The claims about the origins of the east-west divide start to fall apart when we consider the prevalence of honour cultures (which also had honour killings) in ancient & medieval Scotland and Italy (to name a few in Western Europe).
Some of Shakespeares tragedies are centred around actions of characters primarily driven by honour culture.
In contemporary western society we call our version of “honour killings” simply femicide, which are overwhelmingly done by male partners (instead of family).
>>In contemporary western society we call our version of “honour killings” simply femicide, which are overwhelmingly done by male partners (instead of family).
Femicide is, unfortunately, more or less a human universal. Is occurs in the West just as in other societies. The specific thing with honor killing culture is that the wider society perceives killing errant family members the right thing to do.
Good didn't forget to tell us what happened after he yelled. He stopped the story at the moment where he looks best: the shout, the man turning back. Whatever came next didn't fit the narrative he was constructing. That omission is editorial, not accidental, and being "very annoyed" by it means reading an ethnography as a factual report rather than an authored text.
The Pashtun informant telling Glatzer "a shame which nobody talks about is no shame" is simultaneously describing the norm (you kill adulterers), explaining why it isn't followed (the costs are too high), and articulating the meta-norm that resolves the contradiction (secrecy preserves honor). Three layers of normative reasoning in one breath. Then a few paragraphs later we're told honor is "something rather simple that is decided by just a few very important parameters" while Western social status is complex. The informant just demonstrated more analytical sophistication about reputation than "a sliding scale that comprises more or less everything" offers for ours.
This piece tells you less about how these societies work than about what happens when you assume your own complexity is unique. Sophisticated normative reasoning gets read as simple behavioral data because the framework requires it to be simple.
>>Good didn't forget to tell us what happened after he yelled. He stopped the story at the moment where he looks best:
And I find that very annoying. I don't think the purpose of ethnography should be to make the ethnographer look good. I think the purpose should be to describe a certain group of humans. Kenneth Good's text instead deliberately focuses on the ethnographer and his deeds. From my point of view, that is annoying.
Regarding the question what is a complex society, I know that many people disagree with my view that some societies are more complex than others. They assume that human culture is like human language: Always equally complex, more or less. I believe that cultures differ in complexity and that cultural complexity is something fragile. I outlined the basics of that view here: https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/basic-human-social-structure
I could argue that the principle that "we have a strong norm but we mostly ignore it because it is expensive" is simpler than the Western fussy array of norms. But I think that as long as we disagree over the basic question whether different cultures possess different degrees of complexity, such an argument is too weak to take the discussion any further.
I'll agree that different cultures have different degrees of complexity, but it's the specific relation of a lack of what we in the anglosphere see as justice to complexity that I question. That's the trap of the post-WW2 anglospheric universalist project: that English (or French, etc) is somehow a neutral language by which to evaluate other cultures, rather than a lens that distorts by its very nature.
The problem you start with, that the purpose of an ethnography should be to describe a certain group of humans, is nearly hopeless for the western ethnographer, because the tools to do that were nearly excised from the Western academic tradition after the war. The integrated philologists (the people who understood that you cannot separate a society's language from its mythology from its kinship structures from its conception of obligation and authority) were systematically defunded, retired out, and replaced by specialists who each got one slice of the elephant. The anthropologist describes kinship. The linguist describes grammar. The political scientist describes institutions. But it isn't just that nobody is trained to see the system as a system anymore; entire domains of inquiry that only existed within the integrated framework disappeared entirely. The study of how a society's grammatical structures encode its power relations, for instance, isn't a discipline anyone got custody of. It fell between the chairs and stayed on the floor. The few people who try to recover any of this get accused of essentialism or romanticism.
So what you're left with is an ethnographer who arrives with English-centric language categories baked into the methodology itself. "Justice" is already a distortion. "Rights" is a distortion. "Governance" is a distortion. These aren't neutral descriptive terms; they're load-bearing elements of a specific civilizational tradition, and when you use them to evaluate a society that organized itself around obligation networks, or shame rather than guilt, or cyclical rather than linear conceptions of social debt, you aren't describing that society. You're measuring the distance between that society and the anglophone ideal, then calling the gap a deficiency.
