The vast majority of violent acts, including terrorist attacks, are planned and carried out by men. If you want an indiscriminate attack on innocent people, spreading fear, injury and death, there is usually a man or group of men who can be found to carry it out with relatively little effort.
My understanding of male violence as discussed on this board is that it is underplayed by our society because frequently the victims are female, and female lives are less valued than male. But looking at terrorist attacks, men are as vulnerable as women. What is more, terrorists are able to attack not only Joe Public, but also those at the top of the tree - politicians, business leaders etc.
It has raised a couple of questions in my head;
- Are men biologically more disposed to violence than women?
- Are feminist explanations that male violence can somehow be socially engineered out of the male psyche therefore doomed to failure?
My own point of view is that men’s biology makes violence inevitable at a higher rate than it will occur in women, and that short of biological engineering, we are stuck with it. I think that this viewpoint is at odds with feminist thinking, because it is somehow seen as letting men off the hook - ‘poor things, they can’t help it’ etc. I’d be very interested to know what others think.
