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Why Do White Males Commit Most Mass Public Shootings?

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Posts

  • FroThulhuFroThulhu Registered User regular
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    Well...

    maybe not the ones that weren't exterminated by the ones who did.

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    Well...

    maybe not the ones that weren't exterminated by the ones who did.

    We're still talking about thousands of ones with male soldiers, warriors, braves, what have you.

    Thousands of tribes, nations, empires, kingdoms, and not a single one with dominant/aggressive women warrior types, through thousands of years of history.

    And let's just say there were women-dominant tribes out there.

    You're suggesting they all got wiped out by male-dominant ones.

    Which... I mean, yeah... if men were more naturally aggressive, that's probably what the result would be.

    jungleroomx on
  • Fuzzy Cumulonimbus CloudFuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud Registered User regular
    Testosterone actually controls some measure of risk taking and aversion but it doesn’t regulate violence. It’s a popular science myth.

  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    With absolutely zero prompting from genetics and evolution?

    I posit that every society that evolved from a gender role assigned hunter gatherer system destined males to do the murdering

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • ArchArch Neat-o, mosquito! Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    This study found a small but measurable effect on at least some metrics:

    https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/89/6/2837/2870329

    It's a topic for a different thread but, briefly, the data for effects of testosterone on aggression in male humans is very inconsistent, with some studies finding positive, some finding negative, and some finding no effects, all of varying effect sizes from "tiny" to "moderate" and unfortunately afaik there's not a lot of good meta reviews of the data, so you're just gonna have to trust me. If it we're a different thread and I had more time I could compile stuff but....

  • Fuzzy Cumulonimbus CloudFuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    This study found a small but measurable effect on at least some metrics:

    https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/89/6/2837/2870329
    That study showed a small increase in aggressive mood but no increase in aggression or aggressive behavior. It essentially showed giving extra T didn’t cause problems.

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Testosterone actually controls some measure of risk taking and aversion but it doesn’t regulate violence. It’s a popular science myth.

    It has an unproven link, but it is present in aggressive situations. There is no evidence it is a risk-aversion hormone.

    Want someone to get a massive influx of testosterone? Give them a gun to hold.

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Paladin wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    With absolutely zero prompting from genetics and evolution?

    I posit that every society that evolved from a gender role assigned hunter gatherer system destined males to do the murdering

    But why? Human civilizations are vast and insanely different from one to the next.

    Why's that the one thing that stuck?

  • Fuzzy Cumulonimbus CloudFuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud Registered User regular
    Testosterone actually controls some measure of risk taking and aversion but it doesn’t regulate violence. It’s a popular science myth.

    It has an unproven link, but it is present in aggressive situations. There is no evidence it is a risk-aversion hormone.

    Want someone to get a massive influx of testosterone? Give them a gun to hold.
    Endocrine can positively regulate or negatively regulate based on levels. Low-T means risk aversion in some models. High-T means more risk taking.

  • FroThulhuFroThulhu Registered User regular
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    Well...

    maybe not the ones that weren't exterminated by the ones who did.

    We're still talking about thousands of ones with male soldiers, warriors, braves, what have you.

    Thousands of tribes, nations, empires, kingdoms, and not a single one with dominant/aggressive women warrior types, through thousands of years of history.

    And let's just say there were women-dominant tribes out there.

    You're suggesting they all got wiped out by male-dominant ones.

    Which... I mean, yeah... if men were more naturally aggressive, that's probably what the result would be.

    False

    Numerous African tribes and nations had largely female 'militaries' or elite contingents.

    There were also numerous long-standing matriarchal societies and tribes on the African continent.

    That's not just some made-up comic book shit.

  • ArchArch Neat-o, mosquito! Registered User regular
    Testosterone actually controls some measure of risk taking and aversion but it doesn’t regulate violence. It’s a popular science myth.

    It has an unproven link, but it is present in aggressive situations. There is no evidence it is a risk-aversion hormone.

    Want someone to get a massive influx of testosterone? Give them a gun to hold.

    My dude this is a scientifically unfounded thing to say

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    Well...

    maybe not the ones that weren't exterminated by the ones who did.

    We're still talking about thousands of ones with male soldiers, warriors, braves, what have you.

    Thousands of tribes, nations, empires, kingdoms, and not a single one with dominant/aggressive women warrior types, through thousands of years of history.

    And let's just say there were women-dominant tribes out there.

