Dorian Furtuna - Male Aggression: Why are men more violent?

If I had to summarize this article's stance on male aggression, it would be: "Evolution and my hormones made me do it." I would guess that this is still the majority view in biology, anthropology, and even some areas of psychology.

What's missing from this rather simplistic model is the social construction aspect - that gender behaviors are socially constructed and socially enforced. Men may have an obvious evolutionary design that allowed us to be more violent and aggressive - generally in the same way as the males of any species are aggressive as a means of protecting the group (from family to tribe to religion to nation).

BUT, we are no longer a species that operates in a kill-or-be-killed world. We have evolved. In general, the greater the level of psychosocial development, the lesser the incidence of violent behavior. It is no longer feasible to claim a biological imperative toward violence - our biology is only one aspect of who we are.

Male Aggression

Why are men more violent?

Published on September 22, 2014 by Dorian Furtuna, Ph.D. in Homo Aggressivus

In almost every society men are the ones who are overwhelmingly involved in wars, in all kinds of intergroup aggressions and intragroup homicide; they mobilize themselves in armies of violent fans, in criminal gangs, in bands of thugs, etc. These observations are as old as the world and have allowed us to create a clear distinction between male and female sexes regarding their predisposition to violence. Wars are a biosocial product of men and a field for male’s manifestation [Goldstein, 2001]. The same thing is true of crime and cruelty, which are closely linked to masculinity.

Canadian evolutionary psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, who specialize in studying the homicide phenomenon, have analyzed 35 homicide data sets from 14 countries, including some from primitive societies and some from different eras. Among these societies men committed homicide, on average, 26 times more frequently than women [Daly, Wilson, 1994]. Also, familicides (the killing of family members) are committed mostly by men. Some data have shown that men were involved in more than 90 percent of cases [Wilson, Daly, 1997, p. 160].

Men are also, in 70 percent of cases, the victims of homicides. In some societies, this percentage jumps to over 90 percent [Daly, Wilson, 1988; Berkowitz, 1993, p. 274, apud Buss, Duntley, 2002].

In the Russian Federation, in 1996, 86.6 percent of all serious crimes were committed by men. In the U.S., in 2004, 85 percent of total serious crimes were committed by men. Ninety-two percent of serial killers from the U.S. are men [1]. This statistical report is valid for most countries, regardless of their geographical location or size. In Republic of Moldova, for example, about 90 percent of crimes are committed by men [2].

Let us analyze another dimension of violence – cruelty and animal abuse. One of the studies that approached this issue found the following male-to-female ratio, regarding violence to animals: beatings – 38 to 1, shooting – 16 to 1, torture – 20 to 1, burning – 17 to 1 [Gerbasi, 2004].

Why are men more aggressive than women? Several theories have been proposed, trying to explain this phenomenon, most of them being from social psychological theories. One of the most popular theories belongs to American social psychologist Leonard Berkowitz. According to him, men and women are educated, traditionally, to carry out different social roles. Berkowitz uses the following reasoning for his theory: Think of all the ways in which modern Western society teaches children that fighting is more suitable for men than to women. Folk literature and the media constantly present men, and not women, fighting. Parents buy toy guns for boys and dolls for girls. Parents are more willing to endorse and encourage the aggressive behavior of boys, and not of girls. Again and again, directly and indirectly, minors learn that men are aggressive, and women not [Berkowitz, 1993, p. 395].

The theory of “social roles” has created a new paradigm in gender policies and marks, even today, the ways in which many civic and preschool education strategies are developed. It is presumed that girls and boys shall be educated and treated alike, non-discriminatory, and even the behavioral differences between them will disappear. However, although it contains in itself a good dose of truth (boys and girls were, traditionally, part of a different education), Berkowitz’s theory about learned social roles was subject to several critics, who have shown its vulnerabilities.

First of all, it’s not the parents that impose behavioral styles on their children, but their reaction at the latter’s requests; toy guns are bought for boys and dolls for girls because these are usually the children’s preferences (in part genetically predetermined). And as parents respond to children’s preformed wishes, so do media, offering a content which corresponds to behavioral patterns already existing on a social level [Hoyenga, Hoyenga, 1993]. Then, Berkowitz’s theory mirrored the Western culture, but didn’t take into account the realities from other cultures (without cinema, literature, media, toy stores), where the behavioral patterns of boys still greatly differ from that of girls. It was noted, among other things, that homicides in North America (where it seems that the media fosters intense social roles) are marked by sex differences to a lesser degree than in many other societies [Daly, Wilson, 1989, p. 101-102, apud Buss, Duntley, 2002]. So it is not the imprinting of social roles that sits at the origin of men’s increased aggressiveness, but inner causes, determined by the nature of men.

Also important in this regard are the findings of social psychologists who have noted that the social emancipation of women in recent decades has barely influenced or enhanced the expressiveness of aggressive behavior in women, which is additional proof that the higher degree of masculine aggressiveness is, first of all, due to genetic factors. Sex differences predetermine, on a genetic level, the differences in aggressive behavior [Wilson, Herrnstein, 1985]. It’s specific for women to use verbal aggression in intrasexual competition between women and rarely are there cases of physical assault. Women use only language in competitive strategies [Buss, Dedden, 1990, apud Fitzgerald, Whitaker, 2009, p. 469].

