Why men are fascinated by war
Posted on Friday, October 12, 2007
I've worked with men who are Civil War buffs. And I've known men who talked of joining militias. Quite often, I see men casually dressed in camouflage pants.
The recent Ken Burn's special on World War II got me wondering again why men are so fascinated by war. So I've been asking men about it.
Among the answers I've received is that war is fascinating because it is an intense experience. Men fixate on it because they wonder what they would do in similar circumstances - sort of a vicarious testing such as one would experience from reading Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage," one of my least favorite books in college.
Then I asked someone who had been in the military why men are so fascinated by war. He said he wasn't. He'd been there and didn't need more of it.
It seems that men create war, then endlessly fascinate themselves by watching the disaster they've created, unless they've been in actual combat. At least that's my unscientific theory so far.
This generation of men, and many of the preceding generations, have not been forced to go to war. Yet they have a need for intensity. So perhaps they create simulations of war (militias, re-enactments and violent video games, for instance ) to alleviate their boredom with everyday life and test themselves, to make life seem more vital. Or they read books about war, watch movies and documentaries about it, and attend memorabilia conferences about it. Short of that, they buy guns and rev their truck motors. Maybe it's the testosterone. Or maybe it's feelings of powerlessness.
One symptom of this fixation with war is the evolution of the History Channel, which originally was about history. Now it has become largely the war channel. Well actually, it's mostly the Hitler channel (all Hitler, all the time ). Surely there is more to the history of this country and that of other nations than war.
We haven't had a woman commander in chief yet, although we have some women in the military and in combat. So we don't know if a woman president would be more reluctant to engage in war. But there is not this phenomenon of women as a population fixating on war. I don't know of any women who make it a hobby. If anything, women seem to be horrified by war. It's one of the great divides between the sexes. I think women only become preoccupied with war when it threatens their lives and that of their families. It makes you wonder how many fewer wars there would have been throughout history if women had run the world.
Some research suggests that men take to war as a means of competing for space and raw materials. But surely there are smarter and less costly ways to compete than going to war. Countries such as China that are aggressively situating themselves as economic players are evidence of that.
Perhaps this male obsession with war has deeper roots. There is a new wave of handwringing about the socalled powerlessness men feel and the growing underachievement of boys. One of the reasons men join Promise Keepers is to learn how to reassert themselves as "heads"of their households. Conservative leaders seem to obsess about homosexuality, perhaps out of fear of losing their "maleness. "Some church leaders are telling women that God wants them to stay at home. All this and more may be a backlash against the gains women have made.
Some of the worry about the underachievement of boys and young males may be justified. Fewer males than females are entering college, and females have higher grade-point averages and higher graduation rates. Esquire Magazine, that consummate magazine for men, tells us boys are twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with an attention-deficit or learning disorder, or to be held back or drop out of school. Boys are twice as likely to abuse alcohol and 16 times as likely to go to prison. Until age 24, males are twice as likely as females to kill themselves. So perhaps this preoccupation with war is a male defense against feelings of emasculation and worry about the upcoming generation of boys, although men still earn more money than women, hold most of the major corporate roles and dominate government. And that's likely not to change radically anytime soon, despite some slow progress. Learning to share power is never easy. I know one thing: This present war is wearing me out. And I don't need a documentary about World War II to compound the problem. So I am declaring war on war. Let's get out of it, let's focus on something more productive, and let's change the subject.
• • • Barbara Warner is a former congressional press secretary and White House appointee at the U. S. Commerce Department. She lives in Siloam Springs and writes a monthly column for The Benton County Daily Record.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online