In this chapter Angier continues to discuss why and how everyone is naturally aggressive. Everyone knows that women are more likely than men to channel their aggression through language. That’s why I was so surprised to read that studies have actually found that boys and girls engage in equal amounts of verbal aggression, such as insults or pointed facial expressions. Overall, boys and girls engage in the same amount of aggression, with boys’ being physical and verbal and girls’ being indirect (ie, cold shoulder) and verbal. I thought this was a really interesting way of categorizing aggression and explaining how we all fulfill our aggressive tendencies, but the downside is that it all really depends on how one defines aggression. For example, there are many researchers who might agree that verbal aggression is indeed aggression, since it is still direct, but indirect aggression is just a sort of coping mechanism and not violent at all. In this analysis, boys would appear to be much more aggressive than girls.
Another part of this chapter I found interesting was how she traced the female bond back through history and explained it using the social structures of our primate ancestors. She even went so far as to show the change from matriarchy to patriarchy in the Bible! That men learned the benefits of befriending one another and banding together from women is certainly worthwhile to consider.
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