How much less crime there would be a world of all women

[PinkOwlReading]

I've just watched the highly recommended and heartbreaking Netflix documentary "The Girl in the Picture" spoiler alert the perpetrator is now on death row. So it got me Googling how many people are on death row in the US. Clearly not all states have the death penalty and the burden of proof for someone to receive that harshest sentence is very high plus appeals all the time etc... so it's a pretty strong indication that these people truly are the worst of humanity. As of 1 Jan 2022 (according to Wikipedia) there are circa 2,500 people on death row in the USA. Guess how may of those are women?

50

Not 500, 50! Less than 1% when obviously women make up 50% of the population. And of those women the majority were convicted of killing their own babies and children or husbands (obviously inexcusable) but in contrast to the men who's lists of victims are often multiple murders, bombings, mass shootings affecting unconnected innocent strangers. I was really shocked by the disparity. Two things strike me about this:-

1. Men are much more randomly violent and evil than women and what a different world we would like in if we were all women or if we could teach (or the Patriarchy would allow) our boys to be more like women; and

1. This is why we must preserve the integrity of crime data with true sex data and not blur the lines with "identifying gender" etc...

Anyone else agree this is the starkest comparison of all?

There would be hardly any violent crime as most is committed by men.

So yes the prisons would be empty.

But the idea that it would be a cooperative utopia is laughable.

Women engage in conflict, just rarely physical conflict.

They use in group and out group hierarchies to devastating effect, they engage in reputational destruction, utilise shame, and ostracisation brilliantly to control individual and group behaviour.

Of course none of these are crimes at an individual level, but that doesn't mean the impact cannot be devastating.

I think we'd probably have a totalitarian state of control through the means above, to ensure conformity, with those who didn't comply shunned from participation.

But yes probably not much murder.

We actually require the threat of violence, or the utilisation occasionally of violence, to prevent real evils happening, the removal of the option of violence from society would not mean utopia it would mean evil in all other forms could not ultimately be halted.

Men can use violence for evil and they fill up the prisons, but men who are prepared to use violence are necessary.

Men can use violence for evil and they fill up the prisons, but men who are prepared to use violence are necessary.

Men who are prepared to use violence are only necessary because of the existence of other men who are prepared to use violence though.

I think women would be more prepared to use violence in a world where men didn't exist, because the existence of a stronger sex class makes violent conflict extremely dangerous for women.

"Men who are prepared to use violence are only necessary because of the existence of other men who are prepared to use violence though."

Nope. There are times when violence is required not necessarily just in response to violence. See my example above of oppression which might only be overturned by the threat or use of violence.

People (mainly men) have used violence to gain rights & ensure freedom.
Violence is not the only tool of tyranny, (although it's always underpinned by it) but the idea that without violence we'd have no tyranny is just not true.

We'd have tyranny imposed by other tools and no way to overcome it.

Violence is not evil in itself. It is used in evil ways. It is necessary to balance all the other elements within human nature, but it's dangerous and has to be controlled through social expectation and law.

The idea that utopia is a place where we've overcome human nature seems at best a pointless exercise and at worse a road to genocide.

Naomi Alderman examines this premise in her book The Power where women develop the ability to send electric shocks remotely and thus become the dominant sex. In her world once they have this power the women become just as violent as the men. Which kind of makes the point that the sex that has the ability to dominate will do so. Not sure the book completely works but it’s an interesting thought experiment.

I'm not comfortable with the idea (if this is what you're suggesting?) that women are inherently better people than men, and I don't think it's helpful to women to view us like this. We're human beings with all that this entails.
I'm no expert but my guess is that we're much less prone to violence because we don't have the physique or the testosterone levels, plus we're socialised to settle our disputes without direct confrontation.
I wholeheartedly agree with the second point though that crime statistics must continue to be based on sex. One of my biggest fears is that, if we lose this specific battle, our daughters and grand daughters won't have the tools to even talk about male violence,

If we want to get crime down we need to understand the reasons for the crime. Calling any group of 'wrong doers' evil, is very unhelpful.
Tackle the reasons and up to a point we'd tackle crime. Of course lots of crimes are caused because of greed, lust and pure selfishness, but other causes are much more nuanced. So the question is as a society can we tackle greed? Can we tackle the 'I want so I'll have screw the rest' attitude. Can we reduce the last aspect? Can we understand the driving force of ego? Can we understand why child abuse happens? Can we understand the reason for violence and anger?
Then once we understand what, as a society, can we do to prevent?
We need a firm understanding of evolution, biology, sociology. And then we need to answer the why and how.

