QotD: Why men murder

While a man, sociobiologically speaking, seeks a beautiful young woman as the (or a) mother of his children — beauty being a biological metonym for health — a woman seeks a man who is of high social status, because he will be a better, more secure provider for their children. This distinction helps to explain why men are much more likely to kill in response to public humiliation than women, and also why murder is, statistically speaking, a lower-class crime. Lower class men are more sensitive to insult because they have nothing to offer women except raw physical power, an asset that declines sharply with age. If they fail to display such raw physical power in response to a public challenge or humiliation, their value as a potential mate vanishes altogether. They face genetic oblivion.

Theodore Dalrymple, "The Murderer Next Door: The limits of sociobiology", City Journal, 2006-04-24