Mansplaining the Mansplainers

I’ve spoken to many men in the past few weeks who, like me, have been re-evaluating the innocence of their sexual histories, their proclivities, flirtations, encounters, and one-night stands. And I’ve spoken to many women who tend to remember similar encounters in often less innocent ways. Most have been grappling emotionally and intellectually with the sudden flood of revelations about men’s abusive behaviors, not because the pervasiveness of harassment and abuse came as a surprise to them, but because, it seems, with the lid removed, a lifetime of repressed emotions has been suddenly released.

In their Time Magazine 2017 Person of Year article, The Silence Beakers, the three authors Stephanie Zacharek, Eliana Dockterman, and Haley Sweetland Edwards suggest, “We're still at the bomb-throwing point of this revolution, a reactive stage at which nuance can go into hiding. But while anger can start a revolution, in its most raw and feral form it can't negotiate the more delicate dance steps needed for true social change. Private conversations, which can't be legislated or enforced, are essential.”[i] While I feel that this is a time for women to speak out more and for men to listen, I don’t think this entirely precludes men from speaking. In the late 1970s, sometime during my undergraduate years in Tallahassee about a dozen of my male friends formed a “men’s consciousness raising group” dedicated to understanding the feminist philosophy into which our partners, friends, and colleagues were immersing themselves. We didn’t beat on drums and cry and try to reclaim our lost masculinity. We were attempting that delicate dance of honest and nuanced conversation—with one implicit presupposition: we belonged to the group privileged by the long history of patriarchy.[ii] In a way, this composition mirrors that effort. There is little about feminism and the female experience that I would presume to mansplain. I might, however, share some worthwhile observations with my own sex.

In his November 25 New York Times opinion piece, The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido, Stephen Marchenov’s confidently states, “I’m not asking for male consciousness-raising groups.” Okay, I get it, maybe too 1970s.  “Let’s start with a basic understanding that masculinity is a subject worth thinking about,” he continues. “That alone would be an immense step forward. If you want to be a civilized man, you have to consider what you are.” A know thyself affirmation—no problems with that, right? Except for perhaps a nitpick about his mechanistic “what you are” instead of the more philosophical “who you are.” But then, he believes that men are monsters, and I’m guessing monsters don’t possess the level of consciousness deserving of the subjective human pronoun. He also noted with stirring eloquence that, “Liberal or conservative, feminist or chauvinist, woke or benighted, young or old, found on Fox News or in The New Republic, a man’s stated opinions have next to no relationship to behavior.” I’ll take a leap of logic here and mansplain the mansplainer in this way: that, however diverse our ideologies, men share deeper commonalities that impel them to behave in ways that are often chauvinistic, boorish, even monstrous. If we can agree with these two simple premises—that we should strive to know ourselves and that there are common origins for male misbehavior—I would like to explore some territory that has been well-tread in the literature of feminism, anthropology, and psychology, but seemingly passed over in the public sphere and in the everyday discussions among men.

First, it will be accepted here as axiomatic that sex, power, and our history are entwined so deeply and complexly that it may well take lifetimes to deconstruct all the factors. Still, these deep male commonalities surely have biological and cultural roots that we can already partially resolve. In her 1975 classic, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, Susan Brownmiller came to the then provocative supposition that, “Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with fire and the first crude stone axe.”[iii] In The New Yorker, David Remnick recently mansplained it this way: “Sexual coercion and the threat of its possibility, in the street, in the workplace, and in the home, she [Brownmiller] found, is less a matter of frenzied lust than a deliberate exercise of physical power, a declaration of superiority ‘designed to intimidate and inspire fear.’”[iv]

Whether the exercise of physical power is deliberate or not misses Brownmiller’s point and most all theory since Freud, for that matter. Behavior—loving, brutish, or otherwise—is often unconscious in motivation and during execution. That indeed is the principle power of culture: many of our thoughts and behaviors are so thoroughly molded by the worldviews in which we are embedded that we are often completely unaware of their relativity. We wouldn’t think to question them, especially if they happen to benefit us. So, whether conscious, unconscious, biological, and/or cultural, the male abuse of sex and power has disempowered women in every aspect of life at least since the beginnings of civilization and patriarchy. And as both Brownmiller and Shulamith Firestone have persuasively argued, it began even long before civilization.[v] Many indigenous American tribes subordinated and brutalized women, and there exists a robust anthropological literature debating the extent of violence among hunter-gatherers.[vi] I must admit that I have been more persuaded with the side that finds for male violence having a long history.

