Author: Elio Martino

Training the Masculinity Out of Children

Published by Elio Martino

With the recent school shootings, the rise of Donald Trump, and the recent exposure of sexual assault in Hollywood and the wider media, articles about something called ‘toxic masculinity’ are doing the rounds once again. ‘Toxic masculinity,’ we are told, takes many forms in contemporary life and discourse. For example, in an (unfortunately serious) article for NBC, Marcie Bianco describes Elon Musk’s groundbreaking rocket launch as evidence of men’s patriarchal entitlement to conquer. (At the Clayman Institute for Gender Reseach, Bianco manages “the only university fellowship in the nation that aims to train students how to become feminist journalists.”) All the menz are freaking out about this article. Mission complete https://t.co/Wf0x80uMvF — Marcie Bianco (@MarcieBianco) February 21, 2018 More subtle but equally specious rhetoric, generally derived from the French postmodern tradition, analyzes the socialization of boys through an analytical prism of dominance or systems of power and knowledge. A recent article in the Washington Examiner reported that a kindergarten teacher named Karen Keller was preventing boys in her class from playing with Lego in an attempt to compensate …

“You’re Fake News” The Unfortunate Reality of the Ad Hominem

Published by Elio Martino

When Donald Trump tweets, stock prices can tumble. Trump can wield greater influence with 280 characters than some world leaders can with entire economies. Reaching the public directly, Trump is able to personally attack an individual, agency, or company, and impact the news cycle for days, if not weeks, at a time. How can Trump’s attacks be so effective if the restrictions imposed by Twitter’s character limit leave so little room to formulate an argument? Anyone who followed the bitter presidential race between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 could be excused for thinking the evidence is already in. Trump and Fox spent months ceaselessly browbeating CNN and Clinton with attacks on their integrity, their associations, and their alleged motivations. Attacks ranged from accusations of corruption and criminality to anti-American intent. Clinton and CNN responded in kind, drawing parallels between Trump and Hitler, and painting him as exploitative and predatory in his business practices, narcissistic, sexist and racist. Behind these shouting matches, various news channels were busily scrutinizing every statistic, accusation, and proposal, consulting experts …

The Political Chimp

Published by Elio Martino

As of January 2018, the symbolic Doomsday Clock reads two minutes to midnight. The current age of global instability and uncertainty has revived discussion of an age-old question: is war ingrained in human nature? Warfare has been studied for centuries, by everyone from historians of ancient Greece to primatologists. But something strange is happening to the way we consider the subject, especially with respect to the study of chimp-on-chimp violence. Conspecific killing among chimpanzees (i.e. when chimps kill one another) has become a particularly political and controversial topic, and contending arguments seem to reflect the ideological preferences and outlook of the researchers on either side of the debate. At issue are the implications data about primate warfare might have for our understanding of human violence. A link between chimpanzee and human warfare has been stated outright by leading primatologists, who suggest that it demonstrates humans’ innate predisposition for violence. I first encountered this controversy during graduate school. Steven Pinker had just published The Better Angels of Our Nature which provoked heated discussion of war-like behavior as an evolutionary mechanism in humans. Then, two …