Are men really more violent than women?

[Skeptic Ginger]

An individual's absolute long-term testosterone level does not correlate well with his/her level of aggressiveness. Studies on prison populations confirm this.....

I'd be interested in a source of this information. I was under the impression there was a direct correlation even if it wasn't absolute or the only factor.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I mentioned in the OP that this might be true. However, even if domestic violence is 50/50, it fails to explain the gap in other violent crime.

Exactly. Just as the hypothesis men are just bigger so they cause more injury fails when you compare gun violence rates between genders.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Pretty much says it all right there, FR. Of course we are. Do people live life with their eyes shut and ears stoppered?

I find the number of people willing to ignore the obvious in favor of the PC claims that women are just as violent as men but [fill in the blank with some contrived reason] skews the results to be rather astounding. I've pondered why that might be but I only have hypotheses.

 

[Fiona]

Just on the issue of symmetry in domestic violence: the link in PhantomWolf's post gives no details at all of how this study was conducted. This is crucial for reasons given by skeptigirl and others. This critique of the methodology underpinning such claims is a bit older but it is relevant still

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=...oGDF&sig=Djy_HSBQZqqBAJwT8Jd6TIiM1vA#PPA31,M1

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Nice to know that "self evident" arguments are still in use, even on a skeptic's board...

Right. Murder stats, prison stats, gun violence stats, victim/perp stats..... a lot of unskeptical self evident arguments for sure.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You seem to weigh in on issues in this manner every now and then.. It seems strange to me. You pick a side and you leave it at that. How does this help?

Do you think the answer to the question can be agreed upon democratically or do you expect people to believe you on authority, or is it something else? Do enlighten me, but please use arguments?

Much as I disagree with Fran in other threads, I think this tack, the same one Lonewulf seems to have taken misses the point I made at the beginning: Sometimes the obvious really is the true picture.

Are you all suggesting we post links to the proof more men are in jail for violent offenses than women, more men murder, more men injure others than women, or do you think it's OK to call this a given?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

....That being said, my daughter is the master at manipulating my youngest son to do her bidding and avoiding direct blame when I'm called in to resolve disputes.

That would be 'brain' not 'brawn'.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Oh well. I posted relevant excerpts from the British Crime Survey earlier today, and nobody commented on that data at all. ...

But I noticed your data and totally appreciated it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Which brings up another point. Opposite from violence is supportive and cooperative behavior. Girls are more supportive and cooperative as studies of children's play demonstrate. Boys are more competitive. This is much more complex in adult behavior and I don't want to start a debate about team sport cooperation vs competition and the stereotype of the woman competing with other women for men. So my comments only relate to children at play.

Here is an interesting opinion piece from WebMD:

What Makes Girls Play House and Boys Play War?

 

[gumboot]

Which has nothing at all to do with it, does it? Are you really saying that the capacity to win a fight means you have to start a fight? I know a lot of big blokes who would take issue with that.

Did I say that? No.

I am not sure anyone but you has done this but perhaps I missed it

I'm not accusing anyone in this thread of having done that. It's something that happens generally in society.

Well one reasonable way would be to see how often they do it. It seems unlikely that people less prone to violence would do more of it, does it not?

The problem with this is the crime statistics only reflect the result of violence. The OP was referring to intention. You could have a paralyzed person who was obsessively psychotically violent, yet because of a physical inability to actually commit violent acts, any crime statistics would not count him.

See the problem here? It's a question of intent versus outcome.

No. Instances of violence are recorded (not always and not perfectly) and it is a perfectly reasonable measure of violence.

They're a good measure of who is being violent. They're not a good measure of who is prone to violence. Crime statistics deal only with the end result, not intent and not cause.

