Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior (47 page)

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Authors: James McBride Dabbs,Mary Godwin Dabbs

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BOOK: Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior
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her point of view, ''I get so tired of trains and trucks and guns and penises! I wish I had a little girl!"
The beneficial effects of belonging to a group, the increased tendency to defer to others and behave oneself, may be more difficult when there are more men around. Vigilante groups and street gangs are examples of especially rough predominantly male groups. The absolute number of men is important, and the ratio of men to women may be even more important.
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In places where the army is in training, there will be more men. At a time when men have been killed in war, there will be more women. On the frontier, where settlements are sparse, work is hard, and danger is high, there will be fewer women than men. The writer Muriel Spark, living in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), in 1937, said, "In the colony, there was one white woman to three white men, which led to violent situationssometimes murderamong the men."
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The combination of too many men and too little control leads to violence. The historian David Courtwright writes that throughout history, whenever there have been large numbers of "loose" men around, not caught up in social relationships and obligations, there has been trouble.
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He believes that much of the violence in America comes from the frontier history of the nation. On a frontier there is usually a culture of honor, in which a man's reputation depends on his willingness to fight to defend himself. There are many single men, much alcohol use, and few religious and civic activities. Tendencies to engage in violence, including violence related to testosterone, are given free rein. Violence is historically high among men returning from war, unless care is taken to bring them back into the life of the nation, as was done by the G.I. Bill after World War II.
Men's violence toward other men flows over into violence toward women. Men are more violent toward women in cultures where there is war, interpersonal violence, and an ideology of male toughness.
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This pattern brings to mind the relationship between sports and sexual violence. College records show more sexual assault by male athletes than by other students, highest among athletes in team sports as previously mentioned, but high even among those in individual sports.
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Athletes have the double problem of being high in testosterone and being
 
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involved in competitive and often violent sports, where controls on their behavior are loose. An interesting natural experiment is working its way out today in China, where more boys than girls are being born. It is estimated that within twenty-five years there will be two million more men than women entering the marriage market in China.
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One wonders how much restraint there will be among these "undomesticated" men.
"But We Have Free Will"
Mary sometimes sleeps with a small radio under her pillow. Sounds from the radio blend with her leftover thoughts of the day to provide her with entertaining dreams. Sometimes she remembers bits from news reports and late-night talk shows, which she tells me about in the morning. One such item is appropriate here: a woman called a talk show because she had thoughts of killing her child, and it worried her. The impatient talk jockey said, "Come on, now. I know this happens in the animal kingdom. A new horse will take over a herd and kick the mares to make them abort, so he can father his own children. Animals act like that. We all have those impulses. But we have free will! We can do better than that!"
Mary wondered whether the caller was suffering from postpartum depression. It seemed to Mary that free will wouldn't help the caller much until she got medical treatment and help with child care. Effectively treating postpartum depression, like treating hypothyroidism and diabetes, starts with understanding how hormones work within the human body.
Although high testosterone is not usually a condition that requires medical treatment, understanding how it works is a first step toward directing its energy and focus toward prosocial goals. A high-testosterone student I know has told me how hard he has to work to avoid misbehaving. In the past he was delinquent, but now he is law-abiding. He has many tattoosfrom ferocious fighting dragons on his back to a friendly Kermit the Frog on the calf of his legthat chart the changes he has made in his life. He runs his own business now and leads a steady life with a girlfriend to whom he is faithful. Even though he is happy with
 
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his present life, he knows he could backslide and put his relationship with his girlfriend at risk. He handles temptation by focusing his attention on positive activities and telling himself to behave. His strategy for dealing with the antisocial aspects of high testosterone combines understanding and will, the strategy Patrick Henry used to deal with the threat of war. Henry said, "I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and provide for it."
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Thomas Henry Huxley said, "To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall."
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Understanding hormones, too, provides us with a better grasp of the richness of our lives, and beyond that, provides us with practical guidance on how to control our behavior. Sociobiologists like E. O. Wilson believe that understanding the relationship between our animal qualities and our behavior frees us to improve our behavior, similar to the way that understanding the relationship between tubercule bacilli and disease freed us to find effective treatment for tuberculosis. Knowledge of chemistry makes anesthesia possible, knowledge of DNA makes treating genetic diseases possible, and knowledge of nutrition makes a healthy diet more likely. Beyond the medical area, knowledge of our biological limits has encouraged us to transcend these limits by building rockets to fly into space, submarines to swim to the ocean floor, and computers to calculate sums imponderable to human minds. Knowledge of the innate reactions of others lets people know that attacking them will be dangerous and smiling at them will be rewarded. Knowledge of the weather tells us to prepare for a hurricane, and knowledge of heavy traffic tells us to seek a road less traveled. Free will, like art appreciation in Huxley's natural gallery, works better in partnership with knowledge than with ignorance.
In a smoothly functioning society there are many restraints on antisocial behavior, and as my high-testosterone student discovered for himself, some of the most effective are internal. The things we do to control ourselves we call free will, which is what it feels like, but it varies to a remarkable degree with our background, training, and environment. We control ourselves with skills we learn from our families and our communities.
These controls especially come from parents, who teach children
 