So long that its expressions were millions of years in the making. Of all living species, we are genetically closest to the chimpanzees, and they are a savage species as Jane Goodall and then her student Richard Wrangham observed in the Gombe National Park, Tanzania.[viii] And plainly we too are a savage species. Far more savage, to be sure. No other species, not the chimpanzee or the shark, orca or tiger, is nearly as vicious to so many other species or to its own. The study of human atrocities fills vast sections of the world’s biggest libraries—from descriptions of war, torture, and rape to analyses of the more common violence of pedestrian criminals. And the violence is overwhelming male-perpetrated. Violence in the home, community, institutions, internationally, and even online (I am thinking of cyberbullying) are performed predominantly by men.[ix] Within hunter-gatherer societies, within civilization, cross-culturally and across time, men have performed most all of our species’ violence. So, more precisely we are a species with a naturally savage side, namely the male sex.[x]

Of the many biological factors that may contribute to men’s far greater predisposition for violence, the single greatest culprit is the anabolic steroid, testosterone. Testosterone, as the philosopher Ken Wilber put it, is the fuck it or kill it hormone.[xi] The academic literature offers a more nuanced view of testosterone, but nevertheless this steroid hormone tends to imbue males with deeper voices and makes them stronger, hairier, more libidinal, and more aggressive.[xii] In the more precise and cautious language of scientists, testosterone influences the expression of these characteristics within specific environmental and social contexts. However phrased, testosterone far more than the erect penis is the biological source for much of civilization’s dysfunctions in general and female disempowerment specifically. And because we belong to a species where the male tends to be remarkably involved in child-rearing, men have an enormous impact on children during all their developmental stages. There can be many upsides, granted. Or at least, the male role does not necessarily have to impose a “phallocentric” (male-centered) or “phallogocentric” (male-centered language) society.[xiii]  The major downside is the risk to mind and body of women and children when welcoming this testosterone-laden sex into the community.  

Only some six thousand years in the making, Civilization’s principle contribution to women’s disempowerment has been to institutionalize the asymmetry of power between the sexes.[xiv] The divisions of labor that define civilization and that led to expertise and innovation also evolved into an ever more stratified hierarchy based on unequal wealth, power, and status. Stratification became etched along lines of class, ethnicity, skin pigmentation, and gender, but most consistently by sex. All classes, cultures, colors, and creeds discriminated against women. And it was the institutions of religion, military, government, business, education, and media that served to legitimize and reify women’s subordinate roles. There is no room in this short piece to detail the ways in which each institution is culpable. But to take one example: the most obvious sign of religious inequality exists among the clergy. Although there are some female saints and venerated religious figures and mystics, there have been, as of yet, no female popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, and Dalai Lamas, some very few Imams, and just recently some very few Brahman priests and a small percentage of rabbis and pastors. Similarly, in all the spheres of influence—political, military, religious, business, and media—women still represent a small minority of the leaders.

To keep some modicum of peace among the males, societies have evolved ways to repress the most egregious impacts of men’s libido and aggression. Since the time of Hammurabi, rape, murder and other violent acts have been outlawed. Clearly, women were not usually the intended beneficiaries, as the penalties were based on how they affected men and their property. Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, and thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright (I know, yet another mansplainer) used the life of Charles Darwin to exemplify the ways a man—especially a man of high status—could repress and sublimate otherwise de-socializing proclivities and remain faithful in monogamous marriage.[xv] For one, Darwin was sickly for much of his life, which both diminished his libido and lent value to his wife as care-taker. Second, the Darwin family moved to the countryside where the women were few and modestly dressed. Third, he sired many children, and according to the scientific literature, both marriage and children significantly diminish men’s testosterone levels.[xvi]

None of these, however, offer much solace for a world in ecological and equity crises. For one, it’s not the sickly men we fear; it’s the active ones. And large families are no solution for a species in the throes of a population explosion—another problem, by the way, that can be laid at the door of patriarchy.[xvii] When given the freedom to choose, women overwhelming choose small families.[xviii] As for keeping the company of few and modestly dressed women, well… the male-centeredness of this “solution” can test any woman’s patience. So, let’s shift the perspective 180 degrees. Instead of making women responsible for male aggression, why not make men accountable, by having men take estrogen supplements, for instance, and making castration the penalty for crimes of assault and rape. On a more pragmatic note, except for the world’s most conservative regions, where women are sequestered from men’s prying eyes behind the walls of home or tents of cloth, the trend of increasing urbanization is making that ersatz solution impractical anyway.

Okay, so given that for thousands of years at least, men have used their advantage of aggression and its constant threat to satisfy their selfish desires of status, wealth, power, and libido; and given that men hold most all positions of power, and that society’s institutions erect and reinforce the glass ceiling (although the ceiling is often quite opaque in most societies), then what are the solutions? Private conversation was proposed by the above-mentioned authors of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year article. Open discussion, it is hoped, will continue to familiarize society with female perspectives, eventually leading to equality of language. And as women have been standing up to sexual inequality for decades now, it is time for men in ever larger numbers and commitment to stand up and be counted as feminists.

