My take? I’d always wondered about this myself. Then I was rereading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass with my daughter for history class and I’d also recently been reading some various biology works.
So in Douglass’ biography, he’d been struggling with deep feelings of being dehumanized and emasculated. It had been eating at him. He was present during the whipping of his aunt and he was shocked to find out how much he enjoyed it. He went on at some length about how much pleasure he felt by her pain and how it made him feel like a man again.
Personally, as a woman, I was absolutely disgusted. Gut punched, drawn up face, muscles tensed ready to physically defend myself, adrenaline dump disgusted.
Because, some of the biology works I had been reading were about how rather than testosterone causing violence, violence raises testosterone and some observations of violent male behavior in primates species. Especially male on male violence. To really round things up together, I’d been reading some studies on domestic violence.
The ideas all converged together and snapped into place.
They’re subconsciously trying to raise their testosterone levels and although there are more effective ways to do so, women are convenient (they don’t have to wait), women typically don’t fight back so there is little or no perceived risk, and as Douglass pointed out they really really enjoy it because they don’t have to balance those euphoric feelings with any potential fear caused by other adrenaline fueled actions.
And this is why I reject in the strongest possible manner any guy who pontificates on “alpha", dominance, man box masculinity, etc. Because whether this guy is your mate, your date, your boss, your friend, your preacher, your teacher, whatever ….if he’s spouting that trash on the regular he will shred you when he feels emasculated or not up to snuff. Whether he physically beats you or not, because most of it will actually be passive aggressive bullshit, you will be the whipping girl to restoring his manhood, his ego and self identity of being a man. Just like Aunt Hester (Douglass’s aunt). And he will really get off on causing you pain, degradation, humiliation, or distress.
Expect a lot of blowback on this.
