Vicious Kitty: Girls Are Aggressive Too
Sometimes it is nice to think that we're the most rational, calm and functional people that we know. We don't like to think that we're bound by some biological quirk to misbehave and we like to assume that we, along with all our fellow humans, are in complete control of everything we do. As we learn more and more about Neuroscience and its Behavioral Sciences relative, we have slowly been discovering that this is simply not so.We are bound, at least to an extent, by our biology, including the complex structure of our brains.
So what does this have to do with anything? Well, today's post is going to include a little speculation (later in the post). You can take from it whatever you wish, or you can sit and argue with me. However, it seems to me that not only are women at least as aggressive as men over time, but that this aggression is likely to have some good, solid evolutionary explanations that tie directly into sex.
Skepchick Jen recently pointed people toward an article in io9 that showed that bonobos are just as violent as their close relative the chimp. This is important because bonobos have a female dominated culture while chimps have a male dominated culture. The finding naturally calls into question if human societies would see the same effect should we develop a female dominated society. Of course, we need more data to really draw many conclusions, so let me mention that studies in aggression and menstruation in women have shown that women do display aggression but that this aggression is cyclical (Doughert et. al., University of Texas, 1996; Ritter, University of Central Lancashire, 2002).
Note: somehow part of this article got chopped off, I will hopefully have time to rewrite the last few paragraphs on Friday. Sorry!
