If you enjoyed this article, please share it with a friend or consider becoming a paid subscriber. Wednesday’s article is always free. Sunday’s article is for paid subscribers only.
One of the most timeless storylines in art, literature, and Hollywood is the transformation of the bad boy through the love of a good woman. This plot device is so epic that it is even preserved in clay tablets in the oldest surviving literary work, The Epic of Gilgamesh.
In this ancient Mesopotamian makeover tale, the wild man, Enkidu, runs around with animals like he’s auditioning for Animal Planet. So, the favored temple priestess, Shamhat, is called upon to mend Enkidu’s frat boy ways.
She and Enkidu get busy for six days and seven nights in a marathon therapy session, but with less talking and more, well…you know. After their extended rendezvous, Enkidu trades his wanton roughhousing for bread, beer, domesticity, and basic human decency.
Once humans invented paper, they recycled this storyline. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet molds the aloof and prideful Mr. Darcy into a more vulnerable, sincere, and open-hearted gentleman. In Wuthering Heights, a brooding Heathcliff is softened (and broken) by his love for Catherine Earnshaw. In The Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy Blakeney is a frivolous and foppish aristocrat until his wife, Marguerite, tempers his reckless tendencies.
The bad boy turned good motif is repeated in modern romances. In 50 Shades of Grey, Christian Grey is a cold, calculating, wealthy businessman with a dark past and a penchant for whips and chains until Anastasia Steele chips away his emotional barriers. The predator is appeased by his prey.
Essayist Brooke Allen sums up our enchantment with flawed men as “a sorry collection of alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, manic-depressives, sexual predators, and various unfortunate combinations of two, three, or even all of the above.”
Then, a woman enters the picture, and the beast surrenders to beauty. The message is clear: only a good girl can tame a bad boy.
Humans tell the same stories generation after generation to make sense of our world. Our stories allow us to love, lose, hope, fear, and die without taking risks. In other words, stories teach us moral lessons so we do not have to make these mistakes in real life. In essence, we are actors in our self-conceived drama, or, as Shakespeare wisely mused, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Without stories, we would fumble through the roles we play.
But how much of these moral lessons are grounded in reality? Do women tame men?
Criminologists have debated this question for decades. One landmark longitudinal study on crime tracked a thousand low-income Boston teenagers for 45 years. The researchers found two factors contributed to avoiding a life of crime: securing stable employment and forging a meaningful bond through marriage.
Overall, marriage reduced crime by 35%, which was even more significant if the man reported high marital attachment. Marriage has such a strong mitigating effect on crime that it has been coined The Marriage Effect.
However, when comparing the crime rates of married and non-married men directly, we face the usual correlation bias. Men who are more likely to marry may be less prone to violence, right? Not so fast.
Researchers used inverse probability weighting (IPW) to weed out these character traits. In its simplest terms, IPW gives more weight to the characteristics of non-married men who are similar to those who choose to marry. This way, we can get a more accurate comparison between the two groups by adjusting for the factors that might make them different in the first place.
Researchers concluded marriage does lower aggression and violence rather than just the differences in the types of people who choose to marry. That’s one point for taming the bad boy.
More interestingly, researchers found that women who married a non-convicted spouse were less likely to commit crimes themselves. It makes sense. You are the company you keep. If you marry a thug, you are more likely to act thuggish. We are enchanted by Bonny and Clyde, not because of their crimes but because of the crimes they committed together.
Our society also judges single men more harshly. One longitudinal study found that men who were cohabiting or married had a 40–65% lower risk of being suspected of a crime compared to those who were single. So perhaps the player who won’t commit becomes bad because society expects him to.
But while marriage may keep men out of jail, sociologists are not entirely sure why. One theory is that married men are likelier to spend time with relatives, children, and other couples than single men. Obviously, you are less likely to rob a bank with a wife and toddler in the getaway car. Not to mention, it sets a bad example for the kiddos.
Another theory for how women tame men can be found in the temperance movement. Throughout history, alcohol consumption has been the impetus for violence.
So, when women started heading West to join the menfolk, those dainty schoolmarms (and frisky sex workers) also brought with them an air of civilization. Men were sex-starved, and women were looking for husbands.
You can guess who had the bigger bargaining chip in this hormonal Gold Rush. Thus, the smart gals put one stipulation on their handsome, steely-eyed cowboys — quit drinking.
Many did, and that was a damn good thing for the future of America. Research shows that people who are prone to punch first and apologize never become even more so with a belly full of liquid courage. Fortunately, research also shows that married men are 60% less likely to become alcoholics. Love and neurotoxins never mix.
Marriage not only keeps men out of trouble. It also keeps them out of poverty. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, married men and women represent 27% of upper-income Americans. In comparison, unmarried men represent only 17% of upper-income Americans, and unmarried women represent 13% of wealthy Americans. Obviously, money lowers your propensity toward crime.
