So not only is aggression a rational response, but suggesting that it isn’t makes me an misandrist? Well if nothing else Zarathrustra, I can appreciate your consistency.
No, both of these are overstatements -- one of them severe -- is this an INFJ/(tertiary) Ti problem?
Aggression is not always a rational response; it
can be a rational response.
And suggesting it always is irrational does not mean you are a necessarily misandrist.
It's just an indicator that you very well may be one -- that belief has a latent misandristic undertone.
In fairness, I can see a valid argument in saying the urge to be aggressive is a rational reaction- but actually compulsively getting aggressive when things don’t go your way is not a rational response, it’s the product of having little or no tolerance for the negative affect that arises when things don’t go the way you want them to go. People who cultivate patience with/for their negative feelings don’t become puppets to that negative affect when it surfaces, they maintain objectivity and their ability to calmly reason in spite of it. That’s the inherent relationship.
I think there's actually some truth to this (more aptly stated) position.
But the truth lies in the compulsivity and lack of control, not necessarily in the aggression.
I suppose it all boils down to what any given individual sees as rational, then.
See, first I was gunna respond, "Unfortunately, this is is largely true."
Apparently I've become a strong enough proponent of the potential for objectivity in certain situations that "being Zarathustra" is an understandable term for the action, but, when it comes to the use of "rational/irrational", as it used to bother me greatly when I was working through these issues in college, these terms, when used, often signify nothing more than "I disagree with this person's perspective". I felt they were possibly the most misused words in our common language, and when I would read them or hear them, and could clearly see/hear that they signified nothing more, it would drive me a bit bonkers. Its been 5+ yrs since this has really been the case, but I remember tjis specific issue significantly bothering me for at least a solid year or two.
Personally, I would use "irrational" to describe any of the following:
- failure to follow a coherent line of reasoning that others can understand
- extreme/inappropriate emotional outbursts or reactiveness
- behavior that demonstrates a disregard of known consequences/priorities
It's difficult for me to generalize group traits, so I cannot say whether men or women do any of the above with greater frequency.
One thing I have observed, as others have noted: in general, women do tend to be more expressive in terms of emotions (such as affection, crying, talking about hurt feelings, etc), whereas men tend to be more reserved about showing emotion (with the possible exception of anger/aggression). However, not all emotional expressions of sadness, anger, etc. are extreme or inappropriate, eg, I wouldn't consider crying due to experiencing a major loss to be irrational.
But then I read this, immediately after PeaceBaby's post, and thought it was brilliant.
They're still not perfectly objective criteria, but they are more specific, and provide a bit more of an objective basis for making the judgment call. There are still some normative judgments that need be made, which are not perfectly objective, but we're getting somewhere.
Anyway, I found these two posts relevant to yours because your take on aggression was a specific (kinda normative) judgment, and, at least as it was originally presented, was patently false. It would fall somewhere under criteria 2 and 3 in gromit's construction, and the place where it gets murky is whether or not the aggression is "extreme", "inappropriate", or demonstrates a disrgard of known consequences/priorities".
Unfortunately, this is where a high dose of subjectivity almost necessarily (but perhaps not entirely necessarily) slips in. Because what you might consider "extreme", "inappropriate", or demonstrating a disregard for known consequences/priorities, with either greater powers of discrimination, a keener intellect, better knowledge of the situation, or different values, another might perceive (and, in some cases accurately) as within reasonable bounds.
Examples can be provided.