    You're suggesting they all got wiped out by male-dominant ones.

    Which... I mean, yeah... if men were more naturally aggressive, that's probably what the result would be.

    False

    Numerous African tribes and nations had largely female 'militaries' or elite contingents.

    There were also numerous long-standing matriarchal societies and tribes on the African continent.

    That's not just some made-up comic book shit.

    The Kenyan ones? They're divided matriarchal and patriarchal tribes but the women aren't aggressive and physically dominant over the men.

    Unless there's one I'm missing, most of the female militaries are from gender separation.

    jungleroomx on
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Arch wrote: »
    Testosterone actually controls some measure of risk taking and aversion but it doesn’t regulate violence. It’s a popular science myth.

    It has an unproven link, but it is present in aggressive situations. There is no evidence it is a risk-aversion hormone.

    Want someone to get a massive influx of testosterone? Give them a gun to hold.

    My dude this is a scientifically unfounded thing to say

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16866740

  • FroThulhuFroThulhu Registered User regular
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    Well...

    maybe not the ones that weren't exterminated by the ones who did.

    We're still talking about thousands of ones with male soldiers, warriors, braves, what have you.

    Thousands of tribes, nations, empires, kingdoms, and not a single one with dominant/aggressive women warrior types, through thousands of years of history.

    And let's just say there were women-dominant tribes out there.

    You're suggesting they all got wiped out by male-dominant ones.

    Which... I mean, yeah... if men were more naturally aggressive, that's probably what the result would be.

    False

    Numerous African tribes and nations had largely female 'militaries' or elite contingents.

    There were also numerous long-standing matriarchal societies and tribes on the African continent.

    That's not just some made-up comic book shit.

    The Kenyan ones? They're divided matriarchal and patriarchal tribes but the women aren't aggressive and physically dominant over the men.

    Unless there's one I'm missing, most of the female militaries are from gender separation.

    Historically

    There are a few instances, in centuries past, of Europeans (surprise!) getting rolled up in a welcome mat of murder by female warriors.

    In such societies, I doubt there's a lot of female-on-male domestic violence, but I would imagine there'd be less the other way around, as well.

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    Paladin wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    With absolutely zero prompting from genetics and evolution?

    I posit that every society that evolved from a gender role assigned hunter gatherer system destined males to do the murdering

    But why? Human civilizations are vast and insanely different from one to the next.

    Why's that the one thing that stuck?

    Men are on average bigger and stronger. In addition, they cannot become pregnant. The tribe can thus safely despose of large numbers of them in a conflict and rebuild itself quickly using the numerous female and sparse male survivors.

    In fact, the pregnancy argument gives you the answer all by itself, even if men weren't just bigger. Using men to fight has a massive advantage over using women to fight.

    Imagine two tribes exist, both have equal numbers. One tribe uses its men to fight. The other uses its women. A great battle occurs, and 50% of the fighters on each side die.

    The side using men to fight now has 25 men for every 50 women. Its replacement rate per 75 people per year is 50 people. The side using women to fight now has 50 men for every 25 women. It's replacement rate per 75 people per year is 25 people. In addition, the women warriors keep dying in childbirth so the numbers available keep going down.

    Men and Women become capable of vaguely competently fighting in a war at about the same age that women become capable of having children. So by the time the next war rolls around our "men do the fighting tribe" has a massive advantage over the "women do the fighting" tribe even if every one of them was equally strong and competent. The women fighting tribe gets wiped out.

    What this means is that the smart decision in early human society is always to have the women and girls stay home, and to throw the men and boys into battle. Women are just more valuable than men in a short lifespan society.

    edit - Hmm. I wonder if a tribe which used BOTH to do it's fighting would have a fundamental advantage... I would posit no, but it's not so obvious. Every woman who dies cuts your rate at which you can replenish the tribe, and early war wasn't lethal enough to let your weight of numbers advantage just let you kill everyone in the opposing tribe in year one.

    tbloxham on
    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • FroThulhuFroThulhu Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    With absolutely zero prompting from genetics and evolution?

    I posit that every society that evolved from a gender role assigned hunter gatherer system destined males to do the murdering

    But why? Human civilizations are vast and insanely different from one to the next.

    Why's that the one thing that stuck?

    Men are on average bigger and stronger. In addition, they cannot become pregnant. The tribe can thus safely despose of large numbers of them in a conflict and rebuild itself quickly using the numerous female and sparse male survivors.

