Young Men and Violence

Prof. Brown’s column and ideas have got to be helped into oblivion. She presents the now-current sex-is-gender argument which flies in the face of what Darwin so painstakingly showed, and as a professor she has got to know better.

Two-thirds of Charles Darwin’s famous “Descent of Man,” 1872, was “Sexual Selection,” a book within a book. In it Darwin marshalled the evidence that all dimorphisms play a part in sexual selection--all, that is, from spreading antlers and bright plumage to our breasts and beards, height, musculature, voice and silhouette. And of course with the obvious result, logical and Darwinian, differential sexual selection in favor of these attributes produced more of these attributes. Furthermore, as some of us post-Darwinians have pointed out, we also inherit a psychobiological impetus toward further and deliberate differentiation--in manners, dress, grammar, behavior, tonsure, gait and attitudes. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge and belief these are all universals, the common built-in inheritance of mankind.

I pass over (with amazement but no particular alarm) Prof. Brown’s suggestion that we need to impose draconian educational measures on little boys to condition them against future rape, etc. But I do suggest that--out of respect for her appointment and her university--she reread her Darwin.

DAVID ALAN MUNRO

Laguna Beach