A great deal is being written and published in the mainstream press about males and sexual assault, especially young men on university campuses. I will leave it to the sociologists to explore the patterns of intimate partner violence, including the incidence of female-on-male sexualized aggression as compared to male-on-female sexualized aggression. It bears noting, though, that while it may seem surprising, the rates are about the same for both sexes. The widespread overuse of alcohol among high school students and undergraduates of both sexes is an important element in this, as are changing values regarding what constitutes acceptable comportment in society at large. Television reflects and reinforces a society heady with violence. All the while, it is important to bear in mind when studying these patterns that the individuals concerned are still psychosocially immature for much longer than young adults were even one generation earlier. Age 25 is the bew 18. This leads me to my topic.
The question regularly comes up whether there is a greater degree of innate aggressiveness in males than in females. This is important from a psychological point of view, since it would suggest, if true, that males are predisposed from birth to greater violence. After a few preliminaries on this question, we can consider the issue of sexual assaults on campus from a psychological perspective.
It is well known from infant observation and almost a century of child study that, at birth, males are more sensitive to stimulation than are girls. They are more edgy and responsive. Concurrently, they are more vulnerable to serious physical illnesses. By the time they reach early and middle childhood, boys are more kinetic. More active, their play style exhibits centrifugal patterns. They go off and away in seemingly random directions, tending not to congregate with other males in organized activity (including play) until later than girls do. This busy, active, exploring tendency is often enough read as recklessness, and so begins the general impression of boys as more restless, less manageable than girls—and more aggressive. About a year behind developmentally than girls of the same chronological age and on a later daily waking pattern than girls, boys are more difficult to organize, control and cause to submit to sedentary activities in school. They are therefore punished more often. All this is well known.
Boys also engage in what is termed rough and tumble play much more often than girls. We are reminded of puppies or kittens scrapping, sometimes biting each other. We see the young animals sometimes overreaching boundaries. They bite or swipe too hard. Then they stop, realizing that their eagerness and excitement have become excessive. Are they angry at each other, even when they tag a play pal with too much force? Not at all. And what about the boys? Is rough and tumble play a form of aggressiveness? Are boys angry at each other as they challenge, chase and wrestle one another? Not at all. No more than young animals. Read as displaying violent behavior, however, boys have been caricatured as aggressive, when in fact they are vigorously playful physically.
The tendency to rough and tumble play is both discouraged and exploited. Here boys are put in a double bind situation. They get the message early on that they must not be too active in certain settings, yet that very activity is sanctioned and encouraged in other settings; for example, in violent sports such as football. And if there is one sport that is quintessentially American, it is football. Boys and adolescent males are groomed to be tough and rough, but the play now is no longer spontaneous. Lines of offense are set up on the “playing” field and boys are trained to hit. Later on, for some, participation in boxing and even mixed martial arts is encouraged. Boys become immersed in the myth of powerful, dominant male as they are pressed to fight one another, this in necessary preparation for their possibly being called upon to fight for real in the military.
But is there is a natural line of development from hyperkineticism—the greater liveliness of boys, who enjoy running as fast and far as possible, and engage in rough and tumble play—to the focused hitting of violent sports and preparation to be a combat soldier? Not at all. Most boys would rather not fight, although shaming is more powerful than inhibiting and withholding directed fighting behavior when boys are encouraged, even taunted to show their dominance. In fighting with arms, it is well known, most soldiers have found it difficult to kill another man, unless in immediate self-defense of their own lives.
Training that exploits the tendency to rough and tumble play and transforms it into violence directed at other males cannot but generalize to behavior with everyone, females included under certain circumstance, especially when shaming once again is in effect. When there is more aggressive behavior in males, it has been inculcated and rewarded. Meanness and the capacity to go after another human being crosses the border between the sexes and, in some cases, is sexualized. This brings us to the issue at hand: violence against women on college campuses.
