From 'Aggressive Masculinity' to 'Rape Culture'

An Educational Philosophy and Theory Gender and Sexualities Reader, Volume V

Liz Jackson, Michael A. Peters, Liz Jackson, Michael A. Peters

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429854149
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

From 'Aggressive Masculinity' to 'Rape Culture' is the fifth volume in this series and explores the relationship between gender and sex roles and socialisation and education, foregrounding issues of inequity and different forms of oppression in various contexts. It tells a rich story of transformation of a field over nearly half a century, in relation to the theorisation of gender and sexuality in educational philosophy and theory. The transformation of this field is mapped on to broader social trends during the same period, enabling a better understanding of the potential role of educational philosophy and theory in developing feminist, queer, and related veins of scholarship in the future.

The collection of texts focuses on a wide range of topics, including nature versus nurture and the debate over whether gender and sex roles are natural or based upon culture and socialisation, gender and sexual binaries, and how power is organised and circulates within educational spaces (including possibly online spaces) with regard to enabling or disrupting sexually oppressive or violently gendered social conditions. Other important trends include Internet activism and the use of intersectional theory, postcolonial theory, and global studies approaches.

From 'Aggressive Masculinity' to 'Rape Culture' will be key reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, philosophy, education, educational theory, post-structural theory, the policy and politics of education, and the pedagogy of education.

Chapter 1
Education and aggression

J.J. Smolicz

Editors' introduction

In this 1970 article J.J. Smolicz discusses aggression ‘in man’, including its causes and potential value. Although the focus on ‘man’ may suggest to some readers at the outset that Smolicz is writing in line with the philosophical tradition of universalizing the subject position, the latter part of the article provides a fascinating window into a different era, in discussing gender differences and cultural differences related to ‘manly aggression’ in society and education. Aggression is also connected to a positivist framework in the article, with the implication that an education which aims to minimize human aggression would be counterproductive to objectives of mastering and controlling the physical world. Overall the theoretical landscape revealed in the article is quite different from that of today, where emotional well-being, happiness, and anti-bullying are predominant concerns, while cultivation of aggression and competition are increasingly discouraged. Read side-by-side with other articles in this volume, it demonstrates how views and values have changed when it comes to identities, gender, and sexuality in education.

It is now widely recognized that psychological research on the nature of intelligence influences educational practices such as selection, classroom grouping, and the structure of examinations. This does not mean, of course, that a consensus of opinion has been reached either among psychologists or educationists. Disputes between environmentalists and those who stress the primacy of genetic factors in the shaping of human intelligence are still current, with now one school, then the other, gaining partial ascendance^a. The effects of such a tug-of-war are quickly felt in education for they tend to lend support either to the ‘élitist’ or ‘reformist’ orientations.

Aggression represents another human characteristic which is almost equally subject to controversy between the supporters of the primacy genetic and others of the cultural-environmental persuasion. Yet its study has received very much less attention from educationists and this in spite of the fact that it represents a human quality which lies at the origins of many of our hallowed educational processes. Thus the manifest function of educational institutions is propagation of learning for learning’s sake but only too often they operate in such a way as to emphasize inter-personal competition. In fact they may stimulate and encourage aggression and foster a desire for victory over one’s colleagues, be it in weekly tests, degree examinations or in the number of publications appearing in learned journals.

In previous articles¹ attention was centred on the various functions (or dysfunctions) which such structured competition could be said to be fulfilling in our schools. In the same way as ‘games’ were supposed to so tire the body as to keep the mind pure, academic competition was frequently regarded as an activity specially well designed for the sublimation of aggression or at least for its re-routing into socially desirable channels. For whereas controlled aggression in the form of a struggle for academic supremacy has been allowed or even encouraged by school authorities, its more nakedly physical manifestations have been proscribed and condemned as anti-social.

There are still other reasons which can make people look with favour upon inter-personal competition prevalent in our schools. Thus it can be claimed that it provides a useful stimulus to learning and that although it might be better, in theory, to enjoy studying for its own sake, the intelligent use of a competitive situation by an experienced teacher is surely preferable to use of mass terror. And if stress on tests and individual achievement stimulates aggressive behaviour, well then, this may be just what our expansive, dynamic technological society badly needs — aggressive, self-confident, young executives, hard on themselves and ruthless to their competitors. It is also pointed out that competition, as practised at school, is so highly structured as to eliminate most of its less pleasing consequences which could prove disruptive of social life. Finally, it is claimed that one of the most important functions which the present structure of competition is fulfilling is to enable the educational system to serve as a sorting and selecting agency for society’s occupational structure.

