human beings don't kill other human beings. For example, it takes a lot of effort and training to teach a soldier to take the life of another person.

Recruits have to be "torn down" and built up again to become part of a military unit. It's not just about molding them into rank and file members of a group that can take orders in the midst of chaos and face danger and the possibilty of their own deaths. Blithely blowing a recognizable human figure into torn and bleeding parts is not an inherent aspect of the human psyche.

Frustration, anger, lashing out to a degree, babies experience that. However, nearly every human social group on the planet has some cultural means for mitigating that behavior. Turning a person to serious violence requires a different set of cultural conditioning.

There is also a specific set of psychological factors that lies beneath the ugly need for a (generally) physically stronger man to hurt a (generally) physically weaker woman. Add to that centuries of cultural conditioning that demeans and dehumanizes women and the scope of the problem reveals itself.

If women -- who are obviously physically stronger than the vulnerable children they give birth to and raise-- were as consistantly brutal to children as men have been to women in many cultures, humankind would simply not have survived. This point refutes the idea that we are "naturally" brutal and violent.

We come into this world as helpless beings who need constant care. In a significant way, "Nature" coded us for "Nuture". We cannot truly thrive without nuture, caring and empathy.

This gives me hope for our species in dark moments. Even the painful struggle of soldiers trying to return to everyday life as decent fathers, sons, husbands (and yes, mothers, daughters and wives to a degree) is poignant proof that violence and brutality are not the dominent, "default" state of our species.

Separating people into "others" is the first step in separating people from empathy. Casting women into the role of essential "other" is the critical first step in fostering deep seated misogyny. Men have been taught that the very bodies they grow inside belong to creatures that are something not quite human.

This is insanity. We are one human race. We need each other to survive as a species. We need acceptance of the whole of humanity in order to accept ourselves individually as whole humans.

Men who kill women in the context of domestic relations are not just lacking in fundamental decency, there are lacking in fundamental humanity. You can't declare over half of your DNA as less than human, and claim to be a full human yourself.