What do women on the market prefers "men that are willing to fight for you" or "men who are willing to fight over you,"

 

I'm glad you didn't give up me
you didn't stop fighting for me

Before scientists can begin to explain a phenomenon, they need to be able to describe it.  Back In 1981, I read something that pointed out that the ‘competitive component in the nature of women remains anecdotal, intuitively sensed, but not confirmed by science’. Happily, since that time, quantitative analyses and qualitative descriptions of women's aggression have been published. I begin by outlining what these studies have told us, before considering an evolutionary-informed account of the psychological basis of sex (and individual) differences in aggression. Following this, I review whether such a proposal is supported by neuropsychological studies. This ambitious interdisciplinary trajectory takes us from sociology, through psychology, to neuropsychology and endocrinology.

In the United States, girls account for 33% of arrests for simple assault and 24% of aggravated assaults. Despite a 24% increase in female arrests for simple assault between 1996 and 2005, victimization and self-report data indicate that this reflects changes in police practice rather than girls’ behavior. The male-to-female ratio for assault has remained remarkably stable over time. The gender gap is considerably greater for aggravated than simple assault, reflecting girls’ less injurious behavior and their lower likelihood of using weapons. Surveys indicate that in the previous year, 40.5% of boys and 25.1% of girls had been in a physical fight . In the previous month, 60% of girls had called another girl names, 50% had sworn at them and 35% had pushed or shoved them . Boys and girls predominantly engage in same-sex aggression, although girls are more likely than boys to target members of the opposite sex. Here, I will focus specifically on same-sex aggression by young women.

Do you see the finger!

The media depiction of girls’ aggression—as an anomalous violation of the feminine gender role—ignores the way that femininity is constructed differently in different cultural contexts. Female aggression is more prevalent in disorganized neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and low social cohesion . For families living in these neighborhoods, the frequent absence of a consistent father figure means that mothers (and grandmothers) play a pivotal role. They are strong figures who must cope alone with daily stresses of subsistence living. Many mothers are themselves involved in fighting, especially in defense of their family's good name. Some become actively involved in their daughters’ fights also and, in doing so, become role models and allies. Even when they do not go this far, mothers’ concern for their daughters’ welfare translates into tolerance (and sometimes encouragement) of fighting. Most mothers acknowledge that a girl needs to be able to ‘stand her ground’ and ‘hold her own’. The strength and resilience of women (both mothers and daughters) is not seen as incongruent with femininity: indeed passivity is viewed as a weakness rather than an asset. As Irwin & Adler, p. 319] noted, ‘Given the emphasis on female strength, girls lost respect for and even targeted other girls who fell short in fulfilling idealized notions of feminine resilience circulating in the local communities’.

How are two men  supposed to find a way to love the same woman and not fight over her?

If weakness makes a girl a target, an important benefit of willingness to fight is the avoidance of victimization. Girls’ reports of their fights present aggression as a form of self-defense by emphasizing that their opponents ‘started it’. In some cases, ‘starting it’ refers to a physical assault but more often to verbal taunts to which physical aggression is seen as the appropriate response. The slippery divide between physical and verbal provocation is mirrored in the equally fuzzy distinction between self-defense and reputation enhancement. For many girls, success in a public fight achieves more than the immediate goal of causing an opponent to back off: it promotes a ‘crazy’ or ‘mean’ reputation that will deter others from future attacks.  Reputation enhancement involves a disproportionate response to any perceived act (or rumor) of ‘disrespect’ including staring, failing to move out of the way, behind-the-back gossip and an offensive demeanor that presumes social superiority (a girl who ‘thinks she's all that’). Once established, reputations must be defended against others who are seeking to enhance their own. Girls who start fights are ‘ … trying to make their name. They'll go fight somebody so somebody can be like ‘so-and-so’ fought her, just so their name will be known’ . One response to such reputation-seeking challengers is for tough girls to get their retaliation in first. In this way, a self-reinforcing loop develops between self-defense, reputation enhancement, sensitivity to challenge and pre-emptive aggression. But these overarching principles of deterring disrespect and maintaining a reputation obscure the specific triggers that provoke fights. What accusations or provocations constitute acts of ‘disrespect’ worthy of a violent response?

