Erika at TIME.com
Here’s a link to my contributor page at TIME.com, where you can read the most recent of my TIME columns. And here’s a list of all pieces to date (including the joint-authored ones with my husband, Nicholas Christakis):
The Boy Scouts Have A Lot To Learn From the Girl Scouts, TIME.com, May 23, 2013
Angelina’s Mastectomy: Altered Bodies Are Already the Norm, TIME.com, May 16, 20213
Want To Reduce Sports Violence? Make Teens Referee Their Own Games, TIME.com May 8, 2013
Two Degrees of Separation From a Bomber, TIME.com, April 23, 2013
What’s Really Scandalous About the School Testing Scandal, TIME.com April 2, 2013
Want To Prevent Teen Pregnancy? Pay Teens Not To Get Pregnant, TIME.com March 12, 2013
The Catch-22 of Obama’s Preschool Plan, TIME.com February 19, 2013
Do Teachers Really Discriminate Against Boys? TIME.com February 6, 2013
What the Pygmies Can Teach Us About Childrearing, TIME.com January 30, 2013
Flu Prevention: Why Are Adults Still Sneezing Into Their Hands? TIME.com January 15, 2013
Don’t Rush To Judge On Steubenville, TIME.com January 8, 2013
Rape in India: A Result of Sex Selection? TIME.com, January 4, 2013
The Myth of Second Amendment Exceptionalism, TIME.com December 18, 2012
Whither Goes Free Speech at Harvard? TIME.com December 4, 2012
Adults Read Too Much Into “Sesame Street,” TIME.com November 27, 2012
Petraeus Scandal: Are We Guilty of a Double Standard? TIME.com November 12, 2012
Amherst Rape Scandal: What We Get Wrong About Sexual Assault on Campus, TIME. com October 31, 2012
Adults in Costumes: Have Adults Ruined Halloween? TIME.com October 23, 2012
Women’s Inhumanity to Women, TIME.com October 4, 2012
The Argument You Don’t Hear About Birth Control in Schools, TIME.com September 26, 2012
Is it Really the End of Men? TIME.com September 11, 2012
Harvard Cheating Scandal: Is Academic Dishonesty on the Rise? TIME.com September 4, 2012
Todd Akin Fallout: Rape, Abortion, and the Dark History of Qualifying Violence Against Women, TIME.com August 21, 2012
Is Paul Ryan’s Budget ‘Un-Christian’? TIME.com August 14, 2012
Dancing Around the Death Penalty, TIME.com August 7, 2012
The Overwhelming Maleness of Mass Homicide, TIME.com July 24, 2012
Why Birth Control Matters For the American Dream, TIME.com July 17, 2012
Summer Camp: Can It Make Kids More Responsible? TIME.com July 10, 2012
Modern Parenting: Do We Really Need to Re-invent the Wheel? TIME.com July 5, 2012
The School Bus Bullies: Are Adults To Blame Too? TIME.com June 26, 2012
Are Toilets A Feminist Issue? (The Burden of Bad Sanitation Falls On Women in the Developing World) TIME.com June 19, 2012
Should We Stop Telling Kids That They’re Special? TIME.com June 12, 2012
Why Do Critics Hate Kristen Stewart’s Snow White? TIME.com June 5, 2012
Michelle Obama’s Garden and the Problem With Growing Your Own Food, TIME.com May 30, 2012
College Drinking: Maybe Not a Disorder But Still a Big Problem, TIME.com May 22, 2012
Are Hollywood Men Trying To Gross Us Out? TIME.com, May 15, 2012
The Good News In Teen Births Isn’t Good Enough, TIME.com May 8, 2012
Too Busy for A Summer Job? Why America’s Youth Lacks Basic Work Skills, TIME.com 5/ 1/12,
Did Etan Patz Mark the End of Carefree Parenting? TIME.com 4/24, 2012
The Lessons of the ‘Jesus Is Not a Homophobe’ T-shirt, TIME.com 4/9/12
Goldman Sachs and Sex Trafficking: The Acute Discovery of a Chronic Condition, TIME.com 4/03/12
Trayvon Martin: The Neuroscience of What Makes Us Trigger-Happy, TIME.com 3/26/12
50 Shades of Grey: Why Is It News That Women Like Sex? TIME.com 3/14/12
Men Have Sex too, TIME.com 3/5/12
The Ohio School Shooting: Are Parents To Blame When Kids Take Guns To class? TIME.com 2/28/12
What Got Lost in the Debate About Birth Control, TIME.com 2/20/12
Do We Have a Problem Defining Our Problems? TIME.com 2/3/12
Our Concern Over ‘Indecency’ Is Misguided, TIME.com 1/13/12
Women Should Be Required To Register With the Military, Too, TIME.com 1/3, 2012
The Harsh Bigotry of Twilight-Haters, TIME.com 11/21/11
Why Are We Depriving Our Teens Of Sleep? TIME.com 11/18/11
Has Empathy Become The New Scapegoat? TIME.com 10/12/11
I assume you agree that Mitt Romney doesn’t have the “right” to run for the presidencey of the United States, since he bullied a fellow student as a teenager? This sounds like a simplistic and socially ruinous plan, but I wish you good luck in figuring out what to do with kids downstream who commit wrondoing of adults’ making. You might be interested in Collective Guilt: What Should We Do With Bad Kids?