    In fact, the pregnancy argument gives you the answer all by itself, even if men weren't just bigger. Using men to fight has a massive advantage over using women to fight.

    Imagine two tribes exist, both have equal numbers. One tribe uses its men to fight. The other uses its women. A great battle occurs, and 50% of the fighters on each side die.

    The side using men to fight now has 25 men for every 50 women. Its replacement rate per 75 people per year is 50 people. The side using women to fight now has 50 men for every 25 women. It's replacement rate per 75 people per year is 25 people. In addition, the women warriors keep dying in childbirth so the numbers available keep going down.

    Men and Women become capable of vaguely competently fighting in a war at about the same age that women become capable of having children. So by the time the next war rolls around our "men do the fighting tribe" has a massive advantage over the "women do the fighting" tribe even if every one of them was equally strong and competent. The women fighting tribe gets wiped out.

    What this means is that the smart decision in early human society is always to have the women and girls stay home, and to throw the men and boys into battle. Women are just more valuable than men in a short lifespan society.

    This

    The actual problem as it currently presents is, somewhere along the way, somebody decided that females are, and being like a female, is bad.

    And, for some reason I can't actually fathom, this viewpoint stuck and mutated over the generations.

    FroThulhu on
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    With absolutely zero prompting from genetics and evolution?

    I posit that every society that evolved from a gender role assigned hunter gatherer system destined males to do the murdering

    But why? Human civilizations are vast and insanely different from one to the next.

    Why's that the one thing that stuck?

    Men are on average bigger and stronger. In addition, they cannot become pregnant. The tribe can thus safely despose of large numbers of them in a conflict and rebuild itself quickly using the numerous female and sparse male survivors.

    In fact, the pregnancy argument gives you the answer all by itself, even if men weren't just bigger. Using men to fight has a massive advantage over using women to fight.

    Imagine two tribes exist, both have equal numbers. One tribe uses its men to fight. The other uses its women. A great battle occurs, and 50% of the fighters on each side die.

    The side using men to fight now has 25 men for every 50 women. Its replacement rate per 75 people per year is 50 people. The side using women to fight now has 50 men for every 25 women. It's replacement rate per 75 people per year is 25 people. In addition, the women warriors keep dying in childbirth so the numbers available keep going down.

    Men and Women become capable of vaguely competently fighting in a war at about the same age that women become capable of having children. So by the time the next war rolls around our "men do the fighting tribe" has a massive advantage over the "women do the fighting" tribe even if every one of them was equally strong and competent. The women fighting tribe gets wiped out.

    What this means is that the smart decision in early human society is always to have the women and girls stay home, and to throw the men and boys into battle. Women are just more valuable than men in a short lifespan society.

    This

    The actual problem as it currently presents is, somewhere along the way, somebody decided that females and, and being like a female, is bad.

    And, for some reason I can't actually fathom, this viewpoint stuck and mutated over the generations.

    There's my sticking point.

    You're asking me to buy into a viewpoint that doesn't even make sense to you.

  • FroThulhuFroThulhu Registered User regular
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    With absolutely zero prompting from genetics and evolution?

    I posit that every society that evolved from a gender role assigned hunter gatherer system destined males to do the murdering

    But why? Human civilizations are vast and insanely different from one to the next.

    Why's that the one thing that stuck?

    Men are on average bigger and stronger. In addition, they cannot become pregnant. The tribe can thus safely despose of large numbers of them in a conflict and rebuild itself quickly using the numerous female and sparse male survivors.

    In fact, the pregnancy argument gives you the answer all by itself, even if men weren't just bigger. Using men to fight has a massive advantage over using women to fight.

    Imagine two tribes exist, both have equal numbers. One tribe uses its men to fight. The other uses its women. A great battle occurs, and 50% of the fighters on each side die.

    The side using men to fight now has 25 men for every 50 women. Its replacement rate per 75 people per year is 50 people. The side using women to fight now has 50 men for every 25 women. It's replacement rate per 75 people per year is 25 people. In addition, the women warriors keep dying in childbirth so the numbers available keep going down.

    Men and Women become capable of vaguely competently fighting in a war at about the same age that women become capable of having children. So by the time the next war rolls around our "men do the fighting tribe" has a massive advantage over the "women do the fighting" tribe even if every one of them was equally strong and competent. The women fighting tribe gets wiped out.

    What this means is that the smart decision in early human society is always to have the women and girls stay home, and to throw the men and boys into battle. Women are just more valuable than men in a short lifespan society.

