Apollyon wrote:
I'm going to say, it is because of testosterone.
In my own personal experience though, I have seen way more female stalkers. It's very different than male stalkers though, and I believe with women it has more to do with insecurities than anything.
I have had one male stalker (who actually was mentally ill- so it had nothing to do with me, other than me being very, very naive.)
As opposed to five female stalkers.
However, experience, as I'm learning, does not represent the norm. I'm curious if there are studies about this phenomena. Though like I said, women have a very different way of doing it. Maybe subtle. Maybe they don't even realize they're doing it.
In th past I have had both male and female stalkers, but mostly male. I don't get stalkers now, largely because I've identified my own behaviors that attracted them and sought to modify those behaviors, but also because I no longer run in the social circles where I was more likely to meet potential stalker types. Such patterns - like what soical circles stalker types gravitate toward - are very telling. For me, I met most of my stalkers through college and musi/artistic circles. Common traits that I observed in these people were they were very emotionally immature, lacked strong sense of personal identity, felt socially marginalized and were looking for some form of validation from other people.
I do believe with men, testosterone plays a big part. Studies of the effects of testosterone show it can increase irrational, anti-social (against or in defiance of social norms) and risk-taking behaviors, as well as competitiveness and aggression. But also things like insecurity, lack of personal validation and feelings of social marginalization I think play a part as well. From my expereince, all the men who stalked me (that I was aware of) felt disenfrancised by mainstream society. In some cases, they felt victimized by society and were downright enraged. Some because of race, others because of financial status, others because of their looks or lack of social skills, etc., etc. Probably in several cases, these problems were compounded by some form of mental illness or disorder that further isolated them. They felt that their "connection" with me (I've always been a sucker for a sob story) validated them in some way that they weren't getting elsewhere. I think that fueled a lot of their obsession.
Despite the distorted social convention that women are more emotional than men, we now know from neuro science and psychology that men do not possess the same emotional control as women (partly due to testosterone, and partly due to how our frontal lones develop differently), and if they have a neuro disorder like ADHD or even AS, their impulse control may be impaired further. So when such an individual feels a sense of "finally" being validated by someone, even if illusionary, it is extremely powerful - and dangerous, as too many women have found out.
With women stalkers, I think there is mental illness and frontal lobes disturbances likely play a role too. I once saw a doc about female violent offenders, and the studies showed their brains worked more like violent maleoffenders (men who had committed similar crimes) than normal, non-criminal women. I suspect something like that happens with women stalkers too - something in their hormonal or neuro make-up that causes them to behave more like an irrational male stalker than a normal woman. "Normal" women can be very jealous and competitive, but we are wired to act these feelings out in passive-aggressive ways and not aggessive ones. This is why spouse-murdering women are more inclined to poison their husbands, whereas men are more inclined to kill their wives by some violent method like stabbing or shooting. Women are not, by our hormonal and neuro nature, inclined to the same obsessive and violent behavior as men are. From my personal experience, I have found that a "normal" woman who cannot be with a person she wants is more likely to do something passive-aggressive, like sabotage another woman's advances toward that person, rather than agressive, like stalk the guy. I can also say that all my female stalker did not behave in this conventional passive-aggressive way, but were much more aggressive and openly manipulative more similar to my male stalkers than "normal" women.
12 Nov 2007, 11:07 am
