Others comment that most primitive societies have coming of age rituals for young men and that even historically one sees disorderly gangs occurring in situations where such does not exist/satisfy.
My own take on it is that one needn't appeal to hormones but merely the mechanics of birth and reproduction.
I think this is an issue that women, especially feminists, should participate in wholeheartedly and generously, for all kinds of reasons. My most pressing reason is that I have boy children, and I care deeply about their presents and futures. The weeks of school shooting and threats that we've been through have caused me a lot of anxiety. Sometimes I wonder how I will cope with the teenage years, but since I have a couple of really good single mother models who have raised wonderful pro-feminist young men, I think I'll be OK - as long as I keep paying attention.
But I only vaguely understand what you're referring to with regard to the mechanics of birth and reproduction. Is this another way of saying "men have womb envy"? Or: "women are involved in life-giving activities and men take care of the activities of death" - ?
If it is, that really doesn't do it for me. You don't need to be sans utérus to feel existential despair or self-worthlessness. Women, even ones who've had children, can feel it too, and can be every bit as destructive about it - though it might play out in subtler ways.
Just as an example, I caught an article about cosmetic surgery in the NYTimes yesterday, and the last few paragraphs carried a pretty good explanation as to why a woman would submit her body to all kinds of unnecessary and damaging surgeries.
At its most extreme, this craze for plastic surgery is more than a display of culturally conditioned self-hatred. It is, rather, a current manifestation of female masochism — a sister compulsion to anorexia, bulimia, cutting and excessive tattooing and piercing. Here ritual, aesthetics, theatrics and exhibitionism are ceremonious enactments of self-annihilation in the hope of transcendence (if you’re a romantic) or escape (if you’re a realist). These are death and resurrection exercises. Self-loathing, on the other hand, keeps you firmly in the eternal hell of the here and now.
*snip*
Asked if she ever considered a career, Mrs. X, the film-colony wife, replies: “No, because I was never going to be that good at anything. Or at least I was never going to be so good at anything that I would have made a difference.” The disguise of a woman who has sewn, injected and scraped her surface into a masked carapace is only a distraction from her profound, perhaps unconscious sadness. Here the pathos in the Bride of Frankenstein’s agonized cinematic scream finds a brand-new face.
LinkI apologize to have brought this around to women's experience even in this forum, but my intent is to show that we have more in common than what divides us.
When I see my son going through stuff in school and then trying to work it out in his head, I often think 'oh god, I can totally understand why you feel the way you do, and I can remember feeling just as frustrated and powerless." I get to see some different dynamics (or maybe the same dynamics from a different perspective) because he is a boy, but the feelings and motivations are essentially the same ones I felt at his age.
