Basket-Brawls, The Irritable Male Syndrome,
and the End of Civilization - I
Night after night on every news and sports report
we were bombarded with images. Ben Wallace of the
Detroit Pistons shoving Indiana Pacers 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 ONeal 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 whats 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 dont 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
panthers 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 were 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. Whats going on here? After 40
years 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. Its 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 commonup 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. Its 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 Im 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.
Im sure Im not the only man who
feels like hes not having sex with his wife.
She just doesnt seem very interested no
matter how romantic I try and be. But it isnt
just sexual attention that I miss, its just
plain attention, admiration, and praise. I
dont have to be her knight in shining armor,
but I would like to feel that Im special. She
doesnt seem to need me and rarely do I feel
she really wants me. Theres 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 worlds 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:
Youre irritable and paranoid and
humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding,
and no reassurance is ever enough. Youre
frightened, and youre frightening, and
youre not at all like yourself but will
be soon, but you know you wont.
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 themtheir 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. Its 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
dised 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 Im so tired
of all this bullshit that death seems thrilling by
comparison
. I dont have any feelings or
wants, but Ive got to have my self-respect,
and Ive declared war on the whole world till
I get it!
In summing up over 30 years 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 faceno
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 wasnt 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 shouldnt 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 doesnt 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:
- Physically strong
- Cool and stoic
- Economically powerful
- Aggressive
- Outspoken
- Rugged
- Tough
- Protective
- Logical
- Responsible
- Dominant
- Not a woman
This last trait was the one most males fight
against their whole lives. Much of our social
discomfort with homosexuality is male fear of being
seen as less than manly. When I was
growing up, the worst thing you could say about a
guy was to accuse him of acting like a
girl. Anything feminine was to be
shunned and males were taught that a man must not
be:
- Soft
- Passive
- Receptive
- Apologetic
- Giving
- Feeling
- Nurturing
- Caring
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. Ive got to have my
self-respect, and Ive 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
couldnt 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 worlds
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. Tagubas 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 otherits 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 mankinds
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
mankinds story? Daniel Quinn, in his book,
Ishmael, describes the story this way. We
learned it in school. We learned it in church.
Wed 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. Its about man gaining
control over his environment. Its about man
rising above nature and mastering it as a workman
masters a tool. Its about man reshaping the
earth to his own purposes.
Its 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. Its a story that has been
with us for nearly 10,000 years. Its 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.
Its 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: Humanitys 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. Its 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. Theyll 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 futureback 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. Lets get busy. We have a lot to do and
its going to be great fun doing it.
©2010 Jed
Diamond
See Books,
Issues
+ Suicide
* * *
Wealth can't buy health, but health can buy
wealth. - Henry David Thoreau

Jed Diamond
is the internationally best-selling author of nine
books including Male
Menopause,
The
Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing. The 4 Key Causes
of Depression and
Aggression. and
Mr.
Mean: Saving Your Relationship from the Irritable
Male Syndrome. His
upcoming book, Tapping Power: A Mans Guide to
Eliminating Pain, Stress, Anger, Depression and
Other Ills Using the Revolutionary Tools of Energy
Psychology will be available next year. For over 38
years he has been a leader in the field of men's
health. He is a member of the International
Scientific Board of the World Congress on
Mens Health and has been on the Board of
Advisors of the Mens Health Network since its
founding in 1992. His work has been featured in
major newspapers throughout the United States
including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall
Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA
Today. He has been featured on more than 1,000
radio and T.V. programs including The View with
Barbara Walters, Good Morning America, Inside
Edition, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, To Tell the Truth,
Extra, Leeza, Geraldo, and Joan Rivers. He also did
a nationally televised special on Male Menopause
for PBS. He looks forward to your feedback.
E-Mail.
You can visit his website at www.menalive.com


Contact
Us |
Disclaimer
| Privacy
Statement
Menstuff®
Directory
Menstuff® is a registered trademark of Gordon
Clay
©1996-2023, Gordon Clay
|