A detailed examination of the motivations and patterns of violence and aggression in the relationship between the sexes, here mainly the violence and anger of men against their women. The author not only surveys the information, but also tries to relate the whole subject to the working out of the evolutionary backdrop to human behavior. This leads him on to some suggestions of how to minimize, and how to deal with, this phenomenon. One weakness of the evolutional hypothesis is that the actual mechanism by which behavior patterns and life strategies get incorporated in the genes, apart from a general nod to differential reproductive success and survival rates of offspring of individuals adopting the ostensibly successful patterns (a fait accompli explanation). ( )

Summary: A discussion of sexual violence, deception, harassment and abuse, largely on the part of men, grounded in evolutionary sexual conflict theory that helps explain why so many relationships between men and women go bad.

Harassment. Intimate partner violence. Controlling behavior. Stalking. Sexual coercion and rape. We hear reports in our daily news of these sexual offenses, and indeed, some version of these offenses occur in every culture. And in most cases, the perpetrators are men. As a male, this is troubling. Are we all rapists, as Marilyn French has asserted? Certainly many women are wary of all men. Beyond this lies the question of how we explain the universality of sexual oppression and violence.

In When Men Behave Badly, psychologist David M. Buss proposes that sexual conflict theory provides an explanation for these behaviors. In brief, sexual conflict theory roots these behaviors in our evolutionary struggles to reproduce, in which males and females have conflicting strategies for passing along our germ lines. Optimal strategies for men involve multiple matings. For women, the optimal strategy is a long term relationship with a mate. Each gender has developed strategies to counter the other and hence conflict that can turn oppressive, manipulative and violent. These traits are deeply engrained in us. Yet these do not determine or warrant men behaving badly. And not all men do.

It is a battle of the sexes, and largely, a battle over the bodies of women. Buss begins by showing how this works out in the mating market. Buss explores how man assess sexual exploitability, how each gender practices deception and how men and women think differently about what is desirable. It is here that Buss introduces the Dark Triad of traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Men with this triad are much more prone to abuse. Weirdly, perhaps, they are attractive to many women, and there may be evolutionary reasons for this, although they make for terrible long-term relationships. He looks at conflict within mateships–backup mates, and affairs and mate retention through sexual withdrawal and bestowal.

Buss then gets into relationship conflict and the role of jealousy that may be the source of mate guarding, intimate partner violence, stalking and partner rape. All of these may be seen as a form of protectiveness of their investment and guarding partners from other male poachers. Buss goes into the ways perpetrators hijack their victim’s psychology, making it less likely that they will leave. When partners do break up, it may lead to stalking and revenge, including revenge porn.

Buss examines the claim that all men are rapists. Sadly, many men do fantasize about forced sex. Many fewer will act on it. Buss looks at why men who rape do so. Narcissism and lack of empathy, hostility toward women, and disposition to short-term relationships all contribute to a proneness to rape. He also discusses how women defend against sexual coercion, how they avoid assault or escape from it. There is a blind spot. Women most fear stranger rape when in fact most rapes are from men with whom they are acquainted.

The final chapter discusses “minding the sex gap.” He observes some of the misperceptions of desirability and what is attractive (and disgusting) that men do well to understand, the importance of closing legal gaps in terms of harassment and sex crimes, and changing the norms around patriarchy. Learning to recognize the Dark Triad traits mentioned earlier and to protect oneself from them is important.

I found this a bleak book. It is a grim “butchers’ bill” of all the ways men transgress against women, supposedly for some evolutionary reproductive advantage. The back and forth of strategies and counter-strategies felt to me a reduction of relationships between men and women to power games cloaked as sexual transactions. While I think the author would deny it, especially in terms of legal culpability, there is a strong element of evolutionary determinism that underlies the explanations of behavior. It seems the remedy is less self-control as it is evolutionary counter-measures and social and legal controls. I will grant that sexual conflict theory does offer a compelling explanation for the bad behavior of men across cultures. But it reduces human sexuality and all the mating behavior around it to reproductive instincts.

While reproduction is a big part of sexuality for humans as well as animals, this seems an inadequate account of the many beautiful, though always flawed, relationships between men and women that endure long past reproduction, and for the school of character that is marriage, forging mutually sacrificial love, shared and complimentary interests, and generative bonds that not only create families but enrich communities. Buss explains the ways men and women go wrong, and perhaps this is what he most sees. I hope perhaps someday he will have occasion to write about “when men behave well.” I suspect it is to this he aspires, and there are many others I know who have been models of listening to the “better angels of their natures.” Although less noticed, I think asking why this is so is equally worth careful study.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. ( )

“Men’s sexual violence towards women remains the most widespread human rights problem in the world.” So says David Buss. It gives a hint to the global mountain of incidents of harassment and abuse the world endures daily. In When Men Behave Badly, Buss has collected an astonishing litany of abuses, origins, variations, defenses and just plain unfathomable data. It is a mind numbing as well as dazzling trip.

