Sabrina,
Firstly, such a thing cannot be illustrated by statistics alone.
Secondly, what statistics?
Thirdly, why do you believe them?
This makes no sense given that men have, historically and now, by far the greater outlets for aggression. I’m thinking primarily of military life, which is and has been dominated by men (mostly against their will) across the world. But then take something like boxing - for men, this is considered a sign of toughness, of being ‘a real man’, whatever the fuck that means, but for women there’s a whole dialogue about whether it’s ethical, whether women should do this sort of thing etc. etc.
This is right wing feminist propaganda that has never been scientifically demonstrated. The only valid measure we have of pain is verbal reports and other obvious signs of distress.
Of course, there’s a massive variance in accounts of childbirth from women, so there’s no hard or fast rule of what childbirth is like, beyond it being uniquely female.
Alternatively, men’s actions have historically, culturally, literarily and philosophically discussed, leading to a tendency to see history as the story of the actions of men. I’d argue that this sort of feminism is far more valid than the one you set out.
Women have proven to be just as capable of violence as men, it is just that it is widely downplayed or ignored. This is, of course, the uglier flipside of the binary oppositions male/female-rational/irrational ideology, where rationality is male and irrationality is female. As such, women don’t enjoy the benefits accorded to the rational, but enjoy freedoms from the restrictions placed on the rational, at least in terms of violence.
The main reasons why more murders are men are because men are more powerful, and therefore their violence is much more likely to result in death, and because the legal system is much more likely to incarcerate a supposedly rational male who kills than a supposedly irrational female, who is more likely to be placed in a mental institution and ‘studied’ and hopefully ‘cured’. The same applies to sexual assaults - a man who beats and rapes his girlfriend will be imprisoned, if convicted, whereas a woman who cuts off her boyfriend’s penis will not be imprisoned unless she has a prior history of violent behaviour. This is the case in the UK, and I imagine it’s similar in the US from the scattered news I’ve read from that country.
Sexual drive can be overpowering for women too, and it certainly isn’t for all men. Plenty of priests have lived lives of chastity. Others have become peverts, but there you go, that’s the ugly flipside of repression.
You haven’t even begun to take everything into account.
You see, this is my problem with evolutionary theory - when it moves from a perfectly valid explanation of how mutations occur in species to a catch-all explanation of every behavioural phenomena available. It’s ludicrous to expect a scientific theory that has changed significantly two or three times since it’s unsure inception in the works of a confused man who said himself ‘crying is a puzzler’ to provide an explanation of everything human.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s any use in all of this, but sod it, I’ve written it now. Even if no one here cares to read it, I’ve got it on record for my extensive forthcoming volumes…
