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.

The trouble I have with science,is that scientists routinely change their minds.
And then expect everyone to blindly follow their next idea.

Do people not get that there is a difference between the science that is evolution which is true and evo psychology which is not a science? You know, like biology is a science but sociology isn't?

I note with wry amusement that those most ready to huff and puff about Evolutionary Psychology usually know very little about it, or about Evolutionary theory in general

FYI male on male violence for sexual selection, is a fairly well established part of the Evolution thory, and not Evolutionary Psychology. That is why I think its shameful that on MN, Being Offended trumps scientific fact.

Truly the closing of the Western Mind in action.

Scientists don't expect anyone to blindly follow anything.

Science is about questioning, not stating.

whatme, could you stop using the 'western mind' phrase - it is coming across as fairly racist/xenophobic/whatever phrase you want to use for 'generalizing about half the world and assuming they are of one mind'.

If - as you keep saying - there is any evidence for anything you say, sorry, but you'd have better links than wikipedia. I teach first year undergraduates and they know better than to reference wiki, surely an adult with some knowledge of science should know that too?

Btw, since whatme probably won't say, here's the only bit of the article she linked to that refers to 'humans'. The bit she linked to is talking more generally .... including about, um, antlers.

I don't think humans have antlers, whatme, and that seems a fact fairly well accepted by the biologists too.

Anyway:

'Main article: Sexual selection in human evolution
See also: Major Histocompatibility Complex and Sexual Selection and Physical Attractiveness
Charles Darwin conjectured that the male beard, as well as the relative hairlessness of humans compared to nearly all other mammals, are results of sexual selection. He reasoned that since, compared to males, the bodies of females are more nearly hairless, hairlessness is one of the atypical cases due to its selection by males at a remote prehistoric time, when males had overwhelming selective power, and that it nonetheless affected males due to genetic correlation between the sexes. He also hypothesized that sexual selection could also be what had differentiated between different human races, as he did not believe that natural selection provided a satisfactory answer.
Geoffrey Miller, drawing on some of Darwin's largely neglected ideas about human behavior, has hypothesized that many human behaviors not clearly tied to survival benefits, such as humor, music, visual art, verbal creativity, and some forms of altruism, are courtship adaptations that have been favored through sexual selection. In that view, many human artefacts could be considered subject to sexual selection as part of the extended phenotype, for instance clothing that enhances sexually selected traits.
Some hypotheses about the evolution of the human brain argue that it is a sexually selected trait, as it would not confer enough fitness in itself relative to its high maintenance costs (a quarter to a fifth of the energy and oxygen consumed by a human).[38] Related to this is vocabulary, where humans, on average, know far more words than are necessary for communication. Miller (2000) has proposed that this apparent redundancy is due to individuals using vocabulary to demonstrate their intelligence, and consequently their "fitness", to potential mates. This has been tested experimentally and it appears that males do make greater use of lower frequency (more unusual) words when in a romantic mindset compared to a non-romantic mindset, meaning that vocabulary is likely to be used as a sexual display (Rosenberg & Tunney, 2008).
The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has speculated that the loss of the penis bone in humans, when it is present in other primates, may be due to sexual selection by females looking for an honest advertisement of good health in prospective mates. Since a human erection relies on a hydraulic pumping system, erection failure is a sensitive early warning of certain kinds of physical and mental ill health.[39]'

Darwin appears to be saying interesting things ... you know, I am struggling so much to find violence here?

LRD

I didnt read Meow's original post, so i am wading in slightly blindly.

But from what s/he(?) said subsequently it doesnt sound like it was aimed at victim blaming, although may have been poorly worded.

It is always difficult to talk about evolutionary causes of something very sensitive and personal, because it can be construed as offensive, or can be seen as using evolutionary reasoning to justify the inexusable. And some people DO use this kind of "its natural" reasoning to justify sexism, oppression etc...(although i dont think meow was).

As i have argued on here before i think the default feminist response of saying "of course it is not natural" is neither true or helpful. The really surprising thing about evolution (in contrast to religious views of the world) is the realization that human nature is the result of a completely amoral process and you cant draw moral lessons from it at all. This means that what someone says about evolutionary causes can be right or wrong, but it shouldnt be seen as offensive (although the way they express it or the conclusions they draw from it might be).

