The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (118 page)
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Authors: Steven Pinker
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BOOK: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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Social dominance is a guy thing. It’s not surprising that men, the more dominance-obsessed gender, have stronger tribalist feelings than women, including racism, militarism, and comfort with inequality.
147
But men are more likely to find themselves at the receiving end of racism too. Contrary to the common assumption that racism and sexism are twin prejudices propping up a white male power structure, with African American women in double jeopardy, Sidanius and Pratto found that minority women are far
less
likely to be the target of racist treatment than minority men. Men’s attitudes toward women may be paternalistic or exploitative, but they are not combative, as they tend to be with other men. Sidanius and Pratto explain the difference with reference to the evolution of these invidious attitudes. Sexism ultimately arises from the genetic incentive of men to control the behavior, especially the sexual behavior, of women. Tribalism arises from the incentive of groups of men to compete with other groups for access to resources and mates.
147
But men are more likely to find themselves at the receiving end of racism too. Contrary to the common assumption that racism and sexism are twin prejudices propping up a white male power structure, with African American women in double jeopardy, Sidanius and Pratto found that minority women are far
less
likely to be the target of racist treatment than minority men. Men’s attitudes toward women may be paternalistic or exploitative, but they are not combative, as they tend to be with other men. Sidanius and Pratto explain the difference with reference to the evolution of these invidious attitudes. Sexism ultimately arises from the genetic incentive of men to control the behavior, especially the sexual behavior, of women. Tribalism arises from the incentive of groups of men to compete with other groups for access to resources and mates.
The gender gaps in overconfidence, personal violence, and group-against-group hostility raise a frequently asked question: Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? The question is just as interesting if the tense and mood are changed. Has the world become more peaceful because women are more in charge? And will the world become more peaceful when women are even more in charge?
The answer to all three, I think, is a qualified yes. Qualified, because the link between sex and violence is more complicated than just “men are from Mars.” In
War and Gender
the political scientist Joshua Goldstein reviewed the intersection of those two categories and discovered that throughout history and in every society men have overwhelmingly made up and commanded the armies.
148
(The archetype of the Amazons and other women warriors owes more to men being turned on by the image of strapping young women in battle gear, like Lara Croft and Xena, than to historical reality.) Even in the feminist 21st century, 97 percent of the world’s soldiers, and 99.9 percent of the world’s
combat
soldiers, are male. (In Israel, which famously drafts both sexes, women warriors spend most of their time in clinics or behind desks.) Men can also boast about occupying all the top slots in history’s list of conquering maniacs, bloodthirsty tyrants, and genocidal thugs.
War and Gender
the political scientist Joshua Goldstein reviewed the intersection of those two categories and discovered that throughout history and in every society men have overwhelmingly made up and commanded the armies.
148
(The archetype of the Amazons and other women warriors owes more to men being turned on by the image of strapping young women in battle gear, like Lara Croft and Xena, than to historical reality.) Even in the feminist 21st century, 97 percent of the world’s soldiers, and 99.9 percent of the world’s
combat
soldiers, are male. (In Israel, which famously drafts both sexes, women warriors spend most of their time in clinics or behind desks.) Men can also boast about occupying all the top slots in history’s list of conquering maniacs, bloodthirsty tyrants, and genocidal thugs.
But women have not been conscientious objectors through all of this bloodshed. On various occasions they have led armed forces or served in combat, and they frequently egg their men into battle or provide logistical support, whether as camp followers in earlier centuries or industrial riveters in the 20th. Many queens and empresses, including Isabella of Spain, Mary and Elizabeth I of England, and Catherine the Great of Russia, acquitted themselves well in internal oppression and external conquest, and several 20th-century heads of state, such as Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Chandrika Kumaratunga, led their nations in war.
149
149
The discrepancy between what women are capable of doing in war and what they typically do is no paradox. In traditional societies women had to worry about abduction, rape, and infanticide by the enemy, so it’s not surprising that they should want their men to be on the winning side of a war. In societies with standing armies, differences between the sexes (including upper body strength, the willingness to plunder and kill, and the ability to bear and raise children), combined with the nuisance of mixed-sex armies (such as romantic intrigue between the sexes and dominance contests within them) have always militated toward a division of labor by sex, with the men providing the cannon fodder. As for leadership, women in any era who find themselves in positions of power will obviously carry out their job responsibilities, which in many eras have included the waging of war. A queen in an age of competing dynasties and empires could hardly have afforded to be the world’s only pacifist even if she were so inclined. And of course the two sexes’ traits overlap considerably, even in those for which the averages might differ, so with any trait relevant to military leadership or combat, many women will be more capable than most men.
But over the long sweep of history, women have been, and will be, a pacifying force. Traditional war is a man’s game: tribal women never band together and raid neighboring villages to abduct grooms.
