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Short version: Why do some men selectively attack only their wives/girlfriends?
Answer: If monogamy is substantially determined by biology, so is monogamous aggression.
Wait! Don’t say “stupid fringe blogger” and click off. There’s some biology. Really.
Intimate partner violence has always just struck me as so abnormal, so out-of-the-realm of what could be considered pro-evolutionary or pro-social, that the fact that its so abominably common and is largely ignored by society is just so out-there weird and awful, or weirdawful or wawful (new words), that this has to be some very basic biology going on.
This includes psychological aggression, like the kind just outlawed in France. As Melvin Belli, the late King of Torts used to say, soft tissue damage is the toughest to prove, and so psychological damage is dismissed, or even if believed, there are dismissive blame-the-victim brushings aside.
This does not always include homicidal psychopath-sociopaths, the kind that murder rather than divorce — that is using abuse as an instrumentality, rather than as a form of relationship behavior. (See here, Superbowl Sunday: Why Do Men Kill Their Wives?). There’s a typology toward these kinds of Romeos, apparently: white, middle to upper middle class, probably what the shrinks would call narcissistic, and have an entitlement attitude toward the money. There may be some overlap, but not always.
Nor does this include family annihilators, who are more like workplace or school shooters. (See here, “Family Annihilators“: Whether mad or sad, it’s entitlement and control). Again, could overlap, but not always.
The whole thing is just.. . weird. It is monogamy, but not for love; it is monogamous contempt. It is monogamous aggression.
Sexism and racism are based on power — a rationale that, although not justifiable, is at least internally consistent. Relatedly, there are all sorts of neural categorization arguments. People are involuntary racial/gender/stereotyper/profilers. When you see an individual, you immediately put that individual down a pre-selected neural pathway. (See here, for instance, those appearing powerful are categorized as Republican, and those appearing warm are categorized as Democrat). Some batterers may be more or less sexist, but this is incidental; plus the fact that that there are plenty of same gender couples with abuse argues against having any particular world view one way or another.
This isn’t that: this is selective toward a particular individual, the mate. No, more like some neural wires are crossed — and we previously wondered if batterers were sort of synesthesiacs — having not color/letter autonomic association, but love/hate or mate/threat synesthesia. ( Wife batterers: A synesthesia subtype?) Cognitively, the rationale is internally inconsistent: if you detest and loathe someone so much, then why have them around so you can kick them, metaphorically or literally? Just as a matter of resource utilization, intimate partner violence is an opportunity cost: all that energy spent harming someone the batterer loathes could be spent on finding someone new.
Even vindictive stalking isn’t generalized sexism, it is aggressive hostility toward a specific person. (The “stalking post” has comments from a number of vindictive-type stalkers, and even they themselves don’t understand why they do what they do, although they seem to come up with ex post facto rationales based on power or getting even or something.)
There is a mate retention strategy, too: Men who feel lame with their women use verbal abuse to bring the women down to their level as a mate retention strategy (Blogged here, with the pertinent question, “What do you do if you think your girl is going to run off with the pool guy? Insult her.”)
What’s the biology? Vasopressin has a lot to do with selective mating — that is, picking a particular mate, and being monogamous. In various animals, such as animals in the desert or around brackish water, the salinity/peripheral blood tonicity regulates mating behavior, as well as the expression of vasopressin-related genes. Puffer fish go from the the bay to the backwaters to mate; meadow voles living in salt marshes breed in the winter — when there’s less salinity than in the summer.
Our little monogamous friends the prairie vole have particular vasopressin receptors. They lurve to be with their mates. Yet, the little monogamous voles will attack — rather than try to mate with — a novel, temptress female. The little monogamous male vole acts like “you’re not my girlfriend, let me bite you.” The attack isn’t to the death, but the little monogamous voles don’t view the new female as a potential mate-substitute. This kind of attack – not based on physical threat but based on the female being novel — seems similar to that of domestic violence. Sort of intruder aggression, or a Bush-Doctrine pre-emptive strike.
