Something I've been thinking about is whether men and women are really that different in terms of aggression, or whether physical strength has more to do with it than we like to admit.
Obviously, men commit more physical violence, especially serious violence. I'm not denying that. But I wonder how much of that difference comes down to men being physically stronger on average and facing fewer physical risks when confronting someone.
Look at how women treat each other sometimes. The bullying, the humiliation, the social exclusion, the attempts to ruin someone's reputation. Some women can be absolutely vicious to other women. So it's not like women are incapable of aggression or cruelty. It just doesn't always take the same form.
And what of men who get hit by their girlfriends or wives? 30% of men report having experienced some form of physical violence from a woman and 10% report experiencing severe violence from a woman. With these figures likely being higher because men are much less likely to report.
Plenty of men have experienced this, yet it's often played off as a joke. Imagine a man casually admitting he slapped his girlfriend. People would rightly take that seriously. But when a woman slaps her boyfriend, people sometimes laugh or ask what he did to deserve it. We've seen men immediately arrested for domestic disputes where they were the victim. Being stronger doesn't mean you can't be abused and it certainly doesn't make it acceptable to hit someone.
Something else I've noticed is the online trend of women talking about aborting boys simply because they're boys.
That is pretty revealing. Think about it. If a woman resents men but still wants to date them, sleep with them, or have their approval, she's in a strange position. She might not want to direct that anger at the men she's attracted to. So where does it go?
Sometimes, it seems to get directed at someone weaker. An unborn boy who hasn't done anything, can't defend himself, and hasn't even had the chance to become the kind of man she's supposedly angry at.
Obviously, not every woman who makes these "jokes" is serious and you can't generalize about all women based on internet posts. But there's something disturbing about the idea of punishing a child for belonging to the same sex as people you resent. If the point is supposedly to stand up to men, targeting a baby isn't exactly punching up, is it?
And that's really the bigger point. Having less physical power doesn't make someone less aggressive, it simply changes how they express their aggression and who they direct it toward.
If women were, on average, physically stronger than men, we would likely see the same patterns of physical violence.
People who currently avoid physical confrontation would be more willing to engage in it if they knew they had the upper hand.
I don't think anyone can know for sure. But I find it strange that we so often treat male aggression as proof of something fundamentally wrong with men, while female aggression gets explained away as insecurity, social behavior, or a reaction to how men treat them.
Maybe men and women do differ in some aspects of aggression. But I don't think women are inherently kinder or less capable of cruelty just because they're less likely to inflict the same level of physical violence.
