Ball-Games and Politics: A Brief Rant about the Shutdown
The government shutdown that has rendered me unemployed and given me time to catch up on my blogging has gotten me thinking about maleness. Seeing through the smokescreen of party politics and the ideological conflicts that have riven this nation and now stalled our government, there’s a more fundamental problem that no one talks about (maybe because it is so obvious), and it is simply testosterone.
When it comes right down to it, this situation is about men, bent on dominance, overly sensitive to their own sense of honor, willing to wreck their country to preserve their precious power and pride.
I’ve always been a “feminist,” but mainly in an archetypal sense: Of course I embrace the equal rights of women and men in economic and social and political life, but I don’t think the sexes are the same in spirit any more than they are in body, and I don’t think the differences just come from the social construction of sex and gender. There are more male politicians and CEOs and scientists not because of aptitude or even just because of social access (though those also play a role in the complex picture), but because of hormones: Males are just typically more driven to fight and to compete and to achieve and to lead, and they assert and practice this from an early age. This need to fight and achieve may express itself in the social or economic world or in the intellectual world. The lion’s share of what we call history–the rise of civilizations and technology and religion and art–was a male-driven affair. It really was and still is (at least the bits that get written about) “his story.”
But, so is war, destruction, crime, cruelty, and idiocy. When mass shootings and terrorist attacks unfold on TV, we are looking at young men, testosterone-pumped and confused, perpetrating destruction out of their own youthful disempowerment and desperation to make their mark. When corruption and sex scandals unfold in the halls of power, it is always the same thing, although usually an older and more jaded demographic: arrogant accomplished entitled men trying to have everything they want and sure that they can get away with it (or even, that they should get away with it). The same sex runs mafias, commits genocides, builds atomic weapons, etc., etc.
In other words, if civilization (note, I didn’t say humanity) has been built on testosterone, so has its destruction. Testosterone builds up with one hand and knocks it down with the other. Right now, we are watching testosterone knock down our country.
Maybe it is an outcome of growing more settled and calm and less testosterone-driven in my own life, but this dark side of testosterone is coming to disgust me everywhere I look. I’m sick of the story of men and their egos. It’s why I don’t watch the news and probably why I stopped watching Breaking Bad and Mad Men too. And don’t get me started about sports.
That’s all I have to say on this topic. Now, I’m going to go and knit a sweater.
xxx
