Men Fight Emasculation With Violence
In which science proves that overcompensating is dangerous.
Gender norms put a lot of pressure on guys, and that stress might make them more likely to lash out in violence according to a new study on hypermasculinity from the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention.
The study, published in Injury Prevention, explored the stress that results when men don’t feel like they don’t live up to society’s standards. That anxiety, referred to as “masculine discrepancy stress,” can lead guys to overcompensate for their perceived lack of manliness through stereotypically “male” behaviors such as substance abuse, risk taking, and violent assault. In short, men who feel emasculated do dumb shit. This explains high school. Also college. Also the men’s rights movement.
The researchers had 600 American men between the ages of 18 and 50 to complete surveys about their self-perception of gender role discrepancy and the stress that resulted from it. Men who felt stressed about their self-percieved masculinity reported rates of violent assaults that were 348 percent higher than well-adjusted beta males or genuinely alpha types.
