The article you sent was interesting, but it says nothing about enabling behaviour of women on violence perpetuated by men. It only goes into the willingness of women to interact with serial killers who target women specifically, as opposed to mass murderers, domestic abusers and sex offenders. They offer explanations as to why some women show fascination towards serial killers. It reminded me of the fawn response in non-human primates, and the many forms of conflict avoidence humans and other species employ. From frogs and hummingbirds bluffing one’s way out of conflict to chemically influencing male aggression specifically. From chimpanzees prostrating themselves just to avoid further aggression and increase survivability.

I do agree that women who use male aggression for their own purposes exist. I have a friend who got tangled up in an affair. A woman cheated on her boyfriend with him 3 times. Her bf was described as “an abusive douchebag.” Douchebag or not, I don’t condone her cheating, nor my friend’s involvement in it. What I noticed was that he developed a hateful stance towards her bf. And her bf hated him ofcourse. I warned him that if her bf is as much of an abusive douchebag was, she would probably ridirect his anger towards him instead of herself. Pitting two men against each other while managing to stay out of trouble herself. He wouldn’t listen to any woman (family members included) who warned him that this lady was bad news. Thankfully it didn’t escalate and I hope the guy, douche or not, finds a better partner and heals from this experience. So I do see where you are comming from with women playing a role in men’s violent crimes. This anectodal observation isn’t enough, as it isn’t just the woman controlling two men, but also two men competing for the same woman.

I don’t think women’s enabling behaviour plays as much a role in men’s violence as some other aspects might do. Just like the article you sent me, I recon the fascination with violence stems more from self-preservation, as well as female-choice reproduction tactics.

Testosterone does correlate with higher rates of aggression mammals. Mostly because of male-male competition, forcing copulation (orangutangs for example), stealing resources (primates, reighndeer, jaguars, and more) and infanticide of offspring that isn’t theirs without the mother being able to do anything about it (tigers, zebra’s, elephant seals and many primates). Male aggression is so common in birds and mammals, that it shapes a lot of behaviours of social species. Now this isn’t to day that males are evil by default, and females victims. It’s more often a case of females having more to lose than only their lives, less targets to steal from and forcing copulation is rarely needed (there are exceptions). If they could, or had to, they would be just as violent as their male counterparts, and I would not be suprised at all that women try to utilize men for something nefarious. I don’t think its enoug to explain the difference in homocide and other crime rates between genders.

Here are some resources that I read over the last few years. ** Testosterone and human aggression: an evaluation of the challenge hypothesis** This article sums up a lot about how testosterone correlates to the behaviour in men. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763405000102

Fear responses when exposed to androgens. ** The human body odor compound androstadienone leads to anger-dependent effects in an emotional Stroop but not dot-probe task using human faces. ** Three first citations contain more info about anxiety responses in women when exposed to human sweat. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0175055

Olfactory exposure to males, including men, causes stress and related analgesia in rodents. https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.2935

Women smelling men’s masked body odors show enhanced harm aversion in moral dilemmas. Harm avoidance increases when exposed to (masked) male body odor. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031938418309533

Stockholm Syndrome, Appeasement and the Fawn Response.

Appeasement: replacing Stockholm syndrome as a definition of a survival strategy. This paper makes a distinction between a direct physical threat and a hostage situation. It mentions also that the appeasement behavior aims to make the perpetrator feel safe with the victim (talking about an uno reverse card). This is different from the fawn response where the goal is to please a perpetrator in order to avoid conflict. Making it perhaps bit different from what we see in non-primates. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9858395/

History of the term ‘appeasement’: a response to Bailey et al. (2023) This is a response to the article above about the terminology. It also describes different forms of appeasement and relations between individuals and groups in other species. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20008066.2023.2183005

Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn: How We Respond to Threats. An easy to read summary on different forms of responses to a threat in humans. https://www.simplypsychology.org/fight-flight-freeze-fawn.html

Submission signals in animal groups. A summary on different displays of submission across different species. One way to avoid conflict it my adopting a female-mating position. This is seen in quite a few species and isn’t only displayed by females. Even male crayfish found this tactic useful to avoid further aggression and a “reduced chance of death…” https://brill.com/view/journals/beh/159/1/article-p1_2.xml

Perspectives in primate biology. A common form of submissive behaviour in primates is sharing food. In humans, sharing is caring. For many non-human primates, it is a way to avoid aggression. Sharing food particularly when there is a difference in body size between the food possessor and the impending food thief. Female primates are weaker than the males and therefore have less options to demand food from. I wonder if this plays a role in the stereotype of women who don’t order fries and then try to take some from their boyfriend. Dominance or bonding? Both? Does this food competition play a role in why estrogens play a role in fat storage and slower catabolism? Whereas in rats, estrogens actually slow down fat storage. It’s why phytoestrogen rich diets need to be avoided in obesity and atherosclerosis studies using rats (be it male or female) as a model. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/William-Mcgrew-2/publication/246210123_Food-sharing_in_primates_a_critical_review/links/5401f4240cf2c48563af850e/Food-sharing-in-primates-a-critical-review.pdf

Tactics to reduce male aggression in humans A chemical signal in human female tears lowers aggression in males. Why women cry emotional tears much more easily. What’s weird though is that it lowers male aggression to begin with. Did women adopt crying by mimicking an infant’s cry? This also seems weird since male non-human primates are notorious for killing young in order to get the mother to ovulate sooner again and force copulation. Did men have to adopt a “don’t kill the baby” behaviour somewhere along the way, that women then rode the success of? I am still looking for answers. https://journals.plos.org/Plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002442

Smiling also lowers aggression (not just male aggression). It’s why women smile more, and especially when anxious. Men less so. It may play a factor in why men are perceived as more funny too. Since the idea that someone is funny, plays a role in percieved funniness. ** Emotional expressions in human and non-human great apes** Parts 1.3 and 1.4. Talks about the correlation between fear and smiling in humans. “The evolutionary origin of the human smile (not laughter) is considered to come from the bared teeth display seen across primates that signals submission or appeasement (van Hooff, 1976)” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763419304749

** The gender divide in humor: How people rate the competence, influence, and funniness of men and women by the jokes they tell and how they tell them. ** https://repository.wellesley.edu/_flysystem/fedora/2023-11/WCTC_2015_RozekChristina_Thegenderdivideinhum.pdf

Male phenotype mimicry to avoid male aggression or death Some interesting stuff I found over time were different coping tactics for dealing with male aggression. Some involved adopting male behaviours and/or appearance.

Experimental evidence that female rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) perceive variation in male facial masculinity Females looking more masculine to avoid coercive males and signal competitive strength. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.181415

** Intersexual social dominance mimicry drives female hummingbird polymorphism.** 20% of females adopting a male phenotype. They do this to avoid male aggression, despite giving up their camouflage against predators for it. Interestingly, this 20-25% percentage appears from time to time whenever females look or act like males. It was postulated that if too many females look/act like males, the meaning of the phenotype difference is lost. This isn’t always the case however. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2022.0332

It isn’t always used to avoid aggression. There is this species of frog where 48% of females scream like a male to get him to let go. If they don’t get rid of the male embrace, they risk getting crushed to death by a pile up of males. They employ tactics other than mimicry as well. Including escaping the male embrace physically or pretending to be dead. I couldn’t find the original article, only the news item I read months ago. Just haul it through google translate, it’s is a fun read. https://www.newscientist.nl/nieuws/vrouwtjeskikkers-veinzen-overlijden-vrijpartij-ontwijken/