    This

    The actual problem as it currently presents is, somewhere along the way, somebody decided that females and, and being like a female, is bad.

    And, for some reason I can't actually fathom, this viewpoint stuck and mutated over the generations.

    There's my sticking point.

    You're asking me to buy into a viewpoint that doesn't even make sense to you.

    Lots of viewpoints don't make sense to me, though!

    Why the fuck sky wizards, for example!?

    Racism/magnets how do they work?

    Who could possibly give a fuck what somebody else does with their genitals!?

    Humans are weird, and a lot of shit gets rolled up into power consolidation.

    What I can tell you, though, is just a few years working in Natural Professional Fitness will set the record straight on how testosterone affects violence/aggression. 'Roid Rage' isn't a product of steroids, it's a product of the user's lifestyle.

  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    Paladin wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    With absolutely zero prompting from genetics and evolution?

    I posit that every society that evolved from a gender role assigned hunter gatherer system destined males to do the murdering

    But why? Human civilizations are vast and insanely different from one to the next.

    Why's that the one thing that stuck?

    Same reason we're all related to Charlemagne. Common social ancestry monopolizes the species more the further back it goes

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • FroThulhuFroThulhu Registered User regular
    Also, if you look closely, you'll notice that the vasssssst majority of common shitty societal traits are very advantageous to a primitive hunter-gatherer society.

    Humans have done a poor job of outgrowing our humble beginnings.

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Okay, I provided a link to a study showing a link between the simple handling of firearms (and a control action), increased testosterone, and aggression.

    I'm get a lot of anthropological theorycrafting here.

    I'd like to see some kind of study showing any of the above.

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    For instance: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/

    In adult males neuroimaging techniques that have permitted visualization of brain functions have shown that testosterone activates the amygdala enhancing its emotional activity and its resistance to prefrontal restraining control. This effect is opposed by the action of cortisol which facilitates prefrontal area cognitive control on impulsive tendencies aroused in the subcortical structures. The degree of impulsivity is regulated by serotonin inhibiting receptors. The major agents of neuroendocrine influence on aggression in brain process form a triad: testosterone activates subcortical tendencies towards aggression and cortisol and serotonin act antagonistically to testosterone.

  • CantelopeCantelope Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    I think its less about testosterone and more about social isolation. Women are for the most part i think on average better at being social and making friends.


    Our society as it is, we dont have a lot of time for kids. For a lot of families to make it financially you need both parents to work. If work lines up with the kids school schedule thats great, if it doesn't that means you see your kids for an hour or two in the evening when they should be doing their homework. And where is the time for you to actually relax?


    If your lucky enough to do well in your career you get salaried and then are expected to regularly work 10-12 hour days. By the time you get home your exhausted and if the work is at all stressful your coming home late with a short fuse, probably not a good recipe for good parenting. So, most of the time you have no idea what is going on with your kids.


    Add to that the nature of work has changed. People move all the time now. You no longer live next to mostly relatives who might have time to checkup on your kids and participate in their development.


    I think a large portion of parents these days with the way the world is could be raising kids who drown kittens on a regular basis and have no clue unless a neighbor or police intervened.


    If you dont know your kid is being antisocial or having problems or spends half the day watching videos of people offing themselves you cant intervene. And there is a whole internet of freaky subversive stuff to try to get your kid down a dark path. It seems like every week i learn about some freaky dark stuff that i never would have imagined out there.


    Edit: And what I'm describing is a rosey best case scenario as far as time with kids goes. If you are salaried you are probably expected to do some work on nights and weekends, including answering emails. So now your looking at your phone every ten minutes when you are supposed to be spending time with your kids. And that's one of the ideal scenarios where you are successful, so imagine for all of the people that are much less successful the kind of social situations they have with their kids. A lot of kids are becoming adults with almost no input or knowledge of their children's lives.

    Cantelope on
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    With absolutely zero prompting from genetics and evolution?

    I posit that every society that evolved from a gender role assigned hunter gatherer system destined males to do the murdering

    But why? Human civilizations are vast and insanely different from one to the next.

    Why's that the one thing that stuck?

    Men are on average bigger and stronger. In addition, they cannot become pregnant. The tribe can thus safely despose of large numbers of them in a conflict and rebuild itself quickly using the numerous female and sparse male survivors.

