Men responsible for more crime and violent crime than women, anyone researching why and what to do about it, please?

Personally I think hormones have a major imapact on male aggression, an increase in aggression will mean a greater tendancy for violence. I suppose you can say we're not like other animals we are capable of greater thought but when someone is caught on an emotional high lets say anger/fury a lot of the time I think they are not thinking any clearer than any other animal.

Also the majority of male violence is towards other males which is why men make up the majority of victims of assaults and murder. You will also find that tall/big men get a lot of hassle from other men because they are big therefore more of a challenge plus the attackers peers will be impressed by it.

A tendency for violence is useful from an evolutionary point of view there isn't many passive species that survive very long and generally especially in mammals males are always more violent.

As we get more and more technologically advanced the original use of agression and violence gets lost in the past but that agression is still there.

Yes, I can see that.

I'm not trying to overlook it, I'm really not.

I think - sorry, but I really do - that you're not understanding my posts. I wish I were explaining them better, but honestly, what you're responding to isn't what I'm actually saying.

Even with rapes by someone known to you the fact they can overpower you is often key. Obviously there is shock / freezing. But if you could just push him off like a child then that would be a pretty big deal.

I just don't think you can overlook it.

However I suspect this is a bit personal for me so will bow out of this one now I think.

(I mean, I don't see how it's an evolutionary/social 'advantage' that men can rape women ... it might possibly be, I don't know, but I don't see that it's very clear-cut.)

Saying men have a huge physical advantage over women is only true if you measure physical strength in certain ways.

Saying that a big rugby player can beat you up if he so chooses and your uterine muscles can't stop him, is not the same thing.

I think we're miscommunicating because this is a minor point I made, which got blown out of all proportion and then caught up in a conversation full of deleted posts.

However - I don't see how it is an 'advantage' that men can rape women. If we live in a rape culture (as we do), the fact a man is able physically to overpower a woman is one of the relevant factors. Though most rapes aren't like that.

However, if we lived in a culture where strength was conceptualised in a less misogynistic way, I very much doubt it would be a rape culture. That's my point.

I thought you had said that when louise said at the beginning that men have a huge advantage in physical strength over women and you said no they didn't. But IME they do and if they want to be bastards then that is what enables them to be bastards.

Maybe I am misunderstanding something. Because IME men do have a huge advantage in physical strength over me, generally. That's what whole of rape culture is based on, surely. If I was twice the size of blokes rather than the other way around then the same level of threat wouldn't be possible.

I know they're not, I never said they were.

I don't follow what you're saying.

I'm saying it's quite possible that the way we construct 'strength' as a concept might be socially determined, and related to the fact we have a society where violent attacks are not uncommon.

Surely in a society where violent attacks weren't common, it wouldn't be that relevant what you could or couldn't do to resist them?

But LRD my lovely strong uterine muscles aren't much use against a strapping rugby player who wants to assault me, are they.

I am not sure I'm following this.

If women, children and old people were generally physically able to overpower men then you would see a different pattern of violent offending I'm sure.

If it is the case that strength has nothing to do with it then where does that leave people who have been attacked? Why overlook something as fundamental as if a big bloke decides to have a go at you there's not much you can actually do about it? Surely most offences involve a person having a go at someone who is vulnerable in comparison to them?

I am struggling with this a bit.

I do wonder if some of it has a link to attitudes to risk. Participating in violence or crime is a high risk activity.

Also, I gather, many of the younger male offenders are benefitted by doing an enhanced thinking course. Quite a bit of which looks at the consequence of ones actions as I understand it.

I would say that society does encourage or value risk taking more in boys than girls.

You are right. I have re-thought my position. Men just get bored.

We don't know it was in every society since the dawn of time, since we only have historical record going back so far.

Even if we did, I don't follow how that could possibly demonstrate that it has or had an evolutionary use. It's a non-sequitur.

Because it is pervasive. It seems to be in every society since the dawn of time. Fighting, wars, campaigns of slaughter and atrocity - history is full of it. And it always seems to be men leading it.

Why 'must' it?

The tendency for violence must have had an evolutionary use. As with many human traits, they remain a part of our make-up long after society makes their usefulness redundant.

Testosterone is why men are more violence than women.
Is why women with high testosterone for women are more violent.

Testosterone will affect behaviour but intelligence controls the aggression.

There is a pretty strong regional effect. Most violence is occurring in Africa and the Americas. The least in Europe (more violence in Eastern Europe). Initally I would say this is due to wealth/poverty divide, but that can't be the whole story as Asia is generally pretty unviolent. Then there are countries that are war-torn - violence begets violence as FemDrag said about P Stewart. Europe is rich but also peaceful. And I would also bet that a lot of the violence in the Caribbean and Central America is drug-related.

I've always wondered what it is in men that attracts them to violence. In protests that turn violent, it's ALWAYS men getting in with their fists, lobbing stuff etc.

This is a link to homicide stats worldwide;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

The bottom table breaks it down by country, and is re-orderable by region and by rate per 100,000 of population. I cannot see any pattern by region, wealth, culture, religion or anything obvious - Monaco is top of the list with zero murders, but the UAE is also in the top ten, along with Singapore and Brunei. All different regions, systems of government and religions.

Perhaps someone else can see a common thread amongst the least- or most violent countries?

Here's an interesting link about the demographics of crimes: www.sociology.org.uk/pblsdca.pdf

nice - I have sometimes raised the issue that I think our understanding of what constitutes 'strength' is socially constructed. Men do not, for example, have strong uterine muscles that are needed for birthing babies! Nor do they have as good endurance as women. If we lived in a different kind of society, maybe these things would be equally valued. But we live in our society, where strength is understood as 'the things a man is strongest at'.

It is a bit of a nice point, because obviously we do live in this world where we understand strength as male, and we can't get out if it, so we have to live with that. But all the same I think it matters to acknowledge that the things women are strong at are important too, and crucial for us as a species.

Even if those things are the case, until there are tried and tested treatments, it's all moot. If someone is dangerous - whether it is at a certain time of some cycle or whatever - then the public needs to be protected from them.

This is what bothers me about that rape defence of saying you were asleep. Well that's all well and good but fundamentally a woman was raped, more might be raped in the future, and in any other situation there'd be something put in place to prevent it happening again. Well, in theory anyway.

There is a big gap in the law there I think.

I read somewhere/heard in a documentary that women who commit crime (and get caught - I suppose!) are more likely to have done so at a certain point in their menstral cycle. I don't know if this is good science or complete claptrap. But if true, it does suggest that that hormones can be one of the factors which influences behaviour, which doesn't sound implausible, hormones can affect our feelings, and therefore influence our actions.

That's not to say that hormones make women or men commit crime, but perhaps criminals exert less self-control than others when they are hormonal? I don't know. I'm certainly not saying that it ought to be an excuse.

I also remember hearing that some criminals (psychopaths?) don't have a normal biological response to oxytocin (the empathy/love chemical). Which is why they don't feel bad about hurting people. (Though obviously they should still have obeyed the law even if they didn't feel it was wrong). Again I'm not making excuses, but wonder if crime prevention could be improved by understanding the role our physiology has.

Also wanted to say that I don't cry.

Many women have been brought up in the UK not to be too emotional. Stiff upper lip and all that. Sure I'm not the only one! The post from earlier has been deleted though so not sure what the point he made was.

Surely generally most men do have an advantage in physical strength over women?

If they didn't, then we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Maybe it would be the other way around.

I have been aware for most of my life that the vast majority of men could overpower me if they wanted.

I am not sure why this has been raised as incorrect?

If women were bigger and stronger than men then there would be a shit-ton less trouble for us, surely.