Why do YOU think men commit more crime than women?
Its an objective fact among every country that publishes crime statistics. These countries all vary widely in every other metric you can imagine (social, economic, political etcetera). But, crime being disproportionately commited by men is a universal constant. Nobody has an objectively correct answer to this question, it's just a prompt for discussion. Share your opinion, whatever it may be. However, please don't be a dick to other commenters. Disagreement, good faith, many view points and discussion is the goal here.
87 replies
Mental instability, hormone imbalances, the internet/manosphere 'culture' (inc susceptibility to psychological manipulation) propensity to violence
Pick one.
Can anyone even measure the amount of crime committed?
Or is it only the crimes caught, and charged in a court of law.
Because they are not the same thing.
Was about to say this.
Men are caught committing more crimes. Most likely because they are dumber than women.
Criminals tend to be on the extreme end of the bell curve for violence, and men's bell curve for violence is slightly shifted up compared to women. In the end, that means the extreme outliers for all the most disagreeable and violent individuals are men (like 99%) and the same is true on the opposite end but for women.
Men also have a slightly broader bell curve for intelligence, so the same applies for the extreme end of intelligence. All of the dumbest people alive are primarily men. The Venn diagram of low intelligence and agreeableness, along with impulsiveness means most criminals are men.
I think we'll need sources for this, it seems pretty subjective
There are strong sex based differences in propensity for youth violence in WEIRD countries. There's less of a strong correlation outside of those countries but it still broadly applies when analyzed.
It's more complex than just being "hardwired" or "testosterone" but the differences are statistically significant and repeatable.
There is a strong correlation between intelligence and being a criminal. It's not predictive, but if you have low intelligence you're part of a vulnerable group that is far more likely to be imprisoned. This could also be that smart criminals don't get caught, but large case reviews with low intelligence offenders often find a lack of foresight of what happens after commiting a crime, and a lack of understanding about how serious it can be. Both of which strongly correlate with criminality. It's a fancy way of saying they don't think ahead and don't understand the magnitude of what they're doing.
Within the literature the greater male variability hypothesis is not controversial, but well established fact.
The rest of my opinion is derived from a statistics 101 level of understanding of bell curve comparisons between two groups and what happens to the tails and outliers (which is also backed up piecemeal by my sources in different areas indirectly.)
I'm willing to add more sources as needed but I think it's time you did some searching to refute my position if you still think it's suspect.
It's not possible to measure committed crimes. If anyone parrots some crime statistics without limiting themselves to violent crimes it's 100% bullshit. Crime statistics just measure convictions. Violent crime rates often times include unsolved murders and assaults.
Is your stance that women do commit more crime then?
No. I did not in any way say that. If you swapped "men" and "women" in the title I would have said the exact same thing.
If you have a conclusion that men hold more criminal convictions then that could be true because it's very quantifiable.
Oh so you just want to "erm actually" and not make any meaningful contribution to the conversation
My contribution is meaningful. Men "commit" more crimes because they're convicted of more crimes. There are MANY studies across centuries that look into that.
Why do you think they are convicted more?
More like women are convicted less. I'm not really qualified to answer. :|
Absolutely the worst possible way to engage with a question post.
Women are better are covering it up. I think men are more prone to acts of passion or random bouts of rage, which is difficult to plan for and cover up. It's often public, loud and messy. Women internalize from an early age that this is not acceptable behaviour if you're not male, so we reign it in more. But that doesn't mean the crimes aren't committed, we're just always cognizant of the social fallout if we're discovered.
Anyone who has worked in a retirement home can tell you there are some very sweet ladies who will, on or near their deathbed, tell you how they killed their abusive husband decades ago. Or they share the story like words of wisdom to the younger generation.
I think a lot of women have been put in a corner by society, so they don't feel a pressing need to play by the rules all the time.
I think it's social conditioning and lack of mental health resources. Girls are strongly socially conditioned to "play nice" and get along at all costs, which tends to lead to more rules following. Boys are often socialized to suppress their emotions while at the same time are allowed to act out and encouraged to be tough and macho. The bad boy act is romanticized and violence is at best tolerated and at worst idolized.
So you have men who never learned how to deal with their feelings who also are used to having a physical, often violent outlet because that's the only acceptable thing they know.