It is scientifically non-controversial that men tend to be more aggressive than women, and that there is a nature component to this, as well as nurture. Therefore there has to have been some different selection pressures on men and women that gave rise to this.

Part of the problem in these discussions is that people dont understand evolution - it is not intuitive, it doesnt work the way the "folk explanation" portrays it, it is poorly taught, and ideas from religion and morality stop people engaging with it properly.

For e.g. LRD you seem to think that for a characteristic to be driven by sexual selection male and female lines must have evolved independently, with aggression being passed down the male line. This is not the case - we inherit sexual characteistics on both sides (e.g. I have my paternal grandma's bust, not the flat chest of my mothers family). If a certain degree of aggression/violence was evolutionary advantageous for males then womem who had sons that were able to hold their own in competition with other males would have left more ancestors.

Similarly Whisky4tea - the idea that not all men are violent does not mean it cant have had any evolutionary advantage to individuals in the past. Not all people are equally attractive, smart etc...it doesnt mean that there are no evolutionary drivers on thes factors.

None of this means that women are "to blame", or that violent crime can be excused by evolution. I dont see anyone here saying that.

Hi Himalaya.

I think for me 'it's not natural' is a useful shorthand for saying 'it's not an innate quality, we don't have to be like this'. I see your point that it could be put better.

I think it is vitally important, when we're discussing things like violence and rape, to stress that there's no reason that could ever justify them. Men don't normally need or want to rape people. I think it matters to say that in some way, does that make sense?

I don't see this as bringing morality into it (though I agree, evolution isn't a moral process). I see this as acknowledging that when we talk about phenomena like violence or rape that have existed for a long time, we're not accepting they will always have to exist. I don't know a better shorthand for saying it than saying men don't naturally want to rape or hurt people (though there may be one).

I really don't believe that a woman, today, who goes out in the street and sees two men in a violent fight, is going to be attracted to either them. Nor do we have a society where men compete for passive women, and the women just go with the stronger man after the fight - it makes no sense to look at humans as if they were deer or lions.

As to the point about what I think - no, I don't think that, and on another thread recently I have just pointed out to someone else that that's not how it works. What did I say to give that impression?

Maybe the issue is that we need better terminology.

Something I cannot understand, that always seems to come up in these debates, is that on the one side, there are us, are people saying that it is crucial to identify the perpetrators of violence, to stand up and say they cannot continue to blend in as parts of society, we have to see them and acknowledge them. And we have to look at how we're going to make a society that doesn't include such people in the future.

And on the other side, there are people who seem to think we're saying all men are naturally violent ... and they see the need for defending men (I think usually understood as 'the men we know who're not violent, as opposed to the perpetrators of violence) from what we're saying. And yet tied into their argument seems always to be the claim that violence in society is natural, or it's always happened, or some people are just born that way, or really women should expect it and get out of the way ...

How is it we're not all agreeing? How come one side ends up being painted as man haters and the other side as woman haters, it seems absurd but I can't get what terminology would bring us all onto the same page.

in hunter-gatherer soceities, the pecking order would have literaly given better mating rights to those strong enough to be at the top end of it, i imagine this would be allmost entierly by violent means the weakest in these societies would probobly never have reproduced, thus streathening the tribe.
as civilisation grew, males began to use other ways of attracing females, sport, music, art, good conversation, financial success, all manner of differint things.
but at puberty, in the school playground the pressure on boys to create that pecking order is great, and in the process to get a high position it often becomes violent.

thank you hymalaya you put it much more elequently than i could.

But this imaginative re-creation of a posited hunter-gather society doesn't really do anything for us, does it?

You don't seriously think women are attracted to men because they're violent? I mean, if in a school playground boys get violent, what happens in the schools I know about is they're suspended, then if need be expelled, and if they bring in knives or worse, eventually they land up dead or in prison. It's not a particularly successful strategy, being violent at a young age. Those who manage not to go to prison don't seem to make especial headway.

So why do we still tolerate violence in society at all? There is no need for it. There is no benefit to the lad who thinks he looks macho for carrying a knife and then gets killed at 22, is there?

It seems to be unbelievably crass to say so ... we're not living in a primitive society where the 'weakest' are left to die (if we ever were).

It's not even true that men 'compete' for women any more, is it?

