Recently, a loyal reader of my blog asked a question of how it was that salty became used as a term for angry, since it had appeared in a recent quiz-show segment for my congregation’s annual variety show [1].  Looking up the term, I found that according to the interwebs, salty was first used to mean upset or angry in 1938, given that sailors had long had an association with being angry and irritable sort of people.  This led to a further thought experiment as far as why is that sailors got that reputation to begin with, seeing that they were among the groups of men who tended to live without women and therefore were less cultured and civilized than the rest of humanity.  And that is the beginning of our tale today.  Among all the issues of gender studies concerning the relationship of gender to life and behavior, this is probably the one I have the most personal experience with.  And so, let us take a scholarly and even anthropoligical view of the state of men without women, something I am an incontrovertible expert in, it should be noted.

It should be noted that what I am talking about is not about the fate of individual men without women, although I am certainly an expert about that, but about what it is like being in a group of men where there are few if any women.  When one looks at the way that men behave without women, it’s not really the sort of place where one wants to spend all of one’s time.  That said, there is certainly an appeal in spending at least some where, as men are definitely far more free to be a bit more harsh and more direct and less refined than they are expected to be in feminine company.  The sort of socialization that contemporary men are held to is not something that lasts when one is around a group of men without women.  And it should be noted that this is not some sort of jock behavior alone, although it certainly does apply to them, it must be admitted.

What I have found striking is that this same sort of environment happens in diverse situations.  Whether one is with a group of 21+ year old guys at a sports bar watching football or in a math club or chess club or among actual athletes, all of which are situations I have frequently found myself, one finds the same sort of testosterone-driven competition that one would expect from male-only areas.  And it is precisely these sorts of masculine spaces where dominance is tested and competition usually involving flexing and fronting and an easy recourse to insults and violence that tend to bring out the man in all of us when we have no women to moderate things.  This does not mean that women cause violence to be avoided because that’s not right either, but the atmosphere is different when there are both men and women than when there is only men, and this sort of male-heavy atmosphere was once extremely prevalent on the sea or in armies, and it tended to encourage precisely the sort of behavior that one wanted from soldiers or people facing pirates and other dangers at sea.  And apparently it is also what makes one a good chess player or a good mathlete or athlete as well.  Who knew?

What are the downsides of such things though?  Well, it ought not to be a surprise that being around guys all the time without having girls around tends not to make someone a very nice person.  There are quite a few reasons to value feminine company, and we should recognize that while there are definitely occasions where it is good for men to hang out and compete with each other and there are other times when it is better to spend one’s time in other ways.  It’s good to have a balance of experiences that allows one to gain the full advantages of a rich and complex life.  I would guess that all-female spaces are fairly similar to all-male spaces in that the absence of people to perform for tends to heighten the competition between people for respect and honor.  I must admit, though, that my knowledge of that sort of space would be far more indirect and far more limited.  No man can know everything, though.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2019/12/08/what-makes-you-basic/