Male Insecurity & Domestic Violence
Question: Why is the bulk of brutal domestic violence perpetrated by men?
Richard Gelles: Well, there are a variety of hypotheses about this. Underneath almost all of it is the desire to control the other people, the desire to be the person who achieves the benefits and reduces the costs of intimate relationships. I think there's a -- the more complicated answer s, we've cast men in a role that they can't all fulfill. You're the head of the family; you're the breadwinner; you're the key decision-maker; you're the king of the mountain. And the resources to fulfill that role -- the psychological, economic and social resources -- aren't handed out evenly to every man, so that a good number of men are left with the only resource they have is their physicality. And they use that to compensate for the lack of other resources. And I think there's an argument to be said for the shame that goes with not being able to live up to a fairly widespread cultural view of what men are supposed to be like.
Question: Is this the result of social forces?
Richard Gelles: You're right; it's not innate. There's no extra Y chromosome out there; there's no birth defect out there. The psychological factors -- and there clearly are psychological factors -- can't be viewed independently of the social environment in which men are brought up. And I've seen men who are really sociopathic, who really don't know right from wrong. You say, well, where did that come from? Well, go back into their childhood, and you find out that they received a good deal of head trauma at the hands of their fathers, or growing up. And so the clear and significant psychological problems that they have have a social genesis.
Recorded on: October 29, 2009
Question: Why is the bulk of brutal domestic violence perpetrated by men?
Richard Gelles: Well, there are a variety of hypotheses about this. Underneath almost all of it is the desire to control the other people, the desire to be the person who achieves the benefits and reduces the costs of intimate relationships. I think there's a -- the more complicated answer s, we've cast men in a role that they can't all fulfill. You're the head of the family; you're the breadwinner; you're the key decision-maker; you're the king of the mountain. And the resources to fulfill that role -- the psychological, economic and social resources -- aren't handed out evenly to every man, so that a good number of men are left with the only resource they have is their physicality. And they use that to compensate for the lack of other resources. And I think there's an argument to be said for the shame that goes with not being able to live up to a fairly widespread cultural view of what men are supposed to be like.
Question: Is this the result of social forces?
Richard Gelles: You're right; it's not innate. There's no extra Y chromosome out there; there's no birth defect out there. The psychological factors -- and there clearly are psychological factors -- can't be viewed independently of the social environment in which men are brought up. And I've seen men who are really sociopathic, who really don't know right from wrong. You say, well, where did that come from? Well, go back into their childhood, and you find out that they received a good deal of head trauma at the hands of their fathers, or growing up. And so the clear and significant psychological problems that they have have a social genesis.
Recorded on: October 29, 2009