Most relevant in explaining the genesis of male aggressive behavior proved to be the approaches from an evolutionary perspective. Thus, the fact that men are more aggressive and stronger than women can be explained through intrasexual competition (between males). Men have inherited these skills from our evolutionary ancestors, because, in general, in the living world, gaining a higher hierarchical status, resources, protecting the family and obtaining competitive advantages in conquering women involves increased physical contest and increased aggressiveness [Buss, Duntley, 2006; Gat, 2010]. Similarly, in many animal species, including primates, males have the biological role of being guardians of the territory and of banishing the intruders or of protecting the group from predators, and these functions imply that males exhibit a higher level of aggression than females [Wilson, 1975].

The fact that males are more aggressive and more violent is reflected by their anatomy itself; in many animals species they are heavier, more muscular, better armed with means of attack and defense. In humans, for example, the arms of men are, on average, 75 percent more muscular than those of women; and the top of a male body is 90 percent stronger that the top of a female body [Bohannon, 1997; Abe et al., 2003, apud Goetz, 2010, p. 16]. Also, men are taller, they have denser and heavier bones, their jaw is more massive, their reaction time is shorter, their visual acuity is better, their muscle/fat ratio is greater, their heart is bulkier, their percentage of hemoglobin is higher, their skin is thicker, their lungs bigger, their resistance to dehydration is higher etc. In other words, from all points of view, men are more suited for battle than women, and these skills are native; they were selected and evolutionary polished [Sell et al., 2012, p. 33].

Men also have a specific hormonal status. Testosterone, for example, is directly responsible for inducing competitive and even criminal behavior. According to Evolutionary Neuroandrogetic Theory, male sex hormones (androgens) are correlated with the increased ability of males to acquire resources, hierarchical position and sexual partners [Ellis, 2003, 2004].

All of these anatomical, hormonal, behavioral and evolutionary factors demonstrate the biological, instinctual inclination of men to be more combative. Therefore, on an individual and social level, men are involved in acts of violence and crime. The social environment only cultivates and points out these predispositions towards fighting and aggression.

Sources:

1. ...И смертельная ненависть к мужчинам // Ракитин А.И.”Загадочные преступления прошлого”. 2008 / http://murders.ru/Florida_2.html
2. Statistica gender // Biroul Naţional de Statistică al Republicii Moldova / http://www.statistica.md/category.php?l=ro&idc=264
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• Berkowitz L. Aggression: Its causes, consequences, and control. New York. McGraw-Hill. 1993. 485 p.
• Bohannon R.W. Reference values for extremity muscle strength obtained by hand-held dynamometry from adults aged 20 to 79 years // Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Vol. 78. 1997. P. 26-32.
• Buss D.M., Dedden L.A. Derogation of competitors // Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Vol. 7. 1990. P. 395-422.
• Buss D.M., Duntley J.D. Murder by Design: The Evolution of Homicide // Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2002 / http://www.philosophy.dept.shef.ac.uk/AHRB-Project/Papers/Non-pdf...
• Buss D.M., Duntley J.D. The Evolution of Aggression // In M. Schaller, J.A. Simpson, D.T. Kenrick (Eds.), “Evolution and Social Psychology”. New York, NY: Psychology Press. 2006. P. 263-285.
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Aggression in Boys May Start Before Birth (McGill University)

This new(ish) study from McGill University looked at the epigenetic genesis of some behavioral issues in boys and discovered that the cause can often be traced back to the pregnancy.

Their study revealed that men who displayed chronic aggressive behavior between the ages of 6 and 15 had lower blood levels of four biomarkers of inflammation (cytokines) than in men who displayed "normal" levels of aggressive behavior in their youth (from the original paper).

Compared to the control group, males on a chronic physical aggression trajectory from childhood to adolescence had consistently lower plasma levels of five cytokines: lower pro-inflammatory interleukins IL-1α (T(28.7) = 3.48, P = 0.002) and IL-6 (T(26.9) = 3.76, P = 0.001), lower anti-inflammatory interleukin IL-4 (T(27.1) = 4.91, P = 0.00004) and IL-10 (T(29.8) = 2.84, P = 0.008) and lower chemokine IL-8 (T(26) = 3.69, P = 0.001).

This allowed researchers to distinguish between men with physically aggressive histories from men without such histories simply on the basis of four cytokines (IL-1α, IL-4, IL-6, and IL-8).

In a follow-up study with the same men with aggressive pasts, "the DNA encoding the cytokines showed methylation patterns different from those of the comparison group."

Methylation is an epigenetic modification of DNA in relation to imprinting by parents or caregivers. Methylation also plays a role in regulating gene expression (turning a gene on or off). 

According to the researchers, the prenatal and early postnatal environment may trigger these epigenetic shifts that cause reduced levels of the four specific cytokines associated with youthful aggression.

