Is fighting an essential ingredient in manhood? Is violence a part of who we are? Guys weigh in.

One of the big issues surrounding manhood and goodness is the role violence plays in how we express our masculinity. Is violence innate, or is it learned? Even if we could unlearn it, should we?

I grew up in a household of Quaker pacifists. My dad taught me early on that civil disobedience is stronger than fists and guns. Gandhi and Martin Luther King accomplished what no army could. In Amherst, Massachusetts, where I grew up, there was an uncomfortable mix of rural kids and faculty brats—and as a brat who stood head and shoulders above the rest—six feet tall by the seventh grade—I became a natural target for bullies hoping to prove their mettle.

One particularly tough kid started bumping into me in the hall in front of all my classmates. When I wouldn’t respond, he grabbed my books and threw them down the hall, yelling at me for being a sissy. Finally, he figured out my schedule and waited for me outside each of my classes, pinning me up against the nearest locker to spit in my face.

I went to the guidance counselor’s office to use the phone so I could call my father: “Shouldn’t I fight back, Dad?”

As original Good Men Project contributor Steve Almond puts it below, “aggression is the means by which boys learn to share their feelings. Not even the most loving father can protect his son from the playgrounds, bars, and parking lots where bullies lurk, where soft emotions are hunted down and targeted, where fear becomes rage, and rage becomes violence.”

And for men, as much as we may not like it, violence is currency. When words and logic fail, when virtue isn’t shared, violence becomes power—in the schoolyard, among boys, or on the battlefield, among men. But just because it’s always been that way doesn’t mean we can’t help create a less violent world for our kids. Does it?

What do you think? Are men inherently violent?

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We nerds and sissies disprove the notion.

—Bennett Schneider

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Testosterone is not destiny, despite what the peddlers of third-rate evolutionary psychology sometimes insist. Manhood, as we practice it in America, traditionally expects violence as an initiation ritual of some sort. But manhood (as opposed to maleness) is an artificial construct. As a construct, it can be altered—if we want it.

—Hugo Schwyzer, gender studies professor

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There is no way to prove that violence is innate to manhood. We can’t even define manhood. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that human males are more aggressive and assertive by nature, but that is not always the same as violent. My thinking is that men end up more violent because men have to compete with one another with displays of powerful characteristics in order to compete in the male hierarchy, which is ultimately about being selected by women for reproduction. It makes sense to me that violent tendencies are cultivated in that competition. So it’s a learned behavior, born of our innate reproductive programming.

—Paul Elam, men’s rights advocate

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Dave and I are fighting in the TV room. It’s a boy fight: hurled fists and grunting. Our dad is seated on the piano bench, watching this awkward spectacle. He believes we need to “get our aggression out,” and that there’s no other way to do it. He’s even sort of rooting me on, because Dave is bigger and I need to stand up for myself. …

I fight with my twin brother, Mike, too, until he hits a growth spurt and becomes too big to tangle with. Our final fight is especially vicious. We grapple and punch and tumble across the bed. We can smell each other—our skin, our breath. The intimacy is disorienting. Not so long ago, the two of us walked to school pressed together at the shoulder. But the prohibitions of boyhood have torn us apart. These days, the only time we touch is when we fight.

Having pummeled each other to exhaustion, we stand face to face. Our chests heave with adrenaline. We’re confused, not sure how to bring this to a close. My hand flies up and slaps Mike across the face. It’s a loud, clean blow, delivered so quickly neither of us can quite believe it. Mike bursts into tears and runs from the room. I stand, staring down at my hand. My palm stings, but the rest of me feels nothing.

It’s tempting to blame all this on my father. That would be the safe move. Perhaps if he’d encouraged us to share our feelings rather than pummel each other, my brothers and I would have entered the world without fear and loathing. We would have become secure citizens, ready to talk things through. But that would miss the point, that masculinity has always been governed by aggression.

To put it more starkly: Aggression is the means by which boys learn to share their feelings. Not even the most loving father can protect his son from the playgrounds, bars, and parking lots where bullies lurk, where soft emotions are hunted down and targeted, where fear becomes rage, and rage becomes violence.

—Steve Almond, from “Here’s the Bad News, Son” in The Good Men Project

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In mainstream American culture, we teach boys and men that they should be violent, or at least ready to be violent if it becomes necessary. Among other things, we tell them that “a man never backs down from a fight,” “men protect others (especially women and children),” and that we can “step outside and settle it like men.” When a guy doesn’t follow these dictates, we call him a wimp.

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Tom Matlack, together with James Houghton and Larry Bean, published an anthology of stories about defining moments in men’s lives — The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood. It was how the The Good Men Project first began. Want to buy the book? Click here. Want to learn more? Here you go.