In this jungle.......size matters sweetie,
 guys back off when I stand up.

Although girls will fight out of loyalty to family and friends, the ethnographic literature leaves little doubt as to the central role played by boys. Romantic rivalry is one cause. Girls understand their own value in terms of the quality of boys they can attract: ‘Say one guy is good looking, we're all in a fight over who's getting who … If all the girls are fighting for this one really popular guy and one girl gets him, everyone will think she's more popular too’  Once a boyfriend is secured, the relationship must be protected from takeover by other girls: jealousy is another major cause of female fights. When a girl spends too much time with another girl's boyfriend, the anger is firmly targeted at the female interloper rather than at the male partner. This is all the more remarkable because many young men (‘playas’) enjoy trading off girls against one another: ‘He was being with both of them at the same time, and they ended up fighting over him or whatever. In the end, they found out that both of them was getting played by him’ Commentators have noted that jealousy-motivated fights may not be entirely about the boy but about the kudos that a relationship with a high-status boy can bring  At other times, the dividing line between defending a relationship and maintaining a reputation becomes blurred: ‘I don't care about the guy or anything but I'm gonna mess that girl up cause she deserves it. The bitch just be asking for it. The way I see it, I ain't fighting over the boy. I'm fighting the girl because she be acting in a way that says she thinks I'm a punk’ . Jealousy can be even more extreme when financial incentives are added, such as when the wronged girl is the mother of her boyfriend's baby.

Attractive girls are both the strongest rivals for male attention and the greatest threats to an ongoing relationship. However, it is the combination of attractiveness together with a self-confident awareness of it that seems particularly provocative. Girls who advertise their attractiveness through dress, make-up or demeanor are often targeted . These girls offend on two fronts: they attract more than their fair share of boys and they communicate their felt superiority over other girls. This becomes a form of ‘disrespect’ which adds to the rivalry. While disrespect is often synonymous with status challenge among young men, the same is not true for girls. Girls do not show the hierarchical structure typical of boys’ groups. Girls chiefly want to fit in rather than stand out and it is this which explains the paradoxical finding that girls who are nominated as ‘popular’ (visible, charismatic) are not well liked as friends. Girls who communicate their attractiveness too confidently are targeted not just because they are conspicuous to boys but because they set themselves apart from other girls. This refusal to blend in means that those girls who disdain concern with their appearance or with securing a boyfriend can also be picked on: an inherent sense of superiority is read into their non-conformity.

Will a man fight for the woman he truly loves? Will a woman have to “fight” at all to prove her love?

Your strong arms around me makes me feel safe.

Perhaps the strongest evidence that boys lie at the heart of female competition is the terms used to insult others. The same epithets appear frequently in accounts of girls’ fights:  ‘slut’, ‘whore (ho)’ and ‘tart’ . The second most common insults are about a girls’ appearance (‘ugly’, ‘fat’). Whether it is delivered directly to an opponent's face or reaches her via gossip and rumor, these terms are often the immediate trigger to physical confrontation.

insult me again and I will deck you!

final thought

Male aggression (and the paucity of female aggression) has been explained in terms of the greater male variance in reproductive success contingent on polygyny. However, recent developments in evolutionary biology have queried the simplicity of the traditional view of sexual selection which highlights intense male (but not female) competition for mates. Rates of female competition are higher in species (like our own) with biparental care and diminished sexual dimorphism. Attempts to trace the evolution of biparental care have used estimates of increased infant cranial size (leading to earlier births, protracted offspring dependence and greater maternal need for assistance) and dated it to . In terms of sexual dimorphism, archaeological evidence suggests that the relatively modest difference in skeletal size between men and women has remained stable over about 2 yr and possibly longer . The long history of human biparental care is mirrored in the fact that the vast majority of the world's population live monogamously, despite the large number of societies that permit polygyny. The consequences of monogamy for women have been underappreciated. When a man commits himself to a single woman, his criteria for mate choice shift dramatically upwards . Monogamy entails two-way sexual selection: women as well as men must compete to attain the best possible mates.