I've thought about this a lot. It seems to me there are a number of possible reasons why men are much more likely to commit acts of violence than women:

1. Men as a group are innately (biologically) more predisposed to violence than women as a group.
2. Men as a whole aren't innately more violent, but there is a group of men who have a greater genetic predisposition to violence, in the same way that more men than women are colour-blind, for example.
3. Boys are socialised into being more violent than girls.
4. Men are more violent simply because they can be, by virtue of their superior size and strength. Women are just as aggressive as men but they don't usually act on that aggression because they know they will come off worse.
5. Some combination of the above.

There is a bit of evidence for 4, in that if you give women power in an all-female community, they will often behave in a sadistic way. Take the nuns running the Magdalene laundries, for example. Against that, you have the fact that you don't often see stronger women attacking weaker women or children (though you do see it to an extent in eg mothers being abusive towards their own children). Likewise you almost never see gangs of women terrorising other people, in the same way you do with men.

I don't know what the answer is, and in a way I'm surprised that no one has apparently done any in-depth research on this.

(though you do see it to an extent in eg mothers being abusive towards their own children)

Aren't most instances of female violence against their own children or step-children?

I think the idea that a female only society would lack instances of violence is incredible.

@RoyalCorgi I think it's pretty much all of those with the following slight amendments:

1. Men as a group are innately (biologically) more predisposed to violence than women as a group. Agree

1. Men as a whole aren't are innately more violent, but and there is a group of men who have a greater genetic predisposition to violence, or are less able to control it than most men. Those men are very dangerous.

1. Boys are socialised into being more violent than girls.- yes because socialisation and culture follows from observed natural differences.

1. Men are more violent simply because they can be, by virtue of their superior size and strength. Women are just as aggressive as men but they don't usually act on that aggression because they know they will come off worse. - yes bad people who have any advantage will always use it immorally, bad men will use violence. Bad women will use other means.

1. Some combination of the above. Agree

I think sexual assaults and violent crime would go down (not disappear) but I imagine war would still happen. I think need for resource and status drive a lot of conflict and women would still need/want those things.

It's an interesting point but as a historian I would look at what happens when you do give women great/absolute power. In those circumstances they can be very bloodthirsty/violent. Elizabeth I for all that she was against waging war was well known for violent temper tantrums - slapping faces and in one case breaking a maid of honours finger. Her sister, following the example of a grandmother who played a major part in setting up the Spanish Inquisition, burnt hundreds of Protestants during her short reign. Catherine de Medici might not have liked it but she sanctioned the St Bartholomew's massacre. Globally there are many examples of women who got others to do their violent bidding - Agrippina, Empress Wu, Catherine the Great, Joan of Arc, Boudicca, Elizabeth Báthory, Ranavalona of Madagascar. Even those who weren't widespread killers could be pretty violent - Cleopatra was happy to kill her captive sister, Isabella of France apparently dined whilst watching the brutal execution of Hugh Despenser,

I'm curious about the women on death row convicted of killing their own babies and children, and wonder if any of them have post partum psychosis.
The US doesn't have health visitors to visit new mothers at home, or mother and baby units. The few Americans I've spoken to online about the subject haven't heard of PND, and find the idea of the State sending people round your house to check on you an infringement of their liberty.

If you think how we have evolved it makes sense. It’s division of labour. They hunt, they build and they fight. We gathered, cooked, cleaned and kept the children and the home.

Men didn't evolve to hunt and be providers! Why do we still believe this Mens Marketing Board propaganda?

Humans have evolved to have different traits manifesting in men and women to best fit our different reproductive roles:

Women have the means of reproduction. The downside (from an evolutionary point of view) is that we take the full cost of reproduction, which is pretty high. (9 months in uteruro + 1 year breastfeeding of providing calories and nutrients to the baby + a couple of months of being very physically vulnerable during late pregnancy, delivery and postpartum + the very high risk of childbirth.) The upside is that we can almost always get a man to impregnate us (if we just want to be impregnated, and also if our reproductive system is working) since we take the whole cost.

So for women, we manifest traits which allow us to sustain and survive pregnancy and childbirth: smaller size and higher fat to muscle ratio (need fewer calories), skeletal changes balancing speed (to escape predators) against childbirth risk; very strong and complex social ties to be supported when regularly incapacitated during late pregnancy and childbirth.

