Should We Ban Men From Politics?

What is it with all these fourteen-year-old boy-statesmen whose overflowing  testosterone sweeps them into office and then drowns their careers? The latest casualties -- Dominque Strauss-Kahn and Anthony Weiner -- both emerging  superstars poised for major leadership roles as  French President and New York mayor -- are in a long line of politicians of every political stripe who want to "wear the pants" of the big boys, but can't keep them on long enough to make a real difference.

Is it that leadership demands testosterone but testosterone  demands a piggishness that doesn't accommodate leadership? Or is it the vanishing of superego in this age of commercialized libido and unbridled id?

Whatever the cause, what's clear is that testosterone isn't just a promoter of predatory sexual activity as a byproduct of power relations, of sexting as the new political texting, but  is also a promoter of predatory economic competition, collective aggression and war-making as policy. It is why NATO thinks warplanes first and negotiations last in Libya, why it is easier to kill Osama bin Laden than bring him to justice. It is finally why men are incapable of political leadership, if politics means deliberation, common ground, compromise and cooperation.

There is a solution to this deep dilemma of hormonal  reductionism: ban the hormone carriers – MEN! -- from political office. For real. For a long time.

Over the first 125 years of politics in the United States , women were prevented from voting or holding office, while men ran the new world. For the next 125 years let women do the political work while men do their time in the political wilderness, banned from voting and office-holding. It's not enough to have a few women join the men. What is required is not allowing women among all the men but forbidding men among the women. Only that way will the "different voice" (see Carol Gilligan) that defines how women live and work in the world also come to define our politics.

Men would still have sports and videogames and poker and golf -- a kind of virtual power arena in which to exercise their aggressiveness and indulge their hormones. But nobody would get too beat up along the way, and real politics would be left to the cooperative inclinations of the fair sex – fair as in judicious.

I don't want to be a hormone reductionist, but unfortunately that is what male behavior ultimately forces us to be. Which is why even the best of men fall prey to libidos that not only cannot be bridled but often end up in the saddle.

Men, out of politics! Let the women run things for the next century or so. Then like the ancient prophet Teresius, who lived both as a man and a woman and was able to report who had more pleasure, we can decide whether it is under men or under women we experience more peace and less injustice. (The answer is already obvious!)   

Comments

[murmur55]

Actually, men should be barred from the workplace if they are unable to manage their aggression, predatory sexual assaults and personality disorders.