It is interesting to me that in both cases of assault that I experienced over the past week, both were instigated by men in the presence of their female mates. Display behaviors are well described throughout the animal kingdom, being used both for signaling availability for mating and for warning off potentially competitive males (apologies for the hetero-normative assumption here). In both cases I was engaging in a behavior that the other male found objectionable in some fashion. In one case, someone pushed me on a crowded train and I then bumped into the male who then assaulted me, in another case the assaultive male objected to my eosinophilic nasopharyngeal effluence and was, I suspect a germophobe with OCD and ASPD – a hypothesis that I generated from remembering earlier interactions he had with his wife in which he was extremely cold and disengaged with her when she was trying to find out how long the wait for his haircut would be. (Even if not making criteria for the personality disorder, he at least lacks any minimal ability to engage with his wife with any sort of empathy or compassion). In both cases, the male in question resorted to violent displays rather than verbal engagement, which also demonstrates the propensity of males to move towards physical displays and violence when negotiating situations of political ambiguity. I suspect that they were also triggered towards more violent displays by an instinct to protect their female partners. Interesting how the hetero-normative gender roles are elicited in times of emotional dysregulation.
January 14, 2013 by m4u
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