No female serial killers? Are you crazy? couple sources for you:
http://www.criminaljusticeusa.com/blog/2011/10-infamous-female-serial-killers/
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20217
No, I didn’t say that. Nor am I crazy. I said there are of course rare female serial killers. “Rare” is the operational word. I also said america’s worst “mass murders” (which are different than serial murders) were committed by men. I believe many of my commenters, here, at TIME.com, at CNN, and in my personal email inbox ( where I have been called a cunt several times today)have not actually read my column at all, or not carefully, because they have chosen to be aggrieved rather than listen openly to my words. I don’t hate men; I love them and am a mother of sons and happily married to a great guy (who’s got a hefty dose of testosterone.) I care about violence prevention and believe we should examine all known or knowable risk factors, as we do with all health problems. Being a young man is a risk factor for being both a murderer and a murder victim. Am i remotely suggesting that all men are violent or potentially violent? Come on! Certainly not. What I said is the truth: they are nine times more likely to commit murder than women and represent 80 percent of all victims. How is this not worthy of concern, investigation, and intervention? We need to support young men at risk for violence more effectively, give them more opportunities to grow to be good men. Would more intervention have saved these poor souls in Colorado? We don’t know, and probably never will. But we can learn from these devastating experiences and other homicides that are disproportionately perpetrated by men. I gave the example of depression in young men. It often (not always) looks different than in young women, with more suicide and more violence. Why on earth should we be silent about something about which a better understanding might prevent lives? Some have accused me of wanting to castrate or “cull” men etc. Honestly, people? Grow up. Those kind of knee jerk angry and absurd statements are the easy response to a tough, tragic problem our society is unwilling or unable to confront.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Seegrist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_San_Marcos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Smith
Organic mental illness can manifest a number of ways, not all of them wildly violent, but women are certainly not immune to agressive madness. I would tend to believe that cultural expectations of women have a lot to do with how these disorders present.
May seem strange, but I suspect that “the overwhelming maleness” phenomena has a lot more to with what kind of antisocial behavior is seen as acceptable for a woman versus a man. The larger variable isn’t immediate mass violence, it’s more general: sociopathic behavior. What am I talking about? Example: Are top-level executive women more or less likely than comparable men to engage in illegitimate business practices that catastrophically harm thousands of employees and destroy shareholder value? Is there a sig relationship b/w gender and the likelihood to be a con artist? etc. Mass murder is just one manifestation of the selfish/destructive instinct. And on a side note…does it matter if social and institutional forces create violence versus the alleged free wills of individuals. Right after the massacre in CO, a single auto accident in TX killed about a dozen individuals and that made nary a peep in our public dialogue.
The link between maleness and aggression has been known for thousands of years and is common knowledge. Even animals are more fearful of men than women. Not only do people know it, the animals know it. So if this idea is new to you then you have some catching up to do. Did you ever hear about the theory of evolution? Did you know that people are born with certain traits like gender preferences? Didn’t you know that men through out history tended to be soldiers, policeman, and firemen? Can it be possible that there is a link between being a soldier and being a serial killer? It maybe a surprise but the same aggression that produces great scientists can also produce killers. If you get rid of men you also will also get rid of the Einsteins, Galileos, and Isaac Newtons. If you want women to be soldiers then you want more of them to be serial killers. You can’t have one without the other. If you really want to reduce serial killings then you must support strict law enforcement for violent crime and reduced punishment for non-violent crime. More important we must all support early intervention for those who are mentally ill even if it offends our liberal sensibilities.
