Chapter 3: Myths About Masculinity: Biology as Excuse

1Chapter Quote

Chapter Quote

Under patriarchy, every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.

— Andrea Dworkin

Before we examine how patriarchy operates in schools, we need to address some pervasive myths that treat patriarchal conditioning as natural, inevitable, or biological. These myths are particularly dangerous in educational settings because they’re often used to excuse harmful behavior and abandon the responsibility to teach differently.

2The “Alpha Male” Myth

You’ve probably heard it: “He’s just an alpha male”. The phrase is used to explain — and excuse — dominance, aggression, and control. The concept has saturated popular culture, the manosphere, and unfortunately, many classrooms and staff rooms. It’s invoked to naturalize male hierarchies, to justify aggressive behavior, to explain why some boys dominate others.

Here’s the problem: the “alpha male” doesn’t exist. Not in wolves. Not in humans.

The term comes from a 1947 study of captive wolves by animal behaviorist Rudolph Schenkel (Schenkel, 1947), later picked up by L. David Mech. He observed that in captivity, wolf packs had a dominant male — the “alpha” — who maintained control through aggression and intimidation. This research was popularized and applied to human behavior, especially male behavior, creating an entire mythology about natural male hierarchies and dominance.

But there’s a crucial detail that rarely gets mentioned: L. David Mech, one of the world’s leading wolf researchers, has spent decades trying to correct this misunderstanding. In wild wolf packs — not captive ones — there is no “alpha male”. Wolf packs are families. The “leaders” are simply parents. They lead through experience and care, not dominance and aggression (Mech, 1999; Mech & Boitani, 2003). The aggressive hierarchies Schenkel observed were artifacts of captivity — unnatural conditions that created unnatural behavior.

Mech himself has said: “The concept of the alpha wolf is well ingrained in the popular wolf literature… However, it is based on a misunderstanding” (Mech, 1999). He’s literally spent years trying to undo the damage of this myth, even requesting his own early work promoting the concept be taken out of print.

So when we apply “alpha male” to humans, we’re basing human behavior on a misunderstanding of wolf behavior, observations of traumatized captive animals, and unnatural conditions that created pathological dominance hierarchies. Sound familiar? Because that’s exactly what patriarchy does — it creates unnatural, rigid hierarchies and then calls them natural.

In educational settings, the “alpha male” myth shows up in predictable ways. Teachers excuse boys’ dominance and aggression as “natural leadership”. Students organize themselves into hierarchies with “alphas”, followers, and “betas”. Adults treat competition and dominance as healthy male development, assuming boys naturally need to “establish dominance”. Bullying gets rationalized as boys “sorting out the pecking order”. All of this treats learned patriarchal behavior as biological inevitability.

The reality is different. When boys compete for dominance, establish hierarchies through aggression, or use intimidation to control others, this isn’t biology. It’s learned behavior. It’s patriarchy teaching boys that manhood equals dominance, that they must compete with other males for status, that showing weakness means losing position in the hierarchy.

3The Testosterone Excuse

The second major myth claims that testosterone makes men violent, aggressive, and risk-taking. Therefore, the argument goes, boys’ aggression, dominance, and recklessness are biological inevitabilities we must accept rather than behaviors we can shape. This myth is everywhere. “Boys will be boys — it’s the testosterone”. “He can’t help being aggressive, it’s biological”. “Teenage boys are ruled by their hormones”. “Men are naturally more violent because of testosterone”.

Let’s be clear about what’s actually true. Testosterone does exist. It does have effects. Some aspects of behavior may be influenced by hormonal differences. This is not in dispute. But here’s what’s also true, and what gets obscured by biological determinism:

Testosterone doesn’t cause violence or aggression in any simple, direct way. Research shows that the relationship between testosterone and aggression is complex, bidirectional, and heavily mediated by social context (Archer, 2006). Testosterone levels rise in response to competitive situations — it’s not just causing the competition, the competition affects testosterone. Social dominance and status-seeking increase testosterone, not just the reverse. The same testosterone levels produce different behaviors in different cultural contexts. Men with high testosterone aren’t automatically aggressive; context and learning matter enormously.

