The Curse of Being a Man…

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"... for Aristotle said, that the winds men most fear are those that lay them open."

Trying to write on male violence by considering my own life and experiences is like being subjected to that fearful wind. Having been born and raised in a patriarchal society and claiming that you have never inflicted any violence on women, children, and the physically weak, is conceited, to say the least.

But I can, in clear conscience, say that ever since I reached a certain age and awareness I haven't committed violence, at least not deliberately or intentionally. Digging into my past and revealing experiences that might be categorized as violence wouldn't help anyone.

These are private things that will remain between me and my therapist and therefore my conscience. I think that what I should do is to apologize for the "misdemeanors" in my past and explain my professional opinion about male violence.

A woman is raped every 17 seconds in South Africa only. I don't know if there is need to say more. One becomes speechless with the shame of the violence committed by my fellow men.

I want to start my article with the following determination and build on it: "The violence of the man who holds power by committing violence against women, gays, weaker men, children and animals, is also the violence of the social order, which has turned into a subject itself independent of the people who have created it".

This is the violence of a hierarchical, authoritarian, sexist, classist, militarist, racist, sick and malicious society that does not value the individual. The society perpetrates this violence on women by instrumentalizing men – for purposes of this article women will be symbolically representing all the aforementioned persons and groups who are subjected to violence.
Violence on women is men denying their social impotence, which they feel deep down in their soul, through aggression.

Herbert Marcuse defines male violence as the repression of the already suppressed sexual and emotional needs, but one should keep in mind that the patriarchal, heterosexist, authoritarian and class-based society prepares the ground for this male violence. The form of functionality in almost all fields of social, economic and political life constitutes the relational context of male violence.

One of the most underscored subjects is whether violence has biological, genetic or hormonal roots, and if it has, whether it is only about men. Feminist theory has been putting emphasis on the distinction between the biological sex and the social gender since the very beginning.

The construction of gender is a highly complicated process that is not possible to grasp at first glance – not biological sex but gender is a Frankenstein created by the monster called civilization is yet another claim which I will not discuss at further length here as it is the subject of another article.

So I am just making note and moving on. Since the relation between gender and biological sex is very problematic, one needs to be very careful while talking about biological, hormonal and genetic roots of violence.

Because such reductionism impedes any discussion on how to prevent male violence. Since we cannot annihilate the male sex, which would be another form of violence, I believe we have to pursue another explanation model that will better serve us.

Of course we cannot deny the existence of stereotypical gender roles but aren't we all also the passive victims of a system applied monolithically?

While there is no scientific data suggesting that people (men in particular) are not prone to violence, neurobiological studies have shown that people are prone to cooperation and solidarity. It might indeed be claimed that men are more aggressive due to their hormones and are more prone to violence compared with women.

But there is also a very simple truth that we cannot change. The men we have studied are the men who are wrapped up in their gender roles within this social structure. What would be their behavior patterns if they weren't inside this social structure? Because we know from anthropological studies that male violence against women, or even violence in general, was almost nonexistent in the hunter-gatherer times.

While evaluating the human, which is an animal species, and his or her biological, hormonal and genetic characteristics, we shouldn't overlook the following trait that is specific to the human: unlike other animal species that live collectively, the human being is a member of a constantly changing social system in which he or she must change as well.

Yes, human is an animal species and, in this regard, he or she depends on the requirements of his or her genes, cells, organs and hormones. However, our knowledge concerning how this entire physical structure defines our behaviors is not yet complete.

There is still time for neuroscience to enlighten us in this regard. Even if we could know it, we must think in a broader context in order to identify the factors that play an important role in determining our behavioral repertoire, needs and motivations.

Because the human needs to live in continuously developing/changing social structures; it is an animal species that has become different from all other animal species in every sense and is not that "natural" anymore.

While talking about male violence and man's entitlement to make weapons and kill anything and everything he perceives as the enemy, we shouldn't miss the main question that begs for an answer: How does the social structure shape, limit or reinforce this disposition?

How is it that in course of human social development, violence stopped being an isolated phenomenon and became normal, a functional tool widely accepted in everyday life?

After being used in the training of children for centuries, how come beating a member of the clergy or a mayor was classified as an abnormal behavior that needs to be punished?

At the end of the day, the determinant question is what sort of a relationship do societies establish with violence and how do they try to deal with it. Which forms of violence are approved and tolerated?