The authors speculate in the discussion on the connection between specific cytokines and various brain chemicals, specifically serotonin and cortisol (from the original paper):

First, high cortisol levels were found to be associated with high levels of aggression in adolescent males from the same sample [41]. Cortisol levels are known to regulate immune and inflammatory responses [42]. Second, Vasopressin, a mediator of the HPA axis activity released in the brain enhances arousal and aggression [43]. Brain vasopressin is also involved in stress-induced suppression of immune functions in rats [44], [45]. Third, serotonin, a key player in aggressive behavior, is induced by cytokines, such as IL-6 and IL-1β, in brain and in blood [46]–[48]. Serotonin is also known to be involved in regulating IL-4, IL-8, IL-6, TNF-α and IL-1 expression and secretion through the CREB signaling pathway [49], [50]. Together, these studies suggest a link between known mediators previously shown to be involved in aggression and cytokines.

More importantly, the researchers suggest:

There is good evidence that the parents of children on a high trajectory of physical aggression had similar behavior problems and created early childhood family environments which did not support learning to regulate physically aggressive reactions [4], [10]–[14].

As is often the case, aggression is a family issue and is usually intergenerational. The fundamental question, as always, is causality: "Does chronic aggression during childhood result in lowered cytokine activity or does lowered cytokine activity result in more aggression?"

This is an excellent study and worth the time to read. Below is a summary of the research from Futurity, followed by the abstract of the original study.

Aggression in boys may start before birth

Posted by Cynthia Lee-McGill on September 23, 2013


"If our results show that behavioral problems originate from as far back as pregnancy, it means that we can reduce violence through preventive intervention from as early as pregnancy," says Richard Tremblay. (Credit: Peter Dutton/Flickr)

McGill University -- Original Study (PLoS ONE)

Chronic aggressive behavior exhibited by some boys from disadvantaged families may be due to epigenetic changes during pregnancy and early childhood.

A new study shows that men who displayed chronic aggressive behavior during childhood and adolescence have lower blood levels of four biomarkers of inflammation than in men who exhibited average levels of aggressive behavior in their youth, from 6 to 15 years of age.

“This means that using four specific biomarkers of inflammation, called cytokines, we were able to distinguish men with chronic physical aggression histories from those without,” says Richard Tremblay, professor emeritus at the University of Montreal.

In a second study, in the same men with aggressive pasts, the DNA encoding the cytokines showed methylation patterns different from those of the comparison group.

“Methylation is an epigenetic modification—hence reversible—of DNA, in relation to parental imprinting. It plays a role in regulating gene expression,”says Moshe Szyf, a professor at McGill University.

“The pre- and postnatal environment could cause these differences in biomarkers associated with chronic aggression,” Szyf says.

Various studies conducted with animals show that hostile environments during pregnancy and early childhood have an impact on gene methylation and gene programming leading to problems with brain development, particularly in regard to the control of aggressive behavior.

Begins with mom?

Previous work suggests that men with aggressive pasts have one thing in common: the characteristics of their mothers.

“They are usually young mothers at the birth of their first child, with low education, often suffering from mental health problems, and with substance use problems,” Tremblay says.

The significant difficulties these mothers experienced during pregnancy and the early childhood of their child may have an impact on the expression of genes related to brain development, the immune system, and many other biological systems critical for the development of their child.

For the two studies, published in PLOS ONE, researchers collected blood from 32 participants who took part in either of two longitudinal studies that began nearly 30 years ago. The first study followed young Quebecers from disadvantaged backgrounds, while the second involved a representative sample of children who were in kindergarten in Quebec in 1986-87.

It is important to note that in disadvantaged families, the rate of boys with chronic aggressive behavior represents about 4 percent of the population. This greatly restricts the selection of potential participants.

Disorganized lifestyles

“Once they are adults, they are difficult to find because they have disorganized lifestyles,” Tremblay says. “We are studying the impact of the socioeconomic environment on the third generation, now that these children are grown up and have children.”

While no study has yet been published on the subject, he anticipates “significant intergenerational ties, since we observed an association between parental criminality of the first generation and the behavior of their children.”

Nevertheless, Tremblay, who has conducted his work for decades with a prevention perspective, is optimistic.

“If our results show that behavioral problems originate from as far back as pregnancy, it means that we can reduce violence through preventive intervention from as early as pregnancy. We have already shown that support given to families of aggressive boys in kindergarten prevents school dropout and crime in adulthood.”

* * * * *

Here is the abstract of the original article from PLoS ONE, available as an open access publication and downloadable as a PDF.

Childhood Chronic Physical Aggression Associates with Adult Cytokine Levels in Plasma

Nadine Provençal, Matthew J. Suderman, Frank Vitaro, Moshe Szyf, Richard E. Tremblay 

Abstract

Background

An increasing number of animal and human studies are indicating that inflammation is associated with behavioral disorders including aggression. This study investigates the association between chronic physical aggression during childhood and plasma cytokine levels in early adulthood.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Two longitudinal studies were used to select males on a chronic physical aggression trajectory from childhood to adolescence (n = 7) and a control group from the same background (n = 25). Physical aggression was assessed yearly by teachers from childhood to adolescence and plasma levels of 10 inflammatory cytokines were assessed at age 26 and 28 years. Compared to the control group, males on a chronic physical aggression trajectory from childhood to adolescence had consistently lower plasma levels of five cytokines: lower pro-inflammatory interleukins IL-1α (T(28.7) = 3.48, P = 0.002) and IL-6 (T(26.9) = 3.76, P = 0.001), lower anti-inflammatory interleukin IL-4 (T(27.1) = 4.91, P = 0.00004) and IL-10 (T(29.8) = 2.84, P = 0.008) and lower chemokine IL-8 (T(26) = 3.69, P = 0.001). The plasma levels of four cytokines accurately predicted aggressive and control group membership for all subjects.