What testosterone does correlate with is status-seeking behavior, not necessarily violence (Eisenegger et al., 2011). But how you seek status is learned. In patriarchal cultures, status is achieved through dominance and aggression. In other contexts, status comes from cooperation, generosity, or skill. The hormone doesn’t dictate the method; culture does.

It’s also crucial to remember that women have testosterone too. Testosterone isn’t a “male hormone” — both men and women produce it, just in different amounts. Women’s behavior isn’t controlled by their hormones in the simplistic ways often claimed about men. Neither is men’s.

Historical and cross-cultural evidence demonstrates that violence is learned, not biological. If male violence were simply biological — caused by testosterone — we’d expect to see consistent rates across all times and places. We don’t. Violence rates vary enormously by culture, historical period, and social context (Pinker, 2011). Some societies have very low rates of male violence. Some historical periods saw dramatic decreases or increases. This variation proves that violence is primarily social, not biological.

The “testosterone excuse” is politically convenient, and that’s precisely why it persists. If male violence is biological and inevitable, then we don’t have to change how we raise boys. We don’t have to examine patriarchal culture. We don’t have to hold men accountable. We can treat violence as natural rather than preventable. Women just have to accept it and protect themselves. This is exactly what patriarchy wants us to believe.

In educational settings, the testosterone excuse shows up as rationalization for lowered expectations. “Boys are just more physical, more aggressive, more rough — it’s biological”. Different discipline standards emerge: “He can’t sit still, it’s the testosterone”. Teachers accept boys’ violence as normal: “Boys fight, it’s natural”. Activities get organized around assumed male need for competition and risk. Most damagingly, educators give up on teaching boys gentleness, collaboration, and emotional literacy, assuming testosterone prevents it.

4Why These Myths Matter in Education

These myths — alpha males, testosterone-driven aggression, biological inevitability — are incredibly damaging in educational contexts because they excuse harmful behavior instead of addressing it. If boys are “naturally” aggressive, we don’t have to teach them alternatives. If dominance is biological, we accept bullying as normal. If violence is testosterone-driven, we blame biology instead of holding boys accountable.

These myths lower expectations for boys. “Boys will be boys” means we don’t expect them to regulate emotions, collaborate, or be gentle. We accept lower standards for behavior, empathy, and care work. We treat boys as less capable of emotional intelligence and social skill. We abandon the pedagogical responsibility to teach what patriarchy says boys can’t learn.

The myths trap boys in rigid masculinity. If aggression is natural, boys who aren’t aggressive become “failed males”. If dominance is biological, boys must compete for status or be “weak”. If emotions are unmanly, boys must suppress them or be “feminine”. The supposed biology becomes a cage.

Most insidiously, these myths make patriarchy invisible. If current gender patterns are biological, they’re not cultural. If they’re not cultural, we can’t change them. If we can’t change them, patriarchy is natural and inevitable. This is exactly what patriarchy wants us to believe. Biological determinism serves patriarchal interests by naturalizing what is actually a social system.

These myths prevent us from teaching differently. If we think boys are biologically driven to dominate, we organize schools around that assumption. We create competitive, hierarchical environments and call them “boy-friendly”. We abandon the project of teaching collaboration, emotional literacy, and egalitarian relationships. We reproduce patriarchy instead of challenging it.

5The Truth: Biology Doesn’t Determine Destiny

Here’s what we actually know from research: Human beings are incredibly flexible and shaped by culture (Fausto-Sterling, 2000). The same biological substrate — hormones, brain structures, genetic predispositions — produces radically different behaviors depending on cultural context, learning, and social expectations.

Gender differences in behavior are smaller than commonly believed. There’s more variation within genders than between them (Hyde, 2005). These differences are heavily influenced by stereotypes and expectations through mechanisms like stereotype threat and self-fulfilling prophecies. What counts as “masculine” or “feminine” varies enormously across cultures and historical periods. And most importantly, these differences are largely produced by differential treatment from birth — boys and girls are treated differently from day one, and these different treatments create different outcomes.

