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A deadly crisis of violent manhood spills into our politics, again

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by Gary Barker and Ross Morales Rocketto, opinion contributors - 05/08/26 1:30 PM ET

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by Gary Barker and Ross Morales Rocketto, opinion contributors - 05/08/26 1:30 PM ET

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Fairfax County police stand watch at the home of former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, in Annandale, Va., Thursday, April 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

In the last few weeks, two high-profile incidents of gender-based violence have left two elected officials and one of their partners dead. In Virginia, former Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax killed his wife Cerina and then took his own life, according to police. In Florida, Stephen Bowen was charged with killing his wife, Coral Springs Vice Mayor and Florida Democratic Party Vice Chair Nancy Metayer Bowen. She was about to announce a run for Congress.

These are not isolated incidents. Almost 25 percent of women have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Intimate partner violence impacts more than 12 million individuals annually. Nearly three women are killed by a current or former intimate partner every day in the U.S., accounting for more than half of all female homicides.

Intimate partner violence is not rare. But it is shocking — and a gigantic, waving red flag for our society — to see two such incidents in American politicians’ households within weeks of each other.

Two interrelated crises have converged. The first is a long line of violence committed by men against women. The second is the crisis of masculinity that creates the conditions that lead to violent ends.

Hurt people hurt people. Our systems have failed to teach boys how to move through pain without turning it outward or inward. We raise sons on a script that says manhood means providing, winning and never needing help. This narrative validates violence as a logical, acceptable response to frustration and conflict. When life goes off-script because, say, a career collapses or a marriage ends, many men have no community to catch them and no language for grief. So the grief comes out as violence against the women closest to them, or against themselves, or sometimes both.

More than half of men in the U.S. agree with the statement that “no one really knows me,” and three-quarters say no one cares if men are okay. Nearly 80 percent of U.S. suicides are by men. Equimundo’s research on the so-called “Man Box” — the rigid code telling men to dominate, provide and stay silent — finds that the men most trapped inside of it are the most likely to hurt a partner and themselves.

That is why we refuse to accept the oversimplified narrative that Fairfax and Bowen are monsters who just came out of nowhere. That is the facile explanation, but one that fails to understand what drives men’s violence at the societal level. We can never fully know what drove either man. But the court record in Fairfax’s case traces a familiar arc: career collapse, isolation, daily drinking, a gun bought after he lost his security detail, divorce proceedings he resisted to the end.

Handed a manhood that could not hold the loss of status, provision and control, the script offered him two moves: dominate or disappear. He tried both.

Bowen’s inner world is less public, but the identity he embraced online — “God. Husband. Armed.” — sits in the same cultural frame. Their wives, and the children who watched, paid the price, as did they.

Cerina Fairfax and Nancy Metayer Bowen were the victims, full stop. But if we want fewer women buried, we have to name a culture that has stripped men of the skills and relationships they need to live and cope.

The answer is not softer men who shy away from conflict. The answer is men who give and receive care; who call each other at 2 a.m. and show up for each other; who name their pain before it hardens into rage; who tend to the pain of others; who intervene when they see men around them on the verge of violence.

Caring masculinity is a manhood defined by who you hold, not by what you control. It is not made alone or online. It is built in ordinary rooms where men can be known and held accountable by other men — gyms, churches, union halls, barbershops, fathers’ circles, recovery rooms. Building those rooms, on purpose and at scale, is the prevention work this moment demands.

Here we have two elected officials, two homes, two women whose lives and leadership were cut short by men who had made commitments to them. We can read these as individual tragedies, or see the cost of a manhood that is deadly and crying for help. The work now is to build a different version of manhood. One that is close enough to reach, strong enough to hold, and on