The idea that males are more aggressive innately is something that can be tested and can be falsified with one piece of evidence (that is the way science is meant to be done – though rarely is of course).

That a group has acted aggressively may be due to innate aggression but may be due to other factors. This is what can be sorted out from experiment and evidence.

If males are innately more aggressive then it is not possible for them to be less so. And women everywhere always will be less so. But this was not true is some cultures – Celts for instance. And because the warrior hypothesis is so wide ranging it is falsified by this one example (there are many history books about this if you care to inform yourself).

Likewise there are some places where men are less likely to be aggressive than others. The warrior hypothesis can’t take account of these variations (so it is falsified – can’t take adequate account of the data).

The problem with stuff like the male warrior hypothesis is that it is so reductionist it is useless to real life – where genes and learning are mixed to make up our behaviour. The application of it to individuals or individual instances of behaviour is just not suitable (the hypothesis has no explanatory force – that is, not useful).

You need a wider sampling of history – that takes in warrior women and societies that are more and less peaceful. The hypothesis is easily falsified.

Unfortunately though, the author makes the same mistake as her critics when she tries to argue, from her initially sound premise that men on the whole have been more agressive, that therefore women’s participation in leadership will lessen violence. Leaders in modern societies represent a subset of individuals who possess specific traits that helped them get to where they are, and tend to be more aggressive than average. The extreme stress of large-scale leadership roles, the intense competition for these roles, coupled with the fact that women are still in the minority in this field, practically ensures that the average, relatively nonaggressive and family-focused woman will NOT be the one filling these positions. Actually, the same can be said for men.

Almost all of the radical Muslims who have taken part in the 116 terrorist acts committed against the U.S. since 9/11 have been educated and middle class, according to the WSJ (2/12/10)

But one could easily imagine how in Fill-in-the-blank-istan, your statement might have some truth to it.

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Throughout the history of human civilization, wars have a common feature of being practiced primarily by males. This group aggression by males is a persistent feature in society. Here’s a solution….

Dr. Mathur is arguing is for the participation of women in the making of rules – a political point which will find few dissenters outside of organized religion. Such a solution would certainly be more enlightened than just letting men persecute with immunity due to their social position. Sadly, she her argument perpetuates a social hierarchy – one that justifies placing more women on top. But the historical record just simply does not support her suggestion that humans somehow become less likely to war when women are in power. The problem with Dr. Mathur’s assertion is that it tries to put women into roles which would open them up to act just like the men who had them in the past. And in point of fact, this exactly what has happened historically: The introduction of women leaders in “cultural, social, and political spheres” has not proven any different than putting men in the same positions.

A more constructive, less combative, approach that Dr. Mathur could take is to examine the interconnections between people that are supportive of her goal of reducing violence and war. A brief study of complexity theory quickly reveals how the adaptiveness and connectedness of agents (in this case, all humans) affects the stablility and safety of social situations.

Those who engage in the politics of gender are just as likely to be sexists as those who engage in the politics of race are to be bigots. I’m afraid, Dr. Mathur, that you come dangerously close to crossing the line when you assert that men need to be controlled because there is something inherantly violent about them. There is little wonder that your readers have responded this way.

This genetic determinism is falsified by all kinds of evidence
the great variation in violence across cultures to name just one.

This sentence doesn’t make sense:
Since females in all cultures have greater parental investment than males in their offspring, engaging in openly aggressive acts to acquire resources, either individually or as part of a group, will be physiologically and genetically costlier for women.
Women are quite capable of competing with other’s children for the advantage of their own. You could as easily argue that the greater parental investment is likely to make them more violent.

This argument from genetics is dangerous: it can lead to justifying the violence. “Men are just born that way.” The argument can also lead to social darwinism – war (and economics and social hierarchies and the current arrangements of various cultures) are somehow genetically determined. For some reason I doubt that the voting patterns of contemporary Australian society (where I’m from) are encoded in any chromosomal pairs.