Boys are capable of deep emotional literacy and expression. They’re capable of collaboration and cooperation. They’re capable of gentleness and nurturing. They’re capable of non-violent conflict resolution. They’re capable of egalitarian relationships. They’re capable of rejecting dominance hierarchies. None of this is prevented by testosterone or biology.

When we see boys being aggressive, dominant, emotionally shut down, or violent, we’re not seeing biology. We’re seeing patriarchy. And because it’s learned, it can be unlearned.

6The “Religious/Cultural Other” Myth

Another pervasive myth treats patriarchy as something that exists “over there” — in Islamic countries, Hindu societies, or “traditional” cultures — while Western, Christian-majority nations are portrayed as having “evolved past” patriarchy or being naturally more egalitarian. This myth is both factually wrong and politically dangerous.

6.1The Reality: Patriarchy is Global and Systemic

Patriarchy exists in every society, regardless of dominant religion or level of “development”. The data makes this clear. Looking at women’s representation in government, we see that Rwanda (with a Muslim minority) has 61% women in parliament, while the United States (Christian majority) has only 28% women in Congress (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2023). Sweden has 47% women in parliament, Saudi Arabia has 20% women in the Shura Council, and India (Hindu majority) has 15% women in parliament. The pattern doesn’t follow religious or cultural lines — it follows power structures.

Economic indicators show similar complexity. Gender wage gaps exist globally: 18% in the US, 18% in Germany, 22% in Japan, 31% in South Korea (OECD, 2023). Women’s labor force participation rates don’t follow expected patterns either: Rwanda has 86%, Madagascar 85%, while Italy has 56% and Greece 54%. Women in corporate leadership positions are more common in the Philippines (39%) and Thailand (30%) than in Japan (9%) or Germany (12%).

Violence against women is endemic in Western countries, not just elsewhere. In the United States, one in four women experience severe intimate partner violence, and one in six women have experienced rape (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). In the United Kingdom, two women are killed by current or former partners every week, and one in four women experience domestic violence (Office for National Statistics, 2022). In Germany, one woman is killed by an intimate partner every 2.5 days, and 35% of women experience physical or sexual violence. France sees one woman killed by an intimate partner every 2-3 days, with 220,000 women experiencing domestic violence annually. Australia has one woman killed by an intimate partner weekly, with one in six women experiencing sexual violence. Canada sees Indigenous women twelve times more likely to be murdered, with one in four women experiencing intimate partner violence.

6.2How the Myth Operates

The myth operates through selective focus. Western media and discourse intensely focus on certain practices: hijab or burqa requirements in some Muslim countries, sati (a historical practice) in India, female genital cutting in parts of Africa, and honor killings in certain communities. Meanwhile, equivalent practices in Western contexts remain largely invisible or unexamined.

Western countries have beauty standards requiring women to spend thousands on appearance modification. Purity culture in Christian communities controls women’s sexuality as strictly as any other religious tradition. Domestic violence rates in Western countries are higher than in many countries Westerners criticize for women’s rights. Workplace sexual harassment affects 58% of women in the EU (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014). Campus rape culture means one in five college women are sexually assaulted in the US. And the US has a higher femicide rate than many countries it criticizes for women’s rights.

The myth treats symptoms as causes, suggesting that Islam, Hinduism, or “traditional culture” cause patriarchy, rather than recognizing that patriarchal systems use religious and cultural frameworks to justify themselves. The reality is that patriarchal interpretations exist within every religious tradition, alongside egalitarian interpretations.