As this new wave of revelations and the Me Too movement runs its course, I hope that women will be empowered to lead the way forward. Men, I feel, should involve themselves less in the shaming and blaming and moralizing. For the same reasons that men should probably stay out of the abortion discussion.[xix] The men’s task, I would think, is to listen and to be self-reflective and to facilitate by our absence of judgement women’s continuing empowerment. All over the globe, from Kenya to India to Sweden, every instance of women’s empowerment has led directly to improved conditions for all.[xx] The women I know have wrestled honorably with the values and questions evoked by the feminist revolution. They have often acknowledged the complexities of male sexuality far more generously than men have. The divisive issue that split my men’s consciousness raising group all those years back was a protracted discussion about the limits of flirtation and sexual behavior. The half that argued for the immediate cessation of all flirtation and sexual behavior were ironically the men who were the most egregious sexists. The Jimmy Swaggarts and Ben Afflecks of our group.[xxi] When we consulted our feminist partners and colleagues, they rationally differentiated sexuality from chauvinism and misogyny. I trust that, when we are truly equal, all genders can strive shoulder to shoulder to find the best ways for us to live harmoniously together. For now, I would like to honor the increasing empowerment of women, of their voices, and their role in society.

REFERENCES

[i]    Stephanie Zacharek, Eliana Dockterman, and Haley Sweetland Edwards (2017, December 18) Time Person of the Year: The Silence Breakers.. Time Magazine. Accessed Dec. 11 at http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/                   

[ii] Patriarchy here simply means, “the systematic subordination of women” (Tong, R. and Fernandez Botts, T. (2017) Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction. Westview Press, New York), which Shulamith Firestone argued was rooted in the biological inequality of the sexes. Firestone, S. (1970) The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. William Morrow and Company, New York City.

[iii] Brownmiller, S. (1995) Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. Simon and Schuster, New York City.

[iv] David Remnick (2017, November 20) Autumn of the Patriarchy. The New Yorker, pp. 31-32. It has not escaped my noticed that most of my sources are men.

[v] Brownmiller, S. (1995) Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. Simon and Schuster, New York City. Firestone, S. (1970) The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. William Morrow and Company, New York City.

[vi] For example: Clastres (1980/2010), Keeley ((1996), Fry (2007). Skeletal evidence for violence is discussed in Cohen (1989) and Jones (2008). Violence among Amazonian hunter-gatherers can be found in Chagnon (1968), Roach (1998), and Johnson and Earle (2000). For the violence exhibited by Native Americans—Josephy (1961), Brownmiller (1975), Zinn (1980), Gutman (1989), Keeley (1996), Ewers (1998), Gwynne (2010) and Drury and Clavin (2013). Ferguson (2003) argues that violence greatly intensified when hunter-gatherers became sedentary and more populace, and Fry (2007) makes a strong case for war being a feature of complex social organization. However, Wrangham and Peterson (1996) see that violence typifies the primates (aside from the Bonobo, who instead use sex, primarily, to resolve the same sort of tensions). They convincingly argue that the primates, in general, and humans and chimpanzees, particularly are the most brutal of life forms, performing acts of savagery against other species and their own with a viciousness rarely found in the world.  Primates collectively engage in gang rape, infanticide, dismemberment, cannibalism. Fry (2007) argues that Wrangham and Peterson (1996) purposely ignore millions of years of peace that existed in numerous societies in the time between the Hominini/chimpanzee split and the beginnings of Neolithic warfare.

References for above paragraph in alphabetical order:

• Brownmiller, S. (1995) Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. Simon and Schuster, New York City.
• Chagnon, N. (1968) Yanomamo: The Fierce People. Holt, Rinehart, Winston, New York.
• Clastres, P. (1980/2010) Archeology of Violence. Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, CA.
• Cohen, M.N. (1989) Health and the Rise of Civilization, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven.
• Drury, B., and Clavin, T. (2013) The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend. Simon and Schuster, New York.
• Ewers, J.C. (1998) Plains Indians History and Culture: Essays on Continuity and Change. Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma.
• Ferguson, R.B. (2003) The Birth of War, Natural History, July/August, p. 28-35.
• Fry, D.P. (2007) Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace. Oxford University Press, New York.
• Gutman, H.G., director (1989) Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture and Society. American Social History Project, Pantheon Books, New York
• Gwynne, S.C. (2010) Empire of the Summer Moon. Scribner, New York.
• Johnson, A.W., and Earle T. (2000) The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Stanford Univ. Press, California.
• Jones, D. (2008) Killer Instincts, Nature, v. 451, pp. 512-515.
• Josephy, A.M., editor (1961) The American Heritage Book of Indians. American Heritage Pub. Co., United States.
• Keeley, L.H. (1996) War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford University Press, New York City.
• Wrangham, R. and Dale Peterson, D. (1996) Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York.
• Zinn, H. (1980) A People’s History of the United States. Harper Perennial, New York

[viii] Goodall, J. (2002) Beyond Innocence. Mariner Books, Boston, MA.  Also, Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson (1996) Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York.

