Despite the popular tropes, boys aren't always naughty, and girls aren't always nice.

Research suggests women are slightly more agreeable, altruistic and prosocial than men.

In history, women have fought tooth and claw with poisoned daggers and hired armies to defend their families.

Boys are naughty, girls are nice. Boys are tough, girls are soft. Boys are snips and snails and puppy dog tails; girls are everything nice. So go the tropes.

And the research labs back them up. Women are a bit more agreeable, altruistic, empathetic, compassionate, and prosocial than men. The curves overlap, but neuroimages, physiological measurements, experimental tasks, and self-reports suggest that girls tend to be nicer than boys.

History suggests otherwise. Not all girls are sugar and spice. Some have access to scramasaxes. Some hoard poison boxes. Some hire mercenary armies.

Consider Livia Drusilla.

On the 30th of October, in 39 BC, the first Roman emperor, the man-who-would-be-called Augustus, divorced his wife. On the same day, his only daughter, Julia, was born. She became well-read and quick-witted, well-connected and well-liked; she was empathetic and kind. But she partied hard. There were rumors about orgies in the middle of the city. There were stories about late nights in the forum near the statue of Marsyas, the pipe-playing satyr who was a symbol of freedom, where she made herself available to the most eligible men in Rome. There was gossip about Julius Antonius, who was one of Mark Antony’s sons. The ax fell when Julia was a widow of just 36. Charged with adulterium filiae et consilia parricidii: adultery and plotting to assassinate her father, Julia was shipped off to Ventotene, a waterless hunk of volcanic rock near the Bay of Naples, where she was denied wine and men. She never saw Rome again. Her mother, Scribonia, tagged along.

But her stepmother—Livia—was glad to see her go. And one by one, Julia lost her sons. Lucius, her eldest, got sick and died on his way to Spain at the age of 18; Gaius, her second son, was wounded in Armenia and died at 23 on his way home to Rome. Agrippa, who was Julia’s youngest son, got shipped off to a flat little island near Corsica for sowing his wild oats. A guard was instructed to off him in a note; Livia wrote it herself. All three of those boys were supposed to have been, as Tacitus wrote, “cut off by destiny, or by their stepmother Livia’s treachery.”

By then, Augustus had been succeeded by his stepson, Tiberius Claudius Nero, Livia’s only boy.

Or consider Fredegund.

One day toward the end of AD 575, the king of Austrasia, Sigibert I, was struck by a pair of assassins who came at him with poisoned daggers, or scramasaxes. Fredegund had sent them. Close to a decade later, the king of Neustria, Chilperic I, was struck in the stomach and armpit by another assassin. Brunhilda’s man, Falco, was named. Sigibert’s widow, Brunhilda, was left with Childebert II, her 14-year-old son; Fredegund, who was Chilperic’s widow, was left with Chlothar II, a 4-month-old son.

Months after Chilperic bled to death, Fredegund handed a pair of poisoned poignards, or iron daggers, to a couple of agents who posed as beggars, and told them to make their way with all speed to Childebert, then stab him on both sides. They failed. But Childebert was dead by the age of 25; his son Theudebert was done in after a battle with his brother in 612; and a year later, his other son, Theuderic, got sick and died as he was going to war with Chlothar. After which Sigibert II, Theuderic’s 12-year-old son, was done in. Brunhilda survived all of them.

But Chlothar finished her off. As Fredegar wrote: “He had her hair, one arm and one leg tied to the tail of a wild horse, and she was torn limb from limb by its hoofs and the speed of its course.”

Or consider Isabella.

On the 24th of September, in AD 1326, on a calm sea and under a clear sky, Isabella of France invaded England. Within weeks, she had Eleanor de Clare, her husband’s sister’s daughter, and maybe his lover, locked up in the Tower of London. Eleanor’s husband, Hugh Despenser, was hanged, drawn, and quartered in November, and Isabella’s husband, the king of England, was incarcerated in Kenilworth Castle.

In January, Isabella summoned a parliament to Westminster in her husband’s absence, where Edward II was issued 6 Articles of Accusation. Le Roi nest pas suffisant de governer: The king was incompetent to govern. And on 1 February, her 14-year-old son was crowned. Edward III would rule England for 50 years.

His father was put out of his misery. Nobody is sure how or when he died. But the Brut Chronicle, written soon afterward in the vernacular, does not mince words: “They took a hot spit of burning copper and put it through the horn into his body, and oftentimes rolled it therewith his bowels; and so they quelled their lord.”

Men fight to get access to mates. Like other male primates, and other male mammals, and most other males, men fight for access to the opposite sex. Women do that, but not as much.

Women fight to defend their young. Like other female primates, and other female mammals, and most other females, they compete on their descendants’ behalf. Legacy matters to both parents, but mothers are the front lines.

Under the best of circumstances, women are nurturing mothers, devoted lovers, supportive friends, and kind to strangers.

Under the worst of circumstances, women compete for status, alliances, and material assets. They incarcerate, exile, or kill other women, their husbands, and children.

And their legacies are often genetic.

Tiberius, like other Roman emperors, had access to his wives, to the freeborn children rounded up and shipped to Capri to take part in his orgies, and to dozens or hundreds of slaves, who gave birth to homeborn slaves, or vernae, who became liberti, or freed slaves, and ended up as members of the imperial family, or familia Caesaris.

Chlothar, like other medieval kings, had access to his wives, to his senators’ daughters, and to the gynaecea, or women’s rooms, he kept on his estates. Some of those women gave birth to children who grew up to become judges, counts, bishops, or knights; they were named pueri Regis, literally the children of kings.

Edward III, like other kings of England, had access to his wife and mistresses, to the hundreds of servants who lived in his household, and to the women who followed his court. Like his ancestors, he employed a whore marshal, dismembrare malefactores adjudicatos: dismembering adjudged malefactors.

Women have always fought to live on in their daughters and sons.

“That is just, like, the rules of feminism!”

Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. 1981. The Woman That Never Evolved. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Betzig, Laura. 2013. Fathers vs sons: Why Jocasta matters. In M. Fisher et al., Evolution’s Empress: Darwinian Perspectives on the Nature of Women, pp. 187-203. New York: Oxford University Press.

Betzig, Laura. 2026. Your Eyes Will Be Opened: A History of Women, in preparation.

Stewart-Williams, Steve. 2026. A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women. Santa Ana: Forum Press.

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