AIBU to wonder why men are so angry

[Moanranger]

Having read a Marina Hyde column in the Guardian about being followed & harassed by an angry man, plus my own recent experience with anger from a male stranger, I am asking this.
Where does this male anger come from? Drugs/meth? Steroid use? Just what?
My own recent experience was a road rage incident. I honked my horn at some boy racer (car with spoilers, low slung) speeding on my narrow, windy, busy lane. He screeches to a halt, jumps out of his car, then turns car around & follows me back to my drive, jumps out again & shouts “I know where you live, c**t”
Such anger over nothing, but v similar to Marina’s incident. This is a key issue, huge problem with male rage & toxic masculinity.

@BonnieDundee

Because they can

Yep. I think they know they can get away with it, particularly when threatening a woman.

I had a horrible experience when my DC were very small. I was waiting with the pushchair by a zebra crossing to get to the shop on the other side.

Was just about to cross when a speeding driver failed to stop, nearly hitting the pushchair. I made an exasperated'WTF' face as he sped off.

The driver sped to the island, went 360 right around it and sped back towards me. I had since crossed the road. Driver pulled up onto the pavement towards me, opened the window & started shouting. Called me a fucking stupid bitch among other incomprehensible shouting. It seemed to be my fault that he'd nearly killed us all. How dare I want to cross the road when he was on it!!!

I responded by calmly saying 'Please don't swear in front of my babies.' He threw out a few more expletives before screeching off again.

This was broad daylight, in front of loads of people. I thought if he can shout abuse at a woman & her small kids in that context, what was he capable of in private?!

Perhaps he was spooked by the fact that he nearly killed me & Dc but he dealt with it by being a total and utter bellend. 😡

What fuels male rage?
Maybe because their role is to not be a woman.
Female is the default sex in mammals at least. Nature puts its best into the female because of her starring role in reproduction. Males got too much anger and not enough capacity to curb it or understand it.

@babbaloushka

LucieStar yes, rather. I wish I could find the study, I've waded through a couple but none are what I remembered. I think it was part of a documentary about gender socialisation in Primary Schools.

I'd be interested to read it!

Lucie I don’t mind the derailment, as the offenders examples demonstrate how male anger gets turned into crime. These are the unfortunates who have no other outlet. I am sure there is equal distribution of anger in the non-offending population, but they have learned to channel it in less obviously criminal ways.
I would not be surprised if the man accused of Sarah Everard’s murder turns out to have a history of DV, possibly never reported.

babbaloushka

It's a simple blood test, though you have to persuade a GP to do it. Ideally it has to be done before 10am as testosterone levels change over 24 hours and are highest in the morning.

It's once they find that your natural production has tanked and put you on injections where the level slowly drops over 12 weeks (or 11 in my case) that you find out that, no, testosterone doesn't make you aggressive. I find I'm more likely to be angry (like now) when my levels are low at the end (10 weeks) than when they're high at the beginning. I need more self-control now to stop me smashing the router because it keeps causing problems.

@Eckhart

Is it the same with all animals? If you put a bunch of males together, there'll usually be a fight. If you put a female in, the males will fight over her. If you have a bunch of females, less fighting, and if you put one male in, he will choose a female and overpower her.

We think we're so evolved.

true, but with bonobos they have a thing where the females gang together to protect each other from the males, this is linked with the lower aggression in bonobos I cant remember all the details but I read about it in here: www.amazon.co.uk/Hierarchy-Forest-Evolution-Egalitarian-Behavior/dp/0674006917?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

I also find that I feel more aggressive and less empathy as a woman bat certain points of the month. I can be doing something innocuous like being at the supermarket and just feel rage for no reason. Luckily it’s temporary and it passes but it’s maybe a brief glimpse in to male physiology.

@TalbotAMan

babbaloushka

It's a simple blood test, though you have to persuade a GP to do it. Ideally it has to be done before 10am as testosterone levels change over 24 hours and are highest in the morning.

