Size Matters?

MEN AND VIOLENCE: SIZING UP HOW MEN SIZE UP ONE ANOTHER [More]

So let me guess... we're compensating? Alpha dominance?  Baboon mounting? Amazing, what gets grant money these days, but I guess there's a ruling elite market to find ways to box up and dismiss traditional males as violent brutes.

Sure, size disparity can be a factor (although the toughest man I ever met and would have least liked to try was almost a foot shorter than me). Sure, human nature tends to magnify threats.  Sure, armoring up against an imminent potential foe can prime a battle-ready state of mind if flight isn't an option. My guess is, ivory tower academics who had a light bulb go off over that keen insight never had cause to put on protective gear before a contest.

Somebody needs to formalize this? Whatever. Seems like a cushy gig.

If anything, this makes the case for perception discipline, situational awareness and training. And for a bit of Alinsky Rule 5 ridicule, courtesy of Sgt. Nick Penis and his Brassball Battallion... By the way, comic nerd that I was, I always thought NatLamp was templating off Marvel's pre-Samuel L. Jackson Sgt. Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos, not DC's Sgt. Rock of Easy Company.

And back to the sizing up thing for a moment: Some of us are as polite and deferential to the smaller, the older, the weaker, as we are to the bigger and stronger. Offering respect in personal encounters with others is the default until it is shown not be be deserved.

[Via Sweet Baboo]