LEADERSHIP IS NOT A ‘MALE’ TRAIT

Sir,

There is no shortage of references to ‘alpha males’ in popular culture. It’s a widely held belief that the ‘dominant male’ gets the girl. The alpha male is tall, charismatic and aggressive; he speaks with a deep voice and possesses a handsome face. The alpha male is ‘captain fantastic’ and often occupies positions of leadership because that’s his birth right as a bearer of the correct genitalia; at least according to teachings. Religious circles corroborate and they too nominate the male as the de facto leader – so it must be true. Well, it’s not.

Abducting

Humans have been observed to behave abnormally in captivity but somehow the same humans usually have the bright idea of abducting animals from their natural habitats to study their behaviour in captivity. The results of such an exercise are as unreliable as studying the behaviour of prisoners as a proxy for natural human society. Wolf packs don’t form in the wild the way they do in zoos. Wolf packs form around family units. What would be the ‘alpha male’ in a pack is usually just the ‘dad’, the ‘alpha female’ just the mum, and the rest of the pack follows their lead, not because of some competitive vying for dominance, but because it’s mum and dad.

Existence

Humans are perhaps the most sophisticated life form. The concept of an ‘alpha’ in human society is demonstrably more ridiculous. There is no set of skills that is enough to put you in the vanguard of all the fields and social circles in existence. A person usually belongs to a multitude of circles. A junior staff member by day could be a superstar writer by night. Put it this way, nobody is group admin for all the WhatsApp groups to which they belong. The idea of one dominant male maintaining dominance by fighting off challenges from other lower males has many problems. It is not how animals normally organise. It is not as widely spread as we used to think and it is, and I cannot stress this enough, so much more absurd to expect human beings to organise in this manner.

Skill

Leadership is not a ‘male’ trait. It is not a genetic trait at all, it is a skill. A man may acquire the skill but so can a woman. There is no skill that after having acquired bestows on oneself all other skills. The alpha is a myth, especially the human alpha. I will get in trouble with the fandom for going against Tolkein; it breaks my heart to say this but, there is no ring to rule them all.

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