masculinity

This essay has been making the rounds on Facebook: "30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She's 30". Go read it and come back -- I'll wait.

A friend asked what the male equivalent of that essay would be. It's a good question, and it forced me to think about the purpose of the original essay.

The age of 30 was chosen for a reason. It is the age at which women become increasingly aware that they are moving past their sexual prime. In the sexual marketplace, women are heavily judged on the basis of looks, and the age of 30 is symbolic of that power slipping away. It is the age when women's biological clock starts to tick a little louder.

The purpose of the essay is to comfort single women who are coming to grips with their sexual power slipping away.

I'm not passing judgment, I'm just calling it like I see it.

Since men are judged on different qualities than women -- status being the principle difference -- the equivalent piece for men wouldn't necessarily map to the age of 30.  In fact, it wouldn't necessarily map to any particular age at all. The equivalent essay for men would be written by a man who has moved from high status to low status -- perhaps a wealthy scion who invested/spent/squandered his family fortune, and then wrote a piece to justify his decisions. Maybe he spent it wisely, maybe he didn't.

If there's a piece of writing that captures what it's like for a man to move from high status to low status, it's "If" by Rudyard Kipling. The poem is all about how a man should deal with changes in fortune -- i.e., changes in status. (Note: there's nothing in there about looks.) "If" is a lesson on the nature of risk. Risk is a fickle thing -- fortunes come and go.

(Ladies, it is very hard for a man to move from high status to low status -- that's often when men commit suicide. Think stockbrokers who lose everything in a market crash or men who lose their jobs. Death seems like a better alternative than the shame of living. I am not trivializing how it feels to have your value decline on the sexual marketplace -- for men or women.)

Also, notice the difference between how men have to earn their sexual power and women inherit their sexual power. "If" talks about doing great things, building stuff, and taking risks. The "Women at 30" essay talks about deserving things (just because you're you!) and coming to grips with aspects of biology that women can't change ("length of your legs, the width of your hips, or the nature of your parents").

Kipling advises men to look their fortunes square in the eye, and to remain unperturbed by both decreases AND increases in status -- i.e., changes in their own value on the sexual marketplace as judged by women. By contrast, the Women Turning 30 essay can't quite look the issue in the eye. Apparently, she has to have an outfit ready in case the man of her dreams wants to see her in an hour (that or her boss).

The underlying insecurity is right there in the title: "30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She's 30". Or NOT there. It's not actually an essay for ALL women, it's an essay for SINGLE women. This is the accurate title: "30 Things Every SINGLE Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She's 30." But perhaps that was too painful to acknowledge.

And that's what I think bothers me so much about this essay: it arrogantly positions itself as advice -- and advice for all women. If you are a woman who wants to learn "How to live alone, even if you don't like to", this is stellar advice. On the bright side, at least you'll own an "an umbrella that you're not ashamed to be seen carrying."

Here's a brilliant scene near the end of The Jerk. Steve Martin's character was born poor, got super rich by accident, became corrupted by it, and loses it all. (He didn't read any Kipling.) Anyhow, the debt collectors are on their way, and he's depressed and sulking -- but he's pretending that he's fine while grasping at silly things. It pretty much nails the mood of the essay.

A nice umbrella, and a purse. That's all I need.

A nice umbrella, a purse, and a decent piece of furniture. And that's all I need!

And my own email account.

A nice umbrella, a purse, a decent piece of furniture, and my own email account.

AND THAT'S ALL I NEED!

When men are getting drawn into a confrontation, they instinctively size each other up: height, build, posture, jawline, aggressiveness, presence of allies, stuff like that.

What many people don't seem to realize is that men are less likely to get into a violent altercation when there is a clear mismatch in body size.  Two men don't get into violent altercations because the strong prey upon the weak -- call it The Playground Bully Theory of Violence.  Males get into altercations when there are two somewhat evenly-matched men who need to determine which one is dominant.  Remember, males in a lot of species use non-violent dominance displays to avoid a costly conflict.

So when I heard that George Zimmerman had a 100-pound weight advantage over Trayvon Martin, I was shocked.  Sounded like Zimmerman was an aggressive vigilante.  But as it turns out, this information wasn't accurate, like so much of the early reporting on this case, even on something as objective and factual as weight.  The NYT now reports:

"...the neighborhood watch coordinator, 5 foot 9 and 170 pounds, and the visitor, 6 foot 1 and 150, wrestling on the ground."

