“You’re the imitation me.” Researchers in a number of countries have found that such nastiness starts early. “Oh,” she said, looking the younger writer up and down. Chesler gives as a prime example the remark of Mary McCarthy upon encountering Susan Sontag in the early 1960’s. More commonly, Chesler relates, females battle each other by resorting to what social scientists call “indirect aggression”-gossip, manipulation, backstabbing-methods at which they can be very skilled indeed. In the Western world, Southern white women humiliated and beat their female slaves, while gangs of young women in today’s Mexico and Los Angeles visit mayhem on each other, often in arguments over men. Genital mutilation in Africa, honor killings in Islamic countries, burnings over dowry disputes in India-all take place against women with the enthusiastic support of other women. Japanese, Chinese, and Indian mothers-in-law frequently beat their son’s wives, whom they treat more like slaves than like daughters. Mother lemurs and chimps have been known to kill and even cannibalize their competitors’ babies.Īs for the human side of things, the gentler sex is not always so gentle. Among primates, evolutionary psychologists have found, females often bid for “alpha” status by trying to sabotage the reproductive cycles of their sisters. Chesler begins with a run-through of the scientific and historical evidence on female violence.
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