I apologize if I was a little harsh in my tone. It seems some of the respondents never heard of the link between maleness and aggression. Base line aggression cannot be nor should it be weeded out. A certain amount of aggression in males and females can be a good thing and with training it can be increased or decreased. In many cases aggression can be changed into something positive. Countries that used their aggression to make war now use that same aggression to compete economically. With individuals there are any number of young people who were once a danger to their community who through sports have become good citizens and a credit to that same community. What is obvious is we need early intervention with both boys and girls so they have a good life and become good citizens.
Mr. Briggs is interesting but I think oversimplifying. The link between gender and different *forms* of aggression in humans may be real, but it is hardly a clear cut case of male = more aggression. Several studies have challenged this idea. As Briggs’ comments suggest, aggression and competition can manifest themselves or be sublimated towards other endeavors in a large variety of ways. Second, even if we allow that it was evolution that created gender-based social roles, male physical capacity itself could explain the occupational division of labor, even assuming that both sexes have or had equal levels of behavioral aggressiveness. But thanks for “catching us up” on the “common” and therefore indisputable knowledge as to why men like to be firefighters and soldiers. So, it’s evolution (and I suppose genetic). Hmmm. I’d suggest that contemporary gender roles could be primarily driven by socially constructed patterns and stereotyping.
The other part of Mr. Briggs’ post is premised on the belief that male aggression itself is the main source of creative energy in human society. Tempting claim but not fully buying that this aggression is gender based (or needs to be so because it is allegedly natural). I lean more to accepting but am not persuaded that violence or aggression are the most creative forms of social energy. I am also not persuaded that civilization isn’t actually the cause of more aggression manifesting itself in violent actions rather than the cure. But these are old and long debates…
I think that I have made it very clear that both nature and nurture have an affect on an individual. Simply put you have two over lapping bell shaped curves where depending on the characteristic the curve that represents males and the curve that represents females is moved in one direction or the other. Social Science works on statistics. Let’s say we play a game were we guess who is more aggressive. There are two people and we know nothing about them except one is male and other is female. I claim that I will make money over the long term if I know the sex of the individuals in the game and I make the first bet. I wonder how many people really believe that that knowing the sex is of no benefit. One of Philips problems is he thinks there is magic formula that always works I believe there are costs and benefits to any characteristic.
I am sorry I am so wordy. I want to cut this short at least for me. The fact that most animals including humans have certain roles for males and females seems to have no affect. The failure of the Scandinavian Counties and Israel to eliminate difference sex roles hasn’t had any affect. My questions is Philip O’s statement, “I’d suggest that contemporary gender roles could be primarily driven by socially constructed patterns and stereotyping,” a meaningful statement or one driven by an irrational faith. If a statement is meaningful then it must be falsifiable. What pray tell would have to happen for Philip O to abandon this idea. Another point is if Philip O is correct then being gay is not genetic but the result of socially constructed patterns. If he is correct then gays can be taught to be straight. The untold harm that this idea has caused we will never know but even the most vocal proponents of this idea have abandoned it. I fail to see how Philip can be consistent and reject the idea that being gay is learned.
I guess I deserve it but Mr. O has oversimplified my argument to the point were I do not recognize it. I made it very clear that aggression is not only a male trait. I will say again there is no such thing as male aggression there is aggression and both males and females have it. Aggression is only one of many factors that lead to improvements in our society. I categorically reject the idea that creativity is identical with aggression but the two are related. I do believe that without aggression most creativity would die before seeing the light of day. There are any number of other factors like being in the right place at the right time that lead to having an idea adopted. Everyone has wonderful creative ideas but only a very few develop them and make them real because some important factor like aggression is missing.
Social versus nature, genetic versus learned. Of course this is a debate that can be and has been tested and debated by many scientific approaches (some not so scientific…say our deskchair blogging). Any of our somewhat competing proposals can be hypothesized as a null and tested.
Of course I did not say I was an absolutist regarding the nature/nurture argument. I wrote that I suspect that learned (socially created and/or reinforced) roles are primary regarding aggression. Change the role expectation and you can significantly change the behavior. Just ask Margaret Thatcher. As the physical nature of competition becomes less important (technology is always the great equalizer and displacer of nature) so the importance for natural gender distinction will decline.