That's the universalist trap. It doesn't announce itself as a value system; it announces itself as the absence of one. English becomes the "default" language of scholarship not because it's neutral but because the institutions that survived the postwar consolidation happened to be anglophone, and neutrality is the story those institutions tell about themselves. The complexity you observe in other cultures isn't complexity at all from the inside; it's just how things work. It only registers as "complex" when you're mapping it onto a framework that assumed its own categories were universal and therefore simple.
Recovering from this isn't a matter of "being more sensitive" or "centering other voices" or whatever the DEI-flavored version of the fix is supposed to be. It requires rebuilding the capacity to think in integrated systems about human societies; the capacity that the prewar philological tradition had and that we threw away because it was inconvenient, because it was associated with German scholarship, because it didn't fit the disciplinary structure that Cold War universities needed. The few people still doing this work are scattered through places like Tartu and Tbilisi precisely because those traditions weren't routed through the same anglospheric institutional consolidation.
Interesting! Have you done a comparison with premodern Southeast Asia? It seems to have a different operating system, particularly in relations between sexes, which still can be observed today. In 1521, Pigafetta observed how the men in Cebu were “weak” because they let women dictate the conditions of sex. These were the same men who massacred his companions and for centuries were enslaving their neighbors. You can see the same thing today with hardened killers completely helpless when it comes to their wives.
I’m curious why in ultra-orthodox Jewish communities, which also have strict separation between men and women, at least partially rooted in the sense that sexual desire among men is very hard to control, do not have as pronounced problems with men randomly groping women? Is it that other Jewish norms inculcate the self-respect that would prevent a man from randomly groping a woman?
I have read a lot about Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, but I never read about men sexually harassing women. To the contrary, I have read about men trying very hard not to look at women the wrong way (in particular secular women who do not practice modesty in clothes and appearance) and who resolved not to touch any woman other than their (future) wife. There is even some word for this non-touching phenomenon.
Yes, the rule is called “shomer negiah.” But do Muslims not have similar religious rules about male-female contact? In that case, how could religious rules be the explanation for the cultural gap?
I'm not certain about any cause-effect relationships here. When I was 20 years old I was confronted with men who acted as if they lacked the idea of sexual self control that I was used to. I guessed that this state of mind was possible because they lived in a comparatively gender segregated society. I still hold onto that idea: in a gender integrated society, this kind of mindset would not have been practically possible. But this is my only conclusion: Gender segregation makes the idea of male sexuality as an unstoppable force possible. But gender segregation does not in itself lead to that idea.
I think that the reason for the lack of norms for male sexual self control in some Muslim societies is not mostly religion, but lack of cultural sophistication. As I theorized in the article above, the Afghan tribal society seemed to be only a few notches above the Yanomamö jungle horticulturalists in terms of cultural complexity.
As a side note, Anders and I visited Iran after Syria, and I found men to be very different there. We spent a week in Teheran. I never experienced any indecent behavior from any man during that week. Not even when I walked alone. Instead, from my perspective, men acted as if I didn't exist as a full human being. When Anders and I talked to someone (that happened several times, people were a bit curious) they only talked to Anders. A bit into the conversation they could acknowledge my presence, as if I were Anders' dog or something. On a personal level I liked it even less than the Syrian variety. From my Western point of view, I could blame the Syrians for lacking the virtue of self control. The Iranians, on the other hand, seemed as controlled as any Westerner. They just thought that was the appropriate way of talking to a couple. I'm sure they consider it respect for women or something, but from my cultural point of view it was the most provocative behavior I experienced in the Muslim world. In any case, the different public behavior of Iranian men gave me the impression that sexual self control is much more an effect of culture than of religion.