There is, however, another school of thought that asserts that the competitive viciousness of many of our scholastic procedures is not only inimical to true learning but that it is also completely unnecessary, and is forced upon the school by the type of materialistic and greedy society in which we live. According to this view, aggression in children could be eradicated by shielding them from all stimuli which elicit aggressive behaviour. This could be achieved by eliminating as far as possible all competition from school and, if that were impossible, then at least by so altering its structure as to remove the inter-personal element in the struggle for academic supremacy through the encouragement of group activities and contests. And if such a school were then at odds with the prevailing mores of the society in which it existed, it would indicate the need for the latter’s reform.

There are other strictures which are usually levelled at our competitive educational system. It is said to be inefficient in that it encourages conformity and obedience and discriminates against ‘unorthodox intellects’ which our society now specially needs; it is also unfair in that it is biased against working class children, both on account of the system of rewards which it operates and because of its neglect of group co-operation, an activity which is said to be a feature of a working class sub-culture and which is foreign to the middle-class ethos of individualistic endeavour and early and rigorous training for achievement. Interpersonal competition in the academic sphere and its absence on the sporting field, where group activities predominate, is also blamed for driving many adolescents away from learning since they do not wish to be labelled as ‘isolates’ and prefer the popularity and applause which they can gain as athletes to the solitary splendour of academic laurels. For success in the scholastic field, just as much as failure, implies separateness, an isolation from one’s fellow beings which Edmund Leach singles out as being responsible for many of the later neuroses and as the cause of the adult sense of fear.²

Discussion along such lines can be pursued indefinitely but, in one sense at least, it remains superficial unless one stops to examine the theoretical substructure which influences one’s judgement. For implicit in much of such discourse is a certain view of human nature, a certain image of man and, in particular, a certain assumption about the nature of human aggression. And yet such tacit assumptions are hardly ever consciously scrutinized in the light of our current psychological and physiological knowledge. It would therefore be wise to ascertain what is already known of this human characteristic, for it represents the bedrock upon which so many of our educational notions, often unconsciously, rest.

The study of aggression in man has unfortunately been clouded by a number of issues, many of which are still far from being settled. It can, however, be taken as an established fact that aggressive emotions and behaviour are inborn in the sense that they can readily come into play as a result of some external stimulus. The question which has not yet been fully settled to everybody’s satisfaction is whether such a stimulus is in fact essential. The question is an important one, for in the study of how to control human aggression in a school situation it would be of great help to determine whether there is an internal accumulation of aggressive tensions which seek periodic release, or whether the aggressive response is simply a potential which need never be brought into use. If the first hypothesis is the correct one, what is needed to control aggression is provision of suitable outlets for ritualizing and channelling instinctive aggressions and devising means for their effective sublimation. If the latter is true one must devise means to avoid all stimuli which might arouse anger and aggression. Alternatively, if some such stimuli cannot be totally eliminated from school, training and conditioning could help to minimize the aggressive response.

The significance of this debate for the study of education, and of academic competition in particular, is obvious, even if the answer is not yet absolutely clear. Many psychologists and physiologists continue to maintain that human aggression is either a response to frustration or else is a learned activity which our educational system encourages and rewards. There is thus, they claim, no spontaneous aggression ‘in our genes’ and in order to have less competitive and more cooperative and considerate adults, one has to start by diminishing the occurrence of frustration, particularly in very young children, and by minimizing the gains to be won through display of aggression (controlled or otherwise) at school.

As an upholder of this view puts it, if aggression is a spontaneous process then “man can never lead a happy, peaceful existence, but must continually be sublimating the spontaneous ‘drive’ which accumulates within him. (But) if the physio logists are correct, then it is theoretically possible for man to lead a happy and peaceful existence provided he is not continually stimulated to violence. Sublimation will have its uses, because in any practical situation there will always be some accidental stimulation toward violence, but it is only one of the many techniques provided by modern scientific knowledge for the control of aggression”.³ And his conclusions are fairly optimistic, for, in his view, although the “internal physiological mechanism (of aggression) is dangerous, it can be kept under control by external means”.⁴

On the other hand, ethologists such as Lorenz⁵ and Tinbergen⁶ have accumulated a good deal of information from the study of animal behaviour which appears to support their contention that aggression in animals is a spontaneous drive which is as innate, as natural and, at times, almost as powerful as sex. Lorenz’s work in particular indicates that if an animal is prevented from engaging in aggressive activity which is normal to it, it will seek out substitute stimuli to release its aggression.

Unlike Freud, however, whose teaching about aggression helped to encourage the view that it was almost a wholly destructive and negative impulse, Lorenz stresses the highly functional nature of aggression, at least as far as animals are concerned. The intra-specific aggression, which he carefully distinguishes from predation, is biologically necessary for the defence of the territory and ensures that animals of the same species are evenly spread over the entire area capable of supporting them. It is, of course, true that too much intra-specific aggression could lead to extermination of the species, but according to Lorenz, natural selection has so modified its operation as to provide strong inhibitions against the slaughter of the conspecifics.