Within Islam, patriarchal interpretation emphasizes women must obey husbands and have limited public roles, while feminist Islamic scholars like Amina Wadud and Asma Barlas argue the Quran grants women property rights, education, and political participation (Wadud, 1999; Barlas, 2002). Within Christianity, patriarchal interpretation cites “wives submit to husbands” and maintains male-only clergy, while feminist Christian scholars like Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza emphasize Jesus’s egalitarian treatment of women and women’s leadership in the early church (Schüssler Fiorenza, 1983). Within Hinduism, patriarchal interpretation treats women as property and justifies practices like sati and child marriage, while feminist Hindu scholars point to goddess traditions and women’s spiritual authority (Kishwar, 1999).

6.3Historical Amnesia About Western Patriarchy

The myth requires ignoring that Western societies had identical or worse patriarchal practices until recently. Looking at women’s legal status, we find that in the US, married women couldn’t own property until 1839-1900 (varying by state). In the UK, married women were legal property of husbands until the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870-1882. In France, women couldn’t open bank accounts without husband’s permission until 1965. In Switzerland, women couldn’t vote until 1971.

Violence and control have deep histories in the West. Marital rape wasn’t illegal in all 50 US states until 1993. The “rule of thumb” allowed men to beat wives with sticks no thicker than their thumbs throughout Europe. Witch hunts killed 40,000-60,000 people in Europe between 1450-1750, with 80% of victims being women killed for defying patriarchal norms (Federici, 2004).

6.4The “Dangerous Foreign Men” Myth

A particularly toxic variant claims that brown, Muslim, or immigrant men are uniquely dangerous to “our” women. They come here and commit rape because of their culture, the argument goes. It’s a cultural problem, not a problem with men. This myth is factually false and politically weaponized.

The reality of rape culture tells a different story. Most sexual violence is committed by known perpetrators, not strangers. In the US, 80% of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim — family, friends, acquaintances, intimate partners (RAINN, 2023). In the UK, 90% of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. In Germany, 76% of sexual assaults are by known perpetrators. In Australia, 87% of sexual assaults are by known perpetrators.

Rape is overwhelmingly intra-racial and intra-cultural. US Department of Justice data shows that 84% of white women are raped by white men, and 94% of Black women are raped by Black men (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2022). European data shows sexual violence is predominantly committed within the same ethnic and cultural groups. “Stranger danger” is a statistical anomaly — only 8-20% of sexual violence globally is committed by unknown perpetrators.

Family and intimate partner violence statistics reveal where the real danger lies. Incest and family sexual abuse affect one in four girls and one in thirteen boys, with 68% of abuse committed by family members in the US. One in ten women are raped by an intimate partner in the US, with similar rates across Western countries. Child sexual abuse is committed in 90% of cases by known, trusted adults — family members, family friends, and authority figures.

When we examine actual perpetrator demographics, we find that in the US, white men commit 69% of sexual offenses, proportional to population. In the UK, white British men commit the vast majority of sexual offenses. In Germany, German men commit the majority of sexual violence. The pattern is consistent: sexual violence is primarily committed by men from the dominant cultural group.

6.5How the “Dangerous Foreigner” Myth Functions

The myth deflects attention from actual perpetrators. It focuses on rare “stranger rape” while ignoring the epidemic of family and acquaintance rape. It allows dominant-group men to position themselves as protectors rather than potential threats. It creates moral panic about external threats while ignoring internal ones.

The myth is politically weaponized to justify immigration restrictions, surveillance and policing of minority communities, military interventions framed as “saving their women”, and division between women across racial and ethnic lines.

The myth reproduces rape culture by treating rape as aberrant behavior by “others” rather than a systemic problem. It prevents examination of how “normal” masculinity produces sexual violence. It focuses on policing women’s behavior (avoid strangers) rather than men’s (don’t rape).

6.6Why This Myth is Politically Dangerous

The myth obscures patriarchy in Western contexts. By locating patriarchy “elsewhere”, it prevents recognition of ongoing patriarchal systems in supposedly “advanced” societies. US women couldn’t get credit cards without male co-signers until 1974. Pregnancy discrimination in employment remains widespread. Reproductive rights are under constant attack. The gender wage gap persists across all Western countries. Campus rape crisis was largely ignored until recent activism.