It's once they find that your natural production has tanked and put you on injections where the level slowly drops over 12 weeks (or 11 in my case) that you find out that, no, testosterone doesn't make you aggressive. I find I'm more likely to be angry (like now) when my levels are low at the end (10 weeks) than when they're high at the beginning. I need more self-control now to stop me smashing the router because it keeps causing problems.

That is so, so interesting, thank you.

@Gamefacer

I also find that I feel more aggressive and less empathy as a woman bat certain points of the month. I can be doing something innocuous like being at the supermarket and just feel rage for no reason. Luckily it’s temporary and it passes but it’s maybe a brief glimpse in to male physiology.

I can relate.

@BlingLoving

It's entitlement pure and simple. How that plays out - fear of losing things, anger etc, may vary, but it ultimately comes down to this ingrained belief, encouraged by our society, that men have the right to do, say, think, feel etc what they like and NOT take others into consideration. And as a result, when they are challenged by someone they perceive as weaker/lesser, they respond negatively.

A really good and easy example of this is this idea that if a man greets a woman with a cheery, "cheer up love" he thinks that a) it's his right to comment on the (perceived) mood of a strange woman and b) he then takes it personally if she chooses to ignore him or tell him to get stuffed. Because his basic viewpoint is that he has the right to say or do whatever he likes.

Yes, you don't often see/hear of men saying it to other men, either.

It's as if we're expected to outwardly show our niceness with a happy smiley demeanour.

I'm ashamed to say as a much young woman I responded with the smile and a tinkly laugh. I didn't even think before doing it

Now I'm likely to growl.

@LucieStar

When I worked with male offenders (predominantly violent offences where anger was a obviously a feature), I lost count of the number of times I heard men talk about being expected to be "tough" and "masculine" from a very young age ("big boys don't cry" etc - that sort of message). They spoke about any expression of sadness (eg tears) as a child being disapproved of - they were told you don't cry, you're a boy, don't show weakness, you fight back if someone is upsetting you... etc. It was astounding how many of the guys I spoke to couldn't even recognise or label emotions other than anger - it was just "I felt angry- so I reacted". But when you dug underneath that, there was often a whole host of other stuff - sadness, fear, loss, vulnerability etc. A whole range of emotions that as women we seem much more adept at recognising and expressing. But many of these other emotions were an alien concept to the men I worked with.

I realise my experience is based on a cross section of men who had committed violent offences serious enough to come into contact with the CJS, and many of their early home environments left a lot to be desired (sometimes but not always abusive), so unlikely to be the whole picture and perhaps not representative of men who don't offend. But still, it gave me such an interesting insight to how boys are often raised with such different societal expectations to girls in terms of appropriate emotional expression. As others said on this thread, if you suppress natural emotions enough, anger is all that's left.

That is really sad and shows how wide the damage spreads.

If male aggression, anger, entitlement etc can be changed and it's causes challenged there's no one it won't benefit.

I've had a couple like this fairly recently. One screaming at me when I was 8 months pregnant because he smashed my wing mirror off (my car was stationary). The other started shouting at me and threatening me in a public car park, in front of his wife and children, and my two young children, accusing me of chipping the paint on his range rover when I hadn't even been on that side of his car. It's appalling and sadly so common. I don't think it'll stop until it is clamped down on legally with proper consequences.

There is really interesting research showing that testosterone in itself doesn't make people aggressive. Only testosterone combined with an environment where aggressive behaviour results in high status. There was a brilliant line in this talk where he said that if we designed a society where altruism led to status most men would behave like buddhist monks running around doing random acts of kindness.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=7htlm3DQ_so

@Vegeetas

To play devils advocate for a moment...

I've had arguments with some knuckle draggers myself and I used to know some of them personally. Their general outlook on life is just sad to be honest. These are not the people who find joy in being a parent or doing a job well, for them their outlook is far more bleak. The mundane cycle of being broke and depressed is their lot for them until the die is the general thing. Their high points are getting drunk and out of their skulls for a few hours.