Studies of boys say that boys (in games) will follow the rules at the detriment of individual players and girls (in games) tend to allow the rules to be applied individually. This also explains why boys and girls tend to gravitate to different types of games. The way boys play can lead to acute ostracization if the rule is discriminatory towards you or even if you just happen to get unlucky where girls will often make exceptions to those rules to avoid a peer being ostracized. The boy template is how society currently works, it will inherently create poverty, inequality and the only “winner” is the rules. It’s more than social conditioning, it’s the mindset that society chooses to build its self on that perpetuates the problem.
I sourced this from the book “In a Different Voice” which I don’t have access to right now but the author did cite her sources and body of work if anyone else is curious about how basically all psychological studies on human development are almost exclusively done with boys to the exclusion of everyone else, especially foundational works.
Growing up this was not my experience at all with girls. Maybe if you’re neurotypical and/or cis then girls are like that, but I got ostracized by most of my female peers from early elementary school (and the majority of my male peers wouldn’t give me the time of day to begin with because I was a ‘girl’). The ways girls can be cruel to each other for arbitrary reasons is really jaw dropping if you haven’t experienced it firsthand. Maybe it’s different now than it was ~30 years ago, but I’d be surprised if it was. If anything I have to imagine cyber bullying makes it worse.
I would tend to agree to this. My significant other and I have talked about our teenage years (we didn't know each other then) and the differences in conflict resolution are extreme. Where I would go out of my way to fix a problem in my friend group so we could all move on and he happy, him and his bros would beat the shit out of each other then act like nothing happened.
So even in teenage years, the group of girls is being to the root problem, discussing feelings, taking accountability for their fuck ups, and trying not to do the thing again. We were teenagers, we still pissed each other off constantly but at least there was some resolve and feelings are acknowledged and validated.
The group of boys didn't discuss such things. It was apparently more "hey Buddy fuck you!" And a fist fight starts. According to him half the time they didn't know why the other person was mad. They'd just beat on each other and act like nothing happened after. Emotions never got validated, nothing was ever talled about, it was just shoved down.
We both went through depression issues in our teenage years. I talked to friends about it and eventually came out there other side. He talked to no one about it and struggled well into college and even had an attempt before he went to therapy. Therapy which he never told anyone he was going to. Thankfully now these days as an adult he has friends he can talk to about these things. He said it's so incredibly different than how he was raised.
I know this is all anecdotal but, I've seen a fair amount of this so I support your theory.
We really have failed our men and our boys. I consider myself a feminist and I can argue about the shitty things that men do to women with the rest of them, but what almost always gets left out of the argument is that men were raised to be this way since they were boys. Society, do better. Stop raising girls to be accountable while giving boys a pass. Let your boys (and girls!) be rough and tough but teach them tenderness, compassion, and that emotions are healthy.
Teach your boys to become men like Aragorn.
Yes exactly. I hate the "boys well be boys" bull shit. You're setting them up for failure!
Uhhh... Because it's easy?
Men are more likely to face real poverty and get no help from anybody. Suicide, crime rates are just derivatives of it
How so? What does real poverty entail in your view?
Because to it feels like the odds are mostly even, maybe slightly skewed towards women being more like to face poverty.
But I'm genuinely curious about your point of view.
Have some statistics before you start arguing with https://endhomelessness.org/resources/research-and-analysis/demographic-data-project-gender-and-individual-homelessness/
Homelessness is a symptom of poverty, but many people still suffer from poverty without being homeless.
I haven't checked super thoroughly, but the statistics you linked do not make this distinction, as far as I can tell. Maybe there is other reasons for the skew in homelessness than people being in poverty. Maybe your point still stands even after checking if there's actual correlation or not.
(Edit: I just noticed the
part of your original post, didn't consider that yet...)
Could you please spare me the maybe part and state some facts? Just maybe.. As per quote of Mr Woland from Bulgakov "that is the fact. And fact is the most stubborn things under the sun". Women get more lenient punishments for crimes, more likely are to be release on bail, more likely to be release earlier or due to the living dependents, more likely to be covered by some government social program
You yourself are stating facts without any backup, I just wanted to make it clear that I don't necessarily refute your point, but that I've got an issue with the statistics you base your point on.
Just because you state a fact, doesn't make said fact a true thing.