    In fact, the pregnancy argument gives you the answer all by itself, even if men weren't just bigger. Using men to fight has a massive advantage over using women to fight.

    Imagine two tribes exist, both have equal numbers. One tribe uses its men to fight. The other uses its women. A great battle occurs, and 50% of the fighters on each side die.

    The side using men to fight now has 25 men for every 50 women. Its replacement rate per 75 people per year is 50 people. The side using women to fight now has 50 men for every 25 women. It's replacement rate per 75 people per year is 25 people. In addition, the women warriors keep dying in childbirth so the numbers available keep going down.

    Men and Women become capable of vaguely competently fighting in a war at about the same age that women become capable of having children. So by the time the next war rolls around our "men do the fighting tribe" has a massive advantage over the "women do the fighting" tribe even if every one of them was equally strong and competent. The women fighting tribe gets wiped out.

    What this means is that the smart decision in early human society is always to have the women and girls stay home, and to throw the men and boys into battle. Women are just more valuable than men in a short lifespan society.

    This

    The actual problem as it currently presents is, somewhere along the way, somebody decided that females are, and being like a female, is bad.

    And, for some reason I can't actually fathom, this viewpoint stuck and mutated over the generations.

    My guess - I have nothing to support it really - is that paternity is important. For most of history, the only way for a man to make sure his child was, in fact, his was to either watch his mate like a hawk or else keep her away from other men. So right there you have the seeds of men wanting to control women and, by extension, thinking of women as objects to be controlled.

  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The idea that men don't have a safe space to talk about it come from privilege. Men have almost all the places to talk about it.

    If men can freely talk about their feelings without judgment then why is toxic masculinity even a problem? Men can talk about their feelings and frustrations so long as they do so in a way approved by toxic masculinity, and anything beyond that is heavily discouraged.

    Sure, maybe there's actually lots of men who are cool and will let other men be emotionally vulnerable to them without judging them. Just like there's probably lots of white guys who aren't racist and men who aren't sexist. The thing is that you don't know who is who until you take a chance to be vulnerable, and if you're wrong you'll regret it.

    Because many men don't push back. We have the power to but we don't. The reason that other groups seek out places where they can vent is because they don't have the power to do so in normal spaces. If you're a white guy and someone's being shitty about someone's emotions, you can push back against that and that kind of confrontation is a-okay with the concept of white masculinity. If you're a woman or a minority, then confrontation makes people look down on you. You actually have the power to push back against the shitty attitude about emotions and correct it, but a lot of guys don't.

  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    Also, if you look closely, you'll notice that the vasssssst majority of common shitty societal traits are very advantageous to a primitive hunter-gatherer society.

    Humans have done a poor job of outgrowing our humble beginnings.

    Hunter-gatherers tend to be much more egalitarian, though. Because society tends to need everyone, they don't greatly value hunters over anyone else. Men being over-aggressive is actually a recognized downside, which is, in a nutshell, why the Iriqouis Confederacy has a matriarchal component that's there specifically to form a check on the male leadership.

  • ZekZek Registered User regular
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    FroThulhu wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Capt Howdy wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    Testosterone promotes aggression. Men have more testosterone than women. It makes sense that in aggregate men are more aggressive and consequently more violent than women. Anecdotally, I've read an account from at least one trans man of how he found he had a much shorter fuse once he started taking testosterone - which, for him, just meant compensating accordingly. (Being a cis woman, I wouldn't know; but I wonder if it's similar to how PMS makes some of us really irritable. I flew off the handle at my grandma the first few times as a teen, but then I learned to anticipate it and cope without snapping at people... mostly.)

    And then we exacerbate that by not teaching boys healthy ways to process their emotions, and by not allowing men to be vulnerable, like these last couple of pages have been discussing.

    Testosterone is a weird subject to try and nail down in regards to mass shooting violence. If a man's test levels are out of whack it can cause a lot of varying side effects. Some men become more hostile if their levels drop below normal, and some men become less irritable if their levels spike higher than usual.

    I'm not dismissing testosterone as an interesting cause to look into, I'm just saying it's a difficult one to base useful opinions on.

    I was responding specifically to @tbloxham's assertion that men aren't inherently more violent than women, because as a group they absolutely are. I don't think it's useful to discuss the influence of testosterone on any one man's propensity to violence, though.

    If men are inherantly more violent due to their hormones, would you then argue that short of genetically modifying men to change their hormones, that there is nothing to be done to prevent the fact that men will always kill more than women do?