You are weird. You seem to have no understanding at all of the fact that women are human beings, and that patriarchal societies are not only badly flawed but relatively new in evolutionary terms.
>>You seem to have no understanding at all of the fact that women are human beings,
My understanding of the humanness of women is actually great, because I have first-hand information on the matter: I'm both a human being and a woman.
>>and that patriarchal societies are not only badly flawed but relatively new in evolutionary terms.
No one knows anything about the past with certainty. But the idea of a gender-equal or female-dominated past is based on wishful thinking rather than on science.
There is nothing natural about patriarchy. It was a similar mistake/bad decision to the invention of religion. What science does show is that successful social structures among animals are matriarchal, and that surplus males, particularly aggressive ones, need to be removed for the group to thrive.
Interesting. I would love, love to gain insight into (how to frame this I don’t know…) the evolution or devolution of female autonomy in regard to men as the ultimate predator. When circumstances are so dire and the common denominator is the same, when does the brain conquer brute force?
Me too! So I have been working on it for many years. Right now I'm working on an publishable text on the subject. So hopefully within in the next few months.
I find myself reflecting on this piece days after having read it.
I have long thought that ideas about chastity and the levels of sexual self-discipline are morally neutral. However, before this, I had not even realized that some people hold the worldview that chastity and sexual self-discipline are either impossible or unimportant. I have heard/read that polygyny can be considered a form of protection for women without really understanding that stance, but in light of the points you bring up here, this idea makes a lot more sense to me now.
It's hard to articulate what exactly has changed for me or why this was so impactful. On some level, I feel like this was the missing puzzle piece I didn't know I needed - though to what end, I'm still unsure.
A question I'd love to see addressed is why we evolved to have a close to even sex ratio. All these anthropological accounts leave me with a dreary feeling that males in most cultures cause massive, constant, violent problems around mating. They crave it but it keeps them constantly miserable and angry. Most of the protections women need men for are not from nature or other species, but from other men, and mostly because if another man succeeds in getting access to her, even forcibly, she's in mortal danger from her OWN "protector."
How is this evolutionarily successful? When does killing reproductive age females ever make evolutionary sense? Wouldn't the species perpetuate itself just fine - and with far less violence - if we'd evolved to have a sex ratio of say female 10 : male 1?
Too silly. Even if everyone started with 10:1 female to male. Any group that started to see more males would be selected for because of their ability to fight.
Not to mention all the physical tasks men are better at doing. Which is often a big reason why we see female infanticide in farming cultures as well. Why have another girl when you can have a man who does more labor.
But you are partially correct.
The solution is historically MOST MEN DIED before reproducing.
Its the same with lions. They have even gender ratios, its just most of the male lions brutally die.
You DO NOT want to live in a society where most men brutally die even if women aren't touched. That's why many of these primitive cultures stay primitive. No one is spending years studying esoteric sciences when they have to fend for their life constantly. Not to mention any equipment or advanced tools you make are likely to be raided next time you lose a battle.
The killing of reproductive-age females make evolutionary sense when there are too few men to protect those females. If a group of men takes on too many females, those females will be appropriated by nearby, more male-heavy and thereby martially stronger groups. For that reason a certain degree of female-biased infanticide is more or less a rule in unpacified primitive societies.
Helena Valero, a Mestizo woman who was kidnapped by Yanomamö horticulturalists in the Amazon, was once the victim of a plot of murder after she was widowed. The brothers of the killed man reasoned that their enemies would raid and capture the left-over women and have sons with them who would become enemies. For that reason, killing the widows was a good idea, they thought. The windows were warned of the plot and could escape. In any case, the plot bears witness of the delicate balance between warrior men and women and children in need of protection.
I understand, but again, the threat is from other men. And in fact it's not even the women who are being protected, it's the men protecting themselves against attacks by other men. We shouldn't be using the word "protect" for what men do with women. It should be "guard" or "hoard".