So surely all of this drawing of parallels to imagined societies is just, well, play-acting a macho fantasy that doesn't have any use in the real world?

I don't think this is the same as what himalaya was saying, btw.

LRD,I think that is where justice comes in.
To my mind,violence will never become eradicated.Also,I think the trouble with justice is,that there comes a tipping point,as is happening now.
The Government[and it seems to be of all persuasians,and I certainly dont want this thread to become political],chooses not to build more prisons.
I think the prison population of this country is 90,000?
Governements seem to want to keep to that,so that means people are either let out quicker,given shorter sentences,not sent there at all,etc.
Which mean they are out in the community.Im not meaning just men,women also I should imagine.
In reality,there should maybe say 150,000 people in prison?

I wouldn't know the details, amillion, but I agree with you that justice plays a huge role.

I do hold out hope violence would become, at least much rarer.

As I understand it, we know that children who grow up with violence are more likely to become violent. It could well be that if they grew up with the violent figure removed (in prison, or just because mum - and it usually is mum - has the support to get out), this would decrease violence in the next generation.

It is very difficult, though, as you say, when there's not enough going into preventing violence.

I was thinking again about schools - now I know someone who started teaching in a school where they regularly had knife incidents, and people on the gates, and so on ... it makes you think, what change to the children have who're exposed to all of that? But maybe, if we mark out violence as something that is not ok, not the norm, maybe it can be stopped?

*what change do the children have, sorry.

Maybe the issue is that we need better terminology

The issue is that RadFems don't like (nor really understand) what evolutionary theory is or says. Nor do creationists and various other belief systems, so you all try to get it censored, as seen on this thread.

This is what is meant by the Closing of the Western Mind, this increasing pressure to censor science and revert from the an Age of Reason back to a Woo-World of half-cocked beliefs and superstitions.

I don't think humans have antlers, whatme, and that seems a fact fairly well accepted by the biologists too

QED....

LRD

Yes I see how you are bundling "it's not natural" with "we don't have to be like this" and I can see the intuitive attractiveness of that.

But that leads to the converse reasoning where if something is shown to have an innate/evolutionary basis then it seems to imply it can't be challenged (that is false) So you end up arguing against the science because of what you think it implies rather than because of the data. Which is the wrong way to go about engaging with science.

I DO think violence and aggression will always be with us. individuals in every generation needs to learn how to control their anger, how to use reason, how to think ahead and to respect others (thats the hard work of parenting ). Every generation of boys and girls needs to learn that no means no, whatever the context.

People with a hot- headed and aggressive temperament need more learning than other, including the real threat of punishment.... and it appears likely that there are more people at that end of the spectrum amongst the male population than female. Most people are not extreme cases, and the more that society makes clear in its norms that violence and force are not acceptable for either sex the better it will be.

I.e. - as with most things it is a combination of nature and nurture.

Saying that violence is a completely learned cultural practice, means it is something akin to speaking Latin. Once it dies out it doesn't come back. You never have to teach children to not speak Latin. I just don't think violence works like this.

whatme, you keep confusing evolutionary psychology with evolutionary theory, you don't seem to understand that wikipedia, especially when it doesn't cite sources, is an extremely poor reference. I picked you up for linking to the description of animals' development of antlers to support a point about human aggression - that is a mistake few children would make. And yet you're taunting other people about lack of knowledge?!

For goodness' sake, if you have anything at all to contribute other than taunts, why not do it?

Aldus Huxley wrote about his utopia in The Island. Pure fiction of course, but in his utopia individuals with violent tenancies were identified early in life and steered into activities that gave outlet to their aggression which harmed no one. Nice idea, but of course fiction.

I think the problem when it comes to these discussions, and division comes from the 'all men are potential rapists' school of thought, and the confines and framing of discussion. In that a discussion about male violence is within the context of violence against women. Understandable, but I#d hazard a guess that the sort of bloke who wants to pick a fight with a random stranger after the pub is exactly the type who won't think twice about going back home to abuse his partner or kids. So in some sense, possibly small I don't know, we face the same violent individuals. Some of us in the home, some of us outside the pub.

I suspect that war has something to do with some of this. There was something on the BBC recently about soldiers returning from conflict and being unable to control their tempers with their families as a result of intensely traumatic experiences in war zones. I'm sure this has been going on for ever and seed more violence through the generations.

