| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
The scientific names of the animals discussed are given in an appendix, along with a glossary for unusual but necessary terms.
To conclude this introduction, and keeping in mind the insidiousness of bias, we give our own personal statements about our experiences with aggression.
Personal Statement by Dagg
I am a middle-class woman who does not visit bars but who has been out and about for many years. I have read about angry men who beat up their wives and murder their enemies. In movies I have seen thousands of men acting in rage, smashing furniture and blowing up buildings. I have seen endless competitors in ice hockey games tripping and high-sticking each other. But in real life, I have never seen a man act in a violent way toward any other person (except for spanking a child, unfortunately). Once at a party, the host called his grown-up son a “mongrel,” at which the son stood up from the dinner table in anger, waving his fists. However, the host stayed seated, rolled his eyes, and the son soon sat down again. Dinner carried on. Men are more aggressive than women, but aggressiveness in no way defines them.
Personal Statement by Harding
Unlike Dagg, I have seen men fighting each other and have done so myself, but not since university. It is my guess that every boy coming of age has opportunities to either accept a challenge and fall or stand as the victor or to decline and be thought a coward. Certainly this was a near-universal experience in my junior high school and high school, but it was rare in university and never, in my own experience, occurred in adulthood.
A personal statement about male aggression would be incomplete without mentioning that I had another opportunity to fight when, as an American, I was drafted for the Vietnam War. Among my close circle