Men have practically zero cost of reproduction, but the downside is that reproduction is much less certain, since they must gain sexual access to a woman in order to reproduce.

So men manifest traits which give them sexual access to women: bigger size and strength to fight off other males, and for status (remembering the strong social ties women have in order to survive childbirth - so status increases a man's access to women). Strength also to overpower women - that will sometimes be a reproductive strategy . Sure, hunting might give them a bit more status and be able to give gifts of meat, but that's really not the reason for men being taller and stronger than women!

The whole 'men hunters, women carers' narrative is so false. And this same Male-centic view sees women as lesser than men, because we're not so muscular and tall. When actually, our bodies are utterly awesome, and capable, and perfectly adapted. We're the ones who actually do the reproduction bit, and men are just bloody opportunists taking advantage of that!

Oh, OK - we can't get pregnant without men - so their reproductive role is just as valid. But our bodies are definitely way cooler!

I wish it was more clearly understood that it's women who should be considered the human default. And that men are defective women - not the other way round.

Is it not also basically rubbish, the idea that men used to do the hunting etc and women the gathering, cooking etc? And tasks were in fact more divided than that?

In any case, all this was a long time ago, and these stereotyped ideas about who does what are insulting and dangerous to both sexes.

Historically criminology is sexist, women who committed the same crimes as men were deemed more evil than their male counterparts. Male’s dominated every aspect of the justice system so we’re more likely to find women insane and men evil.

This has continued to this day whereby women are statistically more likely to be found to have MH problems motivating the crime than men.

Also women as criminals is studied far less than male criminology.

Biological criminology fell out of fashion but there’s increasing new evidence to suggest that biology does play a part.

I came on to mention this. It's an interesting book.

You’d also need to check those stats for race and economic status. It’s much more likely that a poor black man would end up on death row for the same crime that a wealthy white man did. The criminal justice system is heavily influenced by structural racism and politics of economy and wealth. I don’t think poor black men are any more violent than any other population in society but they are heavily over represented in the prison system generally and on death row particularly.

There was an excellent documentary exploring the way in which the prison system has simply taken over where slavery and Jim Crow left off in the States.

Having been to an all girls school, I doubt the world would be better for the weaker women in society.

I agree that it's not possible to know. Wars, as we know them, would not happen on the current scale as I believe that all weapons are designed by men. The males in a stone age society would have fashioned the flints - that's just supposition but I can't imagine a female doing it. And so the tools and weapons developed.

Males are fuelled by testosterone and I believe are more 'straightforward.' They become angry and attack. Women are more subtle but I think could be equally violent to protect their child.

Male animals have a nasty habit of killing offspring fathered by a different male, and we know, tragically, of recent murders of children by an unrelated partner .

These are huge sweeping generalisations obviously.

It's an interesting topic and I'm sure there are books on the subject. I might read a couple.

Even with your caveat, your post is very simplistic.

Just because you can't imagine a female making weapons doesn't mean they didn't.
Males… I believe are more 'straightforward.' They become angry and attack is a massive clunking stereotype. And women are more subtle; a) I'm not sure they are and b) even if they are, it may well have more to do with society/socialisation than anything innate.
As for male animals and their habits, there is an interesting recent book, Bitch by Lucy Cooke, that questions received wisdom and (I believe; I haven't yet read it) overturns a lot of this thinking.

There's been a number of recent female child killer cases in the UK- notably the murders of Star Hudson, Lauren Wadeand Arthur Labinjo- Hughes. No suggestion whatsoever in the case of Star's or Lauren's mother and Arthur was murdered by his step- mother.

There's plenty more cases like these or there's also Debbie Leitch, for example, 24 year old woman with Down's syndrome who was starved to death by her mother. But hey, there's always some excuse when it's a woman.

Wars, as we know them, would not happen on the current scale as I believe that all weapons are designed by men. The males in a stone age society would have fashioned the flints - that's just supposition but I can't imagine a female doing it. And so the tools and weapons developed

And necessity is the biggest driver of innovation. That stone age woman when confronted with hunger would have learned how to sharpen that stick or fashion a blade from flint in order to hunt.

When the all female tribe from over the hill are confronted with crop failure/death of livestock and they are all facing famine they have the choice of meekly succumbing to starvation or trying to get the other tribe to share their limited supplies, what if they say no? What if the larger more athletic woman from over the hill decide it is easier to just overpower and take those supplies then barter or beg for them? Necessity makes people do what they have to do to survive.