Conclusions/Significance

Physical aggression of boys during childhood is a strong predictor of reduced plasma levels of cytokines in early adulthood. The causal and physiological relations underlying this association should be further investigated since animal data suggest that some cytokines such as IL-6 and IL-1β play a causal role in aggression.

Full Citation: 
Provençal N, Suderman MJ, Vitaro F, Szyf M, Tremblay RE. (2013, Jul 26), Childhood Chronic Physical Aggression Associates with Adult Cytokine Levels in Plasma. PLoS ONE 8(7): e69481. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069481

The Psych Files Podcast - Ep 196: What Men Need to Do to End Violence Against Others

From The Psyche Files Podcast, Michael A. Britt, Ph.D., former Assistant Professor of Psychology at Marist College, a new podcast on what men need to do to end violence against others.

The Psyche Files: Ep 196: What Men Need to Do to End Violence Against Others

Podcast: Download

Are jail time and new laws the only answers to men’s violence against women, children, and other men? Or is there something every man can do to end these tragedies? In an earlier episode of The Psych Files in which I discussed Blaming the Victim, I talked about why there’s a tendency to blame victims and to overlook the Optimism Bias that we all share (particularly younger folks). But podcast listener and psychotherapist Jackie Henry felt that I didn’t go far enough in that episode, and she was right. We – especially men – need to think carefully about the way we talk about women in our everyday lives. Was that joke really funny? Or was it one of the small ingredients that eventually adds up to – or contributes to – the ongoing violence and lack of empathy that those with power express toward those without it. We take up this important issue in this episode of The Psych files.

We say to ourselves, ‘What can I do? I’m only one person. How can we change the system?’ I think you move through that and you realize that there are small things you can do. Once we work on the individual level eventually that’s how bigger things change – Jackie Henry

Revenge But Not Anger Mediates Gender Differences in Physical Aggression

Some new research presented at The Jury Room, a blog from Keene Trial Consulting, demonstrates that while men and women both have equal experiences of anger, men tend more toward a desire for revenge. This would most easily be explained by different hormone levels in men and women, with men having more testosterone.

On the other hand, these were all undergraduate men and women - would 30, 40, or 50 year old men act/react the same way? I don't think so. In my college years, I would be much more likely to seek revenge in the given scenarios, but now I would have to be pushed pretty far to act that way.

Full Citation:
Wilkowski, B., Hartung, C., Crowe, S., & Chai, C. (2012). Men don’t just get mad; they get even: Revenge but not anger mediates gender differences in physical aggression. Journal of Research in Personality, 46 (5), 546-555 DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2012.06.001

IF YOU’RE A MAN, YOU DON’T JUST GET MAD, YOU GET EVEN! 

Friday, December 28, 2012
posted by Douglas Keene

We've all seen the research showing that men are more physically aggressive than women. But it’s been tough for researchers to explain just why that difference exists. They’ve proposed it’s due to social learning or evolutionary pressures but there’s been no real consensus since men are not measurably more angry than women (according to what’s been measured in research). The authors of this blog each have one daughter and one son, and we can join those who are mystified by the pattern of aggressiveness. To our observation, the difference was seen in toddlerhood.

So researchers chose to explore the idea of revenge and to look at whether the revenge motive differs between men and women. Surprise! It does! Here’s what they did over three different studies.

In Study 1, 89 undergraduate students (64 women and 25 men, average age 20.1 years) at the University of Wyoming completed questionnaires on physical aggression and trait anger and revenge motivation.

Men reported more physical aggression than did women. There were no differences in reports of anger between men and women (everyone gets mad– this is consistent with past research) but men reported more motivation to seek revenge than women reported.

In Study 2, 69 undergraduate students (50 women and 19 men with an average age of 19.6 years) from the University of Wyoming completed the same questionnaires used in Study 1.

Again, men reported more physical aggression than women, anger reports for men were slightly higher than they were for women, and men were more likely to have higher levels of revenge motivation.

For Study 3, 95 undergraduate students (55 men and 40 women with an average age of 19.6 years) from North Dakota State University were seated in separated cubicles equipped with desktop computers and headphones for the delivery of noise blasts. They were told they were competing against another research participant. Their task was to press the space bar as soon as they heard a brief beep. Whomever won the competition was able to choose a loud noise blast to administer to their opponent “to encourage them to respond faster”. They were allowed to choose how loud the noise blast would be and also allowed to choose a “no-noise, non-aggressive option”.

