Are men really more violent than women?

KingMerv00

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Offshoot of a chat session...

Statistics show that men are much more likely to be accused and convicted of violent crimes. Does this mean men are more prone to violence than women?

(Note: Even if men are more prone, this doesn't necessarily suggest a genetic cause. It is possible men are pressured by society to be more violent.)

During the chat, it was suggested to me that the stats may be innaccurate because violence commited by a woman (like spousal abuse) is less likely to be reported. I agree with that and I'm sure it has a noticeable impact on the statistics. However, it would not explain why men are overwhelmingly accused and convicted of violent crimes that would always be reported. Murder, robbery, etc. Maybe women are better at getting away with violence? Maybe they commit different violent crimes?

The stats do not prove anything but I think they demand an explantion.
 
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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.
 
calebprime said:
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.
Click to expand...

I love how people automatically shut off their ability to think and make assumptions about basic human nature based upon our social experiences.

Maybe instead of doing that you could offer up a tiny bit of evidence that the relatively small differences in testosterone between men and women actually cause a difference in violent behavior.
 
Gender differences in behaviour: Activating effects of cross-sex hormones
The relative contribution of organizing and activating effects of sex hormones to the establishment of gender differences in behaviour is still unclear. In a group of 35 female-to-male transsexuals and a group of 15 male-to-female transsexuals a large battery of tests on aggression, sexual motivation and cognitive functioning was administered twice: shortly before and three months after the start of cross-sex hormone treatment. The administration of androgens to females was clearly associated with an increase in aggression proneness, sexual arousability and spatial ability performance. In contrast, it had a deteriorating effect on verbal fluency tasks. The effects of cross-sex ] hormones were just as pronounced in the male-to-female group upon androgen deprivation: anger and aggression proneness, sexual arousability and spatial ability decreased, whereas verbal fluency improved. This study offers evidence that cross-sex hormones directly and quickly affect gender specific behaviours. If sex-specific organising effects of sex hormones do exist in the human, they do not prevent these effects of androgen administration to females and androgen deprivation of males to become manifest.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=94d9de3aef00881f5dfa5c36c2c8d157
 
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KingMerv00 said:
Offshoot of a chat session...

Statistics show that men are much more likely to be accused and convicted of violent crimes. Does this mean men are more prone to violence than women?

(Note: Even if men are more prone, this doesn't necessarily suggest a genetic cause. It is possible men are pressured by society to be more violent.)

During the chat, it was suggested to me that the stats may be innaccurate because violence commited by a woman (like spousal abuse) is less likely to be reported. I agree with that and I'm sure it has a noticeable impact on the statistics. However, it would not explain why men are overwhelmingly accused and convicted of violent crimes that would always be reported. Murder, robbery, etc. Maybe women are better at getting away with violence? Maybe they commit different violent crimes?

The stats do not prove anything but I think they demand an explantion.
Click to expand...


Ok, I read again.

I suggest you change your title to: Questioning stats about male vs. female violence.

I suggest, to whoever was talking to me above, that there is a place for critical reasoning and a place for common sense.

Pulling up stats takes a lot more thought.

For some questions, this is justified.

For some--the no-brainers--that amount of effort is not justified.

This is one of those no-brainers.

Now, there might be an interesting insinuation here--that there is some kind of bias against males that makes for over-reporting of male violence, but....

wait for it......





wait......




no.
 
calebprime said:
Ok, I read again.

I suggest you change your title to: Questioning stats about male vs. female violence.

I suggest, to whoever was talking to me above, that there is a place for critical reasoning and a place for common sense.

Pulling up stats takes a lot more thought.

For some questions, this is justified.

For some--the no-brainers--that amount of effort is not justified.

This is one of those no-brainers.

Now, there might be an interesting insinuation here--that there is some kind of bias against males that makes for over-reporting of male violence, but....

wait for it......





wait......




no.
Click to expand...

oh, relatively small difference? 10 to 1? oddly, about the ratio of male to female violence, as well.

stats from butt. but they're not far off--I wager you a small haddock.
 
One problem with the testosterone theory of aggression is you need to induce large changes in the levels of testosterone to significantly affect an individual's aggressiveness. There is no clear link between absolute level of testosterone and an individual's aggressiveness. We have a increase in testosterone when we win and a decrease when we loose.

Each of us appears to get used to a certain level of testosterone and it is only large deviations from this set-point that affects our aggressiveness.
 
