Originally posted by pmb
Or the short version of this question - Is there evidence that men are more aggressive then women.
Aggression in the sense of violence.
If there is a difference is there a breakdown as to why? Is it
inate/biological or is it cultural?
I am not a psychiatrist/psychologist nor am I a social scientist, but I would like to add my own two cents worth on this issue.
Personally, I do not know of any evidence that men are "necessarily" more aggressive than women - both in research and in my personal observations.
The testosterone bit doesn't make sense to me. If the mere fact that males have testosterone makes them more aggressive, why is that not reflected in the animal kingdom? In most predatory species, the males and the females share in the hunt(wolves, felines, whales, dolphins, bears, etc. to name a few predatory mammals). In fact in the lion kingdom, only the females hunt while the male spends its time sleeping about 20 hours a day (now that's an aggressive male). Even among prey, the females are more likely to stand and fight to defend its young than a male. I point this out because you did specify "aggression in the sense of violence" and all males in the mammal kingdom have testosterone therefore, testosterone does not seem to be the major factor in my opinion.
Moving to the human social structure, men are clearly given more aggressive roles. Men are the soldiers, the fighters, the high impact sport athletes. Men also rule the world and often play the dominant role in society as seen in our upbringing, media, and social structure. Historically, women on the other hand have been given the more submissive role in society - although this is changing. If one examines cultures, you will notice that in some cultures women are less submissive than others. Why the difference? I believe this is highly based on culture not genes or sex. All of this affects the male and female agression levels in our society.
But despite the cultural difference, I still see
some women showing lots of aggression. Yes some men are guilty of battering their wives, but some women are also guilty of battering their kids. Isn't that a form of aggression? I've seen boys have physical fights and I've seen girls have physical fights. The difference is that we are taught that boys fight because its in their genes or what have you. This does not explain why girls fight or why brothers and sisters can be physically violent towards each other.
One factor, I do notice about aggression. The weaker will tend to avoid picking fights with the stronger, and the stronger will generally pick fights with the weaker. How many times have you seen the scenario of violence set down through hiearchy. The boss fires Tom and Tom goes home and beats his wife Sarah and Sarah in turn takes it out and batters daughter Cindy and Cindy in turn goes out and beats little brother John and John goes out and bullies the neighborhood youngins ( an extreme example).
In short, I tend to believe society and culture have a heavier effect on the aggression in males and females than the designation of sex and genes.