The myth justifies imperialism and racism. It has been used to justify colonial interventions under the banner of “saving brown women from brown men”, as postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak documented (Spivak, 1988). The Afghanistan War was partly justified as liberating women. Muslim and immigrant communities are portrayed as inherently patriarchal to justify immigration restrictions and surveillance. Cultural superiority narratives position Western civilization as naturally more enlightened.

The myth divides feminist movements. It creates hierarchies among women: Western feminists seen as “liberated”, non-Western women seen as “oppressed victims” needing rescue. This prevents solidarity and coalition-building. It ignores non-Western feminist movements and leaders who are doing powerful work challenging patriarchy in their own contexts.

Most dangerously, the myth enables sexual violence. By focusing on “foreign” threats, resources are diverted from addressing actual perpetrators — family members, acquaintances, intimate partners. Women are given a false sense of security around “safe” men from their own culture. Actual rape culture is left unexamined and unchallenged. Survivors of family and acquaintance rape are less likely to be believed or supported.

6.7Contemporary Feminist Movements Globally

The myth also erases vibrant feminist movements worldwide. In the Middle East and North Africa, women’s rights movements are active in Iran, Egypt, and Morocco. Palestinian feminist organizing continues despite occupation and genocide. Lebanese women have achieved significant political participation. In South Asia, Dalit feminist movements in India challenge both patriarchy and caste oppression. Women’s cooperatives in Bangladesh provide economic alternatives. Pakistani women’s rights activism persists despite significant obstacles. Across Africa, movements like Wangari Maathai’s environmental feminism in Kenya, #MeToo movements across African countries, and women’s leadership in liberation movements demonstrate ongoing resistance.

These movements challenge both local patriarchy and Western feminist assumptions about their societies. They offer frameworks that Western feminism often lacks, connecting struggles against colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy in ways that recognize their intersections.

6.8What This Means for Educators

When teaching about patriarchy and sexual violence, we must avoid certain pitfalls. Don’t present Western societies as “post-patriarchal”. Don’t focus only on “extreme” practices in other cultures. Don’t treat religion as inherently patriarchal. Don’t ignore feminist movements in non-Western contexts. Don’t perpetuate “stranger danger” myths about sexual violence.

Instead, show patriarchy as a global system with local variations. Include feminist voices from all traditions and cultures. Examine patriarchy in students’ own contexts first. Connect local and global struggles. Challenge orientalist assumptions. Teach accurate information about sexual violence — that most is committed by known perpetrators. Address rape culture as a systemic problem, not individual deviance.

As educators, we have a choice. We can accept the myths — treating boys’ aggression as biological and inevitable, organizing classrooms around assumed male need for dominance and competition, lowering expectations for boys’ emotional and social development, excusing harmful behavior as “natural”, and thereby reproducing patriarchy.

Or we can reject the myths and teach differently — recognizing that behavior is learned and can be shaped, holding all students to high standards for emotional regulation, collaboration, and care, explicitly teaching alternatives to dominance and aggression, challenging patriarchal narratives about what boys “naturally” are, and creating conditions for boys to develop full humanity.

The second option is harder. It requires examining your own beliefs about gender and biology, resisting cultural narratives about “natural” male behavior, holding boys accountable while supporting their development, teaching skills patriarchy says boys don’t need, and facing resistance from students, parents, and colleagues who believe the myths.

But it’s the only option consistent with liberatory education. Because when we excuse boys’ harmful behavior as biological, we’re not being kind to boys. We’re abandoning them. We’re saying they’re incapable of better. We’re trapping them in a narrow, violent, emotionally stunted version of masculinity that will harm them and everyone around them.

Boys deserve better. They deserve to be taught that they can be strong and gentle, confident and vulnerable, brave and emotionally literate. They deserve to learn collaboration, care, and egalitarian relationships. They deserve liberation from patriarchal masculinity.

But they’ll only get that if we stop making excuses and start teaching differently. And that requires naming the real cause of harmful masculine behavior: not biology, not testosterone, not alpha hierarchies, not “the others” — it’s patriarchy.

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