Drones and Cannon-fodder …
How did the stereotypical image of males come about? Why is it necessary for society to propagate in boys and men such inhuman qualities as numbness, emotional illiteracy, insensitivity, anger, and domination? I’m not suggesting these are deliberately and with logical planning inculcated, but merely that they originate in order to meet some need in society, and after that, once instilled in the society’s infrastructure, they become simply self-propagating – part of the ‘wallpaper’. They become components of people’s core beliefs and are not even noticed as being unjust, undesirable and just plain wrong.
What is at the root of this distortion of our fundamental human nature that is so widespread that it is considered natural? It’s not because ‘Men are from Mars’ – we are every bit as much Human as any other occupant of Earth (nope – women are not from Venus either!)…
In my view, the reason for this particular set of peculiarities we carry seems to be that it is what is required of us in our society.
For starters, let’s face it, biologically, males are actually pretty dispensable. You only have to look at animal husbandry for proof of that. Most male farm animals last a year, and then they are slaughtered for meat. You only need one or two males to ‘service’ an unlimited number of females to maximise the population. The only reason for keeping a few more around is to increase genetic diversity.
This means that males are inherently less genetically valuable to a society than females (or that they have to be seen to be creating benefit and therefore to be of value). I guess this is why we have traditionally been the ones who risk danger and life in order to provide advantage to the group. Even as hunter-gatherers, the gathered food, which supplies up to 70% of the necessary foodstuff for a tribal group, is collected by women – it is a relatively low-risk venture. Hunting, which provides around 30% in most hunter-gatherer societies, although it is associated with much more ritualistic fanfare, is much less important to the daily supply of nutrition. It is, however, much more dangerous to obtain, and so it falls to the males of the tribe to undertake it.
So males are expected to take more risks from very early on in human history (and beyond). It makes sense then that this should extend to battle and war. When a group needs defending or needs to attack another (or at least when some man decides it does), it is the adult males who are expected to fight and, if necessary, kill other adult human males or lose their lives in the process. A very risky business indeed.
And as we look at the changes since the Industrial Revolution, it is mostly males who have been expected to work like machines, often without reference to self-care or good health, in order to generate income to support families and households.
As a caveat to this, in more recent years, in its drive to increase exploitation so as to maximise profit, our capitalist society has recognised the inefficiency in missing out on half the exploitation value of the population and has increasingly co-opted the feminist movement, and its legitimate desire to empower women into the workforce. They too are now being coerced into working themselves to death in often inhuman conditions, which will no doubt eventually result in them dying at the same earlier age as men…
So you can see, because of this, why men might have developed, and then started to value and cultivate, mindsets that are conducive to risky behaviour, low self-value and self-worth. Though it is sometimes difficult to see this is the case, camouflaged as it is, by the male ego – a fragile and complex web of self-deceit which has developed over the millennia to protect men from actually noticing and feeling this.
It is simply not ‘useful’ to society for men to take notice of their feelings too much – it would indeed ‘weaken’ them if they are under attack in battle or in the process of killing others. It is not ‘useful’ for a man to be sensitive to his own emotions or those of others, or feel pain, when he is under fire or in a field littered with bodies. It is not helpful to the completion of a job and the production of profit to exercise self-care and caution when being tasked with a deadline that requires working 24-hour shifts in a mine or hospital ward. Kindness, gentleness, empathy, sensitivity – these are all characteristics that are positively undesirable in a person who is expected to sacrifice his flesh and beat down (or even kill) others, either for the sake of King and country or for the pursuit of financial gain. It is no wonder that these have been suppressed in the vast majority of men to some degree.
Men, as previously mentioned, are largely dispensable – our lives have less intrinsic genetic value than those of women. Find that hard to believe? Well, look at the numbers: the population of the UK is 97.75 males per 100 females. Except in countries that practice infanticide (and that’s a whole other story and warrants discussion), women outnumber men around the globe. As mentioned above, men have a lower life expectancy than women in the UK by almost 4 years. The fact is that in the UK and the West, men don’t last as long as women. Generally speaking, we take more risks, we don’t look after ourselves so well, we work too hard and for too long, and we kill ourselves in much greater numbers – the rate of suicides among males in the UK for 2021was 16 per 100,000 population while among females it was 5.4 per 100,000 – that’s 2 and a half times as many!
As a result of this inherently low self-value, is it any wonder that we neglect to care for ourselves, take risks with our health and damage ourselves physically?
And having such a low bar, is it surprising that we treat everyone else (including women) badly as well? Men are responsible for most murders and violent attacks – 9 out of 10 of those arrested for murder in England & Wales between 2010 – 2020 were male…. And we murder more men than women (which follows) – Of the 696 recorded homicides in England and Wales in 2021/22, 498 of the victims were male and 198 of the victims were female.
If you look at this in the light of the brutalisation that most boys and men experience in some way, so that they can then fulfil their function in society, it is hardly surprising. Subject to so much violence and trained to do harm and even kill, it is a wonder and a testament to the resilience of our human nature that we don’t do far worse – though not an excuse not to do better…