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

[BornStroppy]

I told my husband how horrible it is being part of a gender that is constantly attacked, murdered, etc. He had never thought about it. He doesn´t need to. So we have Tia Sharp, the lady who disappeard in London, an old lady in Scotland murdered by son´s friend, another one murdered in a taxi in Birmingham - this is just over two weeks.

I have one son, pregnant again and just hope its another boy to be honest.

Why is it OK? Apart from raising gentlemen, what the hell can we do? As a gender, we give birth, nurture, raise, care for them, and as a gender we are the ones who suffer at their hands.

its so depressing.

Morning Olivia!

Plenty, thank you for that excellent post and to Messy for enlarging on it.

"Also, meow, just out of interest, if in the course of evolution, women chose only violent alpha males, then why are the majority of men clearly non violent beta males?"

Can I answer that one?

In general, characteristics can have an evolutionary advantage, without everyone ending up with the same characteristic, to the same extent. Humans live(d) in a wide variety of different environments and adapt to lots of situations so we are very variable, compared to species that evolved in one specific ecological niche.

So for example the gene for sickle cell disease carries some advantage (against malaria) to people who only carry one copy. But not everyone is a carrier. Being able to see in colour is an evolutionary advantage, but some people are colour blind (which may confer a different advantage in terms of motion vision) Being strong, smart, beautiful/symmetrical and resilient were likely all evolutionary advantages but everyone exhibits these characteristics to a different extent, and in different combinations.

Similarly with male strength and aggression. As someone mentioned upthread while alpha males are busy fighting it out, other males have other strategies.

Someone upthread said that female mate choice can have had no significant impact on male evolution because of arranged marriage, rape etc... In evolutionary terms choosing the mate your parents choose for you is still mate selection.

Also infidelity is as old as the hills. Women may not have always chosen who their official partner was, but often they did not only have
children with him. Hidden ovulation is a weird And important thing about human reproduction - it is an evolutionary strategy that promotes female mate choice, and allows human females to have an evolutionary strategy where one man provides resources to help raise a child, where another has provided the genetic resources.

Thanks, Himalaya, yes, that's kind of what I was thinking towards also. Meow's theory that women chose the more violent males is at odds with the reality (IMO) where women have chosen non-violent beta males facilitated by the existence of hidden ovulation. So the truth is that female infidelity (and the urge to up one's chances of conception by being promiscuous) could actually be responsible for the happy fact that violence is not the norm amongst men.

Unfortunately, as someone said upthread violence amongst men is pro-social and is encouraged.

"and allows human females to have an evolutionary strategy where one man provides resources to help raise a child, where another has provided the genetic resources."

Did one man provide resources for another child though? I understand that many pre-materialistic communal societies tended to provide resources for the whole and that for a long time humans weren't aware of the importance of paternity. Hence the idolisation of women as live-giving goddesses just whipping those babies out by magic, (Ahhh ... those good old days )

Sorry this is a complete tangent - I will shut up now! It's just when you get me chatting about evolution I just can't stop...

HQ do not read every single post, unless their attention is drawn to it

No matter how many times you refute that, PM, it doesn't make you right

I'm a speed reader. Even I couldn't read every single post on MN.

what hymalaya said, she puts it very well
messy, dont talk shite meows theory of women chosing viloent males
who is that then, some other meow?,because it certainly isnt waht i said. why dont you bother to read the thread?

I think meow communicated what he thinks perfectly effectively.

He is more interested in insisting that men compete for (passive?) women and do so through violence, than he is in anything else.

This thread didn't start out by looking at finding excuses for male violence, or for suggesting that there's a sexual dynamic in which violence plays a part - but now it's like listening to someone with a fetish, who wants to talk about it over and over. Each time someone tries to get the conversation away from linking violence with male sexual dominance competitions, we're right back there.

And as plenty said so well, it's pretty impossible to claim that a scenario in which women are passive objects in someone else's sex life, is not woman-hating.

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

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 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.

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 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.

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

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"?

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?

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.

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.

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?

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