Here’s video from Dr. Young, who follows voles into the mating lab with a video camera, at Emery University — see 1:45 or so for the experiment when you have a new female on one side, and the mate on the other side, and you drop the male in the middle — the male attacks the new female and goes to snuggle with the mate:
Batterers have both behaviors: they selectively bond with their mates, and they treat their mates with similar intruder aggressive type behavior. (There are all sorts of confounding factors, etc. this is a generalization). Batterers claim that their mates have all sorts of loathsome characteristics, that they were merely defending themselves, and seem to be either lying or paranoid or maybe both. (Here)
The social threat detector is selectively stuck, but just for their mates. Here are random facts that are probably the dots to connect :
- The amygdala is active in social threat detection. (Neither here nor there: high functioning psychopaths have an amygdala that is selectively smaller in areas, blogged here). Amygdala central nucleus in part controls sodium intake, at least in rats. (Here’s an excellent review article on sodium appetite also called salt appetite.)
- Aldosterone, produced in the adrenal glands, relates to salt appetite, and upregulates HSD11B2 , an enzyme that relates to endogenous steroids as well as blood pressure (see here )
- Dietary salt , as well as vasopressin, is related to vasoconstriction/blood pressure — and when you’re threatened, your blood starts pumping. And, salt and water are in a yin and yang so, not surprisingly, brain water content is modulated with vasopressin receptor antagonists (here, e.g.).
- What lets brain water in and out of brain cells? Aquaporin-4, a type of water channel molecule. Testosterone upregulates aquaporin-4 ( here cultured cells) Plus, testosterone increase when mating means good quality paternal care — at least in mice (here). (Whether testosterone is responsible for generalized aggression is questionable, from recent papers)
- It looks like letting water in and out of brain cells related to salt/steroids is part of threat response and calming down.
- If men fail to release testosterone and accumulate steroids in the brain when in the presence of a long term mate (e.g., bonded mate), could this be a form of selective roid rage?
So the biological algebra shows something is messed up here:
vasopressin + testosterone + steroids = salt + amygdala + high blood pressure and social threat
Vasopressin = salt in the blood = aquaporin 4 modulation = interfering with testosterone aquaporin 4 upregulation?
My guess is that the trail leading from voles and desert animals mating where/when there’s more water/less salt will have a dotted line to selective agression against one’s mate. The dotted line has vasopressin and its receptors (particularly relating to amygdalar saline regulation), aquaporin-4 upregulation by testosterone and vasopressin receptor activation. Whether inducing dietary water or reducing dietary salt would make a batterer less likely to have that vasopressin “you’re not my mate so I’m going to attack you” response should be checked out.
For the male supremacists who get their undies in a bunch when talking about male perpetuated domestic violence who want to go into the “well women do it too” argument, see the stats after the jump and any comments derailing the biology argument will be deleted by fiat.
From the Violence Policy Center, “When Men Murder Women,” (September 2009, reporting on 2007 homicide data)
In 2007, there were 1,865 females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents that were submitted to the FBI for its Supplementary Homicide
Report.10 These key findings from the report, expanded upon in the following sections, dispel many of the myths regarding the nature of lethal violence against women.
o For homicides in which the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 91 percent of female victims (1,587 out of 1,743) were murdered by someone they knew.
o More than 10 times as many females were murdered by a male they knew (1,587 victims) than were killed by male strangers (156 victims).
o For victims who knew their offenders, 62 percent (990) of female homicide victims were wives or intimate acquaintances of their killers.11
o There were 315 women shot and killed by either their husband or intimate acquaintance during the course of an argument.
o Nationwide, more female homicides were committed with firearm (51 percent) than with any other weapon. Knives and other cutting instruments accounted for 21 percent of all female murders, bodily force 14 percent, and murder by blunt object seven percent. Of the homicides committed with firearms, 76 percent were committed with handguns.
o In 88 percent of all incidents where the circumstances could be determined, homicides were not related to the commission of any other
felony, such as rape or robbery.
Previous articles:
“Family Annihilators“: Whether mad or sad, it’s entitlement and control
Superbowl Sunday: Why Do Men Kill Their Wives?
33% of all men murdered are murdered by ex-wives. Ooops I meant women murdered by ex-husbands.
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