Why are winos so disproportionately male?

Suppose someone says, “There’s a bunch of winos on that street corner.” You approach the indicated area. You expect to see a group of women in ragged dresses passing around a bottle of wine that is perhaps still in its brown paper bag. Or at least that is what you expected to see prior to the feminist movement of the 1970s.

No?

No.

The image of the wino has always been, and still is, a male image. It’s a man, ragged and worn down, dirty and disheveled, who lives from drink to drink.

Winos are among the most despised of the impoverished and often homeless. I remember a grungy man walking around saying, “Who’s going to help a wino?”

A woman nearby sniffed, “All he wants to do is buy some more wine so he can get drunk again.”

Indeed, winos often evoke disgust and contempt because they “brought it on themselves.”

However, it needs to be asked: Why do men sink into this deprived and despised state so much more frequently than women do?

I believe there are several reasons.

It is possible that there is a genetic factor in men’s falling to the bottom in this horrendous manner. There is a genetically based tendency for the human male to have greater variation in some areas than the human female. While the two sexes are roughly equal in intelligence, men are greatly over-represented among both geniuses and idiots. This is why Camille Paglia has said, “I’m convinced that if civilization had been left in exclusively female hands, we’d all still be living in grass huts.”

Another reason that winos tend to be men may be that there has traditionally been a greater stigma on the drunk woman than the drunk man. The greater freedom men have had in this area is a two-edged sword as it amounts to a freedom that can lead to a destructive addiction.

Another possibility is that the true number of women alcoholics is not that much less than that of men alcoholics but that the women are better able to hide their addiction by withdrawing into their homes. They may be less apt to end up among the despised alcoholic homeLESS because family and friends have greater sympathy for them and are willing to contribute to their support. The government may be more likely to give wino women hand-outs through the welfare system and thus prevent their conditions from becoming as public and as dire as those of wino men.

It also seems to me that there are aspects of the male role that may lead some men to severe alcoholism. Men have traditionally been expected to suppress emotional expression. Trying to keep a lid on their feelings may mean that negative feelings that are not cried out end up poisoning them. Men are usually less verbally skilled and the reasons for this deficit are, in my opinion, probably due to an interplay of biology and socialization. The inability to talk out their sorrows may lead them to try to drown them with booze. Depression is often thought of as a female ailment but I cannot help wondering how many men are genuinely depressed but not diagnosed as such because they feel that they must mask their depression – and how many unconsciously or semi-consciously try to medicate their depression with liquor.

Those are my thoughts on why winos have always been and still are overwhelmingly men. Readers, what are yours?