In support of the rage of man

[Yonadav]

---

A few months ago, my niece broke up with her boyfriend. They had been together for about two years. But they had only moved in together recently. My 23 year old niece left her parent's home for the first time, to go live with this guy. It turned out that they were not so compatible once living together. It only lasted for about two months, when her told her that she needed to go.

So my poor niece came to me, sobbing about what an asshole he was. I comforted her and then asked if she wanted be to kick the shit out of him and burn his house down.

She laughed and said no. And then she looked at me with serious eyes and said, "He's really afraid of you, Uncle Yoni." I grinned and said, "I know." My niece understood that I never bluff. I was basically joking about kicking the shit out of her ex and burning his house down. And she knew that. But she also knew that if she had told me that she wanted me to do it, then I absolutely would have done it. It made her feel a lot better. A young lady needs to have a man or two in her life who will do absolutely anything for her. She swelled with pride, knowing that I would have made good on my offer to her.

---

I'm a real sissy, and all the ladies know it.  

Cool story, "Uncle Yoni"... Reads like 3rd rate Game Of Thrones fan-fiction soft-core incest porn, too. I especially like how you narrate your - alleged - niece's feelings and needs.  

I'm happy you enjoyed it.

[bennyboy]

Rage supporter, I have one question for you: do you support the natural rage to occur in any situation? 

Let me set up a scenario for you, one in which I believe the rage should be supported.

It is a customer and store employee scenario.

Let's the say the customer is being a complete twat. Should the store employee give into his natural rage and say whatever he wants to the customer?

My answer is yes, but is it also yours?

My answer to the first question is not so much that I'd support natural rage all the time-- restraint is expected. However, except for real psychos, it doesn't come out of nowhere. Sometimes, people fuck with a man. They can see the storm brewing, but they are on some rant of their own and don't think he'll start swinging. Then he does start swinging (or even just shouting), and it's a bad day for everyone.

I can give a few examples of my own rage (I've full-on triggered maybe half a dozen times in my life), but I'll start with one. Keep in mind I live in Korea. I was approaching a tunnel, and the posted speed sign for the tunnel was 40km, which is quite slow, so I was slowing down. I was also changing lanes, because you aren't allowed to change lanes inside the tunnel. I had my signal light on for at least a couple of seconds. In my rearview, I see some guy in a sports car bombing toward me doing about 100 in the lane I was moving to. But I'm already in the lane well before he arrives at my position, and I'm very clearly going the speed limit.

He goes fucking crazy honking at me-- obviously, he didn't intend to slow down to the posted speed, and he felt I was cutting him off even though he honked at me not to. We get out of the tunnel (both doing the posted speed of 40). He quickly pulls around me, still honking, STOPS in front of me, and gets out of his car. It's a young punk, a bit gangster-looking, too young to own a car like that unless his daddy's a CEO for Samsung or something. He approaches my car, screaming bloody murder in Korean.

That's when I trigger. I get out of the car shouting, and believe me I had every intention of putting the fucker in the hospital. There was nothing in me that had the capacity to resist the urge to introduce his face to the pavement except his fairly remarkable running speed. He saw a big fucking white dude charging him in an army coat (I'm not IN the army, just have the coat because it's like the best coat ever). He changed his mind about how tough he was, jumped in his car, and drove off with a bennyboy-sized fist indentation on his trunk. My guess is that since I was driving an old beater, and since I was actually driving the speed limit, he thought I was a female driver.

Now, legally, I was all kinds of wrong if I got my hands on him. But I think that threat needs to be there-- we shouldn't be so cocksure in our expectations of civility that we'll just dump on some stranger, and ignore the constant implied threat there-- that if you want to tee off on someone, they might decide to rip off your arm and beat you to fucking death with it.

And that's one thing we never talk about, because it's considered irrelevant-- what was going on in the environment just before some guy's fight/flight flipped into full-on-nuclear destroy mode? Was someone riding him? Did he give them warning? Cuz in my case, I'll almost always try to walk away-- it's when someone makes a point of initiating a confrontation, and will not allow me to walk away because they think they just HAVE to be allowed to complete their emotional vent, that they discover their idea of right behavior isn't going to save them from having a really bad day.

I've raged at my wife a couple times in my life. One time I warned her "I need to go for a walk" but she blocked me: "I want to talk about this now." I said, "Look. . I'm getting upset, and I shouldn't be having this conversation. I'll come back later and we can finish this." Then again: "I'm telling you. I'm losing control here, and you need to stop talking to me like this!!!" But she was on a rant about something and wouldn't / couldn't let it go. That's when I went full nerd-gorilla and tossed a TV across the room-- the old Sony Trinitron tube TV, that you couldn't lift without about a liter of adrenaline in your blood or about 3 friends. It smashed in a pretty spectacular fashion and left a pretty good dent in the floor. She decided then that maybe I did need to take a walk after all.