Unfortunately, marriage rates have been dropping in recent years. In the US, marriage rates have fallen by almost 50% since 1972. They are now at the lowest in recorded human history.
But it’s not just marriage on the decline. Much ink has been spilled on the “great sex recession.” According to recent studies spanning 2006–2019, the numbers are a bit overblown except in one group — young men. While Boomers are busier than ever, Gen Z is ghosting sex.
These statistics matter for one reason. As men and women stop choosing each other, they may turn to different outlets. Humans will make love or war. And war is a young person’s game.
But if one good woman tames a bad man, you might assume that being around many women also lowers crime rates. The obvious assumption is that when men do not have to compete for mates, they are less violent. Interestingly, a longitudinal study found the complete opposite.
The researchers used a perfect microcosm for a female-dominant world — colleges. Currently, colleges are so heavily skewed with female attendants that sociologists have called it “the golden penis effect.” In many colleges, women now outnumber men by 4 to 3.
The researchers found that when women outnumber men, men are more likely to choose casual sex and are also more prone to violence. Basically, men are likelier to break the rules when they don’t have to compete for mates. Forget Big Brother is watching. Apparently, it’s Big Mother watching that pacifies men.
As men and women stop choosing each other, they may turn to different outlets. Humans will make love or war.
Of course, many will argue that biology plays a role in this debate. Some men have more testosterone, and those men are more likely to commit crimes. Or so the theory goes from the science bros.
To complicate matters, testosterone has been trending. Lately, every male influencer seems to be touting the wonders of this little sex hormone. From eating testicles to shining infrared light on your balls, promoting T has become big business. But if the Roganites really want to amp up their T, simply never settle down. Study after study finds testosterone drops after marriage and kids in both men and women.
Researchers found this true even when tracking the same men over different life stages. When a man goes through a divorce, his testosterone rises. Once that same man enters a committed relationship again, his testosterone lowers. I guess this is Mother Nature’s way of benching the players who don’t want to play.
Of course, if we really wanted to test the influence of testosterone on aggression, researchers would need to eliminate it. Unfortunately, researchers can’t castrate men in the name of science because no college student is that desperate for cash. I hope.
But they can castrate primates. So, researchers experimented on talapoin monkeys by having one group that was castrated and a control group that was not. Then they gave the castrated monkeys whopping doses of testosterone to see if they could turn them into little arses. (They measured their jerkiness by aggression toward other monkeys in the group.)
The castrated males did become slightly more aggressive, but only toward the lower-ranking males, whom they were already aggressive toward before they lost their balls. More importantly, the castrated monkeys didn’t move up in rank after the hormone therapy. Obviously, rank allows you more access to females. There goes the allure of the bad boy.
However, there is another side to this thorny debate that Miss Dorothy Parker will settle. She once quipped, “If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.” Perhaps Hollywood is right. What really tames a bad boy is a woman with a touch of badness.
Carlyn Beccia is an award-winning author and illustrator of 13 books. Subscribe to Conversations with Carlyn for free content every Wednesday, or become a paid subscriber to get the juicy stuff on Sundays.
Do Women Tame Men?
Of course, women tame men. It is in the natural order of masculine-feminine integration. But sometimes, in modern times, women tame men too much. And then the woman regrets it. The sexual tension of polarity is disrupted.
Essayist Brook Allen could just as easily have said that women are sometimes enchanted by dark-triad fuck-boys. It is ubiquitous to the point of boring to hear about how women chose the “wrong” guy. Chemistry and the unconscious hope of protection/security often supersede a woman’s assessment of character in their first marriage.
The marriage effect is real. As you implied, sexual access is ALWAYS the “bigger bargaining chip.” Men are willing to be tamed to stay in the bedroom.
Marriage may keep men out of poverty (providing will keep the woman happier), but the cause and effect are blurred here. Impoverished men do not get chosen, so they don’t marry in the first place.
There is a general male sex deficit, https://www.matingstraighttalk.com/the-male-sexual-deficit-social-fact-of-the-21st-century/ but attractive men on campus have a ratio advantage – causing more lousy behavior – more violence (rule-breaking) makes sense. “Big mother” (a woman to impress and win) is always a pacifier.
Testosterone and aggression are a bit tricky to isolate and correlate. I did not quite understand your comment, “There goes the allure of the bad boy,” in your talapoin monkey example.
Anyway, one thing is for sure. Dorothy Parker had it right, “if you wear a short skirt, the party will come to you.” Do you want to tame us out of war games (ala Lysistrata)? No problem. Just don’t deny us sex. (Of course, we go to war to win territory and sex partners - so there is also that.)
For a heterosexual man, sexual access is the prime directive, marriage or not.
BTW, most of my boomer male friends have been tamed so much it is painful to watch. And they are getting no sex to boot. They are just happy not to be criticized as much.
(From one of the “science bros” – the rich and established science of evolutionary biology and psychology.)