A 30-year-old man moved out of an apartment it had taken him months to find. Nothing unusual, except for the reason: the couple, just about his age, who lived next door.
Their fights were getting progressively louder, more intense; and what he`d heard was more than words. The shouting seemed to have escalated into all-out warfare, and lately additional noises-breaking glass, the crash of objects being thrown-echoed into his apartment.
What was even more disturbing to him was their source: He was convinced it was the woman who was starting the fights, who was screaming the words of abuse and hurling things across the apartment-all aimed at the man.
A karate champion was asked how she happened to choose her sport. ”I tried running and I tried cycling. Then,” she paused, ”I tried karate. And I discovered how good it felt to hit someone.”
When most American women hear the word ”violence,” they think of criminals armed with knives or guns, or tragic tales of cruelty, psychiatric troubles, alcohol and drug use that lead to headline-making cases of wife or child abuse. But those who study America`s social landscape also recognize a more hidden-perhaps even more frightening-side: the emergence of violence as a socially acceptable means of communication, a way of grabbing, or holding onto, power, a way of speaking up for oneself.
In its narrowest sense, violence is defined as an act carried out with the intention of causing physical pain or injury to another. But in real life, severe physical violence is only one extreme of a whole spectrum of aggressive behavior that ranges from ”verbal violence”-screaming, shouting, saying vicious, spiteful things-to banging doors to actually pushing, hitting, kicking, throwing things at or beating another person.
Wherever one looks-in newspapers, on television, in social- and psychological-science journals-there is evidence that America is a decidedly aggressive society. What`s also showing up in the statistics, but is missing from the headlines: Women, contrary to most of our wishes and stereotypes, may not only be as aggressive as men, they may also, in certain situations, be just as violent. And this violence cuts across barriers of education, race and economic class.
Women, traditionally, have been thought of as the less aggressive (even nonaggressive) sex. They also have been out of the seats of power and been trained, in a male-dominated society, to deny rather than express anger.
”Young girls are given the message, incredibly early in life, that it`s
`not nice` to get angry,” says Jay Lefer, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College.
”Studies in which tape recorders were put in families` homes revealed that as soon as a little girl sounded angry, her parents-and most often the father-would tell her to stop. Ironically, anger that is not expressed, that`s bottled up, may be most dangerous, to oneself and to society.”
Traditional psychological theory has it that men hit out in anger, women hit in. Depression, or melancholia as Freud called it, is thus thought to be the inward turning of aggression-and, again not coincidentally, is also thought to be primarily a woman`s problem.
Helpless rage
Suppressing one`s emotions, most of us are taught, is the ”civilized”
way to behave. Expressions such as ”keeping a stiff upper lip” or ”keeping one`s cool” epitomize polite society. And in the case of an emotion like anger, suppression may only intensify a feeling. Many mental-health experts believe that a significant amount of violence erupts from pent-up hostility, from anger so tightly bound up that it intensifies to a point at which it bursts out, literally beyond control.
”Anger may be the starting point for violence,” says Lefer, ”but true physical violence is usually an expression of anger at a much deeper level, of a truly helpless kind of rage. That point at which a person feels helpless is usually when violence occurs-when there`s a sense of no longer being able to master a situation.
Just about everyone has fantasies of violence-punching out the guy at the motor vehicle bureau who sends you to the end of yet another line after a two- hour wait, or of hurling your briefcase at the ninth person who tells you
`It`s not my job`-but we normally don`t act on these fantasies. The norms of civilized behavior just don`t allow it.”
The norms of proper behavior do allow women to express their feelings in words-and the angry barb, the rapier-sharp putdown long have been considered women`s special province. It also sheds light on how much of what we assume to be natural differences between the sexes often starts with society`s molding and controlling of our impulses.
”Most human behavior results from a combination of biological and societal factors,” explains Estelle Ramey, M.D., professor emeritus of physiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.
”In a historical sense, women, being smaller in structure and musculature than the male of the species, would be more vulnerable to retaliation after physical expressions of anger,” Ramey said. ”So it would be more to a woman`s advantage to choose verbal weaponry, an area in which she would safely be on equal footing with a man, over physical force.
”Women have become, in one sense, masters of verbal violence,” she said. ”It`s no accident that women are often portrayed in literature as nagging, whining or screaming, or that the expression `sharp-tongued` is usually applied to a female.”
What of the much-touted ”testosterone factor” in male aggression?
Biological determinism, in this case, has been given far too much credence, argues Ramey. ”It is true that testosterone, when given in abnormally high amounts, can induce aggressive behavior,” she says. ”A normal healthy man, though, is not a victim of his hormones, any more than a woman is. Males and females, in fact, both respond to physical threats in the same way, with the release of Adrenalin, corticosteroids and other stress hormones.
”While it`s true that a woman`s hormonal system may need a slightly greater stimulus to elicit the same biochemical level of response, as a practical matter this isn`t a big difference,” Ramey says. ”The vast majority of men in civilized cultures don`t use physical violence-and women, on the other hand, can be trained to be incredibly ruthless soldiers.
”The biggest differences come in what boys and girls are taught: Women are sometimes so socialized not to express negative emotions that they are even afraid to hit back when faced with someone else instigating violence.”
This socialization is confirmed by groundbreaking research into aggressive behavior. In an exhaustive review of 50 psychological studies conducted during the last 20 years, researchers Alice H. Eagly, Ph.D., and Valerie Steffen, Ph.D., concluded that the biggest deterrent to physical aggression for a woman was her concern about the consequences of her actions. ”Research supports the conclusion that women worried about the harm they could cause another person, the guilt or anxiety they would feel themselves, or the danger they would put themselves in by their actions,” says Eagly, who is professor of psychology at Purdue University in Indiana. ”Interestingly, the studies that conclude that males are much more aggressive than females really apply primarily to children; by the time we`re adults, the differences are smaller.”
Power and physicality
The social roles ascribed to men-the military, sports, the competition of the business world-as well as the superior status of men over women, all may help to explain the positive way most men view aggressive behavior. These are spheres, Eagly and Steffen note, in which the ”masculine values” of strength and controlled aggression are especially valued.
These are also spheres into which women have made highly visible, much-publicized and encouraged moves within the last two decades. While in the past women`s traditional roles-homemaker, mother, wife-emphasized nurturance and passivity, feminists have put a high value on assertiveness and on challenging the long-held view of women as ”the weaker sex.” Adopting masculine roles, sociologists have observed, also has meant-for many women-endorsing masculine values.
”This is a highly charged topic, politically,” acknowledges Jackie Macaulay, Ph.D., a former researcher at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who is now a lawyer. ”There is just no scientific evidence that women are innately more peaceful than men. If women`s nonviolence is a learned behavior, then we have to recognize the possibility that, as we change that learning, we may change women`s behavior in ways that aren`t all for the better. That`s a message feminists don`t want to hear.”
