Driven to distraction

Studies by scientists hailing from – where else – California, claim that the male sex drive is responsible for all wars. Supposedly aggression and bravery in men was to compete for mates and territory and belligerence was rewarded by reproductive success. It cites Chinggis Khaan’s alleged 16 million direct male descendents and the genetic code associating Scandinavians with Scottish and Irish people through the Vikings. It doesn’t mention all the idiots who lost their lives in battle, such as Charles the Bold of Burgundy (also known as Charles the Rash) who died before he could father an heir or Major General Rollo Gillespie getting so angry during a battle in the Anglo-Nepalese War that he led a reckless personal charge and taking a bullet through the heart for his troubles, with no known issue sired. Let's not forget all the common soldiery who are cut down and forgotten in a misguided offensive, such as the 30,000 Russians who perished in 1877 at the Battle of Plevna because their commanders insisted on a frontal assault or the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the blackest day in the history of the British Army. History’s genetic code written by the victors you might say but who are the victors?


These liberal Californians (are any of them men by any chance?) say that women are naturally gifted with a ‘tend and befriend’ attitude, who find it easier to enact conflict resolution. Margaret Thatcher, when urged to negotiate after Argentina had invaded the Falklands, hardly showed much of the tending and befriending character. Cristina Kirchner’s bellicose statements on the subject of the islands in the last few years show little of it either. What about Sri Lanka’s Chandrika Kumaratunga, who presided over a bitter civil war with the Tamil minority in the north? Or Indira Gandhi’s storming of the Sikh temple in Amritsar. Or David Ben-Gurion's description of Golda Meir as "the best man in the government" and who showed such steely determination in the Yom Kippur War during her tenure? History is littered with aggressive female leaders – Hatshepsut, Empress Theodora, Wu Zetian, ‘Bloody’ Mary I, Catherine the Great, Cixi, Madame Mao, the battling queens of Edward II and Henry VI and many, many more. Even more respected female figures are exceptionally headstrong – Joan d’Arc, our warrior queen Elizabeth I, Mary II who deposed her father James II, Maria Theresa, even Queen Victoria who, in 1839, refused to replace her Whig ladies of the bedchamber with Tories, so Sir Robert Peel who could not feel confident in forming a government (let's not mention her empire-building enthusiasm later). Scant consensus-building there. The scientists could claim that the female instinct is generally prevalent in the population but then they are hypocrites in talking up male leaders. I imagine they had a deep-seated theory that was personally dear to them - in essence, men are nastier than women, which is the intellectual equivalent of gossip on Ricki Lake (who is returning to talk shows later this year) - and they've set out to prove it, rather than the Popperian approach of disproving the alternatives.  We'll see how the peer-review process goes.  Maybe these scientists should follow their commercially minded colleagues in telling us that all food and drink is bad for us.  Either that or go on Loose Women.