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how to behave. Parents sometimes worry about restricting the masculinity of their sons. They shouldn't worry. With a million years of evolution behind them, most boys will be masculine no matter what their parents do. If they are not masculine, it is more likely because of physiology than parenting. General Douglas MacArthur's mother wanted to guide him so carefully that she moved to West Point to watch over him when he was a cadet. MacArthur is not the only manly hero who had an "overprotective" mother.
When families are fragmented and parents spend little time with their children, formal schooling becomes more important. Programs like Headstart take on special value. Lynn Curtis, President of the Milton Eisenhower Foundation and lead author of a thirty-year update of a report by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, said, "Headstart is one of the most successful crime prevention programs around."
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He reported that Headstart decreases drug use and criminal behavior, and it increases the odds of finishing school and finding employment. Edward Zigler, the founder of Headstart, believes Headstart and similar programs are successful largely because they engage the parents' attention and interest in the children.
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Headstart integrates parents, teachers, and students into a functioning social group with shared goals and values; it sets the stage for the process of socialization, civilizing masculinity and femininity and transforming them into manhood and womanhood.
The sociologist Émile Durkheim described socialization as binding the individual to the group, "by making his society an integral part of him, so that he can no more separate himself from it than from himself."
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Socialization is particularly important if the raw masculine qualities associated with testosterone are to be transformed into the protective, altruistic, and even heroic aspects of manhood. Manhood draws upon the qualities of testosterone and masculinity tamed. Male human beings have to learn to be men. They have to come under the influence of social values. Females have to learn to be women and learn prosocial values, too, but most women don't have to work as hard as men to curb violent tendencies. Many men carry within them, more or less socialized and under control, a potential for violent destruction. The potential for violence, along with other qualities related to testosterone, including persistence, boldness, competitiveness, fearlessness,
 
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and risk taking, helped create the modern world. These qualities are essential human characteristics, but they need to be held in check. Given the social conflicts and danger of violence today, we may need to spend more time developing traits and skills, including cooperativeness and empathy, that come more naturally to most women than to men.
This final chapter has described the need to control testosterone to keep it from doing too much damage. After thinking about the matter, Mary reached a conclusion about testosterone. She said, "It's 'guystuff,' and guystuff seems to be about building stuff, fixing stuff, and blowing stuff up." She went on to say, "A mother's job is to encourage the building and fixing, and discourage the blowing up." We learned the importance of controlling human nature while we were raising our two sons. We are proud to say they grew up to be fairly well civilized, even the one who lives part-time in the jungle. Civilizing is a job for fathers and mothers. Delinquent behaviors are more common among children raised by one parent alone, even allowing for differences in income and education.
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I suspect that absent parents have an especially bad effect on high-testosterone children, either boys or girls, because the rambunctious nature of these children demands more guidance and control.
Without the civilizing effects of mothers, fathers, laws, customs, and societies, we fall quickly into a savage state.
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King Arthur's polite court at Camelot controlled the wilder impulses of his knights, and when the court began to fall apart, his knights looked forward to the freedom to go to war again. Sir Bors was enthusiastic about the prospect. He said, "No offense to you ladies, but this time it will be a man's world, absolutely uninspired, unrefined, and unencumbered. Please God!"
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It was his testosterone talking, and the royal court had been restraining its effects.
Fortunately for the citizens of modern democratic societies, it doesn't take a royal court to restrain the more rambunctious effects of testosterone. Loving families, good schools, and stable communities can channel the energy of the Sir Borses still among us into positive activities. Trial lawyers, athletes, actors, construction workers, soldiers, and heroes still have jobs to do.
 
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EPILOGUE
THE CIRCLE
The Secret
Robert Frost was a farmer, a poet, and a seeker of truth. He was skeptical about how much he could learn. He believed he would always circle the truth and never exactly find it. He wrote a two-line poem about a children's game, called "The Secret Sits." It says, "We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows."
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This poem describes children at play. It also describes scientists at work. Science does not always advance steadily, bit by bit, with scientists busy in their laboratories, carefully doing their experiments and filling in details, according to a schedule. Scientists often advance erratically, with pauses and leaps of faith. They are like the children in the poem moved to a rock pile, inching their way along and leaping to new ledges, hanging by their fingers as they steady themselves. They cannot be sure of the best way of moving across the rocks. Their friends watch, waiting for a fall, thinking they could probably do it better themselves.
Scientists advance by making guesses. They get hunches and try new ideas. They circle the truth. They occasionally leap and scramble, filling in the details later. Sometimes they slip and fall. It is a while before they know they've taken the right path. The best they can do at any moment is to show that the facts fit their theories, that they are not obviously wrong. They can never prove with absolute certainty that they are right. They can expect that sooner or later other scientists will come along, with new findings and new ways of looking at them, and others will think the new ways make more sense.

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