[ix] FBI Crime Statistics in the United States, 2011. Accessed on November 27, 2017 at https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table_66_arrests_suburban_areas_by_sex_2011.xls

[x] These facts and the following discussion in no way excuse male misbehavior; they are to be used in earnest conversation to understand those behaviors.

[xi] Pp. 5-6 in Wilber, K. (2007) A Brief History of Everything. Shambhala Publications, Boulder, CO.

[xii] Nick Neave and Daryl B. O’Connor (2009) Testosterone and Male Behaviors. The Psychologist.v. 22, pp. 28-31. Accessed Nov 26, 2017 at https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-22/edition-1/testosterone-and-male-behaviours

Christopher Bergland (2003, Oct. 3) Testosterone Fuels Both Competition and Protectiveness. Psychology Today. Accessed November 26, 2017 at https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201310/testosterone-fuels-both-competition-and-protectiveness.

[xiii] See, for example, Tong, R. and Fernandez Botts, T. (2017) Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction. Westview Press, New York.

[xiv] How women fared differed somewhat from one society to the next, but rare has been the civilization where women were actually equals. The BCE Minoan civilization is often hypothesized to actually have been one. Civilization has been to a great extent a male-created, male-maintained, male-dominated phenomenon.

[xv] Wright, R. (1995) The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are. The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. Vintage, New York City.

[xvi] The numerous scholarly papers include Gray, P.B. Kahlenberg, S.M., Barrett, E.S., Lipson, S.F., and Ellison, P.T. (2002) Marriage and fatherhood are associated with lower testosterone in males. Evolution and Human Behavior, v. 23. pp. 193-201.

[xvii] See, for example, the discussions on Ecofeminism in Tong, R. and Fernandez Botts, T. (2017) Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction. Westview Press, New York. Also,

[xviii] Kirk, D. (1995) Demographic Transition Theory. Population Studies, v. 50(3), pp. 361-387.

Eswaran, M. (2002) The Empowerment of Women, Fertility, and Child Mortality: Towards a Theoretical Analysis Journal of Population Economics, v. 15, pp. 433-454.

Kaiser, J. (2011) Does Family Planning Bring Down Fertility? Science, v. 333, pp. 548-549.

Upadhyay, U.D., Gipson, J.D., Withers, M., Lewis, S., Ciardaldi, E.J., Fraser, A., Huchko, M.J., Prata, N. (2014) Women’s Empowerment and Fertility: A Review of the Literature. Social Science & Medicine, v. 115, pp. 111-120.

[xix] Read, for example, Jennifer Weiner (2017, Oct. 6) The Flagrant Sexual Hypocrisy of Conservative Men. New York Times. Accessed Dec. 11, 2017 at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/opinion/sunday/conservative-men-abortion-hypocrisy.html?_r=0

[xx]  Of the many, For example, Faiola, A. (2008, May 16) Women Rise in Rwanda's Economic Revival. Washington Post.

Also, Amendáriz, B. and Roome, N. (2008) Empowering Women Via Microfinance in Fragile States. CEB Working Paper no. 08/001, Centre Emile Bernheim.

Also, Upadhyay, U.D., Gipson, J.D., Withers, M., Lewis, S., Ciardaldi, E.J., Fraser, A., Huchko, M.J.,and Prata, N. (2014) Women’s Empowerment and Fertility: A Review of the Literature. Social Science & Medicine, v. 115, pp. 111-120. 

[xxi]  Re Jimmy Swaggart: Wayne King (1988, February 22) Swaggart Says He Has Sinned: Will Step Down. New York Times. Accessed Dec. 11, 2017 at http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/22/us/swaggart-says-he-has-sinned-will-step-down.html?pagewanted=all

Re Ben Affleck: Amy Zimmerman (2017, Oct. 14) The Glaring Hypocrisy of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Harvey Weinstein Statements. The Daily Beast. Accessed Dec. 11, 2017 at https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-glaring-hypocrisy-of-matt-damon-and-ben-afflecks-harvey-weinstein-statements