Even in more progressive areas boys are socialized differently. I’ve been in a field where I see early childhood until middle school for years now. And girls, from the beginning, and raised more strictly. They have more care in their clothes, their meals, and the skills they are taught. They rarely fight, and if they do, it’s not on impulse. My theory on why people often say “boys are easier” is because they absolutely neglect them. So the onus is on 3rd parties to often teach them basic skills and rule following, to control their impulses, etc. Even in K-5, boys are the ones who are telling their teachers to fuck off, leaving the buildings without permission, fighting, etc. Parents blame the teacher/staff, if they are present at all, and antisocial behavior gets rewarded again and again.
From least to most relevant:
What are some examples of your first point?
Opening illegal jars
Fair point
Name one?
Draft-dodging, in the US?
All I could think of. Maybe they're using statistics from 1973.
Men are generally more aggressive
Women have generally chosen said more aggressive men to reproduce with
I guess the more aggressive men are more likely to rape and get women pregnant which increases the chance of their aggressive nature to survive. This is why abortion rights are crucial among other reasons - getting rid of the plague of moronic sexual behaviors that genetically promote violence
And now we're here
‘If you were conceived through rape you’re probably going to be a future rapist’ is perhaps not the messaging to be putting out into the world
I mean, it sounds fucked up, but is it? I guess I assumed that such thing has a genetic component but perhaps I'm wrong, idk
>it sounds fucked up, but is it?
Yeah? Telling a child that hasn’t committed a sex crime that they’re destined to do it because one of their parents was a rapist is messed up. Human behavior is complex, you can’t just say ‘oh you have the rape gene, you’re gonna rape somebody.’
Since the stats are only by who gets caught, I can't be sure that men actually commit more crime as opposed to simply more men get caught. Maybe women are simply better at crime. 🤷♂️
/s
I know you're being sarcastic but, I do think this skews things a bit. Maybe not a significant amount but, a bit. My SIL was all of 5' and 90 pounds. Her ex husband before my brother was 6'5" big dude. She would beat the ever loving fuck out of this guy and then laugh in his face about how the police (her family no less) would never believe she did it. (Yes my brother was shocked when this happened to him. Yes he did get away)
Mix that in with the way society views teachers having sex with students. Adult male on minor girl = predo. Adult female on minor male = OMG he is so lucky. Ew. Just ew.
And look at how many people think men can't get raped. Unfortunately, a lot of those people are male police officers too.
In most cases, I believe it's a mix of hormones and traditionalism. Men have generally been more likely to seek grandeur by participating in violent activities, or, violent activities are demanded by their particular social group. Sometimes a mix of both.
I think it also it boils down to how gender roles are taught by different cultures. If men are taught to be the risk takers, it only makes sense that boundaries and laws will get pushed more by men. After all, intentionally breaking a law may simply be viewed as a calculated risk and not as something that should never be done.
Honestly speaking, it seems too easy of an answer to just blame male physiology. The social aspects of this can't be ignore either.
This is it. It's entirely a social cause. There's an unstated rule that males are generally disposable unless they have status and/or resources.
This leads to men with low self esteem and nothing to lose, no hope, taking risks and taking out their frustration on society. It's both for survival, to have some kind of relevance, and because what the hell else are they going to do when the coping mechanisms run out.
I have no idea how to solve this.. but it's entirely caused by capitalism, as per usual. When people are valued only by a dollar amount, this is what happens.
I don't think it's entirely socially constructed. Testosterone has a clear scientific link to aggressive behavior.
I had a feeling someone would say "it's entirely caused by capitalism". I do think a large chunk has to do with the social settings but I don't think its 100% of the issue. Saying financial benefit is the root cause is pretty reductive in my opinion. I think crime would still exist in a stateless, classless and moneyless society.
It's not just 'financial benefit,' it's everything that comes with it. Exploiting the environment and people, consumerism substituting meaning. Individuality over community, and a desperate rat race giving us no time or means to look past the prison bars.
Crime would exist everywhere, but there's other societal configurations that would reduce it or completely change the distribution.
We have crime in large part because it 'costs too much' to prevent it.
You hit the nail on the head.
I think that's a pretty well reasoned answer. Can't really pick anything out I strongly disagree with. Thanks for the contribution!
Cuz women don’t have the balls to commit crime.
This is a joke.
Testosterone makes dudes crazy.
