This idea that males are physically aggressive and females are not has distinct drawbacks for both sexes.

Basically, we are pack animals. We may be evolving toward hive animals. The nature of the pack is that if all the eyes of the pack are on you, you are either the leader, or you are lunch. So it's a basically hazardous situation to have the eyes of the pack upon you. And I think that's really visceral. I think that's bred in the bone. That's species - deep.

I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.

I know if I were in your generation I would be really tired of seeing Sophia Loren as a sex object.

In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool.

The more potent, unasked question is how society at large reacts to eager, voluntary violence by females, and to the growing evidence that women can be just as aggressive as men.

And while national military forces have historically resisted the full participation of women soldiers, female talent has found plenty of scope in revolutionary and terrorist groups around the planet.