Most animal species don't have this weird behavior. Only baboons, as far as I know, maybe gorillas. Prides of lions are communities of females who hunt together and keep one adult male for fertility. He babysits while the females are out hunting meat. Elephants eject adult males to wander alone while the matriarchs lead and maintain the herd. Wolves behave hierarchically but I've never heard of male wolves brutalizing or killing females in their own pack. Grazers have one bull designed for reproduction but neither the bull nor the other males molest or harm females.
This violence against females is aberrant human and gorilla behavior, as far as I know alone among the species. We should recognize it as unnatural behavior.
But you haven't indicated whether these infanticides in species other than sapiens are sex-selective - which is what I was talking about - and if so, which sex?
That's why I suggested that a different sex ratio would have solved the problem. If nature delivered ten female humans for every male human, the males would have been far less of a threat to themselves, females and the environment. There would have been no hoarding and guarding. But that's not how nature designed it, and as I said at the beginning, I wonder - in evolutionary terms - why.
So many words to explain patriarchy and the harms of misogyny. Excellent detail and reflections.
Fascinating
The claims about the origins of the east-west divide start to fall apart when we consider the prevalence of honour cultures (which also had honour killings) in ancient & medieval Scotland and Italy (to name a few in Western Europe).
Some of Shakespeares tragedies are centred around actions of characters primarily driven by honour culture.
In contemporary western society we call our version of “honour killings” simply femicide, which are overwhelmingly done by male partners (instead of family).
>>In contemporary western society we call our version of “honour killings” simply femicide, which are overwhelmingly done by male partners (instead of family).
Femicide is, unfortunately, more or less a human universal. Is occurs in the West just as in other societies. The specific thing with honor killing culture is that the wider society perceives killing errant family members the right thing to do.
Good didn't forget to tell us what happened after he yelled. He stopped the story at the moment where he looks best: the shout, the man turning back. Whatever came next didn't fit the narrative he was constructing. That omission is editorial, not accidental, and being "very annoyed" by it means reading an ethnography as a factual report rather than an authored text.
The Pashtun informant telling Glatzer "a shame which nobody talks about is no shame" is simultaneously describing the norm (you kill adulterers), explaining why it isn't followed (the costs are too high), and articulating the meta-norm that resolves the contradiction (secrecy preserves honor). Three layers of normative reasoning in one breath. Then a few paragraphs later we're told honor is "something rather simple that is decided by just a few very important parameters" while Western social status is complex. The informant just demonstrated more analytical sophistication about reputation than "a sliding scale that comprises more or less everything" offers for ours.
This piece tells you less about how these societies work than about what happens when you assume your own complexity is unique. Sophisticated normative reasoning gets read as simple behavioral data because the framework requires it to be simple.
>>Good didn't forget to tell us what happened after he yelled. He stopped the story at the moment where he looks best:
And I find that very annoying. I don't think the purpose of ethnography should be to make the ethnographer look good. I think the purpose should be to describe a certain group of humans. Kenneth Good's text instead deliberately focuses on the ethnographer and his deeds. From my point of view, that is annoying.
Regarding the question what is a complex society, I know that many people disagree with my view that some societies are more complex than others. They assume that human culture is like human language: Always equally complex, more or less. I believe that cultures differ in complexity and that cultural complexity is something fragile. I outlined the basics of that view here: https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/basic-human-social-structure
I could argue that the principle that "we have a strong norm but we mostly ignore it because it is expensive" is simpler than the Western fussy array of norms. But I think that as long as we disagree over the basic question whether different cultures possess different degrees of complexity, such an argument is too weak to take the discussion any further.
I'll agree that different cultures have different degrees of complexity, but it's the specific relation of a lack of what we in the anglosphere see as justice to complexity that I question. That's the trap of the post-WW2 anglospheric universalist project: that English (or French, etc) is somehow a neutral language by which to evaluate other cultures, rather than a lens that distorts by its very nature.