There was no real opponent. The computer randomly chose the “winner” as well as the intensity/volume of the noise blast received by the loser. There were 20 rounds of the “game” and each participant (there really was only one) won about half of the rounds (so each participant received 10 separate noise blasts). Following the competition, they filled out questionnaires on their emotional state (having just been repeatedly blasted by their invisible competitor) and then on how much revenge motivation they experienced during the competition.

Men were more aggressive in their noise blast suggestions than women. Men were more revenge motivated than women but not more angry than women nor more generally negatively oriented. The level of revenge motivation expressed was predictive of aggression: that is, men were more aggressive and their revenge motivation was also higher than that of women.

The researchers are quick to say that revenge is not the only reason men are more aggressive than women, but it certainly appears to be one of the reasons. One theory would be that men are more territorially competitive, and want to reassert their dominance. Thus a desire for revenge or retribution would drive aggressive behavior.

What is of interest from a litigation standpoint is whether people find it acceptable, and what circumstances mitigate public dismay at aggressive behavior by men. The studies and stories of aggression by women being judged far more harshly than the same behavior by men are commonplace. But what makes aggression/retaliation seem okay? What constitutes justification, and what is seen as aggressive? And what characteristics correspond to those who are tolerant of retaliation, versus those who are most likely to punish it?

While not from different planets and certainly not different species, men and women are different. They negotiate differently and theydeliberate differently. Our task is to find out when gender is a bright line divider in how jurors think about specific cases. It doesn’t happen often–but when it does, it is critical to know.

Born to Rage: Inside the Warrior Gene w/ Henry Rollins

Interesting . . . . This documentary on rage and the supposed "warrior gene" features Henry Rollins, one of the coolest (and formerly angriest) guys alive, comes from National Geographic Explorer. What a perfect choice of narrator. More, more, and more on the warrior gene hypothesis.

Born to Rage: Inside the Warrior Gene

Were you born to rage? Is the need for anger management in your genes? Many, like ex-punk rocker Henry Rollins, have struggled with feelings of aggression their entire lives, and National Geographic is on a mission to figure out why.

Scientists are investigating a single gene – dubbed the warrior gene – that has been associated with violent behavior, raising the disturbing possibility that some people are Born to Rage.

Henry tests this theory on a colorful crew: outlaw bikers, mixed martial arts fighters, Buddhist monks and former gang members.

DNA testing reveals which of them – including possibly Henry Rollins himself – carries the warrior gene. The results provide an extraordinary insight into human behavior.

Watch the full documentary now. Alternative link at YouTube.

Matt Morin - The Confessions of a Cage Fighter: Masculinity, Misogyny, and the Fear of Losing Control

This is an interesting first-person perspective on MMA and masculinity issues (with a foundation of faith-based life meaning). The author is a former "cage fighter," so mcuh of what he is looking at here involves embodiment and masculinity, seen through a Biblical lens, but there is also much more to his article.

This comes from a site called The Other Journal: An Intersection of Theology and Culture.

The Confessions of a Cage Fighter: Masculinity, Misogyny, and the Fear of Losing Control

by Matt Morin on Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Before enrolling in divinity school, I was a cage fighter—not a full-time cage fighter, not a world-famous cage fighter, not even a person for whom cage fighting paid the bills, but a cage fighter nonetheless. Now, before I go any further, I need to be more careful with my vocabulary or else I’ll risk losing credibility. You see, real cage fighters don’t like to be referred to as such; we prefer the term mixed martial artist. And we prefer that our sport go by the name mixed martial arts or MMA instead of “cage fighting.” There is a long, sordid history behind the sport’s various name changes, and it has everything to do with public perception, influential politicians, and corporate cash (Amy Silverman, Phoenix New Times, February 12, 1998). (But then again, what doesn’t?) Given my history of participation in and love for the sport, my ears perked up last year when MMA arose as a topic of conversation in my theological ethics class.

During the course of our class discussion, one of my divinity school colleagues referred to a recent New York Times article that describes the way a number of churches throughout the United States are turning to mixed martial arts as a way to draw men into their buildings (R. M. Schneiderman, February 1, 2010). Some churches train fighters to compete, while an even greater number of churches host gatherings for men at live fights. On top of this, clothing companies such as Jesus Didn’t Tap and websites like AnointedFighter.com market themselves to a crowd of Christian fight fans—a crowd that might be called a niche if it weren’t already so big.

To some Christians, this new MMA movement represents an expression of real, natural, God-given masculinity. One captain for this team is Seattle megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll, who in the film Fighting Politics says, “I don’t think there is anything purer than two guys in a cage. [. . .] As a pastor and as a Bible teacher, I think that God made men masculine. [. . .] Men are made for combat, men are made for conflict, men are made for dominion. [. . .] That’s just the way men are made.”

And yet, not all Christians are so keen to adopt MMA as a spiritual discipline. Many people are repulsed by Driscoll’s comments yet respond to his sophomorism in kind. Take for example, the responses I heard from some fellow students during the course of our class conversation. “That’s the church of the rich,” one person stated from behind his Apple laptop. Not to be outdone in terms of ersatz answers, another student chimed in, “I’d say it’s the church of the bored.” That is the way these conversations tend to go—like two pugilists past their prime, both sides dance around one another, trading harmless jabs and failing to deliver a decisive blow.