    Looks like the Onions "Only nation in the world" headline just got competition.

    Please climb down from that high horse and realize that you are the ones arguing that men are genetically programmed to be more violent by the demon Testosterone!

    Men are not inherently more violent than women. They are more violent due to our flawed society.

    That's an easier argument to make if you can point to a human society where men aren't massively more likely to commit murder than women.

    Do you know of any evidence of one?

    Do you know of one where it's not socially conditioned and encouraged, and then scienced in reverse?

    So, we're going on the premise that every single society ever created somehow threw men into a role that was more dominant and aggressive?

    Even isolated island villages that had no contact with the outside world until "discovered" by modern people?

    Somehow?

    With absolutely zero prompting from genetics and evolution?

    I posit that every society that evolved from a gender role assigned hunter gatherer system destined males to do the murdering

    But why? Human civilizations are vast and insanely different from one to the next.

    Why's that the one thing that stuck?

    Men are on average bigger and stronger. In addition, they cannot become pregnant. The tribe can thus safely despose of large numbers of them in a conflict and rebuild itself quickly using the numerous female and sparse male survivors.

    In fact, the pregnancy argument gives you the answer all by itself, even if men weren't just bigger. Using men to fight has a massive advantage over using women to fight.

    Imagine two tribes exist, both have equal numbers. One tribe uses its men to fight. The other uses its women. A great battle occurs, and 50% of the fighters on each side die.

    The side using men to fight now has 25 men for every 50 women. Its replacement rate per 75 people per year is 50 people. The side using women to fight now has 50 men for every 25 women. It's replacement rate per 75 people per year is 25 people. In addition, the women warriors keep dying in childbirth so the numbers available keep going down.

    Men and Women become capable of vaguely competently fighting in a war at about the same age that women become capable of having children. So by the time the next war rolls around our "men do the fighting tribe" has a massive advantage over the "women do the fighting" tribe even if every one of them was equally strong and competent. The women fighting tribe gets wiped out.

    What this means is that the smart decision in early human society is always to have the women and girls stay home, and to throw the men and boys into battle. Women are just more valuable than men in a short lifespan society.

    This

    The actual problem as it currently presents is, somewhere along the way, somebody decided that females are, and being like a female, is bad.

    And, for some reason I can't actually fathom, this viewpoint stuck and mutated over the generations.

    I don't think the mindset was ever that females are "bad", but rather that they should not challenge their place in society. People with power do not like to share it, that's pretty much a universal constant in humanity. This is a common refrain you'll hear from most of today's misogynists - "I love women, just ask my wife!" They are fond of women as long as they remain sufficiently feminine. And similarly men should be masculine. To challenge that is to challenge the principles on which their entire world is built.

  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    edited March 2018
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The idea that men don't have a safe space to talk about it come from privilege. Men have almost all the places to talk about it.

    If men can freely talk about their feelings without judgment then why is toxic masculinity even a problem? Men can talk about their feelings and frustrations so long as they do so in a way approved by toxic masculinity, and anything beyond that is heavily discouraged.

    Sure, maybe there's actually lots of men who are cool and will let other men be emotionally vulnerable to them without judging them. Just like there's probably lots of white guys who aren't racist and men who aren't sexist. The thing is that you don't know who is who until you take a chance to be vulnerable, and if you're wrong you'll regret it.

    Because many men don't push back. We have the power to but we don't. The reason that other groups seek out places where they can vent is because they don't have the power to do so in normal spaces. If you're a white guy and someone's being shitty about someone's emotions, you can push back against that and that kind of confrontation is a-okay with the concept of white masculinity. If you're a woman or a minority, then confrontation makes people look down on you. You actually have the power to push back against the shitty attitude about emotions and correct it, but a lot of guys don't.

    I'm speaking from my own personal experience, so I don't know how representative this is, but I'd imagine that guys who are hurt the most by toxic masculinity are ones that aren't that traditionally masculine, if that makes any sense. A guy speaking out against toxic masculinity would probably be seen as a "beta" or whatever. I doubt most people I know would take me seriously if I ever said something about it, for example.

    Hexmage-PA on
  • navgoosenavgoose Registered User regular
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The idea that men don't have a safe space to talk about it come from privilege. Men have almost all the places to talk about it.

    If men can freely talk about their feelings without judgment then why is toxic masculinity even a problem? Men can talk about their feelings and frustrations so long as they do so in a way approved by toxic masculinity, and anything beyond that is heavily discouraged.