So Zimmerman was stockier, but Martin was four inches taller.  Tragically, this makes a lot more sense.

I'd be willing to bet that Zimmerman's initial confrontation of Martin was far more aggressive and dominant than his body-size "warranted" -- because Zimmerman knew he was armed and that the police were coming.  And I would be totally unsurprised if Zimmerman didn't reveal the power mismatch.  Martin didn't know this.  All Martin knows is that he's being aggressively approached by a confrontational guy...who is four inches shorter than he is.  I wouldn't be too happy about that either.  And it escalated from there.

This mismatch in perceptions of power is the main reason why young confrontational males will get into a physical altercation.  And it results from either over-estimating your own power or under-estimating the other guy's.

When I was a senior in college, I got into a fight because of a similar dynamic.  It was the night after the last day of exams, so everybody was out in full force.  As the bar was letting out, a large fight was already underway, but the police had arrived and were breaking it up.  There were probably 3-5 police cars, and a bunch of officers.  They broke up the fight, and the crowd was dispersing.

I didn't know anyone involved in the fight, and I'm walking with a friend back to my dorm when I get bumped pretty hard by one of the guys who had been involved in the fight, who was yelling at someone else and wasn't watching where he was going.  I said, "Hey, watch it, buddy."  He spins around and says, "Who you calling buddy, buddy?"

And really, that's all it takes.

So at that point, we're face to face, neither one backing down, each sizing each other up.  Again, sizing someone up happens instinctively, it doesn't require a lot of conscious thought.  He was taller and heavier than I was, plus he was standing uphill.  He could probably clean my clock.  As it turned out, he was on the hockey team -- Harvard usually has a pretty good hockey team -- and he looked like a hockey player.  So even though I knew I probably would lose a fight if a fight took place, there were police officers all over the place, so I judged that a fight was unlikely -- though it wasn't as calculated as I'm making it sound.  Anyhow, verbally, I didn't back down and neither did he.

And then he clocked me in the face, spinning me around and splitting open my cheek.  Then he immediately ran off down an alley.  I didn't feel it, but I looked down and blood was streaming down my body.  A police officer witnessed the entire thing from about 20 feet away (don't quote me on the distance, it was a long time ago).  Then I went to the hospital and got stitches.

In a moment when you know the universe has a sense of humor, my parents had a layover in Boston the very next morning, and I was supposed to have lunch with them at the airport.  And here I am, showing up with ten stitches in my face.  (I told my parents in advance so my mom didn't have a heart attack when she saw me.)  Anyhow, that was an interesting lunch.

A week later, on the day my parents arrived in Boston for graduation, the story was on the cover of the student newspaper.  I really loved this comment by the close friend of the guy who hit me:

He added that Kelley, who took a year off before attending college to play semi-professional hockey with the U.S. hockey league, is not the confrontational type, unless provoked.

“He’s not a violent person,” Pararas said. “He doesn’t attack people—it’s not in his nature.”

Oh, those semi-pro hockey players -- so sensitive and non-violent.  Too funny.

Anyhow, I'm sharing this because there's a much more serious point: if you want to prevent violence between two unknown men, then you need to understand how the male mind works.  And so much of the ink that's been spilled on this topic has focused on racial issues that not only don't explain the incident very well, but also don't help prevent future violence in society more generally.

And that only makes the situation even more tragic than it already was.

Men objectify women for their looks.  It happens all the time.  And it's important for men to learn how to not objectify women for their physical beauty and to treat them as human beings.  But here's the thing: when a man learns how to do this, it is one of those happy situations where it's possible to do good AND do well.

First of all, it's the right thing to do.  Nobody likes to be objectified, whether it's a woman and her looks or a man and his wallet.  Or vice versa.  Human beings don't like be reduced to objects.  Period.

But that's not the only good reason to do it...

Second, not paying attention to looks will help you attract good-looking women.  Attractive women have a lot of male suitors, so unsurprisingly, they often have their defenses up.  A generic compliment -- nice eyes -- is likely to fall flat.  But when a man comes along who acts nonplussed about her looks, it's a signal of high status.  This guy must hang around a lot of attractive women to not care about it anymore.

