Basket-Brawls,
The Irritable Male Syndrome,
Torture at Abu Ghraib and the End of Civilization
By Jed Diamond©
2004
Night after
night on every news and sports report we were bombarded with images.
Ben Wallace of the Detroit Pistons shoving Indiana Pacer’s Ron
Artest. Players from both teams throwing punches. Artest charging
into the stands after a fan who had thrown a cup of beer on him.
Steven
Jackson and Jermaine O’Neal assaulting fans who came on the court.
Players being spit on and dowsed with beer and soft drinks as they
left the arena. Males, all males, with fists raised and aggressive
eyes looking for a fight.
Everyone
wants to know what’s going on here?” Are these symptoms of
individual rage or a rip in the fabric of civilized society? Is the
problem with sports or with the larger community?
There was a time when even continued
stress and resentment wouldn't have caused the kind of ugliness that
was seen at the Palace of Auburn Hills, when it wouldn't have
occurred to fans to attack players, and players would have
suppressed their anger when taunted by angry fans. That was before
the standards for acceptable behavior changed, before it was common
for guys to issue obscene gestures to opposing players, before we
began chanting "Bull----!" when a referee makes a call we don't
like.
Violence has always been a part of sports, but it seems to be
escalating and changing character. I notice a kind of desperation
among the coaches, players, and fans. These don’t seem to be manly
men with excessive testosterone flowing, but rather frightened men
who act like they are fighting for their lives. Rather than sleek
panther’s hunting for the next kill that will feed their families,
they act more like starving, garbage-dump mongrels, attacking each
other over a dried out chicken bone with a little gristle left on
it.
Irritable Male Syndrome
We see this kind of impotent rage all around us and we’re not just
talking about sports.
We flip each other off in the car more often, fire off angry
e-mails, and yell at our wives and children. What’s going on here?
After 40 year’s of clinical experience and results from a research
study with nearly 10,000 males, we have discovered a new problem
affecting millions of men and those closest to them. It’s called
The Irritable Male Syndrome or IMS. IMS can be defined as a state
of hypersensitivity, anxiety, frustration, and anger that occurs in
males and is associated with biochemical changes, hormonal
fluctuations, stress, and loss of male identity.
“IMS is incredibly common—up to 30 percent of men experience it,”
says Christopher Steidle, M.D., clinical associate professor of
urology at the Indiana University School of Medicine in
Indianapolis. Based on the results of our survey of males between
the ages of 10 and 75, Dr. Steidle may be underestimating the
problem. 91% of the males surveyed said they experienced some
degree of irritability within the past 2 weeks. 40% said they were
often or nearly always irritable. From the locker-room to the
bedroom, our relationships are becoming increasingly mean and
nasty. You can see if you or someone you care about is suffering
from IMS by visiting our website at
www.TheIrritableMale.com.
One woman described what it is like living with an IMS male. “It’s
like
being tied to a primed stick of dynamite. One minute he is sweet
and kind and the next he is evil, angry, and mean. He can get so
angry over nothing. Sometimes just saying ‘good morning’ sets him
off. At other times he gets angry if I don't say ‘good
morning’. I never know where I stand. It feels like I’m living
with a rabid dog one minute and a priest the next. I never know who
he is from second to second.”
A married
man describes his situation this way. “I’m sure I’m not the only man
who feels like he’s not having sex with his wife. She just doesn’t
seem very interested no matter how romantic I try and be. But it
isn’t just sexual attention that I miss, it’s just plain attention,
admiration, and praise. I don’t have to be her knight in shining
armor, but I would like to feel that I’m special. She doesn’t seem
to need me and rarely do I feel she really wants me. There’s a rage
that is building in me that is frightening. I worry that I might
hurt my wife and family. Sometimes I think the best way to protect
them would be for me to check out.”
Irritable Male
Syndrome and Low Testosterone
Kay
Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., is professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine and one of the world’s experts on mood
disorders. In her exceptionally fine book An Unquiet Mind,
she talks openly about her own struggles with mental illness and her
road to recovery. She offers a description of her personal
experience that many who suffer from IMS will readily understand:
“You’re
irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and
demanding, and no reassurance is ever enough. You’re frightened,
and you’re frightening, and ‘you’re not at all like yourself but
will be soon,’ but you know you won’t.” Jamison correctly
recognizes the relationship between fear that is evoked in others by
violent behavior and the fear that is occurring inside the person
who is angry and aggressive.