I am not making excuses and nor would I as I don't agree with this attitude but it is an insidious outlook for them.

Hi Vegeetas good to have a mans view in the conversation. I hope you stick around

I think many young women have similar starts in life with dismal, if any prospects. You don't tend to find their frustration manifests itself as harm to others i think.

If male aggression, anger, entitlement etc can be changed and it's causes challenged there's no one it won't benefit.

Yep. It's why I do the job.

Interestingly, the ones who showed emotion in the room with me (tears etc), would make sure there was no trace of this emotion before leaving the room to go back out to their male peers on the wing. They'd rather stick their first through a wall than let other men see them cry. Working with female offenders was entirely different- they'd cry on each other's shoulders all the time. It's very telling.

In my opinion sex or rather men’s need for sex .. And yes no man has ever died because they haven’t had sex or a bj but I think that in a simple way women are the barrier to them having as much sex as they want and most men want and think about pretty much most of the time ( IMO)
Which is why so much porn is available

A lot of men feel entitled to have a women and therefore sex and they get angry and pissed off when they can’t get it easily. You only have to look at dating sites where men will rarely date older woman but will put ages 18 to 5 years below there age . Even guys in there sixties and older will very often put the ages that low .

I’m rambling now and I know someone will say not all men want sex - no they don’t but most crimes and violent crimes against women will nearly always have an element of some form of sex involved

Have a look at the relationship boards and see the type of homes kids are being raised in. And the posters who make repeated excuses for staying....... I can see those kids futures mapped out already. The boys bully to get what they want and have massive boudery issues and the girls either go the same way or attach themselves to abusive men because that's all they know.

The future needs to change..... and parents (( OK, women)) need to wake up and get their priorities straight.

The future needs to change..... and parents (( OK, women)) need to wake up and get their priorities straight.

This is exactly the attitude I mean when I say society supports men. It’s always the woman’s fault.

Age,
Biology,
Upbringing,
Culture,
Consequences ( lack of )

I think there is a mix of factors that make some men feel it is acceptable to behave badly.

Pumper it's said on here daily women are the primary carers.

Women are the victims of shit behavior and women are the only ones who can get their children out of there..... Unless you're suggesting abusive men can be talked round and pointing fingers changes anything of course its up to women to change things. Women are the primary carers of the abusive men and the primary carers of future victims. Of course its up to us to take charge and change things. Who else is going to do it?

@MobyDicksTinyCanoe

Pumper it's said on here daily women are the primary carers.

Women are the victims of shit behavior and women are the only ones who can get their children out of there..... Unless you're suggesting abusive men can be talked round and pointing fingers changes anything of course its up to women to change things. Women are the primary carers of the abusive men and the primary carers of future victims. Of course its up to us to take charge and change things. Who else is going to do it?

Men. Men could tackle the problem of male violence.

I absolutely think abusive men could be stopped with childhood intervention, councilling, therapy and a whole host of other things.

I believe that much more than they should just keep being abusive and women should just keep out of their way.

I think road rage is a bit of a red herring here. It can be an outlet for male aggression but it’s not why men are so angry.

I’ve also seen a lot of anger being targeted at other men recently for supporting women. They get called simps, white knights, accused of being traitors to other men etc, told they need psychiatric help.

Like a lot of other posters, I think the reasons behind the male anger is a combination of toxic masculinity in their upbringing, fear of failure, fear of looking inadequate, a sense of loss of entitlement, the list just goes on.

Interestingly, my DP grew up in a single parent family and he has one of the most balanced and equal views of women of many men I’ve ever met.

It must be some kind of evolutionary type of thing and hormones etc some of it will be social and culture but the fact that it’s almost always men probably means nature over nurture. Must be some studies on it.

Men just cannot bear women complaining, at any level. And their reactions to it range from ignoring to name calling to abuse and violence to silence their complaints.