The problem you start with, that the purpose of an ethnography should be to describe a certain group of humans, is nearly hopeless for the western ethnographer, because the tools to do that were nearly excised from the Western academic tradition after the war. The integrated philologists (the people who understood that you cannot separate a society's language from its mythology from its kinship structures from its conception of obligation and authority) were systematically defunded, retired out, and replaced by specialists who each got one slice of the elephant. The anthropologist describes kinship. The linguist describes grammar. The political scientist describes institutions. But it isn't just that nobody is trained to see the system as a system anymore; entire domains of inquiry that only existed within the integrated framework disappeared entirely. The study of how a society's grammatical structures encode its power relations, for instance, isn't a discipline anyone got custody of. It fell between the chairs and stayed on the floor. The few people who try to recover any of this get accused of essentialism or romanticism.
So what you're left with is an ethnographer who arrives with English-centric language categories baked into the methodology itself. "Justice" is already a distortion. "Rights" is a distortion. "Governance" is a distortion. These aren't neutral descriptive terms; they're load-bearing elements of a specific civilizational tradition, and when you use them to evaluate a society that organized itself around obligation networks, or shame rather than guilt, or cyclical rather than linear conceptions of social debt, you aren't describing that society. You're measuring the distance between that society and the anglophone ideal, then calling the gap a deficiency.
That's the universalist trap. It doesn't announce itself as a value system; it announces itself as the absence of one. English becomes the "default" language of scholarship not because it's neutral but because the institutions that survived the postwar consolidation happened to be anglophone, and neutrality is the story those institutions tell about themselves. The complexity you observe in other cultures isn't complexity at all from the inside; it's just how things work. It only registers as "complex" when you're mapping it onto a framework that assumed its own categories were universal and therefore simple.
Recovering from this isn't a matter of "being more sensitive" or "centering other voices" or whatever the DEI-flavored version of the fix is supposed to be. It requires rebuilding the capacity to think in integrated systems about human societies; the capacity that the prewar philological tradition had and that we threw away because it was inconvenient, because it was associated with German scholarship, because it didn't fit the disciplinary structure that Cold War universities needed. The few people still doing this work are scattered through places like Tartu and Tbilisi precisely because those traditions weren't routed through the same anglospheric institutional consolidation.
I'm from Central Asia. I feel like I just found a term for what many women in CA experience!
Interesting! Have you done a comparison with premodern Southeast Asia? It seems to have a different operating system, particularly in relations between sexes, which still can be observed today. In 1521, Pigafetta observed how the men in Cebu were “weak” because they let women dictate the conditions of sex. These were the same men who massacred his companions and for centuries were enslaving their neighbors. You can see the same thing today with hardened killers completely helpless when it comes to their wives.
I’m curious why in ultra-orthodox Jewish communities, which also have strict separation between men and women, at least partially rooted in the sense that sexual desire among men is very hard to control, do not have as pronounced problems with men randomly groping women? Is it that other Jewish norms inculcate the self-respect that would prevent a man from randomly groping a woman?
they do have a problem with groping children
https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/ByBkeexEI
Below, at least one person from an Orthodox Jewish community has pointed out that Jewish culture have very strict ideas about male self control: https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/making-sense-of-honor-culture?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=65906301
And I agree:
https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/making-sense-of-honor-culture?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=66366156
I have read a lot about Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, but I never read about men sexually harassing women. To the contrary, I have read about men trying very hard not to look at women the wrong way (in particular secular women who do not practice modesty in clothes and appearance) and who resolved not to touch any woman other than their (future) wife. There is even some word for this non-touching phenomenon.
Yes, the rule is called “shomer negiah.” But do Muslims not have similar religious rules about male-female contact? In that case, how could religious rules be the explanation for the cultural gap?
I'm not certain about any cause-effect relationships here. When I was 20 years old I was confronted with men who acted as if they lacked the idea of sexual self control that I was used to. I guessed that this state of mind was possible because they lived in a comparatively gender segregated society. I still hold onto that idea: in a gender integrated society, this kind of mindset would not have been practically possible. But this is my only conclusion: Gender segregation makes the idea of male sexuality as an unstoppable force possible. But gender segregation does not in itself lead to that idea.