In this essay, I hope to take a different tack altogether. I do not intend to make a case for MMA Christianity but neither do I seek to dismiss its representatives as unworthy dialogue partners. I do not think that mixed martial artists must be transformed into good Christian hipsters before they can teach us something about masculinity. Rather, I believe that MMA can make a substantial contribution to the conversation on masculinity. Therefore, in what follows I am going to consider MMA on its own terms; I am going to take its self-descriptions at face value. I am—in all charity—going to attempt a sympathetic reading of MMA.

In doing so, moreover, I will engage selections from The Confessions of Saint Augustine in order to ground my sympathetic reading of MMA theologically. By putting MMA in conversation with the Bishop of Hippo, I hope it will become clear that the sport does not shore up the particular notion of masculinity that Driscoll and others like him imagine it does.

The Fighter’s Body

According to MMA fans, masculinity is deeply connected to the body. For example, in the video clip, Driscoll makes disparaging remarks about the “fat guys” who sit on the sidelines and critique the sport. The implication, of course, is that the fit guys in the cage are the real men; true masculinity is revealed in the fighter’s body. A simple glimpse of a boxer or a wrestler—these guys are extraordinary physical specimens—reveals thick necks, tree trunk legs, v-shaped backs, even strong jaw lines. No doubt about it, so the argument goes, these are the archetypes to which all men ought to conform.

Furthermore, this emphasis on the relation between masculinity and embodiment seems to be a Christian one. After all, flesh and blood are central to our faith.

And yet, for all of MMA Christianity’s insistence on the centrality of the body for adequate conceptions of masculinity, my experience as a fighter taught me something entirely different. You see, far from acknowledging myself as a living body, success in MMA required that I ignore this fact, that I (somehow!) try to forget that I am a body.

It started in training. I had dozens of training partners who never competed. Their only job was to beat me up as I prepared for the fight. I would spar for a nonstop, ten-minute round, where every minute, a fresh, rested training partner would come in and lay a beating on me. Though exhausted, I would try to give one back. The point, of course, was that when fight night came, the real thing would actually be easier than the hell I had put myself through at practice. And after each training session, far from feeling angry with the people who had just pummeled me, I sincerely thanked them for helping me train, for making me a better fighter.

What was happening along the way, however, was nothing less than being schooled in how to ignore my body. Perhaps you’ve seen the T-shirt slogans that bark with false bravado, “Pain is just weakness leaving the body.” That was my attitude toward training: ignore the pain, redefine it, explain it away—it’s not real, it’s for my own good, it’s not a message from my body; it is just something in my “mind” (whatever that means).

A similar thing would happen on the night of the fight. The adrenaline dump that you get before a fight is incredible. Even after having fought for years, including for a number of large promotions, on fight night the same thing always happened: I got jittery, and my jaw would chatter. When that adrenaline first hit me, I found it difficult to make a tight fist or take a deep breath—both of which are somewhat important for a fighter to do. Early in my career, I came to dread this feeling before the fight. But over time, I learned how to deal with my hormones, how to talk myself out of the message they were trying to send me.

During the fight, I had to ignore not only my body but my opponent’s body as well—which is to say I had to ignore him. After taking an opponent down to the ground, I would hit him until he decided it wasn’t worth it anymore and gave up by tapping out. Some opponents were more stubborn than others and thus needed more convincing than others, but I always vowed to never hit them any more than I needed to in order to get them to tap out—witness the triumph of rational morality, or to use the language of Jus In Bello, “proportionality”!

After the fight, my whole body ached. If it were a quick fight, I would usually feel better in a few days. But if the fight lasted all five rounds, it would be a good week before I felt like getting out of bed. To cope with the pain, I would drink at night—not a lot, just enough to take some of the sting out. On the really bad days, I would pop a few pain pills—again not a ton, just enough to mute some of the pain.

In all these ways—in my training, in the moments leading up to the fight, in the fight itself, and especially in the days following the fight—the way to excel as a fighter was not by living as an integrated human body, but rather by (somehow!) detaching my “self” from my body. So I agree with the MMA Christians in their insistence that any account of masculinity must also offer an account of embodiment. And yet, I simply observe that the successful mixed martial artist must subscribe to a false account—one in which pain is not real and in which human beings are somehow outside of or apart from the body.