It is certainly true that the source of the huge difference in instances of violent crime perpetrated by men and women is not at all clear in terms of causation. It has been suggested that female violence is less likely to be reported because men are embarrassed (possible but unlikely to outweigh the failure of women to report it for that and other reasons): or less likely to be prosecuted where it is reported (not seen any evidence so I cannot comment on that; though I find it vanishingly unlikely that women are not prosecuted for murder or other serious assaults, as others have said). Maybe. But this is mostly guesswork. What we do know is that focussing on male on female violence or vice versa leaves out the fact that male on male violence is very widespread too: lots of hospital A+E departments are full of those victims every night of the week: do you have evidence there are equal numbers of women there as victims of female violence? Did you look at the statistics posted in this thread (twice) and do you have any comment to make on this evidence?

I think I've accepted, from the start, that most serious violent crime is perpetrated by males. In my opinion that doesn't adequately answer the OP. I was attempting to address the other side of it.

Think of it as two separate questions:

1) Which gender can be more violent
2) Which gender wants to be more violent

Crime statistics neatly answer 1) (there are issues about domestic violence, as discussed, but I think it still hold true that men are more violent) but Crime statistics do not answer 2). However looking at a specific more controlled and better studied subset of violent crime - domestic violence - helps to give some insight into 2).

Link please

Study finds Women as violent as Men

Studies show young Women becoming more violent with partners

Summary of 246 scholarly investigations indicating that women are as physically aggressive or more physically aggressive than males in domestic relationships

Men Shouldn't Be Overlooked as Victims of Partner Violence

And so on...

See above. That is ********

It's ******** that New Zealand Police believe that, or what they believe is ********?

and I note in passing that the figure grows every time you tell it

The first time I said "well over half". The second time I said "60 to 80%". How is there any discrepancy there?

False rape complaints annoy police
NZ Herald, August 8, 2005


False rape complaints tie up resources
One News, TVNZ, August 8, 2005

Then it is recorded as assault. What is your point?

I wasn't making a point, I was providing some background information so people unfamiliar with New Zealand law could follow the statistics.

The issue is not about sexual assault, or about domestic violence: it is about the relative incidence of violence perpetrated be men and women.

It's not, it's about propensity for violence in men and women. I've explained my reasoning for using domestic violence as an indicator.

Are you suggesting that records of violent crime do not record the sex of the perpetrator?

No, I'm not.

Yes. I have always wondered why because to me it is part of the reason that the attrition referred to above is so high. A violent crime is a violent crime and I see no particular reason to give sex crime a separate status. But that is irrelevant in any case is it not. For some reason you are intent of bringing this down to violence between men and women and that is not what the thread is about

I'm not sure why you're getting so uptight about me merely pointing out some aspects of how crime statistics in New Zealand are recorded.

You are still wrong about the false allegations.

You mean New Zealand detectives are still wrong about the false allegations.
More on the problem of false allegations in New Zealand.

But again, do you honestly think that the figures for reported crime are made of people wandering in off the street and saying there was crime?

Yes. Reported crime statistics total numbers of formal complaints made to police. That's why they distinguish between "resolved" and "unresolved". Some of the false complaints will be "resolved" (about 300 women in New Zealand are charged every year with laying false sexual assault complaints - these are only the rare cases that expend so much police time that prosecution is initiated) and other false complaints will be "unresolved". Of course you also get wrongful convictions such as the case of Peter Ellis who was convicted of multiple counts of child sexual abuse that any clown with a brain can see never occurred.

While I was prepared to consider the inclusion of other types of definition of violence if you wanted to do that, I am not prepared to consider property damage as violence: the word loses all usefulness if you take it that far. You want to include jay walking cos it gives drivers a fright?

Your remark is ridiculous. Willful damage to property is quite obviously an act of violence, even using the most narrow definition of the word. The intent is to use force to cause physical damage to an object.

What discrepancy? The attrition in cases of rape which no crime such a high percentage of reports?

Your second sentence is incomprehensible. The discrepancy cited is specifically in relation to domestic violence.

Awaiting that link

See above.

