The Femicidal Mania Virus a highly contagious pathogen that only infects human males and causes them to attack and kill the women around them. An epidemic of this disease would lead to an epidemic of femicide - the mass and organized murders of women.
Within human males there is a close linkage between the behavioral expression of aggression/predation and sexual reproduction. This close linkage involves many of the same neuromuscular pathways which are utilized both in predatory and sexual pursuit, grasping, mounting, etc., and similar states of adrenergic arousal which are activated in both. The same areas of the brain are stimulated during both acts of sexual behavior and violent/aggressive behavior.
The same linkage is seen in the males of many other species. In many if not all species it is the aggressive behavior which appears first, and then changes to copulatory behavior when the appropriate signal is presented.
A specific neuronal damage within the brain caused by the virus effects a failure of the switching and triggering function of the inhibiting signal in the brains of human males so the male's fighting response continues. Such a dysfunction is expressed by the failure of mating behavior to modify and supervene over the aggressive/predatory response. The result is that sexual stimulation produces attack only, with the stimulation discharging itself through the destruction of the stimulating object, i.e. human females. Simply put, murder occurs as a response to and completion of sexual desire, as sexual attraction manifests itself as sheer femicidal aggression.
Note[]
- The virus is depicted in the short story, The Screwfly Solution by Raccoona Sheldon.