Men: We Can’t Blame Evolution for Our Aggressive Behavior

In the wake of yet another mass shooting, public debate revolves around gun control, the Second Amendment, mental health, and toxic masculinity — the idea that the way our culture defines manliness in terms of strength, aggression, and suppression of emotions is fundamentally flawed and harmful.

It’s not the easiest concept for men to swallow. The idea that a big chunk of what we’ve spent our whole lives learning to be, what we’ve been taught to aspire to, might be wrong — and not just wrong, but hurting us and the people around us.

Many of us feel attacked by this idea, and reject it in a variety of ways. I’m not going to list them all here — that’s for another (probably much longer) article. Today, I’m just going to focus on one of them:

“But men are just naturally more aggressive.”

The idea that millennia of evolution has given men & women different traits might sound reasonable enough. We can see sex-specific behavioral patterns in animals, why should we be any different? But justifying male aggression using evolution doesn’t really work, no matter what kind of evolution you’re talking about.

Biological Evolution

If we’re talking about biological evolution, then we’re saying that male humans are innately more…