Sir, - Ms Holmquist's article on the relation between gender and violence (May 9th) moves the social perception a little closer to a respectable scientific certainty. She seems to envisage a natural affinity between males and violence something that the fairer sex presumably escapes.
Certainly a statistical analysis of male violence (as Ms Holmquist ably demonstrates) will bear out the case for a delinquent sex, particularly if one can avoid too close an examination of the basic premises of such a hypothesis.
The basic premise of such a hypothesis is that the level of violence can be determined with reference to what is socially good, e.g., the operation of justice in society. In addition, this notion of social good is mobilised to reflect favourably on those who (like Ms Holmquist and the fairer sex) are found within the bounds of the criminal law this leaves the opposing gender permanently slotted in the company of the violent and the criminal.
But can violence be defined today, solely in terms of criminal records or breaches of the law? Without resorting to miscarriages of justice (e.g., the Birmingham Six, etc.,) it will be abundantly clear from recent exposures that by far the greater bulk of violence, affecting the weaker sections of society, child care, the socially disadvantaged, minorities etc., will escape, not only the rigour of the law, but also the judgment of history.
Thus there are two kinds of violence that which the system isolates for corrective treatment, and that which the normal operation of society sanitises and renders respectable in the name of a sort of religious humanism. There is no way of proving that the latter type (by far the greater) is the monopoly of either sex.
Could it be that this type, the one which escapes public scrutiny, is the one which is not generally applicable to the male? There is no way to answer such a question. Without statistical evidence, there is no way in which a case can be made for the moral superiority of any section of society vis-d-vis the operation of hidden violence.
It seems to be part and parcel of every community that the victims and/or criminals will be all on the outside, and that those inside, like the readers of select newspaper will be prone to a sort of moral arrogance whose arguments, when analysed thoroughly, will fall nothing short of cultural imperialism. Yours, etc., Wellington Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.