Fighting like hell to keep the wolves away
Men's stoic behavior often expresses a deep love that can be missed
Previous posts on masculinity here, here, and here. I wrote this to share my notion about masculine love after reading my friend Amit Varma’s post “Tell me you love me.”
Every Indian of a certain generation knows about the chemical Methyl isocyanate leak at the Union Carbide (now part of Dow chemical) at Bhopal in 1984. A very good film on it, ‘The Railway Men,’ was released Netflix recently. These ordinary men sacrificed their lives by simply doing their duty honorably and helping people around them. In military parlance, they ‘stayed at their posts.’
There’s a fantastic song by a son about his father’s health issues caused by a similar chemical leak in Galveston Bay Texas. The now defunct southern rock band Uncle Lucius’s ‘Keep the wolves away.’ This is such fine storytelling.
Well I was barely thirteen when the company man, tried to dig my daddy's grave
It happened on a French owned tanker ship, spilling poison into Galveston Bay
Where the liquid fire filled his lungs and his eyes, silenced any mortal cries
Cold and the grip of death stinging pain, he fought like hell to keep the wolves away
Singer songwriter Frank Galloway spoke about the song in which he also mentioned Bhopal and Dow Chemical.
Another magnificent song is Darrell Scott’s ‘You’ll never leave Harlan alive,’ covered with such an incomparable melancholic undertone by Patty Loveless.
Grandma sold out cheap and they moved out west of Pineville
To a farm where Big Richland River winds
And I bet they danced them a jig
And they laughed and sang a new song
"Who said we'd never leave Harlan alive"But the times they got hard and tobacco wasn't sellin'
And old granddad knew what he'd do to survive
He went and dug for Harlan coal
And sent the money back to grandma
But he never left Harlan alive
Here’s a live version.
A native of Pike County, Patty Ramey Loveless was 12 years old when her family moved to Louisville, in 1969. Her dad needed to take better advantage of his health care than he could find in the hills. Suffering, like thousands of other miners, from a terrible disease, caused by too many years of breathing coal dust in the underground mines where he made his living, Mr. Ramey ultimately succumbed to the ravages of black lung in 1979.1
An astoundingly high percentage of deaths caused during the performing of hazardous jobs are of men2. The exception is of women in tough jobs that are attacked while on work (think of nurses, psychiatric aides, correctional officers) by their stakeholders3.
This is man’s expression of love for his family. That oil change that your husband got done for your car, or filled it with gas (petrol) when he noticed it low during the weekend? That was him saying, “I love you!'“
At the extreme end, as demonstrated by the autobiographical songs above, men kill themselves by putting food on the table for their families. As Wendy Patrick writes in Psychology Today,
Regarding gender differences, in their research, Constant et al. found women as more inclined to communication, affection, and emotional closeness, and men are more inclined to share activities or engage in joint leisure time, in addition to placing significant value on the sexuality component of a romantic relationship. Another gender difference included the finding that women listen more and are more understanding of the needs of their partners.4
We are are not wired like each other and hence men and women experience & declare love in completely different ways, contends Peggy Drexler, also in Psychology Today5.
One might assume that a shift toward commitment and attachment might create a slipstream that would pull along more open and demonstrative emotional communication.
It's an assumption that runs into some formidable limitations imposed by biology. There is more at work here than too many Clint Eastwood movies.
University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Dr. Ruben Gur says that the same way men and women have different bodies, they have different brains—with eons of evolution creating distinct wiring. It goes well beyond the formative impact of testosterone and estrogen.
It's a matter of how we're built, he says, not what we learn. And he has the brain imaging to prove it.
Other studies elaborate on the biological link to male-female communication styles. Men are wired to act during times of high emotion, since emotion can lead to violence; there is a shut-off mechanism. He stops talking—just when women, wired entirely differently, want to talk.
As reported on the website Uncommon Knowledge, there may actually even be survival instinct at work. It takes longer for a man's blood pressure and immune system to return to normal after high emotion than it does for a woman.
My paternal grandfather died when my father was five years old. He grew up with little means and got a merit scholarship for his engineering degree. He worked very hard and the work and other stresses eventually killed him. He was the personification of the quiet, stoic man who rarely expressed emotions - the only time I’ve seen him tear up is at the end of my wedding ceremony. He was suffering a heart condition and wanted to ensure that he did his fatherly duty before he died. He passed away four months after my wedding.
I have friends whose fathers6 fled current day Pakistan after partition. One of those men was five years old when he witnessed his entire family being butchered by mobs and all his sisters and young women of his family abducted - he never had any idea whether they were alive or dead. He was the sole survivor, having been saved by the family servant who smuggled him out across a river and handed him to passing Hindu refugees. In the refugee camp some distant relative picked him up, and decamped with the compensation given by the new Indian government. This kid stayed with other relatives (mostly unwanted) and eventually went on to become the head of a prestigious public sector company. Those who talk about upper caste privilege have no idea about his backstory.
Is it fair to expect this man to demonstrate a Mills and Boon version of love?
Postscript:
When I originally conceived this post in my head, it was in response to the constant misandry expressed by a blogger. I used to like that blog because I thought it unpacked a lot of issues that faced women in India. However, soon after it achieved fame, it has become a whingefest of the sort that was portrayed in Jerry Maguire. It contains lots of quotes by other readers about how their husbands/brothers/in-laws/society are terrible and…. PATRIARCHY! Its gotten predictable and boring. Moreover, it lacks any empathy for men and this blogger’s mistaken determination to feminize men goes against their very biology. (In the interest of civil discourse, I won’t name the blog. This is not about the person, but about an attitude that - inspired by academic ideologues in (US) coastal elite universities - is so prevalent these days.)
We can be empathetic towards each other, and form relationships without putting the other sex down.
‘You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive', Ike Adams, Sentinel Echo, Jul 2019.
A surprising (and growing) gender gap in the most dangerous jobs, Analysis by Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post, March 17, 2023.
How Men and Women Experience Intimacy Differently: Struggles over affection, communication, and physical closeness. Wendy Patrick, Psychology Today, July 2022.
Why Can't Men Love Like Women? Maybe ... men just love differently, Peggy Drexler, Psychology Today, September 2011.
Of course, women suffered immensely during partition and are the most targeted victims during mob riots. Their shutting down of the violence has also been documented. My main point here is that men who bear the burden of responsibility (for family/siblings/friends/country) shut it down even more. If they didn’t, they would not survive the trauma.