Unmanly, but...

I am a big fan of the male of the species. But there is one all-too-common male behavior that I have always reacted to with what some might say is exaggerated vehemence: ganging up on a lone individual. If evolutionary theory is correct, one of men's deepest structures is hunting in groups. But it is very common for groups of males, especially adolescent ones, to hunt other humans. Gang-rape is one form. Gay-bashing is another. To me, a group assault on a weaker person is the most cowardly, most unmanly, of masculine behaviors. And what it provokes in me is pretty primitive.

I am no stranger to my primitive drives. Ever since I secretly read Carl Jung during morning chapel meditations, so that I could learn about my shadow, I have tried not to turn away from my darker impulses. I rarely act on them, but I would rather know them face to face than be caught off guard by them. And just because an impulse comes from anger rather than benevolence does not mean it is wrong. Only stupid morally narcissistic Western liberals could ever believe that. To use an example even they might get, shouldn't Hitler have been, at the very least, shot like a mad dog? (With apologies to dogs). Thomas Aquinas praised just anger and quoted John Chrysostom: "He who is not angry, when he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong.” And Gregory the Great said, "Reason opposes evil the more effectively when anger  ministers at her side.”Amen.

Anyway, there's a guy at my gym whom I flirt with, nice fella, too, and I found out third hand that he had been the victim of a savage gay-bashing some years ago. He looks just fine now, more than fine, but recently I overheard him tell someone something of what happened to him at the hands of a group of young men, very young men. I turned away because it was too revolting to continue to hear. But what I heard made me very angry. When he was healing, he saw these kids again and called the police. They did nothing. They have never been held accountable for their savagery. If it were in my power to mete out justice to those men, young though they be, they would never forget it. Rehabilitation would not be my aim, retribution would.