Meg DeJong - Gentleman or Beast Response

          This semester, I’m taking a psychology class called Psych Disorders and Dysfunctions. In class, we’ve talked on several occasions about the DSM V, which is due to come out in 2013. The DSM stands for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and is published by the American Psychological Association. The DSM is used by millions of people to diagnosis and treat psychological disorders. Which is why it’s so disturbing that in the fifth edition of the DSM, they considered including something called Paraphilic Coercive Disorder. The symptoms for this disorder are as follows: “Over a period of at least six months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies or sexual urges focused on sexual coercion,” and “The person is distressed or impaired by these attractions, or has sought sexual stimulation from forcing sex on three or more non-consenting persons on separate occasions.” Essentially, Paraphilic Coercive Disorder is a disorder that defines a rapist.
I was really disturbed and upset when I learned in my psychology class that they even considered putting this in the DSM, and was reminded of it when reading “Gentleman or Beast?”. Bordo discusses our society’s continuing belief that men are incapable of controlling their sexual urges, not by any fault of their own, but because this is how nature made them. In particular, one thing that really struck me was Bordo’s discussion of “victim feminism” and the belief some people have that our society needs to “stop blaming men for date rape and sexual harassment and start acknowledging women’s active, initiating sexual role.” Overall, it seems to me like our society is always trying to let men off the hook, whether it be by diagnosing them with a mental disorder or by believing that it’s really women’s fault that they are the victims of rape and sexual assault.
One thing I found very interesting was how Bordo placed masculinity in a historical context. Currently, as Bordo discussed, many people claim that men are naturally prone to violence, are highly sexually charged, and lack the ability to control their sexual urges by nature. Essentially, our society seems wrapped up in the notion that men are driven by testosterone and nothing else. However, Bordo points out that in past periods of Western history, it was actually women, not men, who were considered highly sexual and unable to control their sexual urges. Considering this, it doesn’t make sense to attribute modern men’s behavior to natural causes. Instead, we must look at the lessons that our society is teachings boys and the values that are being instilled in them from a very young age.
When people use phrases like “boys will be boys” and expose young boys to violent toys and games, it can seem relatively harmless. After all, how much bad can really come from letting your son play a violent video game? However, in my opinion, the problem doesn’t lie within single, isolated events, like giving a boy a toy gun, but within the conjunction of the all these events over the course of a boy’s childhood and into adulthood. When masculinity is constantly equated with violence and boys are pushed into sports like football and wrestling, it sends a powerful message to both boys and men. From a very young age, boys are taught to dissociate from anything that can be perceived as even slightly feminine. The boy who wants to play with dolls is automatically a “pussy” or “gay”. Boys are put in football helmets, pushed on the field, and told to suck it up and be a man. This becomes a problem when boys take the lessons they are taught on the football field, etc., and apply them to the outside world. When we look at men in our society and the portrayal of masculinity, it could be very easy to want to attribute to natural causes to men’s behavior. After all, when so many men act the same way, it only seems natural that there be some underlying, biological cuase. However, when you step back and take a closer look at how our society teaches boys what it means to be a man, it becomes clear that the problem has societal, not biological, roots.