Over the
years I have treated violent men, I have come to see that underneath
their anger and aggression is fear of losing what is most precious
to them—their feelings of self-esteem and manhood. For men, a key
contributor to our maleness is the testosterone that circulates
through our blood stream. Theresa Crenshaw, M.D., author of The
Alchemy of Love and Lust calls testosterone, the “young Marlon
Brando” hormone. “It is sexual, sensual, alluring, dark, with a
dangerous undertone.” She goes on to say that “it is also our ‘warmon,’
triggering aggression, competitiveness, and even violence. Testy
is a fitting term.”
The image
of football players working themselves up before a game so they can
be monsters on the field is a strong one. I remember seeing
pictures of defensive linemen beating their heads against their
lockers to get ready to “kill the quarterback.” You can almost feel
the testosterone rising. Many football players, as well body
builders and other sports figures who want bigger muscles and more
strength, have taken large doses of testosterone-like steroids to
artificially pump themselves up. “Roid-rage”, though more media
hype that reality, can occur to some men who dose themselves with
too much testosterone.
However,
what few realized until recently was that irritability, anger, and
violence could result from too little testosterone as well as
too much. In early 2002, a colleague sent me a copy of an
article by Dr. Gerald A. Lincoln, a researcher in Edinburgh,
Scotland. In the article he titled the irritable male syndrome,
he described what he observed in the animals following the
withdrawal of testosterone.
In the
introduction to his paper he said that the
“irritability-anxiety-depression syndromes associated with
withdrawal of sex steroid hormones are well recognized in the
female.” They are, he noted, connected with changes associated with
the ovarian cycle and include premenstrual syndrome, postnatal
depression, and menopause. “The occurrence of a potentially similar
behavioral syndrome in males following withdrawal of testosterone
(T) has received less attention.
In my
previous research on andropause, or male menopause, I observed these
same symptoms in men when their testosterone levels dropped as they
got older. I found that many men became nervous, depressed,
fatigued, irritable, and lost sexual function. It’s clear that
violence can result when we try to keep testosterone levels
artificially high or when they fall below healthy levels.
Disrespect,
Paranoia and Violence
We can
learn a great deal about what causes violence in our world by
talking to the most violent men who are locked up in our prisons. I
worked with many of these men over the years. It took a long time
for them to overcome their understandable distrust of others, but I
learned some surprising things about how they saw themselves and the
world. Men I saw in prison said they felt like robots or zombies,
that they felt empty inside. Although they never voiced it, they
seemed terrified that others would find out that they were literally
straw men, easily blown away. To counter their feelings of
impotence and inadequacy many would bulk up their bodies and fight
anyone who showed any signs of disrespect.
James
Gilligan, M.D., author of Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its
Causes, says “the word ‘disrespect’ is so central in the
vocabulary, moral value system and psychodynamics of these
chronically violent men that they have abbreviated it into the slang
term, ‘he dis’ed me.’”
We can
begin to understand the relationship between the need for
self-respect and violence by listening to the words of some of the
inmates that Gilligan interviewed. When asked about his behavior in
prison that put his life at risk one inmate replied, “Death is a
positive in this situation not a negative, because I’m so tired of
all this bullshit that death seems thrilling by comparison…. I don’t
have any feelings or wants, but I’ve got to have my self-respect,
and I’ve declared war on the whole world till I get it!”
In summing
up over 30 year’s experience working with violent men Gilligan
concluded, “I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not
provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated,
disrespected and ridiculed, and that did not represent the attempt
to prevent or undo this ‘loss of face’—no matter how severe the
punishment, even if it includes death.”
African-Americans have had to fight hard over the years to develop
and maintain self respect in a country that is still quite racist.
There is clearly a racial element in the taunts and badmouthing that
goes on as basketball fans demonstrate their displeasure at the
behavior of the players. It wasn’t just a “fan” that threw beer on
a basketball “player.” It was a white man expressing his rage and
contempt for a black man. This shouldn’t surprise us in a sport
where 85% of the players are black men making millions of dollars
and 90% of the fans are white working-class men.