And now it seems appropriate to ask what account of masculinity requires a man to forget his body? The answer can only be that it is not a Christian masculinity but a Manichean masculinity. The Manichees, a sect founded in the third century by Mani and depicted by Augustine in his Confessions as a popular movement during the mid-fourth century, believed that this world was a fusion of divine spirit and evil matter. By this account, it was only through the spirit’s escape from the vile material realm that it was able to reach the transcendent world. Augustine describes his time among the Manichees like so:

I fell among a set of proud madmen, exceedingly carnal and talkative people in whose mouths were diabolical snares and a sticky mess compounded by mixing the syllables of your name, and the names of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, who is our Paraclete and Consoler. These names were never far from their mouths, but amounted to no more than sound and the clacking of tongues, for their hearts were empty of the truth.”[1]

Having joined their ranks, Augustine soon subscribed to a variety of otherworldly philosophies:

I derided your holy servants and prophets. Even as I laughed at them I deserved to be laughed at by you, for gradually, little by little, I was being lured into such absurdities as the belief that a fig wept when plucked, and its mother tree too wept milky tears. Then, I was told, if one of the saints ate the fig, it would be absorbed by his digestive system and then when he belched or groaned in prayer he would spew out angels, or even particles of God [. . .] I believed, poor wretch, that it was accordingly a higher duty to show mercy to the fruits of the earth than to human beings.”[2]

Now if that didn’t make much sense to you—and it shouldn’t—Augustine’s experience as a Manichee can be described as follows: after falling in with a crowd whose hyperspirituality caused them to paradoxically become “exceedingly carnal,” Augustine developed a disregard for the human creature that was ultimately evidenced in some rather absurd practices. Or again, as a result of accepting a false description of the human body—one that mistakenly taught the separation of human spirit and flesh rather than their interwoven and mutually constitutive nature—Augustine also came to adopt a false way of being in the world. Thus, both his flesh and spirit suffered, or in his own words, he became “misshapen.” This description rings as true of some twenty-first-century hypermasculine Christianists as it did of fourth-century Manichaeism.

Any Christian account of masculinity must take our embodiment seriously. Violence will result whenever we forget that God created us as flesh and blood, that God came to earth in flesh and blood, and that the flesh and blood of Jesus is now present to the world in the church’s sacraments.

Go read the whole article.

Tags: Matt Morin, Confessions, Cage Fighter, Masculinity, Misogyny, Fear of Losing Control, MMA, Bible, Christianity, faith, embodiment, psychology, culture, violence, aggression, men, traditional masculinity, The Other Journal, theology, religion

The Good Men Project - Are Men Inherently Violent?

Well, hell, that's a provocative title. I'm not a huge fan of evolutionary psychology, but I think this is one area where that approach is useful. Men are not inherently violent, we're just better at it than are women.

We are bigger, stronger, faster, and have more testosterone - biologically, we are more suited to violence. So culturally, we have assumed that role within the family, the tribe, the community, the kingdom, the nation.

I think that we also have a natural tendency toward altruism - a willingness to sacrifice our own life to protect our DNA, our tribe, our nation.

On the other hand, when I was young (moving to rural Oregon as a 9-year-old), boys fought in school all the time (and we were not expelled). It was how we established hierarchy. The toughest guys picked the teams at recess, we got to be at the front of the line at lunch, and it's no coincidence that we were the first boys the hit puberty.

When I lived in California, the San Fernando Valley suburbs, this was not at all the norm. So what's the difference? The LA area was more liberal, more developed, and more culturally diverse than Southern Oregon. In Williams (the tiny town where I grew up), the "men were men and the sheep ran scared." OK, bad joke.

But seriously, this was a rural farming and logging community, all white, quite religious. Masculinity was very "primitive," for lack of a less offensive word, and very tied to Old West style masculinity norms. Fighting was part of growing up. Fortunately for me, my father had taught me how to fight and made me enroll in Golden Gloves. No son of his was going to be a wuss.

Anyway, so my guess it is a cultural construct that builds on innate male skills - not tendencies.

Are Men Inherently Violent?

January 7, 2011 By Tom Matlack

Is fighting an essential ingredient in manhood? Is violence a part of who we are? Guys weigh in.

One of the big issues surrounding manhood and goodness is the role violence plays in how we express our masculinity. Is violence innate, or is it learned? Even if we could unlearn it, should we?

I grew up in a household of Quaker pacifists. My dad taught me early on that civil disobedience is stronger than fists and guns. Gandhi and Martin Luther King accomplished what no army could. In Amherst, Massachusetts, where I grew up, there was an uncomfortable mix of rural kids and faculty brats—and as a brat who stood head and shoulders above the rest—six feet tall by the seventh grade—I became a natural target for bullies hoping to prove their mettle.

One particularly tough kid started bumping into me in the hall in front of all my classmates. When I wouldn’t respond, he grabbed my books and threw them down the hall, yelling at me for being a sissy. Finally, he figured out my schedule and waited for me outside each of my classes, pinning me up against the nearest locker to spit in my face.

I went to the guidance counselor’s office to use the phone so I could call my father: “Shouldn’t I fight back, Dad?”

As original Good Men Project contributor Steve Almond puts it below, “aggression is the means by which boys learn to share their feelings. Not even the most loving father can protect his son from the playgrounds, bars, and parking lots where bullies lurk, where soft emotions are hunted down and targeted, where fear becomes rage, and rage becomes violence.”

And for men, as much as we may not like it, violence is currency. When words and logic fail, when virtue isn’t shared, violence becomes power—in the schoolyard, among boys, or on the battlefield, among men. But just because it’s always been that way doesn’t mean we can’t help create a less violent world for our kids. Does it?

What do you think? Are men inherently violent?

♦◊♦

We nerds and sissies disprove the notion.

—Bennett Schneider

Read the whole article.

