Males Subjected To Conflicting Messages On Violence

The news reminds us daily that we need a deeper understanding of the sources of male violence. I know there are also violent women, but I ask for your help in creating a dialogue about male violence in all its forms.

The commentators list the following sources or causes of violence: mental illness, ancient survival skills, testosterone levels, genetic-based memories, poverty, unemployment, child abuse.

It’s an intimidating list. It must leave men and boys vulnerable. A new book by Terrence Real, “Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression,” analyzes what Thoreau called men’s “quiet desperation.”

Even in an age when men are struggling to replace “tough” with “sensitive,” it is still unmanly in many men’s groups to speak of feelings. The more men hide their pain and their grief at their loss of pride and position, the more likely that illness, alcohol, drug abuse and violence will become a part of their survival repertoire.

Too many men have been coerced into trading decency and intimacy for position and privilege. We have only to look at the grandiosity of some politicians and executives to see the result: over-stuffed, yet hollow, men tripping over the anger. It is the same anger they use to mask their sense of failure and loss that is at the core of most depression.

One alternative to depression is belonging to a gang, but that requires bonding rituals that veer too easily from domination games to sadism. Good young men are forced by peers into bad behavior and ultimately a denial of self and sensitivity.

Last month we learned of the elite Marine paratroopers’ “blood pinning” initiation ritual. It shows just how far men will go to test each other.

Women create bonding and solidarity in very different ways. I cannot imagine a group of elite female Marine paratroopers punching women in the chest to create “blood wings” or sororities tying bricks to their pledges’ genitals as fraternities sometimes do.

The U.S. is the most violent by far of all the industrialized nations. We are well-schooled in these statistics. They are familiar by now.

Three-quarters of all the murders of children occur in our country. We have the highest rates of childhood and adult suicide and firearmsrelated deaths of any of the world’s 26 richest nations - by a wide margin.

Many nations report no homicides involving children under 15 in the last decade.

Would it be too painful, leave too much of a void in our pioneer/outlaw psyche to just give up violence as normal male behavior?

Europeans, except during wartime, have traded much of their personal violence for work, politics and and entertainment. Fighting still pops out now and then at soccer matches, but citizens are appropriately horrified when the British “bully boys” run amok.

Throughout the world, but in particular in the United States, males are the victims of cultural double messages. Boys are punished severely for slips in the balancing of tough and sensitive. Yet television and film offer heroes who resolve slights with mayhem, who link pride to domination. Schools encourage combat sports with cheering sections yelling “kill,” while demanding restrictions on sexual harassment and offering sensitivity training.

Through all this, our boys try to find a path to honor. Where are their models? Who will serve as their heroes in a world that will increasingly deny them old male privileges? What will fill the void?

Will it be more intimate friendships, bonding with their children, an ethic of environmental preservation, rather than destruction?

Will the lodges crack and the truth seep out? Will “new men” offer leadership models our boys can believe in? Are we willing to let boys hold on to their connections to humanity, the needs for closeness and love they were born with?

Look at the men and boys you love. What are you willing to do for them and for America?

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jennifer James The Spokesman-Review