Gender and Violence and Blame

POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 20:14
VIEWED: 35151
PAGE 5 of 31

So anyway, to get back to the thread topic.... You will hardly ever find in recorded in history instances of women banding together to brutalize another person.

However, our history is replete with examples of (mostly) men in gangs or battalions, beating up and killing each other, women, and children.

As an aside, 90% of people killed in war are civilians, and of those, 75% are women and children. (Doing the arithmetic... roughly 68% of total war casualties are women and children.)

Men and women tend to respond to threat differently. When faced with stress, many men go into "fight or flight". For decades, "fight or flight" was the ONLY recognized and studied reaction. There was a great deal of work done on how the sympathetic nervous system is activated, which hormones come into play, how adrenaline is reversed and so forth. Nobody thought to study women. When someone FINALLY looked at how women actually respond (instead of assuming that women are "just like" men) they found that when faced with stress, many women go into "tend and befriend" mode.

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The dominant model of the human responses to stress has been the fight or flight response. In response to threat, humans (and other animals) can become aggressive and confront a stressor (fight) or flee either literally or through avoidant coping, such as social withdrawal or substance abuse. From the standpoint of human beings, however, this analysis of stress responses is incomplete. Another tendency is to affiliate, that is, to come together in groups in threatening times.[1] This tend and befriend response refers to the fact that people often manage threats by caring for offspring and seeking social support in time of stress.[2][3]

Biological bases of tend and befriend
Many scientists now believe that there is an affiliative neurocircuitry that prompts affiliation especially in response to stress. Research suggests that this system regulates social approach behavior, much as hunger, thirst, or sexual drives are biologically regulated. A biological basis for this regulation appears to be oxytocin.[4]

Oxytocin has been tied to a broad array of social relationships and activities, including peer bonding, sexual activity, and affiliative preferences.[4] Oxytocin is released in humans in response to at least some stressors, especially those that may trigger affiliative needs. Oxytocin prompts affiliative behavior, including maternal tending and social contact with peers.[5] Thus affiliation under stress serves tending needs, including protective response towards offspring, and may also take the form of befriending, namely seeking social contact for one's own protection, the protection of offspring, and the protection of the social group. These social responses to threat reduce biological stress responses, including elevated heart rate, blood pressures, and hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis stress responses, such as cortisol.[6]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tend_and_befriend

It's possible that the largest determining factor between men and women is average levels of oxytocin. I can imagine that people are simply born with different levels of oxytocin... there are studies that the asocial behavior of autistic children can be alleviated with oxytocin nasal spray.

I wonder if what Frem thinks of as "the dark spark" and what Byte assumes is sociopathy is simply low levels of oxytocin, which I imagine is experienced as complete lack of "warm and fuzzies" towards people and/or other living creatures, an internal coldness and absence of empathy.

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Which brings me to... upbringing.

Males brought up to be "male"... less mother-child contact, harsher consequences, etc.... will probably have less oxytocin, or their receptors will probably be less efficient for oxytocin. (Early experience wires the brain for different responses. Early pain makes later pain more acute, early stress makes later stress feel worse, etc.)

And

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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I did about a semestre of judo at school. They taught us to use leverage to try to overcome greater weight and size.

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There is more than one kind of violence. Some people only pick on the completely defenseless.... young children, the comatose, (yes, seriously) the elderly etc These people don't expect resistance of any sort, and any resistance - no matter how incompetent- will stop them. A little bit of karate, boxing, MMA, even wrestling... anything that teaches you to use your weight and improves your timing... should help.

OTOH, there are an awful lot of people who are used to fighting. They've thrown punches, and taken as many. Some have taken knife wounds or bullets. Momentary pain won't shock them, and landing a few blows won't surprise them into stopping. They know how to use their weight, because they've fought before. Don't count on a few years of training to neutralize their advantage in weight, because they're more experienced than you.

You need to be highly trained and in top form, and used to street fighting, before you could win in a straight-up fight. Not for someone weak, small, sick, out of shape, etc. And if your opponent is a gang member, you better stay out of their turf afterwards because you will never, ever be safe. Your best defense is to be part of a militarized group.

ETA: I just saw the thread on MMA. There is one thing I noticed about any martial art, mixed or not: the fighting is very stylized. It prepares you to counter certain expected blows. But as has been noted, certain things are never done in competition because they're permanently damaging. That is why I said you have to be used to STREET FIGHTING.

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I'm... not sure what you're implying. You think I can't take a hit? I can take a hard kick to the groin and not even blink, hard enough I was bruised for a friggin' week. Yeah, so fights in Mormon country are beyond pathetic, for sure, and I wouldn't even try compare it to a street fight or gang warfare. But you're talking at me like you think I've never been in a brush up.

You asked me if I'd taken judo, and I said yeah. But one semestre isn't the only experience I've had. Not by far. :/

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Then we get into the 'son of a bitch deserved it' defense...also known as battered woman syndrome.

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Jezus...battered-woman syndrome = "son of a bitch deserved it"...simple as that, eh? Brrrrrr....a mentality I'd choose to avoid.

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Women stay with abusers because they don't have other options (or they don't see that they have options), not because they "can't" beat up (or shoot) their partners. Sometimes the barriers are financial, sometimes the barriers are cultural, and sometimes psychological, sometimes legal, but rarely is abuse about not knowing martial arts or how to use a gun.

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Thank you, Sig, for making the pertinent point.

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Mass counts . So does strength. Just wait until you get to be MY age and then tell me about it. I'm sure Niki and Magons feel the same way.

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Damned straight! Knowing some moves might mitigate the damage to myself, but kicking ass? That's laughable! There are some things I could do, depending on how much pain I wanted to suffer, but other things I simply physically couldn't do...and I've always been very flexible, even!

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You will hardly ever find in recorded in history instances of women banding together to brutalize another person.

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But you'll find many, many instances of young women of teenage years who've banded together to brutalize, both emotionally AND physically, other women.

Interesting what you said about males abused here.

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with the exception of rappy, hero and geezer

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I would add Wulf to that, if he's never been abused. What I noticed about that statement was that those are three of the lealst sensitive, least able to see others' viewpoints, of all of us. I wonder if childhood sexual abuse in some way makes some people more empathetic, more willing to see the greys?

Tit for tat got us where we are today. If we want to be grownups, we need to resist the ugliness. If we each did, this would be a better reflection on Firefly and a more welcome place. I will try.

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