Behaving Badly by Eden Collinsworth

Author:Eden Collinsworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

12

TESTOSTERONE: MORALITY’S ENEMY, AS WELL AS ITS HERO

Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth.

—George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

By reviewing data on shipwreck survivors, Swedish economists were able to disprove the maritime code of conduct that women and children should be the first evacuated from a sinking ship. According to the head counts, it turns out that women and children had the lowest survival rate, while ships’ crews and captains—having chosen the “every man for himself” approach to morality—fared best.

It doesn’t make sense, I told myself, determined that it not be true. Men have started wars and abdicated crowns for the sake of women. Why would they not ensure that women were the first on a lifeboat?

—

NONE OF IT squared with what I knew of testosterone, or, more accurately, what I knew to be the implications of testosterone, some of which I witnessed in my son’s development. As a little boy with no toy guns made available, he resorted to a steel mixing bowl from the kitchen as a helmet. Clasping his small hands together—one shaped as a gun, the other used to steady it—he would go on imaginary shooting sprees after designating his closet an internment camp for the cat. It was the sheer enjoyment of his maleness that was so obviously gratifying to him. Thinking back, I realize that the enemies he imagined killing with an imaginary gun (and, at closer range, in imaginary hand-to-hand combat) were all male. Women and girls were beside the point, and so were not imagined.

Is it that men are more prone to glory than gallantry?

I won’t speculate whether morality differs according to gender, but I will make room for the historical fact that where there are men, their assertion is inevitable and confrontation is likely.

Greeks and Romans shared the belief that combat should be honored; some of the most celebrated and conspicuous among their citizens were warriors. Japan ushered in the samurai and bushidō, a code of honorable behavior, to a degree, still rooted in the moral conduct for much of Japanese society. Landed aristocrats in Europe were, in origin, invaders. In fact, the twelfth century saw continuous warfare in Europe. There can be only so much killing before its sheer numbers require a hedge against barbarism. Italy—made anxious with the ever-increasing body count in its neighboring countries—embraced the concept of honor for the sake of self-preservation. Scienza cavalleresca was considered by the Italians the motivational force behind civilized and moral behavior for nobles. It was also a precursor to the chivalric code of conduct, which dictated conventions on the battlefield until its definition expanded to incorporate other aspects of behavior, including a gentleman’s moral duties toward women.

A man is never too old to be humiliated by a woman. And while it is true that women bring out the best in men, they are just as capable of bringing out the worst.

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