The motivation behind many male raids in our ancestral past was the capture of women by the raiding bands. In that world, that meant that some of the men, ended up with multiple mates, and some with only one, while some ended up with none at all. This scenario had a strong tendency to select for males who were brash, fearless, and yes, reckless.20 It has been shown by multiple studies worldwide over a variety of different cultures that young males tend to be more impulsive and careless than young females.21 This innate tendency starts early and really accelerates after puberty. Dr. David Geary writes:
•Boys experience near drowning nearly twice as frequently as girls and die from drowning four times as frequently as girls.
•For each girl that gets seriously burned by fire, three boys sustain similar burns.
•Boys are injured and killed more frequently than girls while riding bikes, on playground equipment, and during sports activities.
•For every girl who is injured on a playground, four boys are.
•Boys experience their highest lifetime levels of testosterone around 17 years old.
•75 percent of arrests for DUI are males 21-35 years of age.
•Ten times as many men as women are put into prison.
•Over 92 percent of workplace deaths are male.
•Nearly 70 percent of the homeless in the US are men.
•80 percent of completed suicides are by men.
•Males are much more likely to be both perpetrators and the victims of violent crimes.
•Dating violence is common. Young women between 18-24 years of age experience this most at nearly three times the rate of the general population.Presumably, this is perpetrated mostly by boys and men their own age.
•Over 20 percent of collegiate women experience some form of sexual assault during their college career.
•Sorority members are one of the most highly susceptible groups on campuses.
•Females ages 16-24 are victims of rape at rates that are four times higher than the rest of the women’s population.
•Females ages 18-24 suffer the highest rate of rape and sexual assault of all age groups.
•Men killing men occurs thirty-fifty times more often than women killing women.
•Males murdering other males occurs most from ages 18-25 and more frequently in unmarried rather than married men.
•Around two thirds of males killing males results from social conflict rather than crime.
•More than half of these murders are related to status competition.
It is clear that the epicenter for the battles of the sexes for young men is their ability to control themselves. This is true not only in the area of violence, but also their sexuality.