Third, as a man, it's really quite liberating. You have no idea how much brain-energy most men devote to thinking about attractive women.  It's not fun to be objectified on the basis of looks, but nor is fun to feel enslaved by desire for an object that you can't have.

So don't get fixated on looks.  Easy to say, hard to do -- I love a woman with a 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio as much as the next guy.  So here are a few concrete things men can do to learn how to not objectify women:

1) Interact with attractive women

For a lot of men, it can be hard to speak with an attractive woman without fawning and drooling.  The solution is to speak with enough attractive women -- ideally date them -- but of course, if that were easy, then it wouldn't be a problem, now would it?  So you've got to find opportunities to speak with attractive women where you don't feel any pressure to pick them up.

Here are three possibilities:

1. Live with them.  Not everyone has this opportunity, but it's a great life experience.  When you live with someone -- male or female -- you get the good, the bad, and the ugly.  As it turns out, attractive women have the same bodily functions as the rest of us, including burping, farting, and throwing up.  Be sure to lay down an ironclad rule that there is no hooking up between roommates and stick with it.  This is prudent for a number of reasons, but it also takes the pressure off, and allows you to deal with them just as people.

2. Visit high-end clothing stores, which are usually staffed with attractive women.  If a male staff-member asks if you need help, say you're just browsing.  If a female staff-member asks, take her up on it.  Have her help you pick out a few things to try on.  Tell her to give you her opinion.  Take her opinion into account, but don't necessarily agree with her out of some misguided attempt to ingratiate yourself to her.  Go in there knowing that you aren't going to ask for her number, which will take the pressure off.  Remember, she's working and might be on commission, so if you know you're not going to buy anything, go in when it's not busy so you don't waste her time.

3. Go to a gentlemen's club, but don't buy any dances and just have a beer at the bar. Maybe watch whatever sporting event they have on TV. Dancers will approach you and start a conversation. Remember, they're on the job and are there to make money, so if you're not going to buy a dance -- which I suggest you don't -- don't string them along.  Be respectful and straightforward, and just tell them that you're not buying a dance at the moment, but if they'd like to chat for a bit, they're welcome to.  If they move on, it's no big deal.  If they stay and talk, then you've just taken the pressure off.  Don't say anything that a 46-year old, overweight douchebag might say, which includes pretty much any question about dancing.  Once the pressure is off, and if you're enjoying the conversation, then buy her a drink.  But don't buy her a drink as a way to ingratiate yourself -- that's not the point and it won't work.  Just buy her a drink as a nice thing to do.  It's sucks to buy a drink for a girl when you expect something in return and she feels entitled to the drink.  It's much more enjoyable to spend money on someone when neither of you expect anything in return.  It allows you to be generous and her to be appreciative.  Also, don't go during peak hours. 

2) Interacting with unattractive women

• Don't ignore them.  It doesn't matter where you are or in what situation.  Part of not caring about looks is also learning to care about other qualities in people.

Note that these points can apply equally to women in relation to men, though the emphasis may not be on physical attractiveness.  If it sounds awful to say that men ignore unattractive women, please consider that women also reject low status men.  And when men ignore women, at least there's no active rejection because women rarely approach men.  Women often have to reject men to their face.  The average man has been rejected, to his face, lots and lots and lots of times.  That ain't a pleasant feeling.  So perhaps we can agree that it isn't very much fun to be ignored or rejected.

----

Of course, I'm still aware of a woman's attractiveness and value it.  And there are two ways in which I unabashedly objectify a woman -- even to her face.

First, when I consider a woman's health and beauty, I pay special attention to things that are under her control and reflect the choices and decisions she makes.  Does she respect her body?  Does she exercise?  Is she a little too self-absorbed with her own beauty?  These may manifest themselves as superficial qualities, but they aren't superficial at all -- they reflect her character and values.  That said, it's hard to get a read on these things when people are still young, because health comes so effortlessly to young people.  I didn't start getting healthy until a couple years after college, so who am I to talk.

