Nuance 5

There is a columnist with the Globe and Mail, whom I will not name on this page, but has a tendency to write from a perspective that is decidedly rightwing, and should I say, not at all carefully thought-out. In her column yesterday she was extolling the virtues of toxic masculinity without giving so much as a thought of some of the things she was implying. According to this writer, there is no such thing as toxic masculinity, it seems. The traditional male traits of aggression, violence, competitiveness and inability to articuluate personal thoughts and feelings are, for this writer, normal features of normal masculinity, and that men should not be made to feel ashamed of this. She goes on to cite that such are the features of the male of the species throughout the animal kingdom, particularly noting chimpanzees, which are notoriously violent, male dominant and hierarchical. In the same breath she also wrote that the vast majority of acts of violence and sexual assault, and the victims of violence (but not sexual assault, except in some cases) are all committed by and happen to be men. Here is a quote from an abstract on aggression among female chimpanzees, published by the Royal Society Publishing and authored by Anne E. Pusey and Kara Schroepfer-Walker: "Although rates of aggression are low, females compete for space and access to food. High rank correlates with high reproductive success, and high-ranking females win direct contests for food and gain preferential access to resource-rich sites. Females are aggressive to immigrant females and even kill the newborn infants of community members. The intensity of such aggression correlates with population density. These patterns are compared to those in other species, including humans." While she doesn't appear to be trying to actually justify such behaviour, there does appear to be a tendency to shrug and apologize with the unspoken but very lame excuse, boys will be boys. This writer has quite the tendency to cherry pick, and almost always seems more intent on scoring points than making a carefully and constructively thought-out argument. Or perhaps she is just stupid. For example, she completely neglects the problem of the bonobo, that smaller, gentler chimp-like ape that does not commit acts of violence, and that males as well as females are gentle, affectionate and nurturing towards one another. They also have tonnes of sex with each other. On a series of broadcasts on the CBC Ideas program, recently, I heard historian Margaret McMillan give a series of talks about war, history and human violence. She was asked by an audience member if she believed that the world would be a more peaceful and gentler and more just place if more women occupied high positions of political power. Ms. McMillan, without mincing words, replied, no. She then mentioned the names of three very famous and powerful woman presidents and prime ministers from recent history: Golda Meir, indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher, bloody aggressive hawks, even if she-hawks, every one of them. This also seems to square with my theory that violence and aggression, even if vastly overrepresented in human males, is still largely a historical, cultural and systemic construct. In plain talk, it is about power, status and hierarchy. This isn't to say that there aren't inborn differences between men and women. Neither does this say that there are such inborn differences. The science is not in, and the jury is still out. In the mentime, the pressure that is placed on boys and girls, from birth, to conform to stereotyped gender norms is still tremendous and unrelenting. I imagine that testosterone would also play a role, but no one seems really agreed on this, nor in how big a role. Anectodal evidence for these matters is also pretty useless. The writer of this column has a tendency of mentioning her own husband and men of her family and social circle as evidence for backing her positions about men. That said, I would imagine that this individual's social circle is going to be quite limited to persons of her socio-economic class, and who likely vote the way she does and share with her a lot of the same opinions. In my own experience as a male, I can safely say that in her musings about men, that she is quite full of shit, and that she really ought to stick to writing what she knows, which would likely amount to very little (I'm waxing optimistic here, Gentle Reader!) I am not aggessive or violent, and I am articulte about my thoughts and feelings, I am not hierarchical and I value relitonships. In my sixty plus years of life, I have also known an awful lot of men like me, and they are not all queer, Gentle Reader. In fact, some straight men I have been friends with have expressed gratitude that they can be safely open with me in ways that they would feel judged by other straight men and by women. Let's just hope that Peggy will retire from the Globe and Mail and will soon be put out to pasture. (So, sue me, Margaret Wente!)