So the top shot-caller puts it out, a major, major dis on the other guys and everybody on the street is like, “What the fuck?”, because everybody knows this top guy is savvy, he knows exactly what kind of shit he just stirred up. The other guys say it ain’t over yet. They already burned a couple places and they hit one of their women, shot her in the back.

The talk on the street is war, that the top guy who put out the dis aint safe. Who knows? With whack guys like these who’s gonna predict anything? Check it out – the top guys all totally gave up sex, like that’s gonna get em somewhere, like that aint totally whack. Turns out (no shit !) it did get em somewhere – a whole lot of these top guys end up bein punks, messin with little boys. Their protection held for a while, but then it was no good, so couple of em end up goin in for some time. But it’s like nobody gives a shit, like forget about how whack this organization is. They got their women lined up on some weird shit too. No sex for them either. One of them takes a hit after the top shot-caller’s dis, then she says she forgives the guys who hit her! Maybe they shoulda forgave those top guys punkin the little boys, maybe a little forgiveness woulda put a stop to them messin with the little boys.

Yeah on the street they’re askin “What was this top guy thinkin?” Thing is, he don’t have to care. Check out his bling-bling. Whatever kinda fear and protection he’s peddlin, it’s givin him the juice.

Eating compulsively (when the intake of food is beyond what is needed physiologically) is substance abuse, literally. Some of the same pleasure-reward pathways in the brain are involved as when substances we call “drugs” are ingested. Hence, “comfort food”. Maladaptive side effects of alcohol abuse include liver damage, etc.; those of food abuse include the health consequences of obesity, blood sugar imbalances, etc. The only real difference is that, arbitrarily, abuse of “drugs” is constructed as a psychiatric disorder and often a criminal act, while chronic abuse of food is not.

Substances are abused because the effects in the brain allow temporary escape of negative emotional states, in the case of food probably typically anxiety. Research links development of anxiety in children to perception of threat in their environment, including lack of responsiveness from secure attachment figures - not specifically female, male, or parent, but lack of care giving. So it seems to make perfect sense that abuse of food would be related to lack of care and other dysfunction perceived as insecurity in the child’s environment.

What about adult obesity? We also know that generally anxiety likely develops when access to resources needed for survival are not within the individual’s control. When an individual is subject to arbitrary and uncontrollable denial of access to resources necessary for survival, and especially without a compensatory social support system, we would expect anxiety to develop. We describe the conditions which would predictably lead to anxiety and abuse of food in terms of individualism and capitalism.

We can make some sense of the Colorado killing as related to the status of girls and women, but only if willing to face some discomfort.

The 16 year old girl was NOT killed “before police managed to intercede”, but in fact as a result of a decision to intercede aggressively. Would the man have killed anyone having released four of the girls? We’ll never know, but we have no evidence to suggest he intended to.

Few threats elicit more aggression and less deliberation from males than “their” women being taken sexually by an outsider male. It’s primal, “hard-wired”. Reports point specifically to threat of the sexual assault, but not killing, of young women as the trigger for the raid and gunfight that left the girl dead. No evidence has surfaced to suggest the gunman intended to kill the young women he held hostage. What the local sheriff’s comments consistently suggest is that he intervened violently, and with tragic results, based on a drive to keep “my girls”, as he put it, from being sexually molested.

If the best interests and well being of the young women themselves had been in the forefront, then action would have been driven by preservation of life, and sexual assault seen as a lesser evil than death. They weren’t and it wasn’t, because this became less an issue about the lives of the young women than a conflict between men over women.

Women have been subject to evolutionary, historical and social forces which, as Jane Austen so effectively teaches us, result in their being dependent on being chosen as mates. Even today, most women are driven to assess males based on the male's ability (through competition and agression) to command resources. "Success" for males in competitively estabishing themselves as providers is fostered by suspension of trustworthiness and empathy, success in sexually pleasing a woman by the opposite.

The small percentage of women who become independent resource-wise are free to choose good lovers, and the research suggests that maybe they do. Why not?

It's unfortunate that Broadsheet has to some extent dismissed Louann Brizendine's work (The Female Brain). She provides research based insights into this and other fascinating gender issues.