The Surge And Fall Of Monkey Masculinity

What I’m calling “monkey masculinity” is a deep and old problem, and one that I will shortly explain. And unfortunately it will not vanish in any short period of time.

The “surge” part of our title, however, refers to a recent phenomenon, and it will vanish. In fact, I think its process of decline is beginning right now.

The deep problem, to put it very simply, is a tendency of males to view females as things rather than as full beings. This tendency is overwhelming in primates, with whom we share a great deal of body chemistry, while in humans it is generally weaker and more variable. Nonetheless, the hormonal roots of the problem are shared.

To make this point on primates, here is a passage from Glenn E. King’s, Primate Behavior And Human Origins:

All adult males dominate all adult females and females are sometimes victims of male violence.

Among anthropoids (chimps, apes, etc.) males treat females as things to be used. This point isn’t seriously arguable, as we now have volumes of research. Nor is that fact of our shared chemistry arguable. So, when I use the term “monkey masculinity,” this is the basis for it.

Monkey masculinity has been a human problem since we’ve been human, of course, and is significantly less bad in our time than it was in the past. Ancient Rome makes a good example along these lines, but this is a short and general post, not a book, and so I’ll bypass that discussion.

It is my contention that this deep and old problem has surged over the past 30-some years, beginning in 1990 or so and increasing to a peak very recently. At that time the popular image of “a man” began to coalesce around aggressiveness. I though this was foolish when I first saw it, but I was terribly busy in other areas and didn’t spend a great deal of time on the problem.

What I’ve seen since then, overtly and continuously, has been aggressiveness and dominance recognized and praised as valuable male characteristics. Great athletes were routinely described as “the most competitive person I’ve ever seen,” for example. At the same time trash talking became a prominent aspect of sports, along with “look-at-me” celebrations and endless hot-dogging.

All of the above were, in my opinion, cheap substitutes for strength of character, but they were sold hard. What they were, really, were dominance displays, not terribly far removed from the primate troop. Or, more precisely, they were reversions back toward the primate troop.

At the same time, rap music became a primary entertainment product. And in that form of music, women were very directly portrayed as things. In fact, they were routinely referred to as “hos,” aka whores… a purposeful and very clear slap at females everywhere. Not all rap was so vile (some of it was surprisingly thoughtful), but very much of it was. And in rap videos, the depiction of women as things was overwhelming.

These, it must be said, were not depictions that appeared on the fringes; they were fully mainstream, where they made entertainment executives very rich and spawned a wide variety of negative effects. Chief among those effects were young males learning that maleness involved domination, and that it was also “male” to show disregard for women as people… that girls and women were things to be dominated, conquered and/or tossed away, and that the men who did so were especially masculine.

These effects didn’t make boys behave badly, of course, but they clearly nudged them in that direction, very broadly and very consistently. Continual pushes, even if small, can radically alter one’s course, and this happened to millions of boys.

And so a large portion of the young West has learned that monkey ways are not only permitted, but effective. What we might call Big Entertainment has pumped poison into the pool of young Western males. Sean Combs and his friends are not mere accidents of time and place; they could only rise to prominence within such a cultural context. In a better cultural context they would be aberrations. Within the context of my childhood, for example, they would have been called “degenerates.”

Also since the 1990s, I’ve heard an increasing level of reports – personal reports, from people I know – of women being harassed, being physically attacked, and of males ignoring these abuses. Whatever arguments can be made about this, in my corner of the world one has clearly followed the other.

Now, let me be specific on “monkey man” conduct among human males. Here’s my list:

• • Enjoying the fear or discomfort of women: physically, intellectually or otherwise: their intimidation making you feel powerful.

• • Enjoying victory over a woman: physically, intellectually or otherwise.

• • Tricking women into sexual situations.

• • Treating sexual adventures with women as trophies: how many women, of which types, and so on.

• • Bragging to other males regarding any of the above.

• • Picking vulnerable-looking women to seduce.

• • Making love with women while focused solely on what you get from it, to the exclusion of what she gets or what you both share from it.

• • Reflexively passing-off the complaints of women regarding the above.

• • Enjoying the power to insult, taunt and aggravate women.

• • Enjoying the power to demean women to other men. To enjoy calling them names: Ho, slut, etc.

All of these behaviors are monkey stuff, rooted in the chemistry we share with chimpanzees. And all of them treat women as things rather than full persons.

So, men who behave in this way are stepping downward on the evolutionary ladder. Such steps are not irreversible, but each new action of the type makes their decline that much greater and that much more deeply ingrained.

These actions, and others like them, can rise to dangerous levels if encouraged or exploited. Or, they can be held in check by cultural forces, producing considerably less damage and driving that damage which remains toward the more barbaric corners of human societies.

I will add one further thing from my personal observations: A depersonalized view of sex – with women as things rather than full persons – forms, or at least coincides with, dark character structures. The more people see male-female relationships as revolving around dominance, the more they lose their capacity for wonder and awe; the further they separate from transcendent impulses; the harder and blinder they become.

Where Should We Be Going?

At this stage of human development we are all sloppy on the inside, and this very definitely includes our sexual impulses. We need to make peace with this, and move from where we’ve found ourselves to a healthier place.

This recent expression of this problem is beginning its decline. Reversing that damage will involve cultural forces; this change may be slower than we’d like, but that’s just how things go among millions of humans.

And, to be clear, when I refer to “cultural forces,” I am not referring to top-down efforts (those played the central role in the surge); I am referring to bottom-up efforts: individuals and families changing their minds and requiring better conduct of their relatives.

The underlying problem will also end, but that will be a much slower process, resting, as it does, on a biological base. Such changes can and do occur (even genes can change over centuries), but they require protracted periods of time and protracted vigilance.

Now, looking forward:

Abraham Maslow, who studied the healthiest people he could find over many years, concluded this regarding sexuality:

• • Self-actualizing people are able and willing to take the welfare of others into account in their sexual expressions.

• • Self-actualizing people enjoy sexual experience much more intensely than the average person, though at the same time consider it “much less important in the total frame of reference.”

• • Self-actualizing people tend to join sex and love in a very complete merger. While they may be able to enjoy sexual pleasure without love they are much less likely than other people to care for it that way.

And so, if that’s how the least monkey-ish among us are, that should also be the direction in which we move.

Read through that list again, and see if those are things you’d like to have. Because if Maslow was anything close to right, those of us who have consumed the overflow of monkey masculinity entertainment have let the fullness of life escape us. Trust, confidence and integrity in personal relationships matter, perhaps not for monkeys, but definitely for humans.

We men and women are better together than we are apart. This is a deeply opportune time for us to ditch the professional polarizers (those who are rewarded by our animosity) and start getting along, as full persons rather than as cardboard cut-outs.

We’re fundamentally better than we have been. Believe this.

**

Paul Rosenberg

freemansperspective.com