Opinion | The Fight Over Men Is Shaping Our Political Future - The New York Times - 0 views
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Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, replied to my inquiry with a detailed critique of the A.P.A. guidelines.“The report is blinkered by two dogmas. One is the doctrine of the blank slate” that rejects biological and genetic factors, Pinker wrote, adding thatThe word “testosterone” appears nowhere in the report, and the possibility that men and women’s personalities differ for biological reasons is unsayable and unthinkable.The other dogma, Pinker argued,is that repressing emotions is bad and expressing them is good — a folk theory with roots in romanticism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Hollywood, but which is contradicted by a large literature showing that people with greater self-control, particularly those who repress anger rather than “venting,” lead healthier lives: they get better grades, have fewer eating disorders, drink less, have fewer psychosomatic aches and pains, are less depressed, anxious, phobic, and paranoid, have higher self-esteem, are more conscientious, have better relationships with their families, have more stable friendships, are less likely to have sex they regretted, are less likely to imagine themselves cheating in a monogamous relationship.
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In Pinker’s view, the A.P.A. guidelines fail to recognize thata huge and centuries-long change in Western history, starting from the Middle Ages, was a “Civilizing Process” in which the ideal of manhood changed from a macho willingness to retaliate violently to an insult to the ability to exert self-control, dignity, reserve, and duty. It’s the culture of the gentleman, the man of dignity and quiet strength, the mensch. The romantic 1960s ethic of self-expression and escape from inhibitions weakened that ethic, and the A.P.A. report seems to be trying to administer the coup de grâce.
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Pinker suggested rather thatOne could argue that what today’s men need is more encouragement to enhance one side of the masculine virtues — the dignity, responsibility, self-control, and self-reliance — while inhibiting others, such as machismo, violence, and drive for dominance.
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McKelley rejectedthe implication that the goal is to eliminate male characteristics. The real implication is that rigid adherence to extreme expression of a few select masculine norms is related to poorer health outcomes.In fact, he argued, the guidelines specifically encourage a kind of competitiveness, citing a section that reads,Active play between fathers and children has a functional element correlated with several positive child outcomes, such as competitiveness without aggression, cooperation that buffers anxiety, healthy experimentation, social competence, peer acceptance and popularity, and a sense of autonomy.
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McKelley said hewould love to have someone argue that “competitiveness without aggression” is somehow undesirable. That sounds exactly like redirecting traits toward more productive activity and behavior.
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There is a strikingly different approach to the debate over masculinity in a different branch of academic inquiry. As David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., wrote in response to my inquiry:The greatest adverse shock to the psychosocial welfare of U.S. men has not stemmed from dysfunctional notions of masculinity (not that these are above reproach) nor from #MeToo (which was long overdue) but from deep secular labor market forces — both technological and trade-induced — that have over nearly four decades reduced the demand for skilled blue collar work.The effects of these economic changes, Autor wrote, have been devastating:These forces have dramatically eroded the earnings power, employment stability, social stature, and marriage market value of non-college men. The ensuing dysfunction touches not just in earnings and employment but also male idleness, dysfunctional and destructive behavior (e.g., drug and alcohol abuse), and the erosion of two-parent families, which, research suggests, facilitate children in becoming successful adults.
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Hibbing continued: What some men traditionally brought to the table is no longer required so they must change. That is not easy but so it goes.The men most negatively affected by changing economics, according to Hibbing, are also those most often inclined to reject the fact that “government is the best source for providing assistance and retraining in the face of these changes.” Instead, these men “resist such assistance and feel they are entitled to the arrangements of the past.”
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Many Republicans believe gender roles to be distinct and that categorical denial of hormonal or biological underpinnings to sex differences is erroneous — while simultaneously voicing doubts about the legitimacy of the science of evolution
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Many Democrats defend the basic theory of evolution but remain wary of, if not hostile to, biological explanations of human behavior, in part because of their belief in the efficacy of government or other societal intervention to change behavior.
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The pressures to conform to conservative orthodoxy on the right and to liberal orthodoxy on the left sometimes seem to preclude reasonable compromise — that nature and nurture interact endlessly.