Members in the Media
From: Calgary Herald

The male paradox

Calgary Herald:

Disturbing male-oriented crime stories were all over the news in 2011. So-called honour killings in Ontario. An Edmonton filmmaker convicted of a lethal luring that mimicked his film script. The allegations of torture and sexual assault against Calgary’s Dustin Paxton. And, of course, that testosterone- and alcohol-fuelled riot in Vancouver after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to Boston.

A fascinating article published in 2011 may give us some powerful insights into these tragedies. According to two University of South Florida psychologists, our manhood is actually a very fragile and precarious commodity. When it’s threatened, we’ll go to extreme lengths to defend it.

To explore this concept, Jennifer K. Bosson and Joseph A. Vandello had some college-aged men do “feminine” tasks, such as braiding hair, in a laboratory. Others were allowed to do gender neutral tasks, like braiding rope.

Read the whole story: Calgary Herald

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