Was I "right?" No fucking way. It would have been better if I hadn't triggered-- I mean. . . at the very least, I lost an expensive TV. But after that, she knew-- if I'm trying to escape the environment, and I tell her I'm getting triggered. . . maybe standing between me and the door isn't the best idea. If you trap an angry gorilla, who's right by the societal standards of the day doesn't really matter-- the physics of gorilla vs. environment are on a higher level of reality than that.

[Yonadav]

Rage supporter, I have one question for you: do you support the natural rage to occur in any situation? 

Let me set up a scenario for you, one in which I believe the rage should be supported.

It is a customer and store employee scenario.

Let's the say the customer is being a complete twat. Should the store employee give into his natural rage and say whatever he wants to the customer?

My answer is yes, but is it also yours?

My answer to the first question is not so much that I'd support natural rage all the time-- restraint is expected.  However, except for real psychos, it doesn't come out of nowhere.  Sometimes, people fuck with a man.  They can see the storm brewing, but they are on some rant of their own and don't think he'll start swinging.  Then he does start swinging (or even just shouting), and it's a bad day for everyone.

I can give a few examples of my own rage, but I'll start with one.  Keep in mind I live in Korea.  I was approaching a tunnel, and the posted speed sign for the tunnel was 40km, which is quite slow.  I was also changing lanes, because you aren't allowed to change lanes inside the tunnel.  I had my signal light on.  In my rearview, I see some guy in a sports car bombing toward me doing about 100 in the lane I was moving to.  But I'm already in the lane well before he arrives at my position, and I'm very clearly going the speed limit.

He goes fucking crazy honking at me.  We get out of the tunnel (both doing the posted speed of 40).  He quickly pulls around me, still honking, STOPS in front of me, and gets out of his car.  It's a young punk, a bit gangster-looking, too young to own a car like that unless his daddy's a CEO for Samsung or something. He approaches my car, screaming bloody murder in Korean.

That's when I trigger.  I get out of the car shouting, and believe me I had every intention of putting the fucker in the hospital.  There was nothing in me that had the capacity to resist the urge to introduce his face to the pavement except his fairly remarkable running speed.  He saw a big fucking white dude charging him in an army coat (I'm not IN the army, just have the coat because it's like the best coat ever).  He changed his mind about how tough he was, jumped in his car, and drove off with a bennyboy-sized fist indentation on his trunk.

Now, legally, I was all kinds of wrong if I got my hands on him.  But I think that threat needs to be there-- we shouldn't be so cocksure in our expectations of civility that we'll just dump on some big dude, and ignore the constant implied threat there-- that if you want to tee off on someone, they might decide to rip off your arm and beat you to fucking death with it.

In my opinion, you would not have been all kinds of wrong if you had gotten your hands on him-- if he had kept coming toward you. Once they're running away, you have to let them go. But he pursued you. He stopped you. And if he had continued to advance on you then he deserves whatever happens to him. And that's not even taking his very dangerous road rage into account. People who menace other people with motor vehicles really are menacing with a deadly  weapon. So it's no wonder that you were hot as hell.

In America, we are starting to have a very serious problem with people going around and deliberately provoking other people, simply because they disagree with them. They are intentionally trying to provoke some pretty serious shit. They are stalking people and harassing them while they are eating at restaurants. They are showing up at their homes and menacing them. They are going to their employers and trying to get them fired. They are running up to people and punching them, and then running away. They are trying to provoke some serious shit.

You might have seen this video before. This is a video of some real losers who are using a woman to try to provoke some guys into 'assaulting' her, so that they can play the victim in a big news story about a woman being assaulted at a demonstration. It pretty much backfires on them, and they look like total losers, and it's funny. But it's not really funny. This kind of shit is going somewhere really bad. Watching the tough blackclad guy with a bandanna covering his face act like a tough guy while hiding behind the crazy white girl who is attacking a guy who appears to be Native American or Hispanic is pretty funny. Fucking losers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5g5WTPf8J4

[Sal]

Meditation, such as mindfulness (not necessarily though) and therapy are preferable to rage. (duh)

If someone goes off on fits of rage, I see that as a defect - as someone who is a victim of their own emotions - and to hell with it being "natural".

I think there simply isn't room for people in today's society, especially emotionally unstable bunch, because of how we have structured civilization. I'm thinking anything from raising your voice over minutiae to full out brawl.





The good news is that people don't have to be at mercy of their emotions, and that people can learn to control their emotions, or at least preemptively anticipate them if they have a short fuse and react accordingly. That and therapy.

