Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 5, 1991 TAG: 9102050221
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DON COLBURN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Look at the terms we use to praise or mock our leaders. In a male-dominated political world, where the most insulting label any leader can suffer is "impotent," a forceful leader who happens to be a woman may find herself praised as having masculine physical traits.
That line of thought has been carried over into the decision to use military force.
Poll after poll has found wide differences in the way American men and women feel about war in general and the Persian Gulf conflict in particular, with women less likely than men to approve of the use of force against Iraq.
Especially before the bombing began, women were much more in favor of alternatives such as economic sanctions. Once the air strikes were launched, the gender gap narrowed, but an ABC-Washington Post poll taken on the first night of bombing still found 84 percent of men but only 68 percent of women approved of going to war.
"The decision to kill large numbers of people, innocent people, to achieve a goal appears to be an easier one for men in leadership to make than women," said Georgetown University physiologist Estelle Ramey, an expert on human responses to stress. It's not so much a matter of testosterone levels, she said, referring to the male hormone, but "social conditioning. We perceive the world differently."
American boys, researchers agree, grow up more likely than girls to play with warlike toys, participate in warlike games and sports, use macho "locker room" talk and respond aggressively to perceived verbal, personal or physical threats. Girls and women are more likely to shun violent sports and try to talk out differences without resorting to physical force.
But where does such behavior come from? Different hormones or different habits? Are males naturally more aggressive than females? Or does society make them so?
"I wish there were clear-cut answers," said John Money, professor of medical psychology and psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore. "But you're up against a big, big scientific problem. There's not just one but many, many variables. Everything is interwoven, like in a spider web."
Sexual stereotypes are pervasive: Men are hunters, women are nurturers; men are adventurers and warriors - women are homebodies, preservers of the family. Men are hard, women soft.
"It is always difficult to tease out what the biological contribution is and what the cultural contribution is," said Ashley Montagu, the eminent anthropologist and author of "The Nature of Human Aggression," among many other books.
"But whatever the factors responsible," Montagu said, "it is the males who are the warriors, it is the males who incite conflict and it is the women who are the conciliators and do not believe in confrontation. You can see this in any culture in the world." \
Responding differently \
Would the situation in the Persian Gulf be any different if the U.S. president were a woman, or if any of his inner circle of advisers were women, or if he had not been dogged by the "wimp" label for much of the past decade?
"One thing we can say for sure," said Ramey. ". . . The decision-making in the White House was entirely male."
But the question is simplistic, she and other experts agree, because it fails to consider individual differences in background, temperament, values and political loyalties. Despite patterns of male and female behavior, exceptions abound.
"It's awfully glib and superficial to think in those terms," said Eleanor Maccoby, professor emeritus of developmental psychology at Stanford University, "though I do suspect the tendency to draw a line in the sand and say you can't step over it is a male one."
Evidence for the physiological explanation - that males tend to respond differently to threats at least partly because of differing hormones - has come mainly from studies of brain chemistry in the past 30 years. Researchers have identified dozens of hormones secreted or stimulated by the brain, to the point where Montagu said the human brain is increasingly thought of not as a computer but as a "giant gland."
Testosterone, the main male hormone, is produced by the testicles in response to a complex series of chemical messages from the brain. Testosterone levels in males rise dramatically during puberty, triggering physical changes such as a deepening of the voice and maturing of the sex organs. The levels of testosterone decline gradually after age 20.
Some research has also suggested a link between testosterone levels and aggression, and the effect of testosterone on the male begins before birth. For example, the male brain in utero may be primed by testosterone to produce a lower threshold of rage and anxiety and a more intense "fight-or-flight" response, Ramey said.
But much more than testosterone levels is involved in development of sexual stereotypes - or in the events leading up to the Persian Gulf war.
"You can't say that males are aggressive simply because they have more testosterone, because they have testes," said Money. "I could shoot you up with five times your level of testosterone and it wouldn't make you any more aggressive." \
Gender gap starts early \
From birth, in spite of growing efforts by parents and teachers to treat children equally, sexual roles are defined by upbringing, schooling, social customs, entertainment, mass media and other influences.
Hormonal or habitual, the gender gap shows up very early in childhood, said Ruth Sidel, professor of sociology at Hunter College in New York. Among groups of girls and boys, Sidel said, "it's much more acceptable for little boys to hit and scream and act out their anger."
Little boys tend to "go for it," resorting to physical force more than girls to get their way, said Kate Jacobs, a Washington psychologist who specializes in treating children under age 7.
But a young child who plays with make-believe guns is no more likely than other children to turn into a violent adult, Jacobs said, "any more than wetting your pants at age 2 is a prediction of wetting your pants on your wedding day."
Some parents try to counteract stereotypes - for example, by giving fire trucks to little girls and dolls to little boys. They may also try to make children non-violent by prohibiting them from playing with guns. Unfortunately, Jacobs said, this may simply cause confusion or anxiety in the child. When children make imaginary guns with their fingers or sticks and pretend to shoot each other, "they know they're playing. It's the adult who confuses the situation by reacting in horror as if it were a real gun." \
A man's game \
Central to the male culture of competition is the role of sports. Like many, Sidel said she has been struck by the frequent overlap of jargon between sports, particularly football, and war - as if the Iraqi conflict were "just a more important game, like the Super Super Bowl or the Super Super Super Bowl."
After the first air strikes were launched against Iraq, a U.S. Air Force officer in Saudi Arabia compared American pilots favorably to the Dallas Cowboys football team. Football expressions have laced discussion of the war by President Bush, Pentagon officials, analysts and journalists: end runs, interceptions, blitzes, game plans. Such metaphors "sound foreign" to many women, Sidel said.
In the Persian Gulf war, 6 percent of the U.S. forces in the Mideast are women, but they are not allowed in direct combat and cannot serve aboard warships or attack planes or in ground troop units.
The presence of women in the war came through with a jolt to many Americans last week with the announcement that Spec. 4 Melissa Rathbun-Nealy is missing in action and may have been captured by the Iraqis.
What the average American has seen of the war is a series of television images emphasizing the relatively bloodless nature of pinpoint air attacks - "a high-tech war with no negatives, no bodies, no consequences," in Sidel's words.
The high-tech aspect of the war seems to appeal particularly to masculine imaginations. Men were more apt to feel a thrill while watching television coverage of the first days of the Persian Gulf war - for example, the dramatic videotape showing how a U.S. Stealth fighter-bomber zeroed in on an Iraqi military headquarters, fired a laser-guided "smart" bomb down an air shaft and blew the building apart from the inside.
"This is a prime example of what men find interesting," said Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and author of "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation."
"Watching the war on television is fascinating and even fun to them. Women are less likely to be mesmerized by that `fun' aspect of it and more likely to be appalled by the suffering caused."
In a hospital, Ramey noted, the most exciting place to be is the emergency room. "You see some awful things there, but what makes it exciting is the immediacy of life and death." Men and women, however, approach the work there differently.
"The man takes this as a personal challenge - he's going to overcome death. The woman sees it a little differently - she's going to save a life."
by CNB