You think there are no societal factors influencing the incidence of domestic violence? You think poverty and overcrowding etc etc have no effect on domestic violence but they do on other crimes? Why?

Did I say that? No.

I think "natural inclination" carries baggage, but even if I grant that is not what you intend I do not for one moment see how you can say that domestic violence is a purer indication of the tendency than any other form of violence.

Because data is less likely to be clouded by other factors.

I'm going to speak hypothetically here, because I want to illustrate the point in a simple way.

Let us assume that we have a set of data on violent crime, and it indicates that males commit most of the violence in society. But what if the majority of non-domestic violent crime results as an escalation, or as a component of, other non-violent crime. For example, a burglar breaks into a house to steal someone's television and surprises the owner, and causes injury to the owner in their attempt to escape.

Let's pretend that men are more likely to commit non-violent crime also.

It would then be possible that the higher percentage of males committing violent crime was not a result of men being more violent, but men committing more crimes in general - in other words it's not men that are more likely to be violent, but criminals, and men are more likely to be criminals (for reasons other than violence).

Now, all of the above could, of course, be totally false. That's why I said it was hypothetical. Another hypothetical could be that men are more likely to be criminals because they are more violent. But it illustrates the problems that you run into when you start looking at violent crime statistics.

This is why domestic violence is useful. Domestic violence, by its very nature, is a more controlled environment for study. Both men and women are equally likely to be in domestic situations, and due to the nature of domestic situations the individuals in a given situation are going to be experiencing similar socio-economic influences. It is a confined environment - typically you're talking about small family units of a couple of adults and possibly children.

You can easily isolate gender relationships - male-female, male-male, and female-female.

Further, most people, regardless of attitude, values, history, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, or any other factor, are in some sort of domestic living arrangement. Most (obviously) are not violent, so we can conclude there is nothing inherently violent about being in a domestic relationship. (Contrast this with, say, belonging to a gang).

That's why domestic violence is a more useful sample for assessing a particular gender's propensity to be violent than simply counting up incidents of violent crime.

 

[gumboot]

Girls are more supportive and cooperative as studies of children's play demonstrate.

They obviously never met my sisters! Oy!

 

[gumboot]

How many pounds of pressure do you think it takes to pull a trigger? Is gun violence equal between the sexes? Hell no.

Actually in terms of domestic violence, women are more likely to use lethal weapons than men.

I have wondered, however, if the biological resistance to killing is stronger in women than men, or if men are more able to generate the psychological will needed to overcome the resistance.

 

[gumboot]

They arrest the person who inflicts injuries be it the man or the woman or both.

The factors influencing which person the police arrest are substantially more complex than just that.

 

[gumboot]

Exactly. Just as the hypothesis men are just bigger so they cause more injury fails when you compare gun violence rates between genders.

This (could) potentially be explained by numerous other facts which are not about propensity to violence.

For example, are women or men more likely to own firearms?
Is most firearms violence perpetrated by a specific group that may be dominated by one gender for other reasons?
Is there something else at play that stops women using firearms, but isn't to do with violent intent (I mentioned resistance to killing)

Finally, addressing the whole topic, even if men are not only more violent in terms of damage inflicted (greater physical strength) but also more violent in terms of psychological intent to commit violence (aggressiveness) it could still be that men are not more prone to violence, but are more encouraged to be violent.

Alternatively, it could be men are biologically more prone to violence than women, but that in modern society women are encouraged to be more violent and men discouraged from being violent, resulting in studies that suggest women are equally violent.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Doesn't the violence thing also apply to suicide? I dimly recall reading in a few places that multiple studies show that while women attempt suicide more often than men, men are more successful at it when they do attempt it. The means are usually more violent--men go for guns and hanging, whereas women go for pills or cutting. I guess you could interpret that multiple ways--maybe the unsuccessful suicides really didn't want to, or maybe the more violent methods are generally more successful and the men gravitate towards the more violent.