Some feminist writers (i.e., Susan Brownmüller) who embrace the sociobiological perspective claim that male violence is an inborn psychological feature due to men's anatomic structure. Let's assume that this is correct. I insistently emphasize that what matters is not whether men are prone to violence but what the society does with this violence.

Why does male violence play such a determinant and steering role in most societies? Why is violence tolerated so much and even promoted?

Every seemingly personal act of violence has a social context. This doesn't mean there are no psychopathological cases, but they constitute a really small percentage among those who commit violence.

The form of violence that concerns us are the acts of violence that instead of being punished have begun to be seen as "normal", such as fights, war, rape, bodily harm and psychological violence.

Violence has long been almost institutionalized as a solution method between people and groups which renders the dominant social order's approval of male violence an intelligible phenomenon.

On the other hand, it is a fact that the states' employment of violence as an instrument, through wars and police violence, etc., threatens our lives and future.

The civilization of "civilized" societies is founded on the massacres, exploitation and subjugation that they exercise on other societies. Civilization is shaped by means of destroying, colonizing and enslaving the indigenous peoples.

Is it only the indigenous peoples? The decimation of nature under the guise of human interest and in the name of dominating nature causes irreversible destruction of the ecological balance that was hundreds of thousands of years in the making. Once violence is normalized, it walks all over everything that comes its way.

Daily business life in industrialized class-based societies is also based on violence. Violence reveals itself as an economic reality. Industrialized business life is like a torture center where workers are depersonalized and broken up into pieces.

Employed or not, everyone is exposed to chemicals, radioactive substances, food with GMO and pollution because of industrialization. Advancement of technology does not reduce the burden on people's shoulders but increases the workload and accelerates the pace of life to an unbearable level.

Psychological disorders not connected directly to the person but caused by this increased burden of life are actually a form of social violence, but the capitalist order manages to monetize it by marketing these as psychological disorders.

The majority being doomed to work themselves to exhaustion for 40-50 years until they are completely burned out and then being thrown into the society's retirement trash is absolute violence. Racism, sexism, heterosexism have almost become the rule and turned into acts of violence that are institutionalized in all societies.

Urbanization not only destroys nature and everything that is humane, but has also brought people's relationship with nature to a point of complete rupture.

Urban planner and architect Frank Lloyd Wright says, "To look at the plan of a great City is to look at something like the cross-section of a fibrous tumor".

Cities, social structure, professional life, the human's relationship with nature, and history have turned into the domination sites of violence. In fact, they are now violence itself. Institutionalized violence has infiltrated all social structures and sociocultural relationships.

Let's not forget that one learns how to commit violence through observation and experience. A man beats his son and his son, in turn, beats his dog. Studies have shown that a majority of those who use violence against women were themselves subjected to violence when they were children. And not only by their fathers, but by their mothers as well.

However, as indicated earlier, the more decisive factor is that our personality and sexuality, our needs and fears, our strong and weak points—our self—are not solely shaped by learning, on the contrary, they are produced and imposed on the individual by the social reality which is experienced on a daily basis.

Macro level social and economic conditions—such as poverty, unemployment, lack of housing as well as the acceptance and glorification of violence—lead to increased crime rates and tolerance for violence, which also increases domestic male violence.

While the social order paves the way for violence, violence, in turn, strengthens its own social and economic structure. Development of civilization shows parallelism with the constant increase in male violence against women. Patriarchy is a form of power which enables the reality imposed by men to destroy the historical and natural reality.

Simone de Beauvoir argues that men reflect their ambivalent feelings about nature on women and view them as a materialized form of nature.

According to Beauvoir, in the eyes of men, women are just like nature, which gives us everything we need and can, all of a sudden, turn into a catastrophe taking our lives away.

"Both ally and enemy, it appears as the dark chaos from which life springs forth, as this very life, and as the beyond it reaches for..."

The violence inflicted to dominate nature and the violence inflicted on women usually complement and substitute each other.

"In spite of the inferior role which men assign to them, women are the privileged objects of their aggression", says Beauvoir. In the everyday life of an adult, male violence directly turns towards women. There are not many women who have not been subjected to some form of male violence, which ranges from sexual harassment and rape to sexual abuse and watching porn.

This aggression of men towards women stems from the fragile nature of masculinity, and violence should be understood as a futile effort to protect this fragile manhood, this unreal male superiority. Man feels obliged to constantly exercise agency to protect his potency and maintain his social, economic and political power.

