Friday, February 14th, 2025

Why is male aggression increasing and how can women deal with it?


Rupa Sengupta: Men can be crazy, bad and dangerous? Women can be too. Criminologist Frieda Adler said so in her Pulitzer-nominated 1975 book Sisters in Crime. She declared that women’s emancipation gave a new ‘masculine’ sisterhood access to ‘illicit’ opportunities, including ‘violence-oriented’ crimes. Only, women’s emancipation did not boost female crime, which was traditionally associated with poverty and the ghetto. If independent, smart, superior women were to become deviant in the crowd, crime would not still be an overwhelmingly boys’ club. Men lead all crime categories, except prostitution. These include property-related and white-collar crimes. But violent crime is their stronghold. These include armed robbery, organised crime, sexual assault, murder. Women are mostly violent in self-defence. Globally, about 736 million women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lives. If men make up 81% of murder victims, male intimate partners or family members kill more than five women/girls every hour.

We must create a society where women are not afraid to live their lives: Nayana Choudhary

What does the prison population represent?

Prison population proportions reflect the large gender gap in crime. Globally, women make up only 6.9% of the population. It is 5.9% in Europe, 7.2% in Asia (4.3% in India), 8% in the US. Male prison capacity is so large that even the ‘chivalry’ theory (lawmakers let the women go) is unable to explain it. As expected, imprisoned violent criminals are overwhelmingly male. Which begs an age-old question. How has male aggression managed to pervade all ages, cultures and social climates? How have men outpaced women in chest-pounding, boxing and bloodletting?

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Many scholars attribute the gender-bending of aggression to ‘nurture’ (culture), not ‘nature’ (biology). They claim that ‘socialisation’ creates a male-female ‘binary’. This is because of tough, peer-pressured boys; passive, scared girls; the submissive female housewife. In contrast, girls bully and boys cry. Femininity and masculinity cannot be considered essential. ‘Biology’ shapes women, and Darwin and company label them ‘inferior’. Make female deviance ‘pathological’, and women become controlled. Make male aggression ‘natural’, and there’s your not guilty murder defence. These concerns are valid. There is no minimising male violence. Undeniably society shapes people but, as cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker says, people are not ‘blank slates’.

A blow to the ‘pact of brotherhood’

Philosopher Judith Butler correctly points out that, rethinking the ‘nature/culture distinction’, ‘biological and social forces’ interact ‘in bodily life’ (Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 2024). Yet, regarding violence, the gender theorist blames some superorganic ‘social organization… male dominance’. Butler strikes a femicide ‘pact of brotherhood’, yet suggests that violence – both conspiratorial and coalitional – is not ‘male or masculine’ (interview, NYT). Butler correctly suggests that not all men are rapists (Who’s Afraid of…), yet – reducing many feminists’ fear of assault to paranoiac gender-fixation – it seems that most rapists are men.

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Criticising an inflexible culturalist ‘rape is not sex theory’, Pinker correctly diagnoses the ‘modern denial of human nature’ (The Blank Slate, 2002) in the ‘tabula rasa’ theory. he/she makes three points of relevance here. One, the sexes – biological realities ‘as old as complex life’ – are not indistinguishable. Second, minds are not ‘silly putty’: enculturation requires the ‘underlying circuitry’ of the brain. Third, the prehistoric roots of violence, as well as ‘deliberate chimpanzee killing in our chimpanzee cousins’, suggest that evolution was underway long before ‘culture’.

Shocking discovery of killer apes

According to anthropologist Richard Wrangham, the startling discovery of killer apes in the wild indicated that ‘extreme violence’ was not specifically human, resulting from intelligence or culture (Demonic Males, 1996). The field-studied chimpanzees all appeared human-like. They showed a tendency to raid, kill outsiders, and form ‘male-bonded, patrilineal kin groups’. A 2016 study, ‘Phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence’ (Nature), suggests human interpersonal violence over the centuries mirrors primate behaviour. This is partly due to humankind’s position within – and exclusively within – an ancestral – and exclusively – violent mammalian grouping. Sociality and territoriality encouraged this inherited tendency for within-species killing.

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Evolutionists cited sexual selection to argue that male reproductive strategies underpinned cross-species aggression. These included mating competition, status-seeking, sexual adventurism. But note: Emphasising women’s evolutionary journey, feminist scholars rejected Darwin’s male-centric view of ‘assertive’ men outcompeting ‘shy’, mate-selective women. Anthropologist Sarah Hrdy highlighted female agency among primates. This included competition for resources, defensive cooperation, practical sexuality. Evolutionary psychologist Anne Campbell projected risk-aversion – ‘survivalism’ – as a rigid maternal investment in offspring survival.

Discussion of Young Male Syndrome

Evolutionary psychologists Margo Wilson and Martin Daly famously applied sexual selection theory to the ‘young male syndrome’. This involved risk-taking, status-competitive, crime-prone aggression in young adults, particularly of the lower classes. This classic homicide study (1985) examines how the reproductive pressures of social rootlessness create a sense of unstable masculinity, which provokes dangerous dominance-seeking behaviour. Evolutionary biologist Carol Hooven calls testosterone an ‘essential part’ of sexual selection.

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Men’s testosterone-levels are already 10-20 times those of women, male testosterone-production increases 30-fold at puberty, declining with fatherhood and aging. his/her book T: The Story of Testosterone (2021) takes a multidisciplinary look at how this gender-differentiating steroid hormone builds muscle, masculinizes the brain and controls muscle flexing. his/her message to ‘T-sceptics’: given the ubiquitous ‘gendered patterns’ of aggression, reducing the biology of violence to violence is not socially beneficial.

Regarding sex and gender, nature or nurture ‘depends on what is being investigated’, says oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene, 2016). Turning on (or off), a ‘master gene’, SRY, determines male (or female) sexual anatomy – the ‘binary’. But a ‘gene-evolutionary cascade’, in which lower-ranked genes assimilate environmental (and other) cues, informs gender.

The nurture vs nature debate

Regarding aggression, controversial ‘warrior gene’ research implicates a nature-nurture ‘gene × environment’ link. These include risk-taking MAOA variants and psychosocial stressors such as childhood trauma. On warfare, the debate is still nurture versus nature. Did Neolithic farmers invent warfare? Or is it hardwired, and of hunter-gatherer antiquity? Either way, warfare is a gender-specific male bloodsport, supported by a cultural glorification of military masculinity.

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Ultimately, neither biology nor culture is destiny. Reproductive ‘tyranny’, homo/trans-phobia, gender racism – none of the prejudices go unchallenged today. Millions of rights-conscious women are not victims of some ‘heterosexual’ world conspiracy. Nor are all men aggressive. Without sublimating the mating drive and the killer instinct, without the creative collaboration that anthropologist Agustín Fuentes diligently exposes, no one can co-exist.

Recognition of the dark side of humankind

Many scientists justifiably want recognition of the ‘darker’ side of the ‘human’ race, searching for effective antidotes. If a prescribed remedy is the feminisation of patriarchal societies, sisters across borders should stop apologising for being women. Half of humanity, women do not have to be effeminate to combat sexism. They do not need to imitate men to be equal to men. They do not need to grow fangs to prove their strength. Rather, women should celebrate the things that most women are. These include being empathetic, compassionate, cooperative, peace-prone and anti-war – the life-affirming ‘better angels’ of human nature.

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