I was just rereading Massie’s “Dreadnought”, and there was a passage describing Queen Victoria’s letter to a top Cabinet official, in which she said she wished she was a man so she could kick Russia’s ass (paraphrasing slightly).
The motive is there - means and opportunity are all that’s needed for women to do Bad Things as thoroughly as men (see also Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi etc.).
And not only that, the criminal justice system seems oddly “forgiving” toward women who kill their own offspring. From this article:
Of course, it’s also possible that women who kill their children are in fact more likely to be mentally troubled as opposed to all-purpose ruthless bastards, as compared to men.
My guess is it’s a combination of both.
There are lies, damned lies and statistics. The child murdering numbers are the last. What’s happening is that you’re looking at those numbers and then applying them to a preconception of ‘white, suburban, nuclear family with 2 kids whose mother hacks them up with an axe.’ The problem is that that vision of what a family is is outdated by decades and that version of what a child homicide is is simply a fiction. Part of the reason that more mothers kill their children is quite simply that more mothers live with their children- 1 in 3 children don’t live with their father. The other very, very important factor is that the vast, vast majority of these child deaths are infanticides taking place shortly after birth predominantly to unmarried women of color who gave birth in a non-hospital setting. In effect, they are late term abortions. Most of these infanticides if they had been done 24 hours earlier by a doctor would be legal abortions, because they waited an extra day and threw them in a dumpster instead of stabbing them through the brainstem, they are infanticides. The courts are typically ‘forgiving’ due to this fact. After the first week of life, a child is more likely to be killed by a male than by a female.
That sounds really angry but I’m not sure against whom.
What sounds angry? My post? I wasn’t angry when I wrote it. Just trying to shed light on the earlier numbers and why they show what they show.
What Bad Things did Thatcher do? In the Falkland Islands War, it was Argentina (governed by men, if I recall correctly) that attacked and occupied the islands. Thatcher then sent British forces to kick the Argentine forces out. In regards to the IRA, they were a bunch of vicious terrorists who killed far more British civilians than ISIS ever has. Punching back at them was surely not a Bad Thing. Outside of those two episodes, which are minor on the scale of international affairs, she presided over one of most peaceful stretches in British history.
We’re just fuckin’ stupid.
Do you have a cite to support this claim?
Well, that establishes the rate, but your post appears to talk about the number, inasmuch as you said:
Your cite gives a higher rate among the black population, but because the white population greatly outnumbers the black population, the actual number of deaths among the black population is much lower. The most recent year I can find stats for is 2014; for that year, there were 152 white infants murdered, and 84 black infants. Cite, page 100, at the bottom, listed as “Assault (Homicide)”. So, not at all the “vast majority”, much less the “vast vast majority”.
Also, third-trimester and post-viability abortions are outlawed in the overwhelming majority of states. So, this line:
…is hogwash.
No, it’s about men committing actual serious crimes, that’s why men go to prison. Violent crime, robbery, burglery, assault, rape, murder. Also drug offenses. It has nothing to do with older men not being taken seriously.
I’m not going to say that men don’t commit more violent crimes than women do. However, women do commit crimes - violent and otherwise.
Women just don’t get penalized to the extent men do - that’s a fact. There is obviously a lot of favoritism in the criminal justice system, which favors women & biased against men. This is one of the reasons less women are in prison.
I’m a guy, but found this interesting video online by a woman who is a self-proclaimed feminist - and even she agrees with what I’m saying here:
Also, here is another article:
Also, in many cases women will be sneakier about crime than men:
One of the peculiar artifacts of patriarchal sexism is that “being good” and “being bad” are set up differently for the sexes: for girls, being good is actively assertive, holding one’s self up to a standard, and being bad is falling weakly into disrepute, to be pitied for it as well as being held in contempt. For boys, meanwhile, being BAD is actively assertive, being a badass, a wicked disrespectful disobeyer of rules, a miscreant; bad boys are “getting away with” stuff that they do, and they are envied even when they are punished, so there’s a tendency for punishments to escalate to overcome that bad boy aura. Meanwhile, good boys are assumed to be good for fear of punishment or fear of going against authority or whatever – it’s seen as a more passive state, you could even invoke a description of it as a “pussy-whipped” state if you go looking for it.
I shouldn’t at this point have to issue a disclaimer, but I will: I’m citing the existence of this cultural belief-tendency, but I’m not endorsing it in any shape way fashion or form.
FWIW, I have a high level of testosterone according to a recent hormone panel. I’m a lesbian and have very few stereotypically female interests and many typical male interests and it’s been that way all of my life. I’m far, far more adventurous, aggressive, and thrill-seeking than the majority of my heterosexual counterparts. I’d never claim to be fearless, but I have a high threshold for emotional arousal that some uber-masculine guys have.
IMHO, testosterone is the key driver in what we label as masculine behaviors. Many trans men who take T report incredible changes in their thinking, behavior, and interests; this, perhaps, can give further insight into just how much our chemistry controls us.
So, anecdotes aren’t stats and so on, just wanted to throw my thinking into the thread.
I, meanwhile, seem to have a normal male range dose of the stuff running around in my system. I have very few stereotypically male interests and many typical female interest and it’s been that way all my life, too. I’m pretty damn tough and resilient but so are lots of women.
I suspect the physical differences, including the hormones, make a statistical difference in the populations as a whole; and that the populations as a whole do indeed differ more or less as the stereotypes about males and females say they do. But it’s a generalization and as with all generalizations there are exceptions; and there’s more variation among males (and among females) than there is between the two populations male and female, so there are plenty of outliers.
Yup, smart words. The intersections of nature/nurture are fascinating; after I posted here I was thinking about my upbringing and the pervasive sense that I was very different from the other ruffle-clad demure little Mormon girls. There were not any social rewards for being a butch little girl, but there certainly were social punishments aplenty. I think my drivers lean a lot toward genetics; few kids choose to be pariahs.
I’m a product of polygamy as are many other Utah Mormons. Interestingly, there is an unusually high rate of homosexuality, especially high given the repressive/oppressive religiosity that saturates the culture. I’m hoping science turns an eye toward studying sexuality as it presents in a genetic pool with a high rate of interbreeding.
U of Utah has done a fascinating study on diseases that occur at a high rate in Utah:
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/science/utah/
There are no doubt exceptions, but IMO, as far as a blanket answer goes, it’s testosterone, period.
Well look at the recent event with Katy Perry.
Basically the 33 year old Perry made a 19 year old contestant on “American Idol” come over and kiss her on the lips when she found out he was from a conservative family and hadnt ever kissed a girl.
Can you imagine a 33 year old man doing that to a 19 year old girl? Now the young man downplayed it but still, a 33 year old man would NEVER have been given such a pass.
Where is the #MeToo for men?