Because passivity symbolizes womanhood, which, in turn, symbolizes weakness. Violence against women is, in fact, nothing but an aggressive representation of this agency. Moreover, woman is punished by man also because through her mere existence she reminds him of his actual state, his fragility, weakness and helplessness.

Rape is the form of action in which this fragile manhood manifests itself most clearly. In the statements made by rapists to forensic psychiatrists, we witness that the men who rape women almost always mention feelings of inferiority, fears of impotency in every sense of the term, and a rage that they cannot make sense of.

Whom would a man feel superior to, if there were no women? Rape is not only a crime committed by men against women, it is also the desperate and angry struggle of men in the biological and social gender relationship.

In the late 1970s, researchers conducted a study analyzing the statements made by rapist men.

Let us look at some of these statements now: "When I compare myself with other people, I always feel inferior to them. (...) I find myself disgusting. When I rape someone who I think is weaker than me, I am freed from this feeling."

Another statement is as follows: "I feel so corrupted, vile and disgusting."

Yet another statement: "I believe that the reason behind rape is less about sexual desire than the way a person wants to see himself. My fear of having a relationship with people turns into a demand for sex. Because sex is the securest area where I can release my anger and feelings."

Woman means an other that the manhood, which can fall into pieces any time, thinks it can bring into existence by protecting itself in a phallocentric order. With its weak muscles, it is the soft, humane creature that man actually wants to be. It is a threat which, in his unaggressive state, he emulates and thus causes his fear of falling into pieces to escalate and therefore increases his anger all the more.

This anger of man and his fear, which he does not even notice, can also take on a class characteristic.

Let us look again at a statement made by a rapist man: "When it comes to having a relationship with a woman, I cannot feel myself special at all. I believe that I am not good enough to impress women. That is why, I find a woman from the lower classes and try to lower her more than she actually is, do you understand it? Because what I really want is a woman from the upper class. But I do not believe that I am good enough for these women to find me attractive."

Rape, harassment, psychological violence and abuse, which are the plainest manifestations of male violence, find themselves a place most readily in the family. Family provides the enraged man, who cannot deal with his fragility, with an environment where he can express his feelings and needs with an ease that would not be allowed anywhere else. Family is the only place where the man feels himself sufficiently secure and expresses his every feeling with ease.

Family is also the place where the man compensates for the violence inflicted on him at the workplace. Man is so impotent at the workplace that he tries to feel that he can control his life in the period of time that belongs to him, within the family. Its result is pure male violence.

Yes, it is "male" violence, but violence can gain functionality only in the dualisms of active - passive, manhood - womanhood. Without one, the other cannot exist. Of course, I am not putting the blame on women for getting beaten up. I am also not presenting the men who inflict violence as the innocent victims of society.

I am just trying to emphasize that male violence against women functions as a dynamic affirmation of manhood, which can exist only by being different from womanhood. It should not be forgotten that manhood needs to be constantly fed and approved so as to maintain its existence.

In fact, this approval may take very different forms that are not related to violence. A vast majority of men do not tend to commit violence, rape or harassment. That being said, again a great majority of us have used our superior physical strength or a form of physical violence or the threat of violence at least once during our youth or adulthood.

When those with a weak sense of self or a seriously negative self-image cannot deal with the feelings of impotence in their daily lives, they do not hesitate to use violence against women in order to protect or reconstruct their individual power in our heterosexist social system.

In fact, violence does nothing other than strengthening the feeling of impotence and the negative self-image. As a result, the fragility of manhood increases, its artificiality becomes all the more manifest and the feeling of insecurity becomes stronger and stronger.

In one of the unforgettable novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch, as the non-aging dictator wanders through the infinitely long corridors of his palace, scuffing his fat feet, one feels a constant stench of decay.

He can no longer find a way out of the world of terror, sorrow and exhaustion that he himself has created. The tragedy that he is condemned to is the burden of living forever by breathing in this lifeless air which suffocates him.

Aren't we men living under a similar curse?

But, still, is there no way out of this hell of "male violence" that we ourselves have created, a hell that does great damage to women, homosexuals, children and, of course, to us and which condemns life to destruction; is there really no way out of all these artificialities about manhood? (AH/ŞA/APA/SD/TK/IG)

* Images: Kemal Gökhan Gürses

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