There is what is called the dark triad traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. The more men have of them, the more violent and objectionable they turn out. The less they have, the more loving, caring, thoughtful and just plain human they turn out to be. On the other hand, men with deep dark triad traits “turn out to be unusually attractive to women,” Buss says, and then goes on to prove it and its almost inevitably grim outcomes. And so, a no-win conflict is baked right into humanity.

Tracing men’s behavior back through the ages has led Buss to claim “Evolution by selection, amoral in nature and indifferent to suffering, has forged some nasty human adaptations.” So there is some excuse for the way some men are, but there is also no excuse for the way those men are, as Buss repeats after every headshaking trait and example is examined.

Among other things, high-scoring Dark Triad men are more possessive, vigilant, deceptive, manipulative, emotionally exploitative, and physically threatening in their mate-guarding tactics compared to men who score low in these traits. They are the ones who track and trail their own spouses, threaten them, threaten other men who talk to them, lock up their spouses, beat them and rape them.

Worse, the women stay, or if they leave, they come back, a global and historical phenomenon that Buss examines in detail.

Rape of spouse is now a crime in most American states. But it wasn’t until as late as 1993, and it is still entirely acceptable in many, many countries and cultures. It’s all part of the patriarchy by which men ensure their role as top predator in any setting. But a remarkable thing is happening: the patriarchy is diminishing in power. All over the world, mass communication and news sharing is shaming the patriarchy into a less significant role, Buss says. In Scandinavian countries, something close to equality has become the norm. The dark trait men will of course fight for it to the death (power is power, after all, and few give it up voluntarily), but the long term trend is definitely downward.

Buss put numbers to the violence, showing how different societies are saddled with it. Intimate partner violence dogs a fairly astonishing 30% of relationships in the USA, and 27% in Canada, for example. These kinds of stats will make readers look at harassment, violence, guarding and the other abuses in a very different light.

There are also two sides to the story. Men get harassed too. Women can be just as manipulative, have affairs, love to tease, trick and walk away from men. Violence against men tends to go all but completely unreported. As police officers in one case told the male victim – you might as well not press charges, because if she has broken so much as a fingernail, it is you who will be arrested, not her.

“Studies have asked women if they ‘ever had sex’ with a man other than their husband while living with their husband. Ten percent of the non-victimized women reported having had an affair; 23 percent of the battered women reported having had an affair; and 47 percent of women who were both battered and raped reported having committed adultery. “ Humanity is complicated.

For all the talk of harassment and abuse, women weigh it according to the man doing it: “Women evaluated sexual advances from a physically attractive man as significantly less disturbing than advances from a physically unattractive man. Workplace sexual advances from men low in desirability, apparently, are more upsetting, “ numerous studies show.

They also weigh a man’s value by his height(!). Women prefer men to be at least six feet tall, preferably with a V-shaped body. They believe those kind of men will not only protect them from others, but become social and financial leaders in their group, tribe, society or country and therefore a better catch. This is a global phenomenon, going back as far a history is recorded.

Because women live in fear. They seek protection, while men seek sex. Women fear men will chase them, attack them, rape them and kill them, especially if they rape them. (It’s not true, but that is their overwhelming fear.)They dream it, live it and are ruled by it. Reading the book can make it seem amazing that these two totally different subspecies ever get together at all.

But back to men behaving badly, they really do a lot of damage to a very large number of women, damage both physical and psychological: “A study of 1,882 American men found that 120, or 6.4 percent, admitted that they had. Of these, about two-thirds were repeat rapists, averaging 5.8 admitted rapes. This sample consisted not of convicted rapists but of college students attending a midsize urban commuter university. Other studies have found that between 6 and 15 percent of college males admit to rape or attempted rape as long as the word “rape” is not included in the description.”

But this is not all by a long shot. Buss devotes a chapter to online dating and the ways both men and women lie, stalk and harass each other. Their strategies just show how trapped they are by their evolutionary position. There is also a chapter on revenge during or after a breakup. The pitfalls are endless, but somehow, Homo sapiens continues on its merry way.

Buss, a psychologist who specializes and teaches the subject, is steeped in studies. They come from all over the world, and he has conducted countless varieties himself. He knows their strengths and weaknesses, and is highly conscious that correlation does not imply causation. This makes the book overflow with cautionary statements, but It is still thorough, engaging if not overwhelming, and myth-busting.

The word fraught comes to mind. It’s a wonder it works at all.

David Wineberg ( )