Could we, and should we, cure men of their aggression and violence?

The brain, the androgens, and the gender question

Author’s Note: Please don’t be stupid enough to commit the classic comprehension error of interpreting ‘almost all violent criminals are men’ as ‘men are almost all violent criminals’. I’m very obviously talking about a tiny percentage of men having a truly terrible impact on the world.

The first principle of feminism is that men and women are equal. Before you get mad at me, I absolutely believe this to be true. We are equal: we are both capable of acts of great love, great generosity, great intelligence, great ingenuity, and great bravery. I want men to have the same rights, dignity, and freedoms that I have. But equal does not, in my view, equal ‘the same’. We just aren’t the same. We might be far, far more similar than traditionalists would ever like to admit, especially now traditional gender roles have been blown to the wind and we know men can look after children and clean, and women can lead nations and perform surgery. Even the idea that I could attain a STEM degree from a top university, live on my own without a man protecting me, and run my own business, would be incomprehensible to most men living 100 years ago. But similar is not the same.

There is one very glaring difference in between our genders: men are more violent and destructive, accounting for around 98% of all violent conflict and terrorist acts. That’s not an opinion: that’s a global…