The Destruction
of the Twin Towers, The War in Iraq, and the Torture at Abu Ghraib
With humor,
and more than a little insight, comedian Elayne Boosler says, “When
women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade
another country.” One of the recurring images that is burned into
the mind of every American is seeing the planes crash into each of
the Twin Towers, men and women jumping to their deaths, and the
Towers collapsing into rubble. Symbols and images shape our reality
and can propel our actions.
Many have
given their interpretations of the symbolic meaning of what occurred
on September 11, 2001 and its implication for our future. I offer
my own. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the Twin Towers
of the World Trade Center as phallic symbols. Their size and shape
say something about male imagery. At the time of their completion
in 1973, the World Trade Center towers were the two tallest
buildings in the world. The Towers were also symbols of the
all-American male businessman, the biggest economy in the most
prosperous country on the face of the planet.
Symbolically, the destruction of the phallic towers represents the
destruction of the power of traditional masculinity. Men of my
generation were taught that a man must be:
Although
most women have shed the demands that they act like ladies and avoid
being seen as “masculine,” this has been more difficult for males.
The term “tom boy” does not have nearly the negative connotation
that is attached to the word “sissy.” When our phallic Towers went
down, core symbols of traditional masculinity went with them.
Traditional males with insecure egos felt they must regain their
manhood at any cost.
There are
many reasons we chose to go to war in Iraq, not the least of which
was to control the last easily available oil reserves on the
planet. A less obvious reason is that we are trying to recapture
our lost manhood. The words of the prison inmate I referred to
earlier makes me think of our President. “I’ve
got to have my self-respect, and I’ve declared war on the whole
world till I get it!” The problem is that there are a
lot of men like the President and manhood will never be found
fighting an endless war against shadowy enemies. The enemy is
within, not in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, or North Korea.
Just as
children who have been abused, shamed, and humiliated often
perpetuate the abuse when they become adults, leaders who feel
emasculated often abuse other innocents. This is what happened in
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The government did everything it could
to cover up what happened, until the pictures started to come out.
We were shocked to see our young soldiers smiling and giving the
thumbs up as prisoners were tortured. We were horrified to see men
with hoods over their heads and electrodes attached to their
bodies. We couldn’t believe these actions were being carried out by
our own government.
In the era
of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one
of the world’s most deadly prisons. Torture was common, executions
occurred, and detainees were forced to live in vile conditions.
Although we never found the weapons of mass destruction that we were
told was the reason for the war, the President told us it was good
we invaded Iraq. We needed to get rid of Saddam Hussein because of
the horrible deeds he committed.
Now we were
finding out that our own leaders were giving the orders to commit
unspeakable acts. In his book, Chain of Command: The Road from
9/11 to Abu Ghraib, Pulitizer Prize winning author Seymour M.
Hersh reported the findings of Major General Antonio M. Taguba who
had been sent to the prison to find out what had happened. Hersh
was able to get a copy of the fifty-three-page report that was not
meant for public release.
Taguba
found that between October and December 2003 there were numerous
instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu
Ghraib. Some of the abuse was obviously sexual in nature and meant
to degrade and humiliate the Iraqi prisoners. Taguba’s report
listed some of these acts:
Pouring
cold water on naked detainees; threatening male detainees with rape;
sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom
stick; forcing men to masturbate in front of each other; forcing men
to lie naked on each other. Such dehumanization is horrible in any
culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts
are against Islamic law, and it is humiliating for men to be naked
in front of other men. According to Bernard Haykel, a professor of
Middle Eastern studies at New York University, “Being put on top of
each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each
other—it’s all a form of torture.”
When the
phallic Towers fell, the leading male of America had to make someone
pay. The fact that he was re-elected suggests to me that many other
men in America also felt a loss of male identity and sought to
reclaim it by making other men feel the same humiliation we felt.
When will it end? Who will stop the cycle of abuse?
The
Future of the Masculine Principle and the Future of the World
“When
ecologists find a predictable life-span of a generation separating
us from total extinction, it would seem that we have a duty to
search for another interpretation of mankind’s life story.” These
are the words of Vine Deloria, Jr., from his book God is Red.
