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Mitchell Pearce: just another boofhead like Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton and Mike Tyson
I was walking along the cliffs at Bondi Beach with a male friend when he brought up the story of Mitchell Pearce.
“It’s disgusting. These young sportsmen are treated like gods and lose all perspective of reality; they are spoilt rotten, success goes to their heads. They need to set an example,” he said, huffing and puffing, “for young people.”
When I was silent, he stopped. “Well? As a woman, what do you think? Isn’t it shocking?”
I knew there was a right answer to that firecracker. But no, I was not shocked: “I don’t think it’s any better or worse than what we’d expect from alpha-male boofheads in sport, or business, or politics for that matter.”
The Pearce story aside, it’s always struck me as odd that “polite society” expects what it considers “upstanding behaviour” from its testosterone-dosed alpha males. You can’t muzzle or domesticate a silverback.
ALBRECHTSEN: There’s no villain without a victim
We fall about in shock when we discover Tiger Woods had a zillion women, Bill Clinton had affairs, when Mike Tyson bites an opponent’s ears or Wall Street wolves such as Bernard Madoff rip people off. We are gobsmacked by political leaders who sniff chairs, or sportsmen who grope women in pubs after sports matches, or powerful males who eat their opponents for dinner. But it goes with the terrain. To put it in terms of “right/wrong” is naive.
Even while wars rage and the leaders of multinationals roam the planet with machetes, we still get flummoxed by what Wall Street terms “big swinging dicks”.
No, I’m not male-bashing. Most men are as much victims of alpha-male dominance as women are.
But we stand too far away from the natural world and are left blinking. Alpha-male lions enter the female pride and kill off the infant progeny of the former lion king. Dolphins do the same. Animals are territorial and the leaders of the pack just want to spread their genes.
They are, of course, superior to us in that they are not sadistic like human animals and guilty of domestic violence or putting people in concentration camps, but the top males of any species who are swinging off the Darwinian ladder are nevertheless laws unto themselves.
Add into the equation the idolisation we give our sports-celeb-business heroes — in cultivating and rewarding narcissism — and a dash of alcoholism, and you have a combustible mix.
Yes, Pearce’s drunken behaviour was upsetting to watch. But in the context of alpha-male behaviour, it’s not shocking. It’s just what silverbacks do.
- THE AUSTRALIAN
- FEBRUARY 6, 2016 12:00AM
- SAVE
- Ruth Ostrow
Columnist
Sydney
Mitchell Pearce apologises for actions resulting from the volatile mix of adulation and alcohol.
I was walking along the cliffs at Bondi Beach with a male friend when he brought up the story of Mitchell Pearce.
“It’s disgusting. These young sportsmen are treated like gods and lose all perspective of reality; they are spoilt rotten, success goes to their heads. They need to set an example,” he said, huffing and puffing, “for young people.”
When I was silent, he stopped. “Well? As a woman, what do you think? Isn’t it shocking?”
I knew there was a right answer to that firecracker. But no, I was not shocked: “I don’t think it’s any better or worse than what we’d expect from alpha-male boofheads in sport, or business, or politics for that matter.”
The Pearce story aside, it’s always struck me as odd that “polite society” expects what it considers “upstanding behaviour” from its testosterone-dosed alpha males. You can’t muzzle or domesticate a silverback.
ALBRECHTSEN: There’s no villain without a victim
We fall about in shock when we discover Tiger Woods had a zillion women, Bill Clinton had affairs, when Mike Tyson bites an opponent’s ears or Wall Street wolves such as Bernard Madoff rip people off. We are gobsmacked by political leaders who sniff chairs, or sportsmen who grope women in pubs after sports matches, or powerful males who eat their opponents for dinner. But it goes with the terrain. To put it in terms of “right/wrong” is naive.
Even while wars rage and the leaders of multinationals roam the planet with machetes, we still get flummoxed by what Wall Street terms “big swinging dicks”.
No, I’m not male-bashing. Most men are as much victims of alpha-male dominance as women are.
But we stand too far away from the natural world and are left blinking. Alpha-male lions enter the female pride and kill off the infant progeny of the former lion king. Dolphins do the same. Animals are territorial and the leaders of the pack just want to spread their genes.
They are, of course, superior to us in that they are not sadistic like human animals and guilty of domestic violence or putting people in concentration camps, but the top males of any species who are swinging off the Darwinian ladder are nevertheless laws unto themselves.
Add into the equation the idolisation we give our sports-celeb-business heroes — in cultivating and rewarding narcissism — and a dash of alcoholism, and you have a combustible mix.
Yes, Pearce’s drunken behaviour was upsetting to watch. But in the context of alpha-male behaviour, it’s not shocking. It’s just what silverbacks do.
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