150
This sex difference set the stage for Aristophanes’
Lysistrata
, in which the women of Greece go on a sex strike to pressure their men to end the Peloponnesian War. In the 19th century, feminism often overlapped with pacifism and other antiviolence movements such as abolitionism and animal rights.
151
In the 20th, women’s groups have been active, and intermittently effective, in protesting nuclear tests, the Vietnam War, and violent strife in Argentina, Northern Ireland, and the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. In a review of almost three hundred American public opinion polls between the 1930s and 1980s, men were found to support the “more violent or forceful option” in 87 percent of the questions, the others being tied.
152
For example, they were more supportive of military confrontation with Germany in 1939, Japan in 1940, Russia in 1960, and Vietnam in 1968. In every American presidential election since 1980, women have cast more votes for the Democratic candidate than men have, and in 2000 and 2004 majorities of women reversed the preference of men and voted against George W. Bush.
153
150
This sex difference set the stage for Aristophanes’
Lysistrata
, in which the women of Greece go on a sex strike to pressure their men to end the Peloponnesian War. In the 19th century, feminism often overlapped with pacifism and other antiviolence movements such as abolitionism and animal rights.
151
In the 20th, women’s groups have been active, and intermittently effective, in protesting nuclear tests, the Vietnam War, and violent strife in Argentina, Northern Ireland, and the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. In a review of almost three hundred American public opinion polls between the 1930s and 1980s, men were found to support the “more violent or forceful option” in 87 percent of the questions, the others being tied.
152
For example, they were more supportive of military confrontation with Germany in 1939, Japan in 1940, Russia in 1960, and Vietnam in 1968. In every American presidential election since 1980, women have cast more votes for the Democratic candidate than men have, and in 2000 and 2004 majorities of women reversed the preference of men and voted against George W. Bush.
153
Though women are slightly more peace-loving than their menfolk, the men and women of a given society have correlated opinions.
154
In 1961 Americans were asked whether the country should “fight an all-out nuclear war rather than live under communist rule.” Eighty-seven percent of the men said yes, while “only” 75 percent of the women felt that way—proof that women are pacifist only in comparison to men of the same time and society. Gender gaps are larger when an issue divides the country (as in the Vietnam War), smaller when there is greater agreement (as in World War II), and nonexistent when the issue obsesses the entire society (as in the attitudes among Israelis and Arabs toward a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict).
154
In 1961 Americans were asked whether the country should “fight an all-out nuclear war rather than live under communist rule.” Eighty-seven percent of the men said yes, while “only” 75 percent of the women felt that way—proof that women are pacifist only in comparison to men of the same time and society. Gender gaps are larger when an issue divides the country (as in the Vietnam War), smaller when there is greater agreement (as in World War II), and nonexistent when the issue obsesses the entire society (as in the attitudes among Israelis and Arabs toward a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict).
But women’s position in society can affect its fondness for war even if the women themselves are not opposing war. A recognition of women’s rights and an opposition to war go together. In Middle Eastern countries, the poll respondents who were more favorable to gender equality were also more favorable to nonviolent solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
155
Several ethnographic surveys of traditional cultures have found that the better a society treats its women, the less it embraces war.
156
The same is true for modern countries, with the usual continuum running from Western Europe to blue American states to red American states to Islamic countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
157
As we shall see in chapter 10, societies that empower their women are less likely to end up with large cohorts of rootless young men, with their penchant for making trouble.
158
And of course the decades of the Long Peace and the New Peace have been the decades of the revolution in women’s rights. We don’t know what causes what, but biology and history suggest that all else being equal, a world in which women have more influence will be a world with fewer wars.
155
Several ethnographic surveys of traditional cultures have found that the better a society treats its women, the less it embraces war.
156
The same is true for modern countries, with the usual continuum running from Western Europe to blue American states to red American states to Islamic countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
157
As we shall see in chapter 10, societies that empower their women are less likely to end up with large cohorts of rootless young men, with their penchant for making trouble.
158
And of course the decades of the Long Peace and the New Peace have been the decades of the revolution in women’s rights. We don’t know what causes what, but biology and history suggest that all else being equal, a world in which women have more influence will be a world with fewer wars.
Dominance is an adaptation to anarchy, and it serves no purpose in a society that has undergone a civilizing process or in an international system regulated by agreements and norms. Anything that deflates the concept of dominance is likely to drive down the frequency of fights between individuals and wars between groups. That doesn’t mean that the emotions behind dominance will go away—they are very much a part of our biology, especially in a certain gender—but they can be marginalized.