I think tomcats are pressured by society to be nasty, viscious creatures until you "fix" them. At that point, society expects them to become more gentle, diverting all of their aggressive tendencies toward playing with string and napping.
 
And yet Infanticide (where the mother kill the newborn) is one of the most under reported crimes in human history
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
One problem with the testosterone theory of aggression is you need to induce large changes in the levels of testosterone to significantly affect an individual's aggressiveness. There is no clear link between absolute level of testosterone and an individual's aggressiveness. We have a increase in testosterone when we win and a decrease when we loose.

Each of us appears to get used to a certain level of testosterone and it is only large deviations from this set-point that affects our aggressiveness.
Click to expand...
I agree. However, what you are looking at is the immediate changes of testosterone instead of long term baseline levels. Hormones have short term and longer term actions in both physiology and behavior. You arguing that the immediate levels have little correlation with aggression but say nothing about the long baseline levels.

Men and women treated with testosterone are more aggressive while men with a lack of testosterone(via real or chemical castration) are less aggressive.

I believe that cultural issues play a more major role in aggression but Testosterone definitely plays a role(major or minor is still being argued) but not the only role in aggression.
 
This subject came up before from a related angle. There are a slew of web sites claiming women are just as domestically violent as men. They base the claim on surveys which treat slamming a door as equally violent as murdering your spouse.

Sometimes the obvious is just that, obvious. Women represent a fraction of violent crimes offenders and men a fraction of victims. Hormones, evolution or sociocultural, take your pick of underlying causes, but the facts are the discrepancy in violence between genders is huge, overwhelmingly supported by the data (if you are honest about it) and OBVIOUS.
 
This came up in my Law and Society class last year. My professor, also a DA and long time lawyer said that men do commit violence more, but that women also don't get nearly the same punishment for the same crime.

Her view. Men go to jail, women go to therapy. It really annoyed the hell out of her.

But there are skewing of statistics too. Men are raped almost as often as women*. Yes, mostly by other men, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, that those men don't need support, and that it is any better when women do it to men. Worse yet, most people still view women on men violence, especially rape, as the man's fault, or not even a crime.

Here is a good example. A man and a woman are at a bar. The woman gets drunk, and takes to man home, where they have sex. Is that rape? They both get drunk and have sex, is that rape? Only the man is drunk and they have sex, is that rape? Men have been charged with rape in all three scenarios.

*This is if you count jail rape, and use the same definition of rape for both men and women. This means that emotional blackmail used on men is rape.

Edit to add: Oh, and the entire time I was at college, there were at least eight times I remember a woman claiming to have been raped where it turned out it was a lie.
 
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KingMerv00 said:
Offshoot of a chat session...

Statistics show that men are much more likely to be accused and convicted of violent crimes. Does this mean men are more prone to violence than women?
Click to expand...
Gentle reader, decidedly no.

Inside every man - well, we are all lambs cushioned by soothingly soft pallets of plush cottony pink puffs. I think, mayhap, we are much TOO gentle but if you don't agree, then I support your position instead of mine. Please do not take offense if I did not introduce that concept a word or two earlier, I am most humbly and grovelingly sorry. I do a good job of work apologizing all day long, sometimes it can frig... ahh. Lambs. Eating vanilla sorbet and purring.

Perchance the errant accusations and subsequent convictions are mere societal tests of our unswerving sweetness? If somebody accused ME of (vanilla puffs) an infraction that I didn't even have a poofy powdery snowball's chance in living hell of committing, I would leap across (vanilla lambs) a frozen gridiron and (pinklike pudding) boot the startled accuser through the goal posts 56 yards ahead. If the (tapioca w/ whipping cream) scumbag first hit the left upright and (It's Palmolive. You're soaking in it) then bounced HARD on the center crossbar and THEN through, a helluva lot better. Oh shucks, he wasn't wearing a helmet??? Geez I'm like SO sorry 'bout that, what the hell was he doing on the field, Jim? We're knockin' heads here fer chrissakes! You wanna be a tackle dummy, you like it? Git yer butt out to our next team scrimmage and you'll be a Ph.D-ummy in no time, jerk-weed!!!!!111!

See? Society did this to me, that's wh... Oh this is rich, you DON'T agree? REALLY??? 2-84, 2-84, Red Right, Hut, Hut, ... HUT!
 
It is true what they say: Women are from Omicron Persei 7, men are from Omicron Persei 9.
 
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