Male-Dominated Societies Surprisingly More Relaxed – Study Says

By Ned Hepburn

Not to come across like a Cathy cartoon or a middling 1980s stand-up comic, but men can be pretty terrible. For centuries, we've killed and pillaged and farted and blamed it on the dog and developed the nuclear bomb. Plus, have you ever seen an apartment just inhabited by dudes? Messy as all hell. In short: We are in need of women.

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But not so fast. The University of California, Davis released a study. And, oh, what a study it is. In societies where men outnumber women, it says, there is less violenceand crime. The exact language is:

Rates of rape, sexual assault and homicide are actually lower in societies with more men than women, the study found. And, evolutionary theories predicting that when males outnumber females, males will compete vigorously for the limited number of mates don't bear out.

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Men are, without question, the major perpetrators of violence -- the study merely finds that a lack of women does not neccessarily make men into bloodthirsty warrior types. (The total lack of women does, though. Policies such as incarceration only seem to increase violence, having the near exact opposite outcome intended). And yet, if you play around with the man/woman ratio, it gets even more interesting: When men outnumber women by a more even margin (let's ballpark it at 60/40), the study finds that men actually take better to courting and nurturing a relationship in order to find a long-term partner.

Basically, while it may be easy to paint large swaths of society with the same brush and say that all men are Game Of Thrones-esque murderous bastards, that only applies to Dallas Cowboys fans. No. Wait. That's not true. Shame I can't find the backspace key. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to leave that there.

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And, hey, we menfolk are all a lot more balanced with women around. After all, if you take women out entirely it leads to just a bunch of dudes sitting on their hands and threatening to (and eventually succeeding in attempts to) kill each other over what an alleged man in the sky says.

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