The mid- and late 20th century saw a deconstruction of the concept of dominance and related virtues like manliness, honor, prestige, and glory. Part of the deflation came from the informalization process, as in the Marx Brothers’ burlesque of jingoism in
Duck Soup
. Partly it has come from women’s inroads into professional life. Women have the psychological distance to see contests of dominance as boys making noise, so as they have become more influential, dominance has lost some of its aura. (Anyone who has worked in a mixed-sex environment is familiar with a woman belittling the wasteful posturing of her male colleagues as “typical male behavior.”) Partly it has come from cosmopolitanism, which exposes us to exaggerated cultures of honor in other countries and thereby gives us a perspective on our own. The word
macho
, recently borrowed from Spanish, has a disdainful air, connoting self-indulgent swagger rather than manly heroism. The Village People’s campy “Macho Man” and other homoerotic iconography has further undermined the trappings of masculine dominance.
Duck Soup
. Partly it has come from women’s inroads into professional life. Women have the psychological distance to see contests of dominance as boys making noise, so as they have become more influential, dominance has lost some of its aura. (Anyone who has worked in a mixed-sex environment is familiar with a woman belittling the wasteful posturing of her male colleagues as “typical male behavior.”) Partly it has come from cosmopolitanism, which exposes us to exaggerated cultures of honor in other countries and thereby gives us a perspective on our own. The word
macho
, recently borrowed from Spanish, has a disdainful air, connoting self-indulgent swagger rather than manly heroism. The Village People’s campy “Macho Man” and other homoerotic iconography has further undermined the trappings of masculine dominance.
Another deflationary force, I think, is the progress of biological science and its influence on literate culture. People have increasingly understood the drive for dominance as a vestige of the evolutionary process. A quantitative analysis of Google Books shows recent leaps in the popularity of the biological jargon behind dominance, including
testosterone
beginning in the 1940s,
pecking order
and
dominance hierarchy
beginning in the 1960s, and
alpha male
in the 1990s.
159
Joining them in the 1980s was the facetious pseudo-medical term
testosterone poisoning
. Each of these phrases belittles the stakes in contests for dominance. They imply that the glory men seek may be a figment of their primate imaginations—the symptom of a chemical in their bloodstream, the acting out of instincts that make us laugh when we see them in roosters and baboons. Compare the distancing power of these biological terms to older words like
glorious
and
honorable,
which objectify the prize in a contest of dominance, presupposing that certain accomplishments just
are
glorious or honorable in the very nature of things. The frequency of both terms has been steadily falling in English-language books for a century and a half.
160
An ability to hold our instincts up to the light, rather than naïvely accepting their products in our consciousness as just the way things are, is the first step in discounting them when they lead to harmful ends.
REVENGEtestosterone
beginning in the 1940s,
pecking order
and
dominance hierarchy
beginning in the 1960s, and
alpha male
in the 1990s.
159
Joining them in the 1980s was the facetious pseudo-medical term
testosterone poisoning
. Each of these phrases belittles the stakes in contests for dominance. They imply that the glory men seek may be a figment of their primate imaginations—the symptom of a chemical in their bloodstream, the acting out of instincts that make us laugh when we see them in roosters and baboons. Compare the distancing power of these biological terms to older words like
glorious
and
honorable,
which objectify the prize in a contest of dominance, presupposing that certain accomplishments just
are
glorious or honorable in the very nature of things. The frequency of both terms has been steadily falling in English-language books for a century and a half.
160
An ability to hold our instincts up to the light, rather than naïvely accepting their products in our consciousness as just the way things are, is the first step in discounting them when they lead to harmful ends.
The determination to hurt someone who has hurt you has long been exalted in purple prose. The Hebrew Bible is obsessed with revenge, giving us pithy expressions like “Whoso sheddeth blood will have his blood shed,” “An eye for an eye,” and “Vengeance is mine.” Homer’s Achilles describes it as sweeter than flowing honey welling up like smoke from the breasts of men. Shylock cites it as the climax in his listing of human universals, and when asked what he will do with his pound of flesh, replies, “To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.”
People in other cultures also wax poetic about the settling of scores. Milovan Djilas, born into a feuding clan of Montenegrins and later a vice president of communist Yugoslavia, called vengeance “the glow in our eyes, the flame in our cheeks, the pounding in our temples, the word that turned to stone in our throats on our hearing that our blood had been shed.”
161
A New Guinean man, upon hearing that the killer of his uncle had been paralyzed by an arrow, said, “I feel as if I am developing wings, I feel as if I am about to fly off, and I am very happy.”
162
The Apache chief Geronimo, savoring his massacre of four Mexican army companies, wrote:
161
A New Guinean man, upon hearing that the killer of his uncle had been paralyzed by an arrow, said, “I feel as if I am developing wings, I feel as if I am about to fly off, and I am very happy.”
162
The Apache chief Geronimo, savoring his massacre of four Mexican army companies, wrote:
Still covered with the blood of my enemies, still holding my conquering weapon, still hot with the joy of battle, victory, and vengeance, I was surrounded by the Apache braves and made war chief of all the Apaches. Then I gave the orders for scalping the slain.I could not call back my loved ones, I could not bring back the dead Apaches, but I could rejoice in this revenge.
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