    Sure, maybe there's actually lots of men who are cool and will let other men be emotionally vulnerable to them without judging them. Just like there's probably lots of white guys who aren't racist and men who aren't sexist. The thing is that you don't know who is who until you take a chance to be vulnerable, and if you're wrong you'll regret it.

    Because many men don't push back. We have the power to but we don't. The reason that other groups seek out places where they can vent is because they don't have the power to do so in normal spaces. If you're a white guy and someone's being shitty about someone's emotions, you can push back against that and that kind of confrontation is a-okay with the concept of white masculinity. If you're a woman or a minority, then confrontation makes people look down on you. You actually have the power to push back against the shitty attitude about emotions and correct it, but a lot of guys don't.

    I'm speaking from my own personal experience, so I don't know how representative this is, but I'd imagine that guys who are hurt the most by toxic masculinity are ones that aren't that traditionally masculine, if that makes any sense. A guy speaking out against toxic masculinity would probably be seen as a "beta" or whatever. I doubt most people I know would take me seriously if I ever said something about it, for example.

    The toxic part of it negatively affects everyone to some degree. Even those who seem to benefit/perpetuate it.

  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The idea that men don't have a safe space to talk about it come from privilege. Men have almost all the places to talk about it.

    If men can freely talk about their feelings without judgment then why is toxic masculinity even a problem? Men can talk about their feelings and frustrations so long as they do so in a way approved by toxic masculinity, and anything beyond that is heavily discouraged.

    Sure, maybe there's actually lots of men who are cool and will let other men be emotionally vulnerable to them without judging them. Just like there's probably lots of white guys who aren't racist and men who aren't sexist. The thing is that you don't know who is who until you take a chance to be vulnerable, and if you're wrong you'll regret it.

    Because many men don't push back. We have the power to but we don't. The reason that other groups seek out places where they can vent is because they don't have the power to do so in normal spaces. If you're a white guy and someone's being shitty about someone's emotions, you can push back against that and that kind of confrontation is a-okay with the concept of white masculinity. If you're a woman or a minority, then confrontation makes people look down on you. You actually have the power to push back against the shitty attitude about emotions and correct it, but a lot of guys don't.

    I'm speaking from my own personal experience, so I don't know how representative this is, but I'd imagine that guys who are hurt the most by toxic masculinity are ones that aren't that traditionally masculine, if that makes any sense. A guy speaking out against toxic masculinity would probably be seen as a "beta" or whatever. I doubt most people I know would take me seriously if I ever said something about it, for example.

    From my experience working industrial jobs, most people don't even know what the word "Beta" means, much less use it in the way that 4Chan, Twitter and Reddit use it

  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The idea that men don't have a safe space to talk about it come from privilege. Men have almost all the places to talk about it.

    If men can freely talk about their feelings without judgment then why is toxic masculinity even a problem? Men can talk about their feelings and frustrations so long as they do so in a way approved by toxic masculinity, and anything beyond that is heavily discouraged.

    Sure, maybe there's actually lots of men who are cool and will let other men be emotionally vulnerable to them without judging them. Just like there's probably lots of white guys who aren't racist and men who aren't sexist. The thing is that you don't know who is who until you take a chance to be vulnerable, and if you're wrong you'll regret it.

    Because many men don't push back. We have the power to but we don't. The reason that other groups seek out places where they can vent is because they don't have the power to do so in normal spaces. If you're a white guy and someone's being shitty about someone's emotions, you can push back against that and that kind of confrontation is a-okay with the concept of white masculinity. If you're a woman or a minority, then confrontation makes people look down on you. You actually have the power to push back against the shitty attitude about emotions and correct it, but a lot of guys don't.

    I'm speaking from my own personal experience, so I don't know how representative this is, but I'd imagine that guys who are hurt the most by toxic masculinity are ones that aren't that traditionally masculine, if that makes any sense. A guy speaking out against toxic masculinity would probably be seen as a "beta" or whatever. I doubt most people I know would take me seriously if I ever said something about it, for example.

    From my experience working industrial jobs, most people don't even know what the word "Beta" means, much less use it in the way that 4Chan, Twitter and Reddit use it

    People who don't investigate this regularly aren't going to have vocabulary for it, but the concept will still exist

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    Yeah, you don't have to know all the MRA vernacular in order to consider the person who speaks up as odd and someone to be socially ostracized for violating the established norms.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Paladin wrote: »
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The idea that men don't have a safe space to talk about it come from privilege. Men have almost all the places to talk about it.

