The Trouble with Our Men
I have done some study in gender sociology, my major essay of which argued for the loss by both male and female under patriarchy (aka Dorothy Dinnerstein), and youth suicide and masculinity issues research. So you can be assured that what follows is not generated by any misanthropy.
Once upon a time, but not that long ago, our civilization periodically culled testosterone levels with a nice little war and packed its excess women off to the nunneries. This was a rather brutal but very practical way of maintaining social peace and population balance. We know that testosterone is a wonderful but sometimes troublesome hormone, present in varying, relative degrees in both male and female. It is necessary for its production of physical strength, vitality and assertiveness but Janus-faced, it is also more vulnerable to chromosomal insult that produces defective personality types such as ‘fragile X’ sociopaths. Disorders on the AspBerger’s-Autism and ADD-ADHD spectrums are also more common amongst males, but not exclusive to them. Violence and aggression are the more troublesome characteristics of testosterone, useful when disciplined and targeted positively but dangerous and destructive when controlled by evil agendas or combined with personality disorders. Civilisations have harnessed the force of this dynamic hormone for enforcing civil order, adventuring and military conquest. Its positive face has given us men of great genius and achievement, its negative, the horrors of war. It was only in the mechanised carnage of the 20th Century that war became sufficiently monstrous to give us pause from a long warrior history that exulted in battle. Testosterone and its danger to social peace have long been known, and H G Wells rather brutally observed that society needs a good war every now and then, just to cull its presence.
Our civilisation has seen a confluence of factors impacting on the male of our species in greater, more troublesome ways than perhaps ever before. The complex problems emergent from these factors appear to have only become exacerbated in Gens ‘X’ and ‘Y’ males and, after a variety of personal and proxy experiences combined with ongoing interest in cultural and current affairs, I have come to the conclusion that our civilisation faces a looming tsunami of problem males in the coming decades. The most basic assaults on human males over the past three generations is agribusiness’ practice of female hormone additives in the food supply, with as yet unknown outcomes on the male of our species (and other species for that matter). To this is added indiscriminate use of heavy metals in pesticides and herbicides, which are now indicated in neural disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease, and in vaccination serum, controversially associated with Autism. The effects of such pollutants on other neurally based behavioural conditions are yet to be confirmed, but since we know the male embryo is generally more vulnerable to in-utero insult, the potential for a higher than normal range of male dysfunction cannot be discounted. Add to this diminishing breastfeeding, an organic filter that once shielded the neonate and infant from environmental contamination.
Then there are a variety of cultural factors that have placed additional stressors on the intimate and socio-economic male roles. In particular the advance of feminism, in which women gained cultural territory by encroachments on formerly exclusively male precincts but few acceptable new avenues have opened for males. Witness the short-lived, much derogated, SNAG and Metrosexual and the poor males who did their best to adjust to these new regimens but just ended up being pilloried. Cultural mores have also shifted to counter and disparage previously acceptable forms of male aggression without offering a sufficient variety of alternative outlets; the Brad Pitt film, Fight Club, an important exposition of the distortions resultant from these repressions. Compounding these diverse influences are an education system that enforces a uni-sex curriculum with little recognition of unique male biological and psychological needs, the protracted adolescence of a Peter Pan syndrome now extended well into the thirties, the explosion of virtual technology encouraging perceptions of action without consequence, and the ubiquitous use of neurologically damaging hydroponic cannabis and ‘party drugs’. Combined, these cultural and biological phenomena have added to the normal risk factors of being male by a factor of ten, perhaps more.
Of course, every human alive is a descendant of survivors and there will always be a greater proportion of robust males, either resilient enough to overcome the damage of whatever cocktail of insults the environment throws at them or sufficiently fortunate to grow whole and sound in a protected environment. However, it has been my observation that there is a growing number of dysfunctional males with varying types of psychological disorders of various degrees of significance who are now approaching or in their thirties without having developed a solid intimate relationship or found satisfying work that facilitates the development of mature capacities and responsibilities. Many of these men are vulnerable to further damage, both physically and psychologically, due to poor dietary and behavioural patterns, and so are liable to greater disintegration with concomitant poor health outcomes. These men not only do damage to themselves and the women they engage with but, if they comprise the numbers I suspect, are likely to present a serious risk factor and cost to our society in the not so distant future.
I don’t have an answer to this perceived concern of mine, and am not proposing H G Wells’ solution, but I do think its something that requires more attention, both for those males now heading into a bleak Never-Ever-land and for the vulnerable males to come.
