You didn’t have to ask, did you, when you heard about the latest shootings in the US? You didn’t think: “Well, there are a hell of a lot of women out there who are utterly alienated, possibly with mental health issues, who have very screwed up attitudes about migrants in the US, so ‘the shooter’ in each case will clearly be one of them.” You just knew.

Before you get into the “not all men” groove, let me just say, no, not all men are murderous, for which I suppose I must be thankful. But I am not actually. Not at all. Not all men rape either, but in this country we have watched rape become virtually decriminalised because the justice system is so poor.

I am sad, so sad for the US, because I once lived there and it always felt like my future, my possibility

Many men will be as appalled as I am about all this. Good. Lobby to change things. You have the power.

What’s shocking about mass shootings is how ordinary they are. Seven years on from Sandy Hook, the US – or the parts that apparently matter in this case – seems to think that the slaughter of small children is a price worth paying for “freedom”. This predates Trump. No one needs another lecture about gun laws and open carry. We talk as if there is a finite number of people who need to get killed before something changes. We know that number will never be reached and that these men turn the guns not just on others but often on themselves. Two-thirds of US gun deaths are suicides. We know, too, as Joan Smith has documented brilliantly in her book Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists, that a lot of these shooters have a history of terrorising the women in their lives. This terror is called “domestic abuse”. They may well kill their own mothers or, in the case of the Ohio shooter, his own sister.

We are familiar with there being links between twisted masculinity and views about “white genocide” or the idea that migrants are taking over and taking “our women”. Poisonous rhetoric slimes out of Trump’s mouth daily. The US media doesn’t challenge it much. As Beto O’Rourke said: “Members of the press. WTF?”

You can’t keep referring to people who are not white as invading vermin, then behave as if you’re dismayed when someone acts upon such inducement. Racism towards migrants is churned out in the UK mainstream press, too, posing awkwardly as humour, the unsayable or common sense. It is vile.

“Make America Great Again” not only means make America white again, it is also a longing for a particular kind of manliness. It is part of the backlash against feminism. Many may address the first part of this, as the racism is so open, but are perhaps reluctant to address the second part. Instead, we are to congratulate any man who admits to having feelings at all. Last week I was part of a discussion about men in the 21st century. It was torturous, a placatory exercise, where people spoke of testosterone and cavemen and no longer being breadwinners. This sub-Jordan Peterson stuff never takes account of class, culture or history – eg working-class women have always worked, and in the US for the past 40 years two wages have been needed to sustain any average family. The substitute for difficult and intersectional discussion is that everyone has to agree that being a man today is a very difficult and confusing state.

Spare me. The “crisis of masculinity” that we regularly address is an alibi. Masculinity is crisis. But it is also in power, something the middle-class men who complain they are unable to express themselves take for granted.

I am sad in all sorts of ways that to express my feelings is to be thought of as a crazy witch. I am sad, so sad for the US, because I once lived there and it always felt like my future, my possibility.

I have what so many people long for: a US passport. I also grew up with guns. My father gave one to my mother and it seemed glamorous. All my boyfriends in the US had guns. I learned to shoot when I lived there. It was a thrill. But the US is no longer the future, unless I accept that massacres are just what happens.

Male violence – for this is the issue – is everywhere. In the US it is armed to the teeth. Sure, change the gun laws. That may be easier than changing a culture in which men express their feelings nonstop, most notably through death and destruction.

• Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist