"At the beginning of the 21st century it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that men are in serious trouble. Throughout the world,
developed and developing, antisocial behavior is essentially male.
Violence, sexual abuse of children, illicit drug use, alcohol misuse,
gambling, all are overwhelmingly male activities. The courts and
prisons bulge with men. When it comes to aggression, delinquent
behavior, risk taking and social mayhem, men win gold."
Men also mature later, die earlier, are more susceptible to infections
and most types of cancer, are more likely to be dyslexic, to suffer
from a host of mental health disorders, such as Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and to commit suicide.
In her book, "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man", Susan Faludi
describes a crisis of masculinity following the breakdown of manhood
models and work and family structures in the last five decades. In the
film "Boys don't Cry", a teenage girl binds her breasts and acts the
male in a caricatural relish of stereotypes of virility. Being a man is
merely a state of mind, the movie implies.
But what does it really mean to be a "male" or a "female"? Are gender
identity and sexual preferences genetically determined? Can they be
reduced to one's sex? Or are they amalgams of biological, social, and
psychological factors in constant interaction? Are they immutable
lifelong features or dynamically evolving frames of self-reference?
Certain traits attributed to one's sex are surely better accounted for
by cultural factors, the process of socialization, gender roles, and
what George Devereux called "ethnopsychiatry" in "Basic Problems of
Ethnopsychiatry" (University of Chicago Press, 1980). He suggested to
divide the unconscious into the id (the part that was always
instinctual and unconscious) and the "ethnic unconscious" (repressed
material that was once conscious). The latter is mostly molded by
prevailing cultural mores and includes all our defense mechanisms and
most of the superego.
So, how can we tell whether our sexual role is mostly in our blood or
in our brains?
The scrutiny of borderline cases of human sexuality - notably the
transgendered or intersexed - can yield clues as to the distribution
and relative weights of biological, social, and psychological
determinants of gender identity formation.
The results of a study conducted by Uwe Hartmann, Hinnerk Becker, and
Claudia Rueffer-Hesse in 1997 and titled "Self and Gender: Narcissistic
Pathology and Personality Factors in Gender Dysphoric Patients",
published in the "International Journal of Transgenderism", "indicate
significant psychopathological aspects and narcissistic dysregulation
in a substantial proportion of patients." Are these "psychopathological
aspects" merely reactions to underlying physiological realities and
changes? Could social ostracism and labeling have induced them in the
"patients"?
The authors conclude:
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