Second, if we've screened each other for deeper qualities and respect each other as human beings, that's when it's the most fun to start treating her as a sex object.  And vice versa.  Read the plot of any romance novel -- women want to feel sexually irresistible to the man she covets.  She WANTS to be the OBJECT of his sexual desire.  She wants him to objectify her.  If I hear one consistent complaint from women about men they're dating or married to, it's that once they're in bed, men don't objectify women ENOUGH.

So men, here's the bottom line: don't objectify all women as sex objects-- just the one you care about.  And then objectify the hell out of her.

When most people think about human history, they tend to lump all men together and all women together.  As in:

• Men oppressed women
• Men could vote and women couldn't
• Men rigged everything in their favor

This is historically inaccurate.

For example, there are huge differences between the lives of high status males and and low status males.  If you are a low status male throughout most of human history, then you get to enjoy the following privileges:

• You are conscripted into military service
• If you flee battle, you are killed by your superiors
• You get to slowly die of scurvy on a boat
• You end up in prison
• If your people is conquered, men are the most likely to be wholesale slaughtered
• You are not allowed to vote (an often forgotten fact -- it's historically rare for low status men to have the vote)
• You are less likely to reproduce (or if you do, then you leave fewer offspring)
• You do hard labor for long hours nearly your entire life
• You have a miserable life expectancy

During the Agricultural Age, the best option was being a high status male.  But the next best option was probably being a woman.  The worst option was being a low status male.

Incidentally, this pattern holds true in just about any sexually-reproducing species.  Males are the high-risk sex, and thus you have some big winners, but many more losers.  Females are the low-risk sex, and thus you have a more equitable range of evolutionary outcomes.

If you look back at history and look up, it looks like men run the show.  But if you look back at history and look down, you see that a lot of men received little to no benefit simply by virtue of being a man.  In fact, low status men have generally been viewed as the most disposable and worthless people in society.

David Brooks devotes his column to Robert Bales and the massacre in Afghanistan, making many of the same points I made in my post on PTSD and Alexander the Great and the difference between ancient and modern warfare.  Here's Brooks:

"It’s always interesting to read the quotations of people who knew a mass murderer before he killed. They usually express complete bafflement that a person who seemed so kind and normal could do something so horrific."

But we all have the capacity for violence.

"David Buss of the University of Texas asked his students if they had ever thought seriously about killing someone, and if so, to write out their homicidal fantasies in an essay. He was astonished to find that 91 percent of the men and 84 percent of the women had detailed, vivid homicidal fantasies.

...

These thoughts do not arise from playing violent video games, Buss argues. They occur because we are descended from creatures who killed to thrive and survive. We’re natural-born killers and the real question is not what makes people kill but what prevents them from doing so."

That's one reason why many ancient philosophers and religions viewed humans as innately sinful or depraved.

"According to this older worldview, Robert Bales, like all of us, is a mixture of virtue and depravity. His job is to struggle daily to strengthen the good and resist the evil, policing small transgressions to prevent larger ones. If he didn’t do that, and if he was swept up in a whirlwind, then even a formerly good man is capable of monstrous acts that shock the soul and sear the brain."

Full article here.

It was 4 AM the other night -- naturally, I found myself reading about Alexander the Great on Wikipedia.  I started to read about Cleitus the Black, one of Alexander's commanders who saved his life in an early battle.  After many of the conquests, Alexander gave Cleitus an assignment that he didn't want, Cleitus gave Alexander a piece of his mind, they got into a drunken fight, and Alexander stuck a lance threw Cleitus and killed him.

Then I read this:

"In all of the four major texts we possess, it is shown that Alexander grieved greatly for the death of Cleitus. His grief could be genuine or contrived. Cleitus was a member of the generation of Philip II and Alexander had been systematically killing off that generation to keep his generation in power. Alexander may have genuinely not wanted to kill Cleitus, making it possible that this was one of many examples of post-traumatic stress disorder."

