Very few animals live in patrilineal, male-bonded communities wherein females routinely reduce the risks of inbreeding by moving to neighbouring groups to mate. And only two animal species are known to do so with a system of intense, male-initiated territorial aggression, including lethal raiding into neighbouring communities in search of vulnerable enemies to attack and kill. Out of four thousand mammals and ten million or more other animal species, this suite of behaviours is known only among chimpanzees and humans.
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson
Now this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has a passing interest in anthropology and primates, and I am not quoting this as some kind of revelation here (this particular book was published in 1996, after all). I just feel the idea of our shared common ancestry with chimps bears endless repeating. Our closest living relatives engage in some of the same types of ugly behaviour that we do, such as organized warfare and procuring sex through violence (i.e. rape). However, the significance of this basic observation is either unknown to or ignored by some social theorists and Über-liberal blank slaters, who prefer to think that the evils of war and rape are human inventions that we may rid ourselves of if they weren't simultaneously being conjured up and glorified/legitimized/perpetuated by male culture.
I'm mainly referring to the more radical elements of feminist theory here about how male violence is purely a social construct. Such a claim seems ludicrous on its face in light of the available evidence of our biological evolutionary heritage. Males especially are apparently predisposed toward violence. Of course, this requires that something resembling a 'human nature' exists in some form, an idea that is thoroughly rejected in some academic circles.
The knee jerk reaction to claiming that violence is part of human nature is that this is somehow meant to be taken as an endorsement for it. While it may be that rape is a natural phenomenon (chimps do it, and I'm not sure any sane person could argue they are operating within the confines of some form of "rape culture"), it does not necessarily follow that this is behaviour is desirable. It is not an appeal to nature. It is merely an attempt to explain the world using available evidence. It sucks that dudes do bad things, but that doesn't give us license to make stuff up about why it happens.
This is not to say that culture cannot exacerbate or mitigate these nasty types of behaviour. I think this is quite clearly the case. It is just that culture is not solely responsible form them, as is sometimes claimed. To illustrate this point, anyone who asks a question such as "how do children learn to aggress?" has it all backwards. The real question should be "how do children learn not to aggress?" Setting our thoughts straight about the how and why of human violence (which almost always perpetrated by males) will allow us to be more effective when it comes to creating the kinds of social conditions we desire. We didn't invent bro culture recently, we evolved it long ago.
The evolution of violence as an adaptive strategy for achieving certain goals has far more explanatory power than social constructivist theory when it comes to why people behave badly in spite of having 'learned' not to. Culture can only go so far, and some individuals will always find a way to break our hearts. Admittedly, this is a rather tragic view of human nature, but it seems the most accurate one.