It is a hell of a drug
I think a mix of factors, the ones I think about are:
There is often no fallback. After a certain point there is no one to take care of you so if you fail your options quickly run thin. This leads to feeling increased pressure to do high risk activities.
I also think men value their lives less. There is a certain line of thought that is in every mans head where they are pissed off and they look at their life and they look at what they're pissed off at and they think "What if I just threw it all away to destroy that thing" at least I could say my life was useful. For most men this check fails because their lives are decent but for people on the bink I can see them thinking its worth to trade their life to take someone elses. If I were in the US i'd probably trade my life for Trump's if I thought i could do it.
Biology, higher propensity for taking extreme risks, tolerance for violence, physically stronger on average, mentally mature slower, wider distribution across the iq bellcurve. We grow up fighting each other for fun, we see and learn about millions of us dying in wars, we see how failures are treated in society, we see a lot of media showing 'failures' lashing out at society.
Yeah I mean at the very beginning men are born more frequently than women. In high school they explained that as men are more likely to participate in deadly activities. You gave a well thought out answer with a lot of things I think are accurate and relevant, thanks!
I doubt they do. Likely more violent crime given testosterone and all.
Because ~85% of males could physically overpower ~85% of females.
Young men too polite and well behaved to physically engage with women may underestimate the difference , and they may be taken by common movie tropes where a little girl is a secret martial arts master and beats the shit out of fifteen guys. But in real life the physical difference is enormously biased towards men and boys.
Men and boys know this and so they are more likely to try crimes. Women and girls know this and so they are less likely to try. This knowledge comes into play both when considering the crime, and when considering the law enforcement response to those crimes. (“I could overpower/slip away from / outrun that cop!”)
This explains the disparity in violent crime, but also leads to an overall mindset that explains nonviolent crime.
I think this is a big factor
This is a good write-up of the issue: https://theconversation.com/men-are-more-likely-to-commit-violent-crimes-why-is-this-so-and-how-do-we-change-it-157331
It kind of mirrors what others are saying in this thread. Some key quotes from the article.
They haven't met some of my wife's (former) friends. She seems to attract crazy people (me included).
Luckily my friends are cool and they like her more than they like me anyway.
Bored.
It's because of several factors. In no particular order, crime statistics are skewed, they only account for crimes that have been discovered and considered solved, if a certain demographics were better at hiding or getting away with crimes it would be underrepresented. Even if we could trust the statistics, some crimes are less severe than others, and it's hard to judge all crimes in the same bag, even all murders are not equal so statistics can get skewed by a demographic committing more of the crimes you're analyzing even if they commit less if you were to look at specifics. Even if we could trust that, and have crimes organized neatly into completely independent and equally severe categories there's the social factors. Most societies around the world tend to educate men more violently than women. Finally, even if you were to have a society with humans educated equally, and have a 100% crime rate solved with 100% accuracy and analyze crimes in a completely unbiased way, there's still the biological differences, and men have more testosterone than women, and testosterone is responsible for aggressive behavior, so even in such a society there would still be some tendency for men to commit more crimes, although I imagine it would be a lot less skewed than today.
Societal expectations for one thing. We're also conditioned into suppressing our emotions. Many men don't have healthy outlets.
That's definitely an aspect that plays it's part.
They’re more capable of doing so.
I can't really disagree on a physical level but this universal constant carries to ALL crime not just violent/physical.
Think about it more deeply.
Can you elaborate on your initial statement instead? Guessing what you think/mean isn't really a good way to understand your stance.
How so?
I'd imagine a cause they're more economically able to and usually more physically capable. Plus violent acts are usually baked into most cultures version of masculinity.
The cultural reason was what I was thinking too.
At first, physical capability popped into my mind as well, however can a woman not steal a loaf of bread? Or grab a knife and stab someone, or grab a gun and pull the trigger?
Economically able to could also lead into the gender imbalance in executive positions.
However I would like to hear the person I replied to's reasoning instead of us guessing or putting answers in their mouth so to speak, as 'more capable of doing so' doesn't really lend much to the conversation.
Women can and women do. Last year a women few miles away decided she had enough of her husband abusing her and decided to stab him in the driveway. Not only did the husband manage to pull out the knife but stab the wife to death. I've seen neighbor's CCTV footage. Luckily/unluckily however you see it she did enough damage that he died before paramedics arrived, but he did so much damage from the same knife, that she died before him. Per cops, Wife did leave a journal entry with intention to murder the guy and expected to be going to jail for murder. But ended up dying before that.