Say what?  So I google PTSD and "Alexander the Great" and find this site (full article here):

"Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE): At the age of 22, Alexander crossed the Hellespont with an army of just over 30,000 men to conquer the “known world.” After 10 years of bloody battle, enduring near-fatal wounds and seeing legions of comrades perish, Alexander subjugated the Persian Empire of Darius III, becoming “Lord of Asia.” Upon reaching Western India, Alexander’s exhausted troops refused to march further, forcing him to return to his new capital at Babylon. During his return from India, Alexander began to experience disturbing changes in his character. The once brave, adventurous, adaptable, ingenious and considerate leader drove his army through the Gardosian Desert, where two-thirds of his troops perished from dehydration, starvation and hypothermia. Alexander then began executing lieutenants and satraps who had served him as middle managers of the empire during his conquests to the east.  Alexander spent the last months of his life drinking heavily and had become pathologically suspicious and easily alarmed."

You can't possibly be serious.  PTSD in Alexander the Great?  Spare me.  Are you to have me believe that one of the most militaristic, aggressive, and successful warriors of all time was...traumatized by his conquests?

If Alexander was unhappy or anxious, it's probably because his conquering days were over.  That is to say, his symptoms were the result of too little violence, not too much.  A life of not subduing your enemies is just soooooo boring.  Look, if someone is used to regular surges of status and prestige -- from, say, conquering every enemy you've ever faced -- and suddenly that goes away, then you probably get a little irritable.  It's widely known that Alexander wanted to keep conquering, but he faced a mutiny by his soldiers, who wanted to party, have sex, and be rich.

You also probably don't take it kindly when subordinates disagree with you publicly, especially when you're drunk.  And if that subordinate also happens to be someone who saved your life in battle, then you probably mourn him heavily when you sober up.  As for paranoia -- powerful alphas have always been paranoid, and justifiably so!  They usually faced repeated challenges to their power.  Alpha male mustangs get far less sleep than non-alphas during their season or two in charge, since they are guarding the females and fending off threats.  It takes a physical toll.

What this author doesn't seem to realize is that Homo sapiens is a naturally violent species, particularly the males.  Needless to say, that doesn't make it morally right -- but it doesn't make a lot of sense to pathologize species-typical behavior.  And if your goal is to reduce violence, then you're probably better off having a realistic view of human nature and actually try to understand how it works.

Here's an alternative hypothesis for PTSD.  Imagine you're a pig farmer -- you probably don't lose any sleep from slaughtering those pigs.  Now imagine you've never seen anything die in your entire life and you step into a slaughtering house -- pretty traumatizing, right?  People in past ages were completely desensitized to violence and death.  Plus, here's how the human mind copes with violence: by dehumanizing enemies to the point where they are vermin or inhuman, and thus can be wiped out without losing any sleep.  If you deactivate this dehumanizing mental module, it probably becomes more traumatizing to kill other people.

The author also describes alleged symptoms of PTSD in Captain James Cook, Florence Nightingale, and Emily Dickinson.  What a list.  Here is the entry for Emily Dickinson, the great poet:

"Emily Dickinson spent virtually her entire life in Amherst, Massachusetts, sheltered from the outside world among her socially prominent family. As a child, she was "one of the wittiest girls in [her] school, a self-proclaimed free spirit," and by the time she reached her middle teens, she was brimming with self-confidence, exclaiming, "I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don't doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age." However, in <2 years, she underwent a striking metamorphosis, retreating into the world of a recluse. An accumulation of PTEs coincided with her withdrawal from society and might have precipitated the change in behavior.

During her 14th year, there were the deaths of four intimates in rapid succession, whose funerals she was forced to attend. One of these deaths was that of a cousin of the same age, Sophia Holland, into whose room Dickinson stole moments after the girl died; Dickinson reportedly remained staring transfixed into her dead cousin's face "until others pulled her away." During this same time, Dickinson developed intermittent fever, cough, and possibly hemoptysis, which would plague her for decades and force her to withdraw from Mount Holyoke College at age 17. Her mother had a similar illness that relatives feared was hereditary. Emily was her mother's primary caregiver for nearly three decades.

In the late 1850s, Dickinson began secluding herself from most social contact, refusing to come downstairs even to meet close friends, no longer attending church, fleeing from the room or from the garden at the approach of outsiders, meeting visitors at the foot of the backstairs by moonlight alone, conducting conversations from behind an ajar door or screen, and permitting her doctor to examine her only by observing while seated in the next room as she walked by an open door. At age 35, she began to recover, to become more interactive socially, and to write poems less morbid than the earlier ones for which she is remembered. She died at age 56, most likely of hypertension complicated by a massive stroke."

