Men Today are Domesticated

I can’t speak for women on this subject since I am not a woman and I’m not sure if this applies to them. But for men, we are generally more physical and competitive beings. One of the reasons so many young boys (myself included) are told we have ADHD in our childhood years of school, is because we don’t do well sitting in one spot behind a desk for hours at a time. This doesn’t change much as we grow older.

According to the Canadian Public Health Association, men have on average 40% more upper body strength, 30% lower body strength, and 11% more lung capacity, compared to women. Hence why men have outperformed women in sports since the beginning of our existence. I think it’s a fair assumption to say men are a significantly more physical gender and need an outlet to release our urge to get physical. This is coming from a 23-year-old who likes to write and play videogames. But even I feel the urge to wrestle or fight. My main concern is what happens to a man when he doesn’t ever get to play a sport or exert such physical energy. I’m sure he can be both physically and mentally affected.

Let’s get the tried and true science stuff out of the way. Exercising releases endorphins that relieve stress and even pain from the brain, often resulting in what’s referred to as “runners high.” This also causes your brain to release dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. These chemicals help make you feel good, stabilize mood, reduce stress, and help with sleep. This can create a positive snowball effect because sleep is the time your body needs to rest and your brain’s glymphatic system cleans out waste from your nervous system, aka removes toxins from your brain. These are several small things that can add up to make you feel better mentally. However, in today’s world, we are much more dainty than we’d like to admit, even us men. Our jobs are largely just at desks or behind a counter, our population doesn’t play sports as much as we once did, we find our entertainment from videogames and TV. We are a physically lazy generation. This along with many other reasons is why we have a massive increase in people with extreme anxiety and depression. I’m not saying exercise is the only cure, and no, if your issues come from abuse or relationships, exercise will not help you much at all.

Next, is what being domesticated does to us physically. Well, obviously we don’t get as much exercise, so we’re weaker. But I don’t think the answer is to go to the gym, though that is better than not going to the gym. The issue with going to the gym is that you work on specific muscles at a time in a clean and safe environment. Playing a sport, whether it be skateboarding, wall climbing, football, or soccer, you use more muscles than you realize. I recently took up skateboarding since I wanted a cheap sport I could do alone. The amount of muscles you use to balance and perform tricks or even simply pump and push is more than you’d think. Balancing on a skateboard can be tricky, it requires both the lower and upper body to be rather precise with both movements or holding certain positions. The same goes for standing on one leg while playing soccer and maneuvering the ball with the other foot. You don’t get the same nuances of muscle use and haste in a gym. Not to mention in contact sports you also have to push against other people and sometimes you fall down and get dirty. It’s good for you to be thrown around and bruised. At least for men.

But why did I bring up men specifically? Mainly because I’m not a woman, I don’t know what it’s like for a girl to sit behind a desk for hours on end with little to no physical activity. In the movie Fight Club, it tackles the idea of how men are so domesticated these days. How we care too much about what we look like, and our clothes, and our job title. We want to be clean and are looking for fun in all the wrong places. This is when the main character(s) form their fight club, for men to just be men and fight and wrestle and hit something. To get out their need to get physical, and roughed up.

There’s not a lot of hard evidence to support that men specifically need this physical outlet more compared to women, other than just our own life experiences. In school, the boys would wrestle, start fights, play sports, play tag. The girls did…. Well, I’m not sure what girls did, I didn’t pay attention to any when I was little, but I don’t remember any playing sports or fighting. Us boys would get antsy sitting at our desks, while girls did not. In high school I would often sit in the back of the class, partially because I didn’t like being at the front, but mainly because I could slowly let the teacher trust me to just stand in the back quietly. I didn’t want to sit, I wanted to stand and move my legs. When my brother and I would fight as kids we didn’t settle it by running to our parents, we’d fight (except when I was too little to fight since he’s 7-years older than me). My brother and I would wrestle and if need be, hit each other. When the fight was over, it was like it never happened. We felt good to just hit the other person and let out our frustrations. Sadly, we can’t do that in our schools or workplaces without getting in trouble. Honestly, though I can see why high school boys fight, and frankly it should almost be encouraged that if two guys have a dispute, they should meet somewhere and tussle it out. It helps build character.

Lastly, is the sense of community. Going out to play sports gives you people to socialize with and something to look forward to once or twice a week. It also gives you a place to make rivals, something many guys need to push themselves.

The reason I bring up this topic is that men have grown soft and weak in our modern first world countries. They have no confidence, no work ethic, they’re not physically, mentally, or emotionally strong. Men have become a disappointment in general. Now, this isn’t all men, but it’s all too common and we need to do better. I have noticed an issue with women more and more these days, but I will tackle that topic in another article with input from my fiancee since she’s a woman and her perspective would be very helpful in such a discussion.