Gazing in the Mirror

March 7 - Testosterone Sighs

How a society channels
male aggression is one of
the greatest questions as to
whether that society will
survive. That's why I am not
against violence in the media,
I am against the glorification
of immoral violence.
~ Dennis Prager

Practically the whole human race
is hypnotized because it thinks
what somebody else told it to think.
~ Ernest Holmes

I grew up in a family of all girls (except my dad ;-} ). When I began having sons at the ages of 47 and 50, I experienced what I can only define as "gender shock". During one period in the raising of my older son, I discovered that I had the makings of a professional wrestler – so persistent, determined and challenging was he – even though not how I would have preferred to handle situations, I was doing so to not cause him the harms a more aggressive response might have inflicted. I never enjoyed being in the wrestling profession. Parenting is different with boys. At times they really seem to enjoy that physical sparing out with one another. My boy's favorite time of the day is just before bedtime when they get totally physical and rowdy with each other.

In the movie, The Hurt Locker, during their "recreation or down time" the men at some point throw punches at one another and are actually hurt in doing so but then go back for more. In her Verse 10 essay for her book "A Thousand Names for Joy – Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are" author Byron Katie shares – "One day, a few years after I first found The Work inside me, my sons began to fight in our living room. I was sitting on the couch, very close to them. They were two grown men, in their twenties, and here they were on the floor, wrestling and pummeling each other and yelling, "Mom, Mom, make him stop !" All I saw were two men trying to connect, not knowing another way. I sat there just watching them, just loving them, and in that moment I didn't have the slightest thought of intervening. There was no doing, no trickery to it. And suddenly they noticed, and they stopped fighting. I loved that they found their own solution. That was the last time they ever fought."

Sometimes, my boys misinterpret each other's actions as being purposely belligerent even when there is a simpler and more benevolent explanation for what occurs. Joseph Tobin, a professor of early childhood education at Arizona State University says "Calling boys 'aggressive' is an attempt to punitively try and control behavior we are not comfortable with. We rarely use this word in a positive way, so when we start by calling boys' behavior 'aggressive' we are already prejudicing how we look at it." I will admit that it is true that I'm not comfortable with much that I kindly interpret as boysterous (have you ever heard of girlsterous ?). He goes on to say "Children use their bodies and express their feelings by pushing, grabbing, and fighting." and that's certainly true in my household !! And sometimes it isn't directed at another person but there is the breaking or throwing of objects and thankfully that has been a rare occurrence.

I found an "interesting" Top 10 list for the Traits of A Real Man at AskMen.com. Here is a sampling . . . "A real man doesn't cry, doesn't moan, doesn't complain, doesn't get sick, and doesn't need to go to the doctor every time he sneezes. A real man makes decisions and lives with the consequences. A real man accepts responsibility for his actions and his words. A real man is firm. If life is a b*tch, a real man will slap it and move on. A real man is macho. A real man is tough. A real man doesn't show emotions." And that is only #1. Thankfully, some of the men I am acquainted with would argue otherwise but there it is, I believe, the stereotypical depiction used for many story and movie characters.

It is also true that studies have shown that both boys and girls do engage in relational aggression. It is noted that girls tend to use more indirect, social and verbal forms of aggression. Examples include social exclusion, collusion, gossiping, rumor spreading, character defamation, name-calling, ostracism, threatening to end valuable friendships, threatening to disclose personal information and mean-spirited teasing. It is also clear that at all ages girls tend to engage in less competitive, grabbing aggressive behaviors than boys. I did not get along well with girls in my childhood years. I always thought of myself as a tomboy for that reason. However I can see now as well that I was never as physically aggressive in the same kinds of ways as my boys. Even as I write this I am reminded that I would make tickling signs at my younger, "middle" sister (only 13 mos younger than I) to intimidate her into doing whatever I was wanting from her in that moment. From a more mature viewpoint, I would now define my behavior then as being a form of aggression.

How does one come to terms with aggression ? My heart would love to somehow transmute it into something more life affirming. I don't really have any answers or solutions. It has been found that society tolerates aggression more in boys than girls. It has been proven in studies that perception matters. In watching a video of two children playing roughly in the snow with their gender disguised by heavy snowsuits, both men and women viewed the exact same level of aggression differently depending upon what they were told about the gender of the children. From this it is shown that boys are allowed to play more roughly than girls before they are considered to have "stepped over the line" of acceptable aggressive behavior. This social pressure influences girls to be less aggressive. As worrisome to my own heart as it is to admit this, since aggression remains a reality in our civilization, I can't deny that if I found myself in a dangerous situation I would want someone near me that was skilled in countering such aggression and yet my heart still yearns to see a kinder and gentler reality overall.

~ perspective

Aggression in human beings is
a complex aspect of societal
behavior with roots back into
basic needs of survival.
It appears that some of the
difference in the aggressiveness
of boys stems from affirmations
that such behavior will be tolerated
in boys by the adults around them.
Similarly the less aggressive behavior
of girls is influenced similarly by
the adults around them and it is
proven that girls can be taught to
be every bit as aggressive as boys
therefore there is some degree of
"learned" behavior possible in children
at both ends of such a spectrum.
Individuals are strongly affected by
the actions and/or words of others
and the acquisition of aggressive
behavior can also vary in nature
due to biological, environmental and
programmed media/educational factors.
It is important to teach children to
think critically about the violence
they see around them or in entertainments
and encourage them to become aware
of it in the stories people tell.

#aggression #behavior #children #gossip #learned  #ostracism #reality #response #siblings #wrestling