Alexander the Great and Emily Dickinson.  PTSD.  You've got to be f***ing kidding me.  This is probably the dumbest social science that I have ever read in my entire life.  I find it hard to imagine how someone with a functioning brain could actually believe this drivel.

When I read the NYT obit of adventurer John Fairfax, as amazing as it was, I knew it had to be a white-washed piece.  Remember the motto of the New York Times : "All the news that's fit to print."  I'm pretty sure that a bunch of John Fairfax's best stories ain't fit to print.  High testosterone people create good material for biographies -- ups and downs, achievement and failure, tragedy and comedy.  That's the nature of risk-taking.

 Sure enough, here are excerpts from a book on Fairfax: violence, women, gambling, drugs, achievement, perseverance, greatness.  Go read the whole thing, it's gripping.  Here are a few great parts.

On his first day of rowing across the Atlantic, Fairfax is having second thoughts:

"How had he gotten into this mess? he wondered. As though prodding Britannia [his boat] to answer, he kicked her, but she remained mute. He remained despondent. He was hungry, thirsty, damp, sore, sleepy--and no Sylvia to look after his needs. "How silly, this going to sea without a girl," he muttered, resolving right then and there, only twenty hours from shore, that the next time he rowed an ocean, if there was a next time, he would travel with a woman."

Given the nature of high testosterone people, I have a sneaking suspicion that "hungry, thirsty, damp, sore, and sleepy" weren't his only needs.

Sure enough, a few years later, when he rows across the Pacific, he takes his lover along with him.  I wish I could have been there for that conversation -- persuading his girlfriend to get into a tiny rowboat and row across the Pacific.  Now that's charisma.  I'll bet they had mind-blowing sex out under the Pacific stars, the night after a shark attack.

As for sharks, here's the time that Fairfax lasso'ed a mako shark and got it to pull his rowboat:

"As the great fish swam alongside Britannia, he passed the loop round the snout and past the gills. Before it could pass over the dorsal fin, he tightened the loop with a pull. The shark reacted with a paroxysm of fury, towing Britannia on her fastest ride ever. She skimmed the waves like a torpedo, with John hanging on for dear life. It was hard to believe that even a shark could generate such power.

Then he killed the shark, cut her open -- and finding offspring, killed them all.

It was soon over, the shark spent. Sharks get their oxygen from the flow of water over their gills. Since the gills don't move independently, they achieve this by swimming. A shark prevented from moving freely in the water, as Dusky was, will eventually drown.

Curious about the contents of its stomach, he slit it open and discovered about two dozen tiny sharks in her belly, tiny replicas of their mother. Wriggling about, they appeared in perfectly good health. His last entry in his log that day reads:

...killed them all and dedicated my victory to Venus...Well, it's now sunset, the wind has almost stopped and, yes, my beautiful star, thank you, I shall row all night. 

Lesson learned: do not mess with John Fairfax.

I like the journal entry on his birthday:

May 21 121st day

My birthday--thirty-two years that feels like a hundred--and one of the worst days at sea. I ran out of tobacco; had a bit for half a pipe only, which I had kept to celebrate--and it got wet. A tin of raspberries I had kept for today gassed, and I had to throw it away. And just as I was about to have a sip of brandy to celebrate my birthday, an enormous wave, about 15 feet high, hit Britannia squarely broadside and washed me overboard. Lost the bottle and hurt my leg and foot very badly.... Apart from that, a very happy birthday!

Rowed eight hours. 

So British.

How does a man like John Fairfax come into the world?

He was, he admits, a horrible kid, an only child spoiled rotten by his mother and nanny. "We had money," he says, "and I got everything I wanted. What I lacked was a father for an authority figure. It made me an opinionated little brat. To this day, I don't like children because they remind me of myself as a kid." 

He never learned how to channel his testosterone.  It's a good thing Fairfax was crazy enough to row across the ocean, otherwise he probably wouldn't have gotten an obit in the NYT.  Remember that for every one John Fairfax, there's a hundred like him who got eaten by sharks, thrown in prison, or killed in a bar room brawl.  But the ones that succeed, sure do make life interesting.  Go read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Gawker for the link.

If