Violence and Sexual Selection
The desire to find love and a life partner is one of the more fundamental, and ideally noble, pursuits in life. Having someone to share the joy and grief of existence, to start a family, and to grow old together, these are the cultural expectations of romantic love. There is also a strong biological drive to reproduce the species. Somehow, it seems that the two become intertwined, and biology, especially the possessive and violent aspects of biology, takes over. Some people become possessive of their mates, willing to die or even kill to prove their possession over another human being. Buss (2005) notes that 87 percent of all murderers are men (p. 49). This suggests that there is something within the male biology that harbors violent impulses, especially related to the idea of mating and reproduction. It is this “intense competition” for a mate that “opened the door for murder” (p. 81).
Sex and the Human Animal
Human beings are, obviously, animals in the biological sense. Perhaps because of our levels of intelligence and reasoning, we see ourselves as above the biological fray, able to make decisions beyond bodily urges. As Wrangham and Peterson (1996) put it: “Pride, ideology, or belief restrains many people from viewing Homo sapiens as just another primate species” (p. 128). We may want to mate with everything that moves, but we restrain ourselves from doing so out of the rational understanding that either such is not socially acceptable behavior, or a lack of opportunity. Still, as Daly and Wilson (1988), females are a “commodity for which males have been selected to compete” (p. 139). Basically, women are limited by their biology in the number of children that they can produce over the course of a lifetime. Men, however, are not, and can biologically compete to ensure the reproduction of their genetic lineage by mating with a maximum number of women. This reality of biology, and the conflict it has spawned, created an entirely new situation: “intense rivalry with members of one’s own sex for access to the most desirable members of the opposite sex” (Buss, 2005, p. 51).
Thus, human beings not only preen themselves like peacocks in order to attract a mate, they become willing to kill in order to possess a mate. Fortunately, this does not apply to all human beings, but it occurs in enough members of the species to warrant understanding. Even still, among the total population of the human species, “we end up competing directly with out same-sex rivals…and we also end up spending a great deal of time trying to make ourselves appealing to members of the opposite sex” (p 53). This is the mating game, although society prefers to call it the dating game. We dress up, women apply make-up, and we present ourselves in the best possible light in order to appear attractive to a potential partner as well as better than the rest of the population. Unfortunately, this competition directly leads to violence, mostly on the part of men. As a result of evolution, both biological and social, “females compete for mates much less than do males” (Daly & Wilson, 1988, p. 140).
Biological Roots
Wrangham and Peterson (1996) note that this same behavior is found in chimpanzees. Three male chimps at the Amsterdam Zoo would compete in “an eternal triangle” in order to become the Alpha male (p. 127). The two non-Alphas would form an alliance, attack the Alpha, at which point one of the two rivals would become the new Alpha, leading to a perpetuation of the cycle which culminated in the “assassination” of the Alpha male, which included his castration (p. 128). Chimpanzees, along with human beings, are the two species that commit murder as the result of competition violence. And while rape is “an ordinary act” among orangutans, and gorillas regularly commit infanticide, this leads to the question “Is there something about the apes that specially predisposes them to violence?” (p. 131-2).
Part of the answer to that question must be the reality that human beings, despite our language capabilities and our “civilization,” are not much more than apes. As Daly and Wilson (1988) noted, “There can be no doubt that men have killed one another at high rates for as long as there have been men” (p. 143). Indeed, Wrangham and Peterson’s work suggest that such violence was a part of the evolutionary forebears of Homo sapiens. It is known that human beings did not evolve from chimpanzees, but that humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor millions of years ago. Archeological evidence demonstrates that australopithecines (a precursor to modern humans) “staved in one another’s skulls” (Buss, 2005, p. 144). The suggestion that there is a deeply rooted biological component to male violence, perhaps not just limited to sexual selection, cannot be ignored.
Raping Our Way into the Gene Pool
The problem is that, as Wrangham and Peterson (1996) point out regarding orangutan rape, it “implies that it is an evolved adaptation to something in their biology” which “raises the frightening question” that the same is true for humans, which “whispers an excuse for evil” (p. 132). The implication is that, if rape and murder have an evolutionary, biological basis, those who commit these acts can excuse their behavior. What was once “the devil makes me do it” becomes updated to “evolutionary biology made me do it?” This argument can be supported by the notion that “Evolutionary theory suggests that any behavior occurring regularly or consistently has logic embedded in the dynamics of natural selection for reproductive success” (p. 138).
With rape, “it can increase an individual male’s success in passing on genes to the next generation” through the sexual control of the female (p. 141). In other words, by sexually controlling a female, the male is ensuring future sexual access to her, thus potentially guaranteeing the propagation of his genetics. The end result of this behavior has been, as Buss (2005) pointed out, “modern men have descended…from men who strived, and succeeded more often than not, to maintain exclusive sexual control of their mates” (p. 56). If our ancestors raped and killed in order to vanquish their sexual rivals, then it is the genetics of the rapists and murderers that have been passed on more often than the genetics of those eliminated from the reproductive pool. The “simple, stupid, selfish logic of sexual selection” means that “males who are better fighters can stop other males from mating, and they mate more successfully themselves” (Wrangham & Peterson, 1996, p. 173).
Daly and Wilson (1988) argue that social scientists continue to maintain that, “men and women are not psychologically different except by virtue of having been treated differently” (p. 158). In other words, men are more violent in society because of socialization, despite the fact there there are “anatomical differences between the brains of men and women” (p. 159). This is not to say that one is superior to the other, merely that there are biological differences. Traditional society, it seems, has been built upon these biological differences. As Wrangham and Peterson (1996) remind readers: “we can’t assume a priori that sexual selection has acted in any particular way for any single species” (p. 173). It is not a case of nature versus nurture, but a matter of nature and nurture.
The Persistence of Male Violence
The fact remains that “the vast majority of extremely violent acts are perpetrated by men against other men” (Buss, 2005, p. 62). As with the case of the Amsterdam Zoo chimps, the roots of such violence can be traced back to the desire to ensure genetic success over rivals. It is one thing to rape a female in order to assure sexual access. Murdering a potential rival is another way to eliminate him from sexual access to females and increasing the odds of one’s own. “Violence gives him a chance to change paths,” which “explains why men occupying the bottom rungs of the reproductive ladder more often resort to violence” (p. 63).
Society has evolved to a point where rape and murder are not acceptable means of gaining what one wants. Unfortunately, as Buss points out, “men did not evolve…in a modern environment,” but rather “Our psychology was forged in the furnace of an evolutionary environment in which aggression sometimes paid astonishingly well” (p. 64). One can be reminded of the precipitating event in Homer’s Iliad, when Agamemnon (a king) takes away the sex slave of Achilles, a mere warrior. Being a great warrior allowed Achilles to enjoy sexual access that his social status might not have otherwise permitted. And while Achilles does not kill Agamemnon, but it sets up a rivalry that alters the course of the Trojan War. This ancient example serves to support the assertion of Daly and Wilson that “Intrasexual competition is far more violent among men than among women in every human society for which information exists” (p. 161). It is also a problem among our closest primate relatives.
If indeed violence is an evolutionary biological response to sexual selection, there may not be anything that can be done to eliminate male violence and murder in human society. This, of course, does not mean that, as a society, we can condone or excuse such behavior. Indeed, there must be an aspect of nurture in the debate. Society can, and should, seek out a fuller understanding of this aspect of our biology in order to recognize our inner ape and restrain those impulses that drive men to kill.