    If men can freely talk about their feelings without judgment then why is toxic masculinity even a problem? Men can talk about their feelings and frustrations so long as they do so in a way approved by toxic masculinity, and anything beyond that is heavily discouraged.

    Sure, maybe there's actually lots of men who are cool and will let other men be emotionally vulnerable to them without judging them. Just like there's probably lots of white guys who aren't racist and men who aren't sexist. The thing is that you don't know who is who until you take a chance to be vulnerable, and if you're wrong you'll regret it.

    Because many men don't push back. We have the power to but we don't. The reason that other groups seek out places where they can vent is because they don't have the power to do so in normal spaces. If you're a white guy and someone's being shitty about someone's emotions, you can push back against that and that kind of confrontation is a-okay with the concept of white masculinity. If you're a woman or a minority, then confrontation makes people look down on you. You actually have the power to push back against the shitty attitude about emotions and correct it, but a lot of guys don't.

    I'm speaking from my own personal experience, so I don't know how representative this is, but I'd imagine that guys who are hurt the most by toxic masculinity are ones that aren't that traditionally masculine, if that makes any sense. A guy speaking out against toxic masculinity would probably be seen as a "beta" or whatever. I doubt most people I know would take me seriously if I ever said something about it, for example.

    From my experience working industrial jobs, most people don't even know what the word "Beta" means, much less use it in the way that 4Chan, Twitter and Reddit use it

    People who don't investigate this regularly aren't going to have vocabulary for it, but the concept will still exist

    The normal term would be "pussy" or something about "manning up" or whatever.

  • Inkstain82Inkstain82 Registered User regular
    I think people might be projecting their own social anxieties and insecurities (and god knows I appreciate those feelings) onto social norms. Men who loudly express opinions and demand change in others, including speaking out against other men, are admired and prized. Loudly expressing your opinion is basically the ultimate masculine trait in our society.

  • IncenjucarIncenjucar VChatter Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    I think people might be projecting their own social anxieties and insecurities (and god knows I appreciate those feelings) onto social norms. Men who loudly express opinions and demand change in others, including speaking out against other men, are admired and prized. Loudly expressing your opinion is basically the ultimate masculine trait in our society.

    Loudly expressing the *correct* opinion.

  • Inkstain82Inkstain82 Registered User regular
    The "correct" opinion in any given group is usually established by a small number of loud, aggressive men.

  • IncenjucarIncenjucar VChatter Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The "correct" opinion in any given group is usually established by a small number of loud, aggressive men.

    Or just men who determine whether or not you get to eat.

  • NyysjanNyysjan FinlandRegistered User regular
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The "correct" opinion in any given group is usually established by a small number of loud, aggressive men.
    Only when the silent ones agree.
    No amount of loud aggressive men is going to turn pink summer dresses into the thing to wear for "manly" men, atleast in the short term.

  • Inkstain82Inkstain82 Registered User regular
    Nyysjan wrote: »
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The "correct" opinion in any given group is usually established by a small number of loud, aggressive men.
    Only when the silent ones agree.
    No amount of loud aggressive men is going to turn pink summer dresses into the thing to wear for "manly" men, atleast in the short term.

    I distinctly remember some of the most popular young men in my high school showing up for halloween in drag. They were widely applauded for their audacity and hilarity, deep in the heart of rural transphobic America.

    Sure, one loud person isn't going to singlehandedly turn deeply held social norms, but I think the effect they have on setting norms within the spectrum of socially acceptable opinion is being understated.

  • IncenjucarIncenjucar VChatter Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    Nyysjan wrote: »
    Inkstain82 wrote: »
    The "correct" opinion in any given group is usually established by a small number of loud, aggressive men.
    Only when the silent ones agree.
    No amount of loud aggressive men is going to turn pink summer dresses into the thing to wear for "manly" men, atleast in the short term.

    I distinctly remember some of the most popular young men in my high school showing up for halloween in drag. They were widely applauded for their audacity and hilarity, deep in the heart of rural transphobic America.

    Sure, one loud person isn't going to singlehandedly turn deeply held social norms, but I think the effect they have on setting norms within the spectrum of socially acceptable opinion is being understated.

    That tends to be done to mock transgender people.. it's audacious because it's considered wrong. Like dressing up like Satan.

This discussion has been closed.