There is clearly difference of strength for any kind of physical contact weapons. Guns for sure are equalizers in that regards.
Yes of course, but the crime was still committed and she had full capability of committing the crime regardless of how it ended up for her. The question wasn't "why are males more successful at committing a crime", although this is where my mind went as well.
Probably would have lived if he didn't pull the knife out
Women can get away with crime easier than men because they are seen as more innocent. Another thing that comes to mind is how mens' IQ is said to have more kurtosis, so you get more dumb men at the beginning of the bell curve committing bad crimes.
Is there a direct correlation with low IQ and likelihood of criminal activity?
Convicted criminals have a mean IQ of 91-93, as compared to the general population at 100.
I'm not saying IQ is particularly meaningful, but there does seem to be a consistent negative correlation with convicted criminals. And who knows, maybe the criminals who didn't get caught have above-average IQ.
I don't. They don't. Men just get charged more often and are more willing to plead guilty to get out of jail (the common option is you can plead guilty and they're going to give you time-served and you can leave immediately... Freedom. Yay. whereaa you can plead not guilty and you can sit here and then they're going to have a trial in like a few months and you can just sit in jail and profess your innocence for that long time and probably have no job when you get out, unless you can post bond quickly) Women will plead innocent and there's a decent chance the DA just dismisses charges because they rather target some 'real criminals' (aka men.) They're more likely to be released on a PR bond if they do plead innocent.... More likely to get bonded. Just call up a dude and tell uhm, "I'll do anything if you Bond me out of jail." And lickety split that guy's going to the bank and getting her out of jail and then they're going to do some amazing sodomy.
Seek therapy dude
I am TheRapist
Do you hold that opinion based on any evidence? Or is it just a anecdotal vibes kinda thing?
You asked what I think.
Now you want proof? Evidence?
Gtfo....
I want to know why you hold the opinion you do and what informed that.
Power. Men are more privileged than women. The more power somehow has, the more they are shielded from the consequences of their actions and the worse their behaviour.
I do suspect that overall men are alsi more likely to engage in violence than women, but i haven't checked data to see if i'm wrong.
which kind of crime, violent crimes yes. even suicides men use more physical methods, rather than things like poisons. also if its baked into many cultures, than yes. another complex issue is: at least in the US, men are expected to move out of the house right after HS, and not expected to come back, even if they have very little job prospects, or directions, or finances which may lead to do crimes,sell drugs,,,etc. while women are expected to stay home way past, like in thier 20s or 30s in some cases and expected to marry into a family and they usually have support system to go to college, and colleges themselves have support system for women in general, expenses paid until you finish or get married so the risk of crimes are low, when you have needs met. this isnt all cases. both men and women can stay home past HS what they should be doing independently. its complex issue, but physical violence(guns, beatings, car running over, knives, weapons) are usually men.
All crime, yes. Being in the US I can't say I agree with most of what you're saying. I think moving out at 18/ after HS is expected regardless of gender. Or at least I don't think the negative stigma of staying home into your 20s is any different among the genders. To be fair, I'm 31 and moved out when I was 18. I found roommates off craigslist and did wild shit to pull it off. Even that doesn't seem commonly possible in the current housing/rental market in most places. Do women have more resources at college? Not that I remember. I do remember knowing some that were just going to get their "Mrs. Degree". I think thats more the minority though. I just see a lot of flawed thinking opposite from my experience.
Also I have a pet theory that they don't they just get away with it more often. So that Skews the data. Also in the US incarnation is just another way to reimplement slavery that's why African American men are targeted more for prosecution than any other demographic. Plus men are geared by society to be providers for their families so crime is sometimes thought of as an option when people are desperate.
I recognize the whole 13th amendment problem but again this is a blanket thing, not a US thing. I don't understand your fist statement though, are you saying women actually commit more crime but they just don't get caught? I can agree with the final part of your comment.
Yes that women on a whole are smatter about it when they decide to commit crimes. Plus the justice system is also geared to be more lenient on women also plays a factor as they are not thought of as suspect's and that feeds the numbers that enforces the stereotype. So its feedback loop. Also like i said its my own personal theory I'm not declaring that's its fact.