It should strike everyone as remarkable given the double bind young males are put in that there is not more violence against women. That incidents of such behavior occur more often involving college and university athletes should come as no surprise. Taught to hit on the field or court or on the ice, males are more likely to default to such behavior in situations in which controls of conscience and decorum are weakened—when intoxicated, for example. Or when they are shamed.
In a culture where hitting was not encouraged and rewarded with recognition, hero status, and scholarships, there would be less reason for boys to allow themselves to become accustomed to being aggressive. They are not so by nature. As we have seen, rough and tumble play is, well, play. Its motivation is excitement and pleasure in activity for its own sake, so-called functional pleasure. Developmentally, play segues into work, which produces its own functional pleasure, as Erik Erikson showed in the middle of last century. Hitting that leads to increase in status has come from a very different source.
Now how should we understand campus violence when perpetrated by males? First, we should recall that often the female partner has slapped or hit first. (That has its own social meaning and psychological significance.) Second, we should wonder: What recourse do ever less mature young males have when struck, especially in sexualized situations where performance masculinity is on the line for them and shaming is the consequence of not meeting expectations. Are males more sexually assertive than females? Certainly, they are expected to be, and there are deep evolutionary reasons for them to be so. Male sexuality has elements of capture, seizure and control of the female body that cannot be denied. Can partners share in taking the lead sexually? Certainly. But this takes experience and time for both partners and is not in the repertoire of most teenagers—male or female. And to repeat: Prolonged or protracted adolescence is now the rule rather than exception. Age 25 is the new 18.
Let us understand the social setting of the relative few incidents of sexual assault on campuses, given the psychological preparation boys and young males have experienced. We should expect many more, but happily there a very few such incidents. The broader question of whether sex (intercourse) is for the male a qualitatively different experience than it is for the female is again easy to answer. Yes, it is. But is that difference (assertiveness, control of the situation, performance expectations that cannot be met by faking it) a matter of innately greater aggressiveness. The answer is clearly, No. Are some males more disposed to being shamed into acting as though they were? It would seem to be so. This is very likely the quite small group who when also encouraged and rewarded for being seriously aggressive, not playfully active, with other males may sometimes lose control of themselves when taunted or hit by a female sexual partner. The hitting is the issue. Men: Don’t hit women, even though you may have been rewarded for hitting other human beings. Women: Don’t hit men. Putting hands harshly on another human being hurts, even if he is male.
Most managers don’t give much thought to the experiences their employees are having right before they get to work. Maybe one employee sat in hellacious traffic and another quarreled with her teenage daughter. Someone else dropped a buttered bagel on his new shirt. Others spent time getting elderly parents ready for their daytime routine. Managers would do well to pay more attention to their staffers’ morning moods. My research with Steffanie Wilk, an associate professor at the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University, shows that start-of-day mood can last longer than one might think—and have a significant effect on job performance.
Because such toys are so irresistible to dogs, I sometimes use them in my dog obedience class, scattering them around the room and then asking students to heel their dog around the toys, while trying to keep their dog's focus on the task and not on the toy. One evening, during such an exercise, I watched a woman struggling with a young Labrador retriever who insisted on grabbing any toy which came within reach. In exasperation she finally called out to me and said "This is not fair. Even trained guard dogs sometimes find these kinds of toys too tempting to ignore." She then went on to tell me a story about a teddy bear, named Mabel, which had been owned by Elvis Presley and eventually fell prey to a fully trained Doberman pinscher named Barney. Her description sounded incredible to me so I decided to check it out. It turns out that the story was true. While this narrative may demonstrate how enticing such toys are for dogs, it also may be interpreted as a tragic tale of jealousy resulting in the murder of a plush toy.
The Golden Rule, in some form or another, exists in many cultures, religions, and ethical codes. While the specific form varies from culture to culture and belief system to belief system, the basic idea is: treat other people the way you want to be treated.
Now that I have two little grandkids, I think about the future more than ever. The far distant future. It’s painful to consider that these innocents I know and love so intensely are likely to be profoundly affected by climate change, not to mention the ever-present nuclear shadow.
Earlier this week, I wrote a post about the