Deloria is a leading Native American scholar, whose research,
writings, and teaching have encompassed history, law, religious
studies, and political science. He is the former executive director
of the National Congress of American Indians, a retired professor of
political science at the University of Arizona, and a retired
professor emeritus of history at the University of Colorado.
So, what is
the dominant interpretation of mankind’s story? Daniel Quinn, in
his book, Ishmael, describes the story this way. “We learned
it in school. We learned it in church. We’d know it even if we
never went to school or to church, because every news story, every
magazine article, every book is written as part of that story. It
is written with that story as background. You could learn it just
watching television commercials. The story is about the conquest of
the world. It’s about man gaining control over his environment.
It’s about man rising above nature and mastering it as a workman
masters a tool. It’s about man reshaping the earth to his own
purposes.”
It’s a
story dominated by an elite group of white male leaders who are
guided by their interpretation of the directions they receive from a
white male god. It’s a story that has been with us for nearly
10,000 years. It’s also a story, as Deloria suggests, that is
leading us down a path of extinction. Quinn offers an image about
our dogged acceptance of this story and its ultimate end. He
described a man who felt he had discovered the secrets of flight.
He climbed up to the top of the highest building in the world.
Perhaps it was one of the Towers. He jumps from the top and begins
flapping his arms. As he passes the 50th floor on his
way down, he smiles and says to himself, “So far, so good.”
People who
are willing to see the truth of our situation recognize that
industrial civilization is not sustainable. It never was. We will
find a new way to exist on the planet or we will die. It’s that
simple. Our current “wars on terror” are like fighting over deck
chairs on the Titanic. They are our addictions to keep us from
thinking the unthinkable, that the ship of civilization is sinking.
Like the
Titanic, civilization was supposed to be the biggest and best there
ever was. The bad news is that what we call civilization is coming
to an end. The good news is that there is something better on the
other side. Daniel Quinn is one of many visionaries who is
beginning to help us see what that might look like. In his book,
Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure, he offers
a number of guidelines. One which ties well with Deloria and many
others who have come to recognize the wisdom of indigenous people
throughout the world is the need to abandon the hierarchy that is
the cornerstone of civilization and return to the egalitarian
network that is at the heart of tribal living. We were born into
the tribe and it is the tribe to which we must return.
“The
tribal life and no other is the gift of natural selection to
humanity,” says Quinn. It is to humanity what pack life is to
wolves, pod life is to whales, and hive life is to bees. After
three or four million years of human evolution, it alone emerged as
the social organization that works for people. People like the
tribal organization because it works equally well for all members.”
Trying to
live the hierarchical life of civilization has had as much long term
success as bees trying to live like whales. It’s only our big
brains and ability to adapt to the most horrendous conditions that
has kept us from recognizing the futility of trying to live a kind
of life that humans are not built to endure.
What we are
seeing is an old way of life that was never sustainable going down
like the Twin Towers. Some will do anything they can to keep that
way of life alive. They are heavily invested in its succeeding.
These people will lie, cheat, steal, and kill. They’ll do anything
except admit that there is a better way to live. Others will get
off the Titanic, get into small boats of their own, link in with
other like-minded people, and will go back to the future—back to the
tribal way of life that is our human birthright. The bad news is
that we have been living out of harmony with nature for eight or ten
thousand years. The good news is that we all lived in harmony with
nature for three or four million years before that and there are
pockets of people throughout the world who still remember the old
ways. We live in interesting times. Let’s get busy. We have a lot
to do and it’s going to be great fun doing it.
Jed Diamond is the author of seven books, including the best seller
Male Menopause (Sourcebooks, 1997), which has now been translated
into 16 foreign languages. His forthcoming book is entitled "The
Irritable Male Syndrome" (Rodale, 2004). He has lent his expertise
to such programs as "The View" with Barbara Walters and "Good
Morning America" with Charles Gibson. See his Web site at menalive.com for more valuable information on living long and well.
The best way to reach Jed is by e-mail:
Jed@menalive.com.
He also has an online newsletter and information through his web site:
http://www.menalive.com.
