Just feeling really angry at all the murder, assault, rape of females that goes on

LRD

well I think female on male DV accounts for 40% of reported DV cases in the UK, at least according to gov statistics I've seen and in T'Guardian.

But that's not the point I'm making. I'm just putting forward the idea that violence in the home has some root in traumatised soldiers returning to civey st after the horrers of war.

I know that poverty and cramped living spaces play a part too.

Yes, chibi, and to me the idea of women as witnesses or sufferers is troubling.

When wars involve fighting over the bits of land you're living on - which they still do for most of the world, we're odd in that the wars of the last century occurred not in the UK - you do not find that men fight while women cower. Women fight too.

I don't want to minimize warfare. I completely believe that could leave someone, male or female, very traumatized and that might show itself as violence. But I don't see how it could explain the gendering of violence that we see?

Or is it the fact of men being in a formal, trained army that is the issue? I could believe, actually, that the trauma of compartmentalizing things deliberately, of saying 'I'm a solider, what I'm doing is right and noble - and I'm killing people' - that could possibly prompt the violence to spill over into normal life? And that would affect more men than women because women tend not to be in the trained bit of the army.

I'm not sure though. It's still such a short period of time where warfare has worked like this.

the whole idea of women and children as witnesses of war who are only directly affected once an invading army comes is problematic. are there any modern conflicts where fighting takes place, perhaps in a field somewhere, far away from civilian populations?

this wasn't even true in the second world war

Himalaya, do you have data that comes from another source? Given the drug and gang and gun culture that has blighted US cities and is not replicated elsewhere, it's difficult to see those figures as demonstrating anything that can be applied in a general sense. They reflect a specific set of cultural circumstances. You wouldn't extrapolate an expected number of gun shot wound victims for every hospital in the developed world based on US figures.

No, women have been involved in killing people too, MrGin, that was what I was saying. Not on the same scale, I think, but they did, and so surely we'd expect an equivalent proportion of women (5%? 10%) to be as violent as men, and although some women are violent, I don't think it's as many as that. I may be wrong, of course.

LRD.

The difference is / was that the men were doing the killing. The women and children whitness it ( child soldiers apart ) and suffer the consiquences of a victorious force who go on to take whatever they please which usually includes the rape of women.

It does bring up uncomfortable questions about whether violence is justified or required ( not in the realm of DV of course ).

Would be intersted to hear a more informed view.

SGM - but aren't you interested in knowing if your assumptions are sound or not?

The OP said she did not want to have a girl because women are the gender that are more likely to be attacked, murdered etc...

You said yes this is true.

A bunch of people said actually men are statistically more likely to be the victims of violent crime. Some even linked to data. How is that derailing?

Are we all just supposed to nod and say yes you are right women are more likely to be murdered. Why?

I dont think it is minimising VAW to look at the data. Every act of violence against women is one too many. Especially if it treeted with impunity. It doesn't depend on females being the victims of the majority of cases.

Yes it bugs me if feminist arguments are built on flimsy data, when they dont need to be so I do call it out. I don't think this is derailing.

did i say violence? i meant the history of war, so ritualised violece i suppose, whoops.

here it is

anyway i remeber one chilling quote from german WW1 soldiers who had been rampaging and were admonished that the war was over - they responded that this couldn't possibly be true, since they themselves were the war

brrr

actually barbara ehrenreich has written a v interesting book about violence called blood rites i think. i will have a google + link

Until quite recently, though, violence during war wasn't confined to men, it was experienced by women (and children of both sexes) quite a lot. I think SGM works on this stuff and knows more about it.

I agree with you about issues with troops now - and the support they need. But I'm not sure warfare explains violence being gendered .... it might, I just don't think it's the case that men on the battlefield are so cut off from the rest of society that this would explain violence being, if you like, mostly localized to men?

I would think that violence in society has it's roots in conflicts, the taking or defending of territory and / or resourses.

Since before the Vikings were raping and pilaging (sp) and well after the Russians marched into Berlin and basically did the same.

Men ( usually ) are peretrators of extreme violence in conflict on the battlefield and are unable to control themselves in the calm of home. Their kids grow up with it and it jumps to a new generation.

This is an issue with our troops returning from war zones that the MOD is starting to take seriously.

meow - I think it's fair enough to ask the question, but I don't think the responses are 'reasons' or 'justifications'.

I think we do know some of the patterns behind violence - it's been mentioned several times that children who grow up seeing violence do seem more likely to accept violence as if it were a normal part of life, than children who didn't grow up seeing that.

But that to me isn't a justification of violence, or a reason for it, or an explanation of why it exists, because it is only an observation based on a situation in which violence already exists. That's the huge difference, IMO.

SGM - do you still think women are the victims of the majority of violent crime, or have you changed your view, having looked at the data?

If you still think women are the majority of victims can you share the evidence?

i would agree with that too, technology and changing lifestyles are moveing much faster than evolution can, (under natual and sexual selesction anyway)

LRD, with waht you said at 19:18 can i assume you think there is absolutly no point is asking the question "why is there violence in our society"?

I think that's true. Our world has changed so, so much faster than the sort of timescales on which evolution can be measurable.

But evolution has meant something pretty different for a lot of humans over the last several hundred years as we are eg able to treat a badly broken leg that in the wild would leave an animal as prey.

Our justice system, moral judgements, way we live, fact we are posting on here and can communicate with someone out of earshot is surely more reason than evolution to behave in any given way.

I just don't think evolution has much to say on this topic.

I don't think rationalizing male violence is a good thing to do. Funnily enough, I haven't changed my mind about that. Calling it a 'reason' as opposed to a 'justification' in really not sufficient what you are saying.

We have a justice system to stop violence because most decent people believe violence is not just. They don't make up reasons for it - they stand up and say it's appalling and should be punished.

if , for arguments sake, evolution was totaly responable for male violence it wouldnt be a justicfication for it, only a reason, otherwise we wouldnt have a justice system to stop the violence

I don't think anyone needs evo psych to prove the brain exists (and I think psychology studies the mind, in any case).

I am talking about the evo psych theories peddled on this thread, including the justification for male violence as an evolutionary strategy. A propensity towards violence is not simply a physical thing, is it? If indeed such a propensity is innate, which I don't think we've proven at all.

i'm not sure about evo psych either, (apart from the fact that all organs evolved and the brain is an organ so it must exsist).
but what evo-psych your talking about and what it proports to justify i really dont know, and i probobly agree with you anyway on that.
but.
sexual selection has physical effects, not psycological attall.

I understand evolution, meow. I may disagree with a lot of evo psych, but that puts me in pretty sane company.