I think that the reason for the lack of norms for male sexual self control in some Muslim societies is not mostly religion, but lack of cultural sophistication. As I theorized in the article above, the Afghan tribal society seemed to be only a few notches above the Yanomamö jungle horticulturalists in terms of cultural complexity.
As a side note, Anders and I visited Iran after Syria, and I found men to be very different there. We spent a week in Teheran. I never experienced any indecent behavior from any man during that week. Not even when I walked alone. Instead, from my perspective, men acted as if I didn't exist as a full human being. When Anders and I talked to someone (that happened several times, people were a bit curious) they only talked to Anders. A bit into the conversation they could acknowledge my presence, as if I were Anders' dog or something. On a personal level I liked it even less than the Syrian variety. From my Western point of view, I could blame the Syrians for lacking the virtue of self control. The Iranians, on the other hand, seemed as controlled as any Westerner. They just thought that was the appropriate way of talking to a couple. I'm sure they consider it respect for women or something, but from my cultural point of view it was the most provocative behavior I experienced in the Muslim world. In any case, the different public behavior of Iranian men gave me the impression that sexual self control is much more an effect of culture than of religion.
This is such an interesting article
You are weird. You seem to have no understanding at all of the fact that women are human beings, and that patriarchal societies are not only badly flawed but relatively new in evolutionary terms.
>>You are weird.
Some people say so.
>>You seem to have no understanding at all of the fact that women are human beings,
My understanding of the humanness of women is actually great, because I have first-hand information on the matter: I'm both a human being and a woman.
>>and that patriarchal societies are not only badly flawed but relatively new in evolutionary terms.
No one knows anything about the past with certainty. But the idea of a gender-equal or female-dominated past is based on wishful thinking rather than on science.
There is nothing natural about patriarchy. It was a similar mistake/bad decision to the invention of religion. What science does show is that successful social structures among animals are matriarchal, and that surplus males, particularly aggressive ones, need to be removed for the group to thrive.
I also dislike patriarchy. Unfortunately it is a part of the human condition. I once wrote a post about why I think patriarchy arose in the first place. https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/the-origins-of-patriarchy
Interesting. I would love, love to gain insight into (how to frame this I don’t know…) the evolution or devolution of female autonomy in regard to men as the ultimate predator. When circumstances are so dire and the common denominator is the same, when does the brain conquer brute force?
Me too! So I have been working on it for many years. Right now I'm working on an publishable text on the subject. So hopefully within in the next few months.
Very very good!
Western woman discoverers what we've been saying for years: Islam is the definition of incel rape culture.
It’s just about the picture - I was captured by the way this man looks at his woman/bride: there is so much love in his eyes…
I find myself reflecting on this piece days after having read it.
I have long thought that ideas about chastity and the levels of sexual self-discipline are morally neutral. However, before this, I had not even realized that some people hold the worldview that chastity and sexual self-discipline are either impossible or unimportant. I have heard/read that polygyny can be considered a form of protection for women without really understanding that stance, but in light of the points you bring up here, this idea makes a lot more sense to me now.
It's hard to articulate what exactly has changed for me or why this was so impactful. On some level, I feel like this was the missing puzzle piece I didn't know I needed - though to what end, I'm still unsure.
Thank you for sharing this.
A question I'd love to see addressed is why we evolved to have a close to even sex ratio. All these anthropological accounts leave me with a dreary feeling that males in most cultures cause massive, constant, violent problems around mating. They crave it but it keeps them constantly miserable and angry. Most of the protections women need men for are not from nature or other species, but from other men, and mostly because if another man succeeds in getting access to her, even forcibly, she's in mortal danger from her OWN "protector."
