Fist Through The Drywall
Overheard on social media:
“I’m a divorce attorney, and you’ll never be able to convince me that someone is your soulmate once I find out that they’ve punched a hole in your wall.”
My first reaction: Hard agreement. That’s not your lover, that’s an assault and battery that hasn’t landed on you yet. Get out now.
My second reaction: First of all when she said “someone” I heard “a man” and you did too. We’ve all seen plenty of fist-holes in drywall and thin door panels. I’ve never seen one put there by a woman’s fist. But I, myself, have never punched a wall. Asking only somewhat tongue-in-cheek: am I a defective man? Is the patriarchy gonna toss me out for imperfect performance of masculinity?
I’ve never even bruised my knuckles. I’ve been super mad, I have hit stuff (although not people, not as an adult) with my open hand and thrown things and broken things and made very loud noises, but punching stuff is apparently not in my automatic go-to toolbox of shit a man does.
I’m afraid people will look at this and see a free-floating “not all men” response to a question nobody asked me. But that is emphatically not my intention. Remember the first thing I said: hole-in-wall punching is very much a pattern we all recognize as man stuff. But I’ve never even been tempted to do something so obviously painful and stupid. Sometimes I genuinely wonder whether I’m a singular weirdo, but I’m not singular; there are plenty of peaceable men with smooth knuckles like mine, running around loose out here.
This is what I suspect is closer to the truth: the wall-punchers are a large defective subcategory of men, ones who attract way more attention than they deserve to our gender, by means of the damage they do and the fear they cause. I can’t even accuse them of poor impulse control, because I’ve never so much as had the impulse to punch architecture. It’s hard to see as an anger management deficit, because I’ve never been that angry. I don’t understand their malfunction, but they obviously have one, and it’s not rare.
I’m not, however, stupid. My working theory must be that the wall-punching results from some state of overwhelm I’ve never experienced where negative emotions (which I have experienced) exceed self-control and the ability to foresee immediate negative consequences. But another theory is that the wall-punching is deliberate, controlled, and performative. In other words, it’s a threat. Not overwhelm, but evil. “Look what just accidentally happened to this wall; sooth and placate me, or…”
No real man would. No conception of masculinity I recognize allows it. But just like I said at the top of the essay, it does sometimes feel like me and the patriarchy do have beef about masculinity, and how to perform it.
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Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=35292
That was a lot of words to agree twice.
The real horror is how many people breeze past that extremely low bar of property destruction as a tell of whether they are your soul mate.
I read medical notes for a living and 1) 99% of the partner violence I see is committed by men.
2) The level of brainwashing is astounding,the excuses these women give for their partners behaviour is like a bad movie script. Literally “it’s my fault I make him angry” while sitting there with a broken orbital bone.
The distinction between breaking/throwing vs punching inanimate objects seems pretty minor to me and I wouldn’t hang too much on that. I have to admit I have done all those things in nearly 60 years on this planet, although not in the last decade or so which may be due to acquired wisdom or changing hormone levels. I don’t see these actions as performative or a threat, they have happened when rage and frustration overwhelmed me and I deliberately redirected violence towards inanimate objects rather than people. I fully appreciate that those people won’t see it the same way, and it isn’t something I am proud of, but intentions have to count for something.
On a lighter note – I thought we were going to get a joke about glory holes…
> No real man would.
Unfortunately, plenty of “real men” would; claiming otherwise is kind of the textbook example of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
I agree _vehemently_ with you that those approaches to defining or understanding masculinity (the ones that support physical violence as an appropriate or defensible or unavoidable emotional outlet) are deeply broken, toxic, and damaging – to society, to the people around those men who subscribe to that kind of masculinity, and to those men themselves.
But they are still men; they identify as men, society identifies them as men, they are perceived as men by other men. Saying they aren’t “real men” is easy and facile but not supportable.
They are shameful, both personally for their decisions and actions and societally for the environment that produced them. They are abhorrent to people who think that violence is an unconscionable act and that even the most well-supported violence that stops far more harm than it engenders is something to be undertaken seriously, solemnly, regretfully, and as a last resort. They are deeply unsafe to be around, and it is appropriate, correct, and necessary in _my_ ethical framework that they be watched, guarded against, and their victims supported and defended. (And that they be given the opportunity to make restitution and repair and return to the good graces of society, rare though that might be!)
But they are, indeed, men – real men – and one cannot kick them out of that large and inherently inclusive group simply by declaring their behavior abhorrent.
JD, you’re being too literal when you take my “no real man would” as a “no true Scottsman” fallacious example. The reason is that word “man” here is doing double duty. In one sense, it’s just a gender marker; and if I were using it in that sense, you would be absolutely right.
But there is also a cultural war being waged over the definition of masculinity, over who has the right to call themselves a “real man”, and that’s the sense in which I was using the word. And in that sense, I’m very much taking the side that claims that unrestrained impulsive violence excludes a person (male gender or not) from the definition of “real man”. Is my claim the minority position, opposed to a million gym-rat podcast bros who think anger management classes are a feminazi scam? Absolutely! But it’s not a logical fallacy, it’s a staked-out ideological position.
Bruce, your comment that “the distinction between breaking/throwing vs punching inanimate objects seems pretty minor to me and I wouldn’t hang too much on that” is an observation that I find myself in disagreement with, without having a strong argument against it. Ultimately it’s a value judgment with a lot of cultural context encoded in it. To me the closed fist encodes a level of rage and intent to harm that the other stuff doesn’t. But I can feel that way without having a compelling argument for feeling that way, or even knowing whether witnesses would feel that way too. As with you, for me it’s been decades since I’m managed to work up anything more powerful than a frustrated bellow anyway, and even that was (if memory serves) at automobiles threatening my pedestrian life.
I’m 74; I’ve never hit a woman or put my fist through a wall or anything close to that. It might be because I was brought up in a really abusive household. Me, my sister, and my mother were abused terribly. I endured and/or witnessed a lot of it. Nobody mourned my Stepfather when he died. I don’t think I would have done it anyway, but who knows? I got out and joined the Marines. Got married at 43 and I would do anything for her.
One objection to the comments:
Domestic violence goes both ways. It’s just that rarely is the woman able to inflict substantial injury.
But I definitely believe that a fist through the wall says get out now.
Loren, your “goes both ways” suggests an equality of ill intent that simply isn’t reflected in the real world. The statistics are clear for anybody who wants to look them up. Although men and women commit minor domestic violence at similar rates, seriously injurious acts are overwhelmingly (by some measurements, up to 95%) committed by men — and the physical strength disparity (or ability, in your framing) is not even close to big enough to explain all of that difference.
As men we do not get to “both sides” this one.
Loren, I have known violent women, but I think most women are less likely to initiate violence than men. This might be due to biological differences, or due to fear of retribution.