Now for the argument about genetic determinism as it applies to sexual preference. On this issue I don’t see how anyone can be an absolutist either way. I accept that science suggests that there are individuals who are genetically homosexual or heterosexual. But that does not make homosexuality a purely genetically determined preference. (1) Behaviorally we know social constraints can ultimately determine a whole bunch of behavioral traits (with very mixed consequences). But more important, (2) the behavior itself may exist independent of genetic code even though for some it is genetically determined. Some people probably have a genetic predisposition to abhor the taste and effect of a certain food or drink — say dairy products. That doesn’t mean that everyone who doesn’t have this trait will enjoy dairy products. So let’s talk normal distributions. Gender preference is possibly a set of three or four discrete (perhaps genetically determined) categories (homo, hetero, bi, asexual). But preference also might exist on a continuum, especially for those best genetically suited to be able to exercise some volition along that continuum. It is these folks that are most open to social learning for the given behavior.
Aside from the scientific debate, I understand the appeal of the genetic defense of gay rights (something I support entirely). It has validity and is an effective argument in our current political culture. However, one can easily imagine a different political climate where arguments about genetics would be quite useless or even *harmful* to the interests of homosexuals. The right to be straight, gay, bi should not be limited by a perspective that ignores the rights of those whose preferences are just that — their preferred choices. Gore Vidal was wrong to claim absolutely that there are only homo and heterosexual acts not homo and heterosexual persons. But I suspect he’s correct regarding the mode of the normal distribution.
I’d suggest that contemporary gender roles could be primarily driven by socially constructed patterns and stereotyping. I believe that genetics, learning and choices made by the individual play a part. The problems with terms like primarily how it’s defined. The point about genetics if there are no genes there would be no person to have a role. As for learning without it there would be no social interactions. What it comes down to is my objection to social engineering where maleness is treated like a disease. As a male I was attacked and insulted because of my gender for as long as I remember. This on going abuse has damaged me irrevocably. And now that I am able I will stand up for myself and males.
Regarding your recent article on Time which I can see is starting an internet flame war.
You stated the following:
“No reasonable person can imagine how despair could possibly lead to premeditated mass homicide.”
I would like to state that you clearly do not know nor understand what happens to people when they enter depression. I’d like to try and explain depression to you. Sorry if I offend you. Also English is my second language so sorry for bad grammar.
Depression can differ to from people to people and I can get it at times. When I enter depression, I start to hate the world and sometimes myself, I start to hate being with other people and just want to be by myself. Just remembering small past events that might not matter to some people can easily get me suicidal. Sometimes some people tell me that there are others who have it worst than me and I should be thankful. I hate those guys so much it’s a miracle I haven’t k****d anyone. According to that logic I’m not allowed to complain and should just grin and bear it. Even remembering getting bullied at school can easily send me into depression. I start to hate other people so much that unless you’ve suffered from it, you won’t be able to truly understand it.
That’s what can happen when someone enters depression. I hope you understand it a bit more.
Thank you
Thank you for sharing your perspective and I am sorry you are suffering depression.I hope you get support for your depression. I know how debilitating it can be and I don’t think you should grin and bear it. It’s very, very hard when people expect a depressed person to have sufficient perspective to understand that others have it worse somehow. I can see how that would enrage you.
In using the term “reasonable,” I meant “being in full control of one’s reason” (i.e. not being acutely mentally ill) but I went on to say that most (not all) of the people who have committed mass homicides (and many of the people who commit other kinds of less sensationalized murders) aren’t “crazy’ in the way that the public imagines them to be. I discussed the rage and anguish that sometimes afflicts young men and how it can become channeled into violence.
I was just trying to drive home the point that despair can make people (especially men, given the statistics) feel incredibly out of control to the point of doing things that we would all agree are unacceptable.
I do understand a bit more. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.
Ah, ok
Thanks for your time.
Please note that I say your letter to Time on a site and by god do those people on that site hate you.
: )
Erika,
As a male, I applaud your article that appeared in Time. I’m glad someone is asking questions about rampage and serial killers, and observing their gender. It’s also not surprising to read the hate mail you received on the blog. Do I dare guess the gender of those sending out the vicious attacks?
I also have another thing for you to consider. The castrato singer Faranelli was a man who was a victim of a horrendously cruel and brutal practice of the 1700′s, though he was famous all over Europe for his falsely-made soprano voice. What is interesting is to note what friends and colleagues said about him. I have not found one word written about Faranelli that disputed the fact that he was the most genuinely nice man they had ever met. He was considerate, compassionate–the list goes on and on.
I’m sorry that I didn’t finish my post above. The story of Faranelli gives insight into the problem you are addressing, by observing an opposite situation. I wish you well in your research.