 

[gumboot]

Doesn't the violence thing also apply to suicide? I dimly recall reading in a few places that multiple studies show that while women attempt suicide more often than men, men are more successful at it when they do attempt it. The means are usually more violent--men go for guns and hanging, whereas women go for pills or cutting. I guess you could interpret that multiple ways--maybe the unsuccessful suicides really didn't want to, or maybe the more violent methods are generally more successful and the men gravitate towards the more violent.

This is an interesting aspect to consider. But do you think this behavior would be motivated by attitudes to violence, or desire to avoid pain? Studies of pain response indicate that males and females have markedly different responses to pain. It would seem to me a major factor in deciding a method of suicide would be the perceived pain involved.

 

[ConspiRaider]

The female T-Rex in Jurassic Park was violent, therefore women are more violent then men.

Yeah but TW: Weren't ALL of the dinos womenfolk? And in the flick, we had just the one T-Rex. Horrific philosophical dilemma.

For all we know, that Madame T-Rex might have been a model for Miss Manners, right? How do we know? We don't get to compare her to career/professional T-Rexes, single soccer mom T-Rexes, a spoiled baby of the family with a father complex T-Rex, Malibu heiress capped-teeth/fangs T-Rexes, a frustrated unmarried T-Rex working at the DMV...

And of course no comparisons to Hombre T-Rexes, who probably picked their their teeth with newborn hadrosaurs in the backyard, after a bronto BBQ.

Maybe the paleontological record can illuminate, I dunno. But I don't think I'm speaking out of school to suggest that angry fossils, if found, would certainly point to them being guys.

 

[TragicMonkey]

This is an interesting aspect to consider. But do you think this behavior would be motivated by attitudes to violence, or desire to avoid pain? Studies of pain response indicate that males and females have markedly different responses to pain. It would seem to me a major factor in deciding a method of suicide would be the perceived pain involved.

The problem with analyzing the thought processes of successful suicides is a lack of first-person after-the-fact testimony.

Other considerations might include making minimal mess, leaving an attractive corpse, causing minimal problems for other people, or making it look like it might have been accidental to spare survivors or for religious reasons.

 

[Lonewulf]

Right. Murder stats, prison stats, gun violence stats, victim/perp stats..... a lot of unskeptical self evident arguments for sure.

You assume I'm talking specifically about those arguments that used statistics.

I was referring to the arguments that did not. Namely the argument that "It's because of increased Testosterone, period" (or mainly, or whatever).

I'm thinking that somehow this thread hit a personal cord with you, Skeptigirl.

One of the posts I was referring to was Calebprime's here:

I can't help wondering if you actually live in the world.

The answer is yes.

The reason, mainly, testosterone.

I'm all for critical thinking and even philosophy, but there's no reason to ignore the things you know.

The reason is testosterone, case closed, open the champagne, call it a conclusion well-drawn, bam. Sounds like a Self Evident argument to me.

By the way: Much as I disagree with Fran in other threads, I think this tack, the same one Lonewulf seems to have taken misses the point I made at the beginning: Sometimes the obvious really is the true picture.

Are you all suggesting we post links to the proof more men are in jail for violent offenses than women, more men murder, more men injure others than women, or do you think it's OK to call this a given?

Is it really so hard to understand that there's a difference between saying "Men are innately violent" and "Men statistically commit a higher degree of violence"? The former is what I'm questioning. To claim that men are violent because of the statistics seems to be the same conclusion that racists use to conclude that being African causes you to be more violent.

So therefore can I deduce that it's because blacks are genetically more violent, or can I not question the idea more?

If being a skeptic means that I have to accept the first conclusion thrown at me, then sorry, but I'm going to hand in my Skeptic's Card (tm) right now.

 

[Lonewulf]

They arrest the person who inflicts injuries be it the man or the woman or both.

Okay, evidence?

Also, doesn't this actually fly in the face of Self Defense? So you can't defend yourself? Or is it just wrong to defend yourself and cause injury?