Hi Taylor,
Thanks for your comments about cruelty and gender. I'm new to blogging, so probably didn't make my points as clearly as I should have, but I think if you look carefully you'll find what I said was "most extreme physical cruelty" is done by men, not "all cruelty".
My school was full of females, so believe me, I know about their kind of cruelty! I don't know anyone who seriously argues that women can't be cruel. If you do I'd be interested to see their arguments; in any case I'm not one of them.
When it comes down to extreme physical cruelty, though, I'd point to the historical record. The majority of those who have done the torturing and killing in genocides, war crimes, or even just plain old interpersonal murder are male. That doesn't mean women can't commit atrocities. It means that most atrocities have not to date been carried out by women.
Statistics from the US government in 2005 -- I quote:
"Males were almost 10 times more likely than females to commit murder in 2005."
"For the years 1976-2005 combined, among all homicide victims, females are particularly at risk for intimate killings and sex-related homicides."
Why -- well, that's a fascinating question, and one I do talk about in Cruelty, though as I make clear there it's premature to look for final answers. For one thing, the interesting natural experiment of allowing women to serve in the US military hasn't yet given us enough data to understand the circumstances which lead to women initiating extreme physical cruelty. Did the women at Abu Ghraib -- and other examples of cruel women -- initiate the abuse or follow the lead of male colleagues/superiors?
Look at the abhorrence directed at Myra Hindley, when of the two Moors Murderers Ian Brady was the dominant partner. Current social norms condemn physically cruel women much more than they condemn physically cruel men. If those norms were to vanish, would women and men be found committing war crimes with equal enthusiasm? We can guess, but we just don't know.
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