For a society striving for equal opportunity and freedom to act as one pleases, common values have fallen into the pit of unequivocal standards. The general characteristics of male and female behavior are no longer held on the same platform and terms like “hyper-masculinity” are blacklisted while feminism seems to be on an exponential growth curve.
However, masculinity and femininity are two sides of the same coin. If feminism does not have a tipping point, masculinity cannot have one either.
The female sex has been stifled beneath an overbearing sentiment of male superiority for a large portion of American history but there is such a thing as overcorrection. When the feminism movement started, it was based on equal opportunity.
Candy-apple-red fingernails folded away in firm fists rose as the most admirable Rosie Riveters cheered on the inalienable rights of women. Fast forward and the feminist movement has made well-deserved headway from suffrage, to breaking through female objectification, to equal job opportunities.
Now in 2019, the movement has reached its fourth wave and has grown curious since its original drift; the tides have turned. Men are the ones facing suppression.
Regardless of gender identity notions, it is indisputable how individuals born with XX or XY chromosomes have certain biological trends indicative of their future mannerisms. Glands are secreting hormones like estrogen and testosterone that predispose the body to act a certain kind of way.
Scientific knowledge is not an opinion—this is science. These predispositions are still beneath the veil of voluntary and meditated action, but it is a biological tendency—like many other things—the 21st-century advocates tolerance for.
Unless hypocrisy in the philosophical perspective is something suddenly admirable, it does not make sense to cherry-pick how and where logic is applied. If something is out of someone’s control, like sexual preference, people cannot help certain behaviors.
A study titled “Testosterone and Aggressive Behavior in Man” found, though at varying levels, testosterone manifested itself through a number of coined “hypermasculine” characteristics. Physical and verbal aggressiveness, dominance behaviors and competitiveness were included. The study stated, “testosterone plays a significant role in the arousal of these behavioral manifestations.”
Jonathan Gottschall, English professor at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, released a book in 2015 titled “The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch.”
His last line in the book remarks, “if this sounds insane, if it sounds like I am captive to a barbaric version of masculinity, I plead guilty. My only defense is I am not alone. As we’ll soon see, this barbaric masculinity is typical of our species, not just our culture.”
Unless society is content to trade a football tackle for a hug or to stop letting women go braless, people are going to have to accept some members of the male sex are biologically built to be more aggressive, sexually inclined and competitive than the female sex.
However, this is not a means to dismiss rape or excessive public violence. Such concepts are universally inappropriate and therefore cannot be used as an argument against hyper-masculinity; they are not exclusive.
However, let men scuffle if they please. Let them be assertive. Current attitudes are too often formatted in a way resembling an unevenly spread peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It is not sensible to apply to one side what is not applied to the other. If there is one thing women have learned from feminist activism, it is how to make a proper sandwich.