Sell, Hone, and Pound (2012) examined the importance of physical strength in shaping male psychology. Aggression and violence are fairly effective ways of winning conflict in the competition for resources between males, but can impose large costs on the loser of the conflict (Sell et al., 2012). The consequences of conflict would have put high pressure for the male brain to evolve ways of interpreting the odds of success, to determine when to avoid conflict or engage in aggressive and violent actions (Sell et al., 2012). The authors outline evolved mechanisms for aggression and their effect on the decisions of modern-day human males.
Central to the paper’s premise are the features of the male physique that appear to be tailored for aggression. Numerous sex differences exist that infer the importance of violence and aggression in shaping the male body (Sell et al. 2012). The authors highlighted these sex differences as evidence of evolved weaponry and defenses. Two of the main mechanisms discussed in the paper are upper-body strength, which is strongly connected to fighting ability (...
This also leads into the fact that people interpret male violence and aggression as natural. They’ll pin it as something hardwired from ‘the hunter-gatherer days’. Often times they’ll also blame it on media violence, such as graphic video games, movies and TV shows. This is something much broader than that.
Throughout history, certain problems or societal aspects are often associated with one gender or the other. Manual labor was, and still is, often performed by men, while more skillful tasks, such as cooking and sewing, were done by women. By using the ideas put forth by Judith Lorber in Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology, we can analyze the findings of Matthew Petrocelli, Trish Oberwies, and Joseph Petrocelli’s “Getting Huge, Getting Ripped.” Lorber’s ideas of people having unique experiences, gender being one of society’s inventions, and a power differential between men and women can help us understand why men feel the need to use steroids to become the ideal male.
All around the globe, people have attempted to find an organic, genetic basis for aggressive behavior. Several hormones and neurotransmitters, such as testosterone and seretonin, have been implicated in the "aggression quest", as well as specific localities of the human brain. My paper will serve to suggest that although many findings have shown impressive results regarding possible biological causes of violent behavior, we still do not have sufficient means to understand the neuroanatomical or biochemical basis of aggression.
Men are allegedly competitive, aggressive, dominant, and strong and if these attributes are not acquired a man is not a man. When other men recognize a man failing in those four areas of “manliness” they compare him to a female with negative connotation as expressed in the following quote, “The worst insult one man can hurl at another-whether its boys on the playground or CEOs in the boardroom-is the accusation that a man is like a woman.” These actions create perceptions that women are unworthy and pitiful. Jensen mentions that because of masculinity men are thought to seek control over women resulting in an increase of physical violence towards women. However, masculinity has harsh effects on men as well. Men are constantly trying to prove their dominance to each other, while competing against one another for ultimate dominance. This creates a never ending cycle of competition and unease for
Domestic violence has been plaguing our society for years. There are many abusive relationships, and the only question to ask is: why? The main answer is control. The controlling characteristic that males attribute to their masculinity is the cause of these abusive relationships. When males don’t have control, they feel their masculinity is threatened and they need to do something about it.
When Katz interviews inmates in prison, many of them say that the reason why they use violence is that it is the quickest way to achieve respect. The idea behind respect is that it is a circle. When one wants to achieve respect, in some cases, they use violence to develop it, but to establish respect, one has to show their masculinity. Many times masculinity is achievable only through violence, which then completes the casual loop. The sociological idea of sociobiology, the study of social behavior in both humans and animals, can be applied to this scenario since humans have the incessant need to be socially accepted by their peers. For instance, many gang initiations involve an act of violence, and if one does not go through with the task at hand, the individual will lose the respect of every member. Therefore, males will show their masculinity to their peers to gain their respect. While I do agree with the notion that every person has to prove themselves to others, the idea of establishing respect through violence is not the answer. While it is the fastest way to achieve masculine approval, it is also the fastest way to lead one down a path that they cannot come back. While violence is not the answer, if one does not establish their masculinity, many often comment that they are not a man, but feminine instead. This transitions into how one tries to prove their
Sexual violence is sometimes thought of as a natural part of life. That men have an inherit biological trait that predisposes them to violence and that it cannot be helped. The famous quote is “boys will be boys” meaning that men have no control over their actions and that if they sexual assault someone, that it is just human nature. This is in fact false. There is nothing in the biological makeup of males that can explain away sexual violence. It is a learned cultural behavior generated by gender norms and the medias perpetuation of sexual violence.
These two clusters of attributes are most commonly seen as mirror images of one another with masculinity usually characterized by dominance and aggression, and femininity by passivity and s...
Neihoff, D. (1999). The biology of violence: How understanding the brain, behavior and environment can break the vicious circle of aggression. New York: Free Press.
Many experts do not accept that biology alone creates children who kill. They believe that violence is a learned behavior. Being abused or witnessing domestic violence is an environmental factor in ju...
So why are girls so “aggressive?” Nicki Crick, PhD, a researcher at the University of Minnesota says: “Physical aggression isn’t very accepted for girls, so they turn to manipulation and emotional threats as weapons” (Murray, par 3). “In recent research, it indicates that gender differences in aggression disappears when the definition of aggression is broadened to include aggressive acts in whish the victim’s personal relationships are manipulated of damaged-- that is, relational aggression” (Miller, 145).
The article written by Dan Jones essentially dislikes the lower violence rates in humans with evolution. The article hinges on a couple points, the first being that there simply hasn’t been enough time to adequately measure if lowered homicide rates can be attributed to evolution. Overall, Jones’ article offers many points of view and allows the reader to formulate his or her own opinion on the matter. The column offers possible explanation to some of the violence readers see in Voltaire’s novel, Candide.
Freud believes that aggression is a primal instinct, and civilization thwarts this instinct, making man unhappy. Civilized society controls man's tendency toward aggression through rules and laws and the presence of authority. These mechanisms are put in place to guarantee safety and happiness for all individuals in a society. However, the necessity of suppressing the aggressive drive in m...
and Dr. Whitehead, male behaviors and masculinity are not just a simple product of biological predispositions or genetic coding. All societies around the world have the cultural concept of gender, but some of them do not have the idea masculinity. The modern usage of masculinity usually describes the behaviors that result from the type of person someone is. This means that one who is un-masculine would behave differently. For example, “being peaceable rather than violent, conciliatory rather than dominant, hardly able to kick a football, uninterested in sexual conquest, and so forth” (42). The presented concept of masculinity presumes that one has to believe in individual difference and personal agency. So, it is based on the concept of individuality
behaviors, and social conditions that we call masculinities are “hard-wired” into males through biology (see Thorhill & Palmer, 2000) and/or the heritability of human psyche (see Jung, 1959/1989; Bly, 1990). They view masculinity as static, transhistorical, cross-cultural, and cross-situational. From this perspective, gender change is either impossible, or it involves the use of powerful force to constrain what is seen as “naturally” male. (Masculine Self pg. 19)