---

Now, this is all well and good for yourself. But how do you defuse a situation, where someone goes off in a tangent and is raising their voice and being all pissy. In my experience, where a dangerous man approached me because I had the audacity to smile in a random direction, which caught his eye, and came up to me ready to fight me. I stood my ground, lost the smile and didn't give into his rage. I just stood there and he pulled a threatening pose and was all in my face and staring me down, I mean, really in my face. I didn't flinch and didn't give him any reason to punch me or anything. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something about me "laughing at him", I don't know where he got that idea, but I was talking to a friend of mine nearby at the same time. I've learned from others that he was a dangerous man, that he had fought a lot of people for no reason. Grade A asshole.

Defusing a situation is an art. Not that I am in any way an expert, but I've talked my way out of few heated situations from people with an edge on.

Another time a junkie tried to get a rise out of me by challenging me. I knew him from before he went all ass up, a hardass if you ever have met one. He kept raising his voice and tried to put me down. I simply shrugged it off as banter, yet he kept pressing me. He probably was looking for a reaction, and when I didn't give him one I simply said I wasn't interested in a stern voice while looking him straight in his eyes. Nothing came of it. He ODed some years later. He came from a troubled family. Rumors of his father beating his kids and absentee mother.

[bennyboy]

But the idea of a patriarchy of asshole men victimizing poor, helpless, innocent women is a crock of shit.  We're all in this together, and let's not pretend that isn't the case.  You don't think that many powerful men have been driven by equally powerful and conniving wives?

Says a man who started a thread advocating that male rage should be considered socially acceptable.

It's not really about being acceptable.  It's about being understood as part of human nature.  In the very complex social relationships we have, male rage is part of that dynamic, as it's part of the definition of our species.

I mean. . . you can pretend that it's just a few dysfunctional assholes.  But I don't think that idea represents the reality of the species, as are all our hormonal and instinctive behaviors.

---

If someone goes off on fits of rage, I see that as a defect - as someone who is a victim of their own emotions - and to hell with it being "natural".

I'm not justifying rage, quite-- even in my own examples, I would prefer not to have had that experience, or taken those actions. But I acknowledge that those instincts are in-built in me.

I'd suggest that it's very easy for people who might not have certain instincts, or have them in the same degree, to sit in judgment on those who do.

[Shell B]

Oh for fuck's sake. It's my fault for paying attention to her. Now she's just going to keep acting up for more.

[Sal]

The whole "natural", or in this case, "instinct" view is bogus in my opinion. This reminds me of the homeopathy, crystals, aural healing and all that shit that claim that as long as it's natural it's good for you. Well, fuck me, hemlock is natural, so is malaria, doesn't mean we should put up with that crap.

We are the masters of our own destiny because we've reached a point in our civilization that we are able to change ourselves; everything from planning when/if we get kids to adapting the environment - including plants and animals - to suit our needs. Why should we stop at there? Exub1a has an interesting take at how we could engineer ourselves, re-invent ourselves.

[tackattack]

I hate to break it to you, but dominance hierarchies have been around since before trees. They're not social constructs from the floor up. Social constructs can amplify and reinforce negative feedback loops that are on top of the framework. I believe this is why the term "misogynistic male patriarch" was invented, it's a misnomer though. Only in the minutest minority are the guys out there seeking to subjugate women to secretaries because they fear a challenging opponent. Most are just doing what they feel it takes to get ahead and whatever cost they feel is appropriate. It wouldn't matter if you were a male or a female, but those types tend to pick easier fights. Men are driven to have the best stuff, and some of that stuff man wants is a high quality mate. It may differ from individual, time period and society what the definitions of "stuff" are but one particular drive is the opposite sex. It is definitely objectifying, but could changing women's selection criteria vary the formula enough to shake things up?

Male aggression and dominance, is part of the framework on how we're genetically built. I see very little productive use on railing against that. Adding confrontation to a situation already based in confrontations and posturing will only amplify what's there, it won't help solve it. I agree with Sal that if someone goes off on fits of rage, I see that as a defect too. Exactly because they don't have to positive feedback loop to apply reason and self-control to their own emotions.

[bennyboy]

This is the essence of the human struggle, and in my eyes, it's the essence of the Christian concept of sin as well. The so-called "7 deadly sins" all consist of natural instincts which, when they are over-inflated, end up doing really great harm.

But all those instincts have a very great potential to spin out of control. Eating is an instinct-- when people lose control of that instinct, it's gluttony, and it will likely lead them to an early death. Romantic love is an instinct-- when people lose control of that instinct, you end up with betrayal, disease, and abuse. The desire to rest is an instinct-- when it is compulsive and leads to sloth, then a life is wasted and the person must be supported by a society which shouldn't have to bear the burden of laziness.

I think in all these cases, we look at them with some sense of disgust. These are people who aren't functioning normally. But I don't think there's a single person who doesn't have experience with SOME kind of instinct getting out of control in some way.

[I_am_not_mafia]

What's the difference between the rage of man and the rage of woman?