This seems a quintessential case of what has come to be known as toxic masculinity, as Marcotte defines it, “a specific model of manhood geared towards dominance and control.” When men seek that control—when we feel it’s our due—and don’t achieve it, we can resent and hate. Toxic masculinity sets expectations that prime us for disappointment. We turn that disappointment on ourselves and others as anger and hatred.

As the psychologist Arie Kruglanski told The Washington Post this week, the most primal act a human being can take to ameliorate self-loathing is “showing one's power over other human beings.” (As a small, non-masculine philosopher once said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”)

“If toxic masculinity was just about men posturing around each other in a comical fashion, that would be one thing,” writes Marcotte, “but this persistent pressure to constantly be proving manhood and warding off anything considered feminine or emasculating is the main reason why we have so many damn shootings in the United States.”

Whether it’s the main reason is necessarily speculative, but examining the role of masculinity in hatred is overdue. There was some discussion after the Santa Barbara killer’s 137-page manifesto literally said “my problem is girls,” who denied what he felt he deserved. And after the Washington Navy Yard shootings in 2013, amid a national argument over whether to blame gun control or mental illness, NPR asked simply “Why Are Most Rampage Shooters Men?”

The story lost the trail, though: Sociologist Lin Huff-Corzine posited that “men are more comfortable than women when using guns, whereas women are more likely to choose knives.” Criminologist Candice Batton suggested that men are more likely than women to “develop negative attributions of blame that are external,” which translate into anger and hostility toward others. Women, though, are more likely to blame some failing of their own, “directing anger inwardly into guilt and depression.”

This feels closer to an explanation—women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression. But it ignores the reason that men and women tend to cope differently, the role of masculinity in teaching men what they are supposed to expect and how they are supposed to deal. This manner of coping is not inherently violent, but it does not pair well with ignorance and firearms.

The Orlando murderer appears to have been a violent bro who, in the moments before his death, bizarrely identified with the Boston Marathon murderers, with whom he had nothing apparent in common but a violent quest for self-actualization. ISIS seems to have been a vehicle for his hatred, which was more fundamental. The Orlando Sentinel reported yesterday that the killer frequented the nightclub Pulse, where he would “get so drunk he was loud and belligerent.” He also “express[ed] his intolerance toward homosexuals,” his ex-wife recalled, corroborating his father’s accounts.