But to talk merely of the inhibition of aggression does not do justice to the ingeniousness of nature. For in the interests of survival, natural selection brings about a remarkable transformation in the exercise of compulsive pugnacious behaviour and these variations endlessly enrich animal life. Lorenz attempts to show by reference to geese and other animals how behaviour which signifies aggressive ‘hostility’ toward enemies can come to be modified into ritualized forms which signal ‘love’ and ‘amity’ between friends. In such instances aggression is not inhibited but re-directed from certain members of the species (usually the mate) and channelled instead in the direction of others (usually a territorial neighbour). In this way rituals evolved in animals fulfil their purpose of neutralizing those consequences of intra-specific aggression which are harmful to communal life, without at the same time eliminating those of its functions that are essential to the survival of the species.

But Lorenz does not stop with animals. According to his view, man suffers from immense disadvantage when compared with large carnivores in that he is ill-equipped to ritualize his aggressive instinct. For in the absence of powerful natural weapons, man has failed to acquire strong inhibitions against injuring his own species which we see in better armed animals such as wolves and lions. We thus find ourselves at present not too unlike “a dove which by some unnatural trick of nature, has suddenly acquired a beak of a raven”. If humanity survived in the face of such handicaps, as after all it did, it was only because the “same human faculties which supplied man with tools and with power dangerous to himself, also gave him the means to prevent their misuse: rational responsibility”. But man never again achieved security from the danger of self-destruction. “If moral responsibility and unwillingness to kill have increased, the ease and emotional impunity of killing have increased at the same rate”.⁷

One factor which is often mentioned by human biologists because it operates in a way that increases hostility, is that of crowding. It is also the one which, in view of the close herding of pupils, is of special interest in education.

One result of overcrowding is that modern man often has nowhere to escape from other members of his species. In animals, two males, after a ritual display of aggression, may separate and the weaker one is given a chance to make his escape. Only in captivity, when flight is impossible within the confines of a cage, do we find fights resulting in death. But we too often find ourselves in cultural and environmental cages created by our own advanced civilization. Various moral and social customs can make it very difficult for people to separate from those whom they ‘cannot stand’ (and this happens every day in schools, offices, institutions and even in families).

Results of a series of laboratory experiments on rats (and other types of mammals such as monkeys and deer) only strengthen our fears on this account. When these animals have been systematically exposed to physical conditions thought of as typical of big cities — overcrowding, air pollution, excessive noise, bombardment by visual stimuli — there has been an observable increase in aggression, illness and premature deaths. Studies on rats at the Animal Research Centre at Maryland were designed especially to test their tolerance of crowding by allowing them to breed to double or treble the density in which they are found in their natural state. The results showed a gradual disorganization of the rat community: nest-building and child-rearing habits fell away into chaos; sex practices increased dramatically; female rats became physically and psychologically ravaged and had a high rate of miscarriages; and even more significantly, a number of males engaged in sudden and unprovoked displays of aggression with frequent assaults on both the very young and very old. This situation is almost unknown in rat communities existing under natural conditions where the inter-specific aggression is usually directed against rats of other tribes.

A number of biologists have argued that the implications of these discoveries when related to man-made environment cannot be totally discounted. Some observers point to man’s great ‘plasticity’ and argue that one cannot equate behavioural patterns of man with those of rats, for unlike animals man has intelligence and reason and can therefore adapt himself to the strains of his new environment. Researches of Boyden in Canberra and of Dubos at the Rockefeller Institute in New York indicate the dangers implicit in this argument. According to Dubos, “crowded rats behave so much like people in crowded communities that it is impossible to disregard the similarity between the two. Man cannot adapt all that much better than rats to a (new) unnatural environment, although he may at first appear to do so. Civilization modifies contemporary man, but does not significantly affect his biological nature in the long term”.

A number of scientists have therefore argued that, although since the time of Neolithic Revolution our environment has been changing very rapid...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation information
• Credits
• Introduction From 'aggressive masculinity' to 'queer politics' and 'rape culture': the theorisation of gender and sexuality in philosophy of education
• 1 Education and aggression
• 2 Education for sexism: a theoretical analysis of the sex/gender bias in education
• 3 The rational woman
• 4 Mill's epistemology in practice in his liberal feminism
• 5 Gender socialisation and the nature/culture controversy: the dualist's dilemma
• 6 More sexes please?
• 7 Democracy, social justice and education: feminist strategies in a globalising world
• 8 Antonio Gramsci and feminism: the elusive nature of power
• 9 Queer politics in schools: a Rancièrean reading
• 10 American Chimera: the ever-present domination of whiteness, patriarchy, and capitalism...a parable
• 11 Selfies, relfies and phallic tagging: posthuman part-icipations in teen digital sexuality assemblages
• 12 Weinstein, sexual predation, and 'rape culture': public pedagogies and hashtag Internet activism
• Index