SciAm Mind - Are Men the More Belligerent Sex?

I don' think so, and either do the authors of this article. However, there is a whole "mean girls" thing that probably gets exaggerated - boys are mean, too, but in different ways.

Are Men the More Belligerent Sex?

ANGRY MEN: Males are often thought of as the more
hostile sex, but research actually paints a more complex picture.

Men are more dangerous, but women can be just as aggressive

By Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz

The notion that men have shorter fuses than women has acquired the status of a psychological shibboleth. More than 30 years ago Stanford University psychologists Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin concluded in an influential book that sex differences were minimal in most psychological traits but considerable when it comes to aggression. This opinion has endured ever since.

Were Maccoby and Jacklin right? Recent research bears out the broad brushstrokes of their claim but reveals that women can be equally, if less dangerously, belligerent.

Mad Men
In 1995 the late psychologist David Lykken of the University of Minnesota wrote that if we could magically place all boys and men between the ages of 12 and 28 in a cryogenic freeze, we would slash the rate of violent crime by two thirds. The data bear out Lykken’s thought experiment. In the U.S., the rate of violent crime for girls and women aged 10 and older is one in 56; the corresponding figure among their male counterparts is one in nine. Men commit close to 90 percent of the murders in the U.S. and more murders than women in all the countries researchers have examined, according to a 1999 report by psychologist Anne Campbell of Durham University in England.

Indeed, investigators have consistently found that short of criminal activity, men exhibit more frequent and more extreme levels of physical aggression with one exception: in domestic disputes, as we will see, the tables are often turned. In a 2004 mathematical synthesis of 196 studies (known as a meta-analysis), psychologist John Archer of the University of Central Lancashire in England found that men are more physically aggressive (by various measures) than women across all ages, with the difference peaking between the ages of 20 and 30. This sex difference extended to all 10 countries Archer examined, which included the U.S., Finland, Spain, India, Japan and New Zealand. Interestingly, researchers have found men to be more physically aggressive in their mental lives as well. Compared with women, men harbor more frequent and enduring homicidal fantasies, more often think about enacting revenge against their enemies, and report more physically aggressive dreams.

Evening the Score
Still, studies show that women are at least as prone to feeling anger as men and that they fight plenty. Instead of expressing their angry emotions with their fists, women tend to use what in 1995 psychologist Nicki Crick, then at the University of Illinois, termed “relational aggression,” a less overt form characterized by social manipulation, especially of same-sex peers. Popularized by such books as Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, by Rachel Simmons (Harcourt, 2002), relational aggression includes spreading rumors, gossiping, glaring, eye rolling, giving others the “silent treatment,” sending nasty notes or text messages behind rivals’ backs, excluding others from social gatherings, poking fun at the appearance of competitors, and assorted other stealth attacks. The so-called gentler sex may opt for such tactics because they are socialized to not show hostility openly and also because their relative lack of physical strength makes violence seem a less promising strategy.

Girls do not have an exclusive claim to relational aggression, however. A 2008 meta-analysis by psychologist Noel Card of the University of Arizona and his colleagues suggests that it is equally common in girls and boys across both childhood and adolescence. Other research suggests this absence of sex differences persists into adulthood.

More surprisingly, women are also just as likely as men to express hostility—in this case physically—in the context of a romantic relationship. The popular stereotype of a domestic abuser is a man who habitually hurts his female partner. Yet research by Archer and sociologist Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire calls this scenario into question. Surprisingly, their analyses demonstrate that men and women exhibit roughly equal rates of violence within relationships; some studies hint that women’s rates of physical aggression are slightly higher. This apparent equality is not solely a result of women fighting back, because it holds even for altercations that women start. Still, domestic abuse within intimate relationships poses a greater threat to women than to men. Women suffer close to two thirds of the injuries, largely because men are stronger on average than women. In addition, women and men differ in the severity of their actions; women are more likely to scratch or slap their partners, and men more commonly punch or choke their partners.

Biology to Blame?
Until recently, most psychologists thought differences in the degree to which men and women exhibit physical aggression stemmed largely from societal reinforcement of traditional gender roles. Social factors undoubtedly account for a part of the differences. But in a study published in 2007 psychologist Raymond Baillargeon of the University of Montreal and his colleagues reveal that as early as the age of 17 months, 5 percent of boys but only 1 percent of girls engage in frequent physical aggression, such as kicking and biting. What is more, this gap does not widen between 17 and 29 months, as might be expected if environmental influences such as socialization by parents were to blame. These findings suggest that biological factors—such as the effects of testosterone on brain function—contribute to sex differences in violent behavior.

Bolstering this hypothesis is the fact that males are the more belligerent sex in virtually all mammalian species that biologists have studied. Even the one marked exception to this trend—the spotted (“laughing”) hyena—may prove the rule. The female hyena, which is more physic ally aggressive than her male counterpart, has higher testosterone levels than the male does.

Tags: Scott O. Lilienfeld, Hal Arkowitz, psychology, gender studies, brain, aggression, Scientific American Mind, Are Men the More Belligerent Sex?, Eleanor Maccoby, Carol Jacklin, David Lykken