Cordite & Testosterone - Why Men Should Not Be Running the World. Cecilia Boone's Tanner
we have the right to vote the bad guys out and put good guys in, but it doesn't work that way. We get to vote for different-looking guys but they all do the same thing because they don't get elected if they don't sit down to brunch at the boy's club.
Women have been conditioned to uphold the male hierarchy system as well. They have their place and they don't break out of it. Some of us that do are either firmly put back into our place or we are dismissed. But women can rise to the occasion when their contribution is valued.
When doing research for this book, one small example of female conditioning became apparent. I went to the Women's Studies department at the university where I was lecturing, and asked the secretary for some help. She asked me what I needed, and then she offered some very useful directions and suggestions, writing down titles and names of authors for me. She was very self-assured, forthright, and well versed in everything I wanted to know.
When I went to the science departments, the secretaries upheld the male hierarchy order by trying to think of which professor would be able to help me, not offering any help of their own. There are certainly female professors in the sciences, but I was forcefully struck by the acceptance of "place" in the hierarchy of the science secretaries who showed no personal sense of their ability to contribute, in marked contrast to the women's studies' secretary who was fully actualized as a person.
This surely is what this male-dominant society is doing– it is undermining a female's sense of competence, and it is distorting and crippling males as well. The whole system is destructive to all its inhabitants, human or not, as well as the planet.
We have been brought up to follow the leader–we even had childhood games of Follow the Leader–and thanks to that edict, we had good church-going men and women in Germany torturing and killing Jews by the millions. Did they think Hitler was god, he who must be obeyed, the divine leader who must be followed?
In our society, people follow the leader with great devotion and force their children to do so also. The Jehovah Witness children are actively discouraged from pursuing an education–very very few go to college or university. One student told me of a young Jehovah Witness girl to whom she was giving piano lessons, which the girl loved with all her heart. The girl's family stopped the lessons for the girl's own good. The leaders did not approve. And it goes on and on under the oppression of ignorant men and their allegiance to the hierarchy.
On the larger scale, we have Pakistan and India and Iraq and Iran following the lead set by the West in developing nuclear bombs. Better they follow us to the dentist.
They all need a new direction to follow. Peace–it used to be a word people believed in.
Women in the Pecking Order
While many people gain a sense of belonging and a sense of their place in the social structure by following leaders, women and many men as well feel terribly undervalued in this oppressive hierarchy. Their worthwhile ideas are ignored because they are only "workers", and the lower administrators are at the mercy of some intimidated or mean-minded higher administrators who are themselves disillusioned with the Board of Directors they must answer to, and up and down it goes.
Many creative men and women are not hustlers by nature and are at a terrible disadvantage in a world constructed on the pecking order where only the hustler gets heard and hired. If they can't find someone to hustle for them, their talents are never utilized, and some of the best minds and most talented artists are wasted because the hierarchy has only 2 directions, up and down.
Men are generally very uncomfortable in the presence of really strong women since these women are not part of the male strata system, and they don't know where the women fit. They would just as soon eliminate them from the decision-making equation and many actively try to do so. This is much like the English with their class system in which the English don't know where North Americans fit in their class structure, so some of them put us all on a lower rung since we don't have a "place" clearly defined; others treat us with amusement.
Similarly, men feel that women intruding into the male zone is a threat to male supremacy: they fear being dominated in an order that is not conforming to their established system. But having strong women in the society does not mean female domination. Women don't particularly fear very intelligent male leaders (when they come across one)–they respect them. Women fear the thugs, the powerful ego-centric male who has bought the Big Lie, and who does not respect the female status or contribution.
Also, men should rejoice in the presence of strong intelligent women because those are the women who will make sure the children are well brought up, and who will ensure the men's dignity will be respected in ill health and old age.
Testosterone and Decision Making
In April, 2008, researchers at the University of Cambridge released a study of traders in the City of London financial district that showed that male traders made bigger profits on days when their testosterone levels were high. This study suggested that testosterone may help focus the mind but constantly high testosterone levels are likely to make traders foolhardy.
“Rising levels of testosterone and cortisol prepare traders for taking risk,” said John Coates, who led the study. “However, if testosterone reaches physiological limits, as it might during a market bubble, it can turn risk-taking into a form of addiction, while extreme cortisol during a crash can make traders shun risk altogether.”
These Cambridge researchers found that daily testosterone was significantly higher on days when traders make more than their one-month daily average. Whether the higher levels contributed to the success outcomes or whether the levels were higher because they were so successful was not mentioned in the news report of this study. It could be either way.
However, the Cambridge researchers did report that their work suggested that the rapid decisions the traders were pressured to make may be biased by emotional and hormonal factors that have not so far been considered in any detail. Coates said that this bias may help explain both rational and irrational behavior.
Can we extrapolate this to apply to government leaders? Because this could account for the almighty necessity to maintain the political leaders’ seats in government for which they sell their souls. They are addicted to the hormonal effects of high-level decision making. But these decisions can be compromised by their emotional and hormonal levels.
Power corrupts says the old cliché, which is absolutely true; however, power both compromises and corrupts. Former US President Bill Clinton started out with good intentions–health care that got squashed as a consequence of a huge campaign of lies by the insurance companies and the medical industry who are getting fat on sick Americans. In 2007, a report showed that the US has the most expensive health care system in the world and it does not provide the best care. Clinton was trying to do a good thing. Then several years later, President Clinton ended up handing over the digital air wave spectrum to the media giants for nothing when it could have been leased for $70Billion which would go a long way in getting the health care program up and running.
Speaking of the lies that the insurance companies and the health industry propagated in that health care campaign. Advertisers on American TV are not allowed to broadcast lies about the products they sell, but the political candidates and their super-paks can broadcast blatant lies in their TV attack ads with impunity. The Swift Boat ads against John Kerry when he was running for President stand out. This is another case where the leaders and would-be leaders can be as corrupt as they choose to be.
It would seem that the stronger the male dominance, the more corrupt the society. In India, corruption is rampant. Edward Luce wrote that nearly a fifth of parliament members have been indicted for at least one crime,
“Many people, especially foreigners, do not appreciate the extent of corruption in India…they think it is an additional nuisance to the system… in many parts of India it is the system.”
Very few people can resist the temptations of power. We think