Sorry, himalaya, cross posted.

I don't believe that if something has an evolutionary basis, it can't be challenged - why would I say that? That's the opposite of what I am saying!

I take your point about violence as a learning strategy - yes, we're surely never going to get rid of toddler tantrums!

I suppose what I mean is the institutionalized (if that's the right word) violence we have now. I'd like to see it go the way of, say, laws making it ok to beat your wife.

I think smacking is an interesting case here - it used to be accepted as not only normal, but ideal parenting. Now there's much more dissent.

I didn't say violence was a completely learned cultural practice - and you are right, it's not - but also, I'm not sure speaking Latin is the comparison. I think there are lots of learned cultural practices - like, say, clicking your thumbs to attract attention - that have roots in something perfectly physically natural, but have an overlay of cultural meaning. So they're both determined by physical bodies, and by social understanding. I think a lot of violence is like that.

LRD , just to come in late on this topic, but I think we are still driven by very basic drives that lurk under our different socialisations and cultural taboos. Male violence towards women is very real and simmering in many men, but is controlled to an extent by moral and physical repercussions.

I know men who are horrified at some of the reactions and thoughts they have, unbidden, towards their partners or women in general. There seems to be a gap between what they know is the right and correct behaviour and some deep, atavistic drives which are still allowed some expression in some societies, and often in warfare too.

Oh, and I definitely know some women who are attracted to violent men, and repeatedly enjoy seeing that violence expressed, either onto other men or even to themselves.

mrGin - I agree about war, I am sure that's part of the problem.

If you fight, you have to compartmentalize the 'violence is ok' and the 'I'm still a good person' bits of your mind - that leads to immense stress, I think.

I agree with the fiction bit, that the idea is too simple - you could never identify the people who would end up being violent before they were, not in all cases.

That's why it has to be a lowest common denominator - under UK law, all men are potential rapists who have the physical capacity to rape; we're all potential murderers, etc. etc. Doesn't mean we know who would turn out to be the actual murderer.

ohdo - I find that post very scary. And horrifying, actually.

Isn't that what a psychopath is, someone who has these deep desires?

We discussed women who're attracted to violent men above - I believe it is correct that women who are, are usually those who've been exposed to violence?

Going to dip a toe in here and offer observation not science, but both as a welfare benefits advisor and then as a community worker in some of the most poverty stricken communities in my large city of residence, I can say that I have seen and witnessed situations where women not just choose to be with a violent man, but actively aspire to it. We arer talking drug dealers, men who have done serious armed crimes, gang members, crime bosses, and men who may not be involved in criminality but who use their fists on others to dominate and portray power. One woman I know finally left her husband after she was shot at in her own home by a rival gang. She sayd that for a long time she felt as if she was the queen bee and enjoyed that level of power she got from being the wife of this man. Also after she left she felt some level of grief for losing that lifestyle.

The point I am trying to make is a follow on from what LRD is saying about the essence of the thing is that we agree that this behaviour is not acceptable and should be "trained" out of all humans. I would add though and I doubt that any one was saying this I am just making it clear, that it is not just a male thing or for males to stop. It is for everyone to be involved. Men and women both glorify violence, their are as many women boxing fans as male. Women want to right to join the army to kill people where as I would really rather that we had no army at all. Support for the death penalty in the u.s. and in the U.K is pretty evenly spread across society. Seeing violence any violence as acceptable is the problem.

Some people do find violence sexually exciting. Ever seen a bunch of grannies watching a wrestling match?

Isn't 50 Shades full of sexual violence ? ( not read it ) and that's super popular with women.

leith - yes, but what I'm getting at is, there seems to me a huge difference between saying that women spur on male violence because male violence is a way of attracting women, and saying that some women are turned on by violence in certain very ritualized contexts (eg. boxing), or saying that some women aspire to be with criminals. I mean, most of us don't aspire to be with criminals. I may be wrong, but my impression is that women who are with violent men do not tend to be what we'd all aspire to for women we know, right?

It's scary. Violence is scary.

I watch judo and I enjoy it, and it's all very exciting.

That is not, IMO, comparable to enjoying violence, because the point is that I know these people have rules restraining them, and I know they are not going to turn around and hit me.

We started out talking about murder, assault and rape. I don't think they are comparable to play-fighting like boxing or wrestling, I just don't.