https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/712484
"Boys will be boys. And so will monkeys. At least that’s the impression one
gets from popular depictions of the relationship between masculinity and
violence, which have spread like weeds in recent years. Cherry-picked findings
from studies of nonhuman primates provide fodder for “biobabble,” the
marshaling of pseudoscientific explanations for behavior that equate gun-toting
soldiers, say, with border-guarding chimpanzees (see Gutmann, Nelson, and
Fuentes 2021). The relentless proliferation of research on testosterone,
prehistory, and the supposed differences between men’s and women’s brains adds
other ingredients to the mix. Biobabble has been given a respectable face in
best sellers by elite scholars like Steven Pinker (2012) and Richard W.
Wrangham (2019), who draw on archaeological events and primate studies to
present people in simple societies, past and present, as in urgent need of
domestication. But it has not stopped there. The naturalness of male violence
justifies everything from the claims of men’s rights defenders to modern
policing; the powers that be are the only thing saving us from a life that is
nasty, brutish, and short. In the age of Me Too, human nature once again has
come to the rescue of the status quo.
As Matthew Gutmann, Robin G. Nelson, and Agustín Fuentes point out in their
illuminating introduction to this special issue, when it comes to masculinity,
maleness, and violence, we are facing an epidemic of errors. Anthropologists
have for the most part been silent on the misleading claims being made. That
is, until now. From March 15 to 21, 2019, a group of 17 biological
anthropologists, archaeologists, medical anthropologists, and cultural
anthropologists, along with a research neurologist, gathered in Sintra,
Portugal, to discuss the problem. They developed a shared tool kit on the basis
of their research on a broad range of topics: from the behavioral ecology of
primates, to the bioarchaeology of early empires and small-scale societies, to
the necropolitics that leads to slow death for people who don’t adhere to
gender norms. The participants dined together, debated together, and, in the
course of five days, arrived at a shared understanding of the complexity of
male violence—an understanding that discounted neither the affordances of human
bodies, in all their variety, nor the importance of cultural values and social
institutions in determining human behavior. Neither masculinity nor violence
emerged from this symposium meaning just one thing."
Via Muse, who wrote "Fascinating introduction to a body of research about,
largely, colonialism and toxic masculinity."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
