. It teaches them that being a “real man” means taking control and dominating others. Within this system, violence can serve specific social purposes. It is often used to reassert male dominance, especially when men feel that their control is threatened. It also becomes a socially acceptable way to express men’s emotion. Vulnerability, shame, and the need for support are often discouraged or even punished in men, leaving aggression as one of the few available outlets.

What saddens me most is that these recurring acts of violence are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a culture that trains men to suppress vulnerability. When that emotional repression becomes unbearable, it too often explodes into destruction and harm. In the process, women become the ones who suffer directly. They are harmed in the name of preserving a version of masculinity built on power and control. 💔

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In The Gender Knot, Johnson also introduces other important ideas, such as “the path of least resistance,” which refers to the social habits that allow harmful systems to continue unchallenged. He also discusses fear and control as key forces that sustain patriarchy. I plan to share more thoughts on these concepts in a future post.