How is this evolutionarily successful? When does killing reproductive age females ever make evolutionary sense? Wouldn't the species perpetuate itself just fine - and with far less violence - if we'd evolved to have a sex ratio of say female 10 : male 1?
We didn't evolve to be happy, unfortunately.
I'd point out that the tribe with a lot of fighting age males would easily overpower the tribe with the 10:1 female/male ratio.
(I'm no biologist but it's interesting to think about how variations in M/F ratios might evolve, X and Y chromosomes and all that).
Yes, of course, but if sapiens had evolved that way, all tribes would be that way.
Too silly. Even if everyone started with 10:1 female to male. Any group that started to see more males would be selected for because of their ability to fight.
Not to mention all the physical tasks men are better at doing. Which is often a big reason why we see female infanticide in farming cultures as well. Why have another girl when you can have a man who does more labor.
But you are partially correct.
The solution is historically MOST MEN DIED before reproducing.
Its the same with lions. They have even gender ratios, its just most of the male lions brutally die.
You DO NOT want to live in a society where most men brutally die even if women aren't touched. That's why many of these primitive cultures stay primitive. No one is spending years studying esoteric sciences when they have to fend for their life constantly. Not to mention any equipment or advanced tools you make are likely to be raided next time you lose a battle.
I'd argue that they *are* all that way.
But humans actually do modify their sex ratios through sex-selective infanticide and childhood gender discrimination.
The killing of reproductive-age females make evolutionary sense when there are too few men to protect those females. If a group of men takes on too many females, those females will be appropriated by nearby, more male-heavy and thereby martially stronger groups. For that reason a certain degree of female-biased infanticide is more or less a rule in unpacified primitive societies.
Helena Valero, a Mestizo woman who was kidnapped by Yanomamö horticulturalists in the Amazon, was once the victim of a plot of murder after she was widowed. The brothers of the killed man reasoned that their enemies would raid and capture the left-over women and have sons with them who would become enemies. For that reason, killing the widows was a good idea, they thought. The windows were warned of the plot and could escape. In any case, the plot bears witness of the delicate balance between warrior men and women and children in need of protection.
I understand, but again, the threat is from other men. And in fact it's not even the women who are being protected, it's the men protecting themselves against attacks by other men. We shouldn't be using the word "protect" for what men do with women. It should be "guard" or "hoard".
Most animal species don't have this weird behavior. Only baboons, as far as I know, maybe gorillas. Prides of lions are communities of females who hunt together and keep one adult male for fertility. He babysits while the females are out hunting meat. Elephants eject adult males to wander alone while the matriarchs lead and maintain the herd. Wolves behave hierarchically but I've never heard of male wolves brutalizing or killing females in their own pack. Grazers have one bull designed for reproduction but neither the bull nor the other males molest or harm females.
This violence against females is aberrant human and gorilla behavior, as far as I know alone among the species. We should recognize it as unnatural behavior.
Actually, it's a lot more common than you might think...
1. How common is infanticide in mammals?
Broad pattern
Documented in ~100+ mammalian species (likely underreported)
Occurs in:
Primates (e.g., langurs, chimpanzees)
Carnivores (e.g., lions, bears)
Rodents (e.g., mice, voles)
Ungulates (less common but present)
Seen in both wild and captive populations
Key distinction
Infanticide is not random cruelty—it is typically:
Strategic (adaptive), or
Pathological (stress-driven / maladaptive)
(courtesy of ChatGPT)
But you haven't indicated whether these infanticides in species other than sapiens are sex-selective - which is what I was talking about - and if so, which sex?
That's why I suggested that a different sex ratio would have solved the problem. If nature delivered ten female humans for every male human, the males would have been far less of a threat to themselves, females and the environment. There would have been no hoarding and guarding. But that's not how nature designed it, and as I said at the beginning, I wonder - in evolutionary terms - why.
Fisher’s principle:
i was shocked in Israel at how palestinian men treated western women, but that is what propagandising all non muslin women as whores will do