ApostateAbe
Banned
If you have been to college any time after the year 2000, then you have heard the slogan, "Rape is not about sex, it is about power," or something similar. It means that rapists rape mainly because men, as foot soldiers of the powerful patriarchy, are trying to oppress women, and a man's sex drive does not have much to do with rape. The popularity of that slogan on campuses is bad enough, but you probably never heard anybody respectable disagree with it. Even those who disagreed with it don't want to come off as pro-rape, nor do they want to supply any rhetorical points in favor of the rape culture.
The absurdity isn't just scientifically wrong. It has destructive consequences, namely that any advice to women to protect themselves from rapey men is denounced as blaming the victim. Not that such denouncements would follow even within this theory, but the thinking goes: what we really should be doing is teaching men not to rape. It seems to make sense, because rape is a learned behavior, and we only need to undo that bad teaching. That would be a more efficient use of our opportunities to communicate.
You really have to go out of your way to know how the theory contrasts not just with any lay fool's grasp of reality but also with the body of data on the matter. It is not enough to know that theory was constructed on anecdotes selected by activist authors and reinforced by a lot of bad arguments (see ). A pretty good rundown was provided by John Alcock, 2001, The Triumph of Sociobiology, pages 206 to 211. I supplied the text below, along with Figure 9.5 and the footnotes.
Footnotes:
The absurdity isn't just scientifically wrong. It has destructive consequences, namely that any advice to women to protect themselves from rapey men is denounced as blaming the victim. Not that such denouncements would follow even within this theory, but the thinking goes: what we really should be doing is teaching men not to rape. It seems to make sense, because rape is a learned behavior, and we only need to undo that bad teaching. That would be a more efficient use of our opportunities to communicate.
You really have to go out of your way to know how the theory contrasts not just with any lay fool's grasp of reality but also with the body of data on the matter. It is not enough to know that theory was constructed on anecdotes selected by activist authors and reinforced by a lot of bad arguments (see ). A pretty good rundown was provided by John Alcock, 2001, The Triumph of Sociobiology, pages 206 to 211. I supplied the text below, along with Figure 9.5 and the footnotes.
The most unpleasant and damaging manifestation of the conflict between the sexes lies in the area of rape and other forms of coercive sex. Here too I believe that evolutionary theory has something important and practical to tell us about the phenomenon, if only we can put aside ideological blinders and a belief in the naturalistic fallacy [311]. These requirements will not be easily met, given the tendency of many to invoke the naturalistic fallacy when reacting to evolutionary analyses of coercive sex. Let a biologist attempt to explain why men rape and he can be guaranteed to hear that the hypothesis is not only dangerous but morally repugnant. And they will be told so in high dudgeon, as in "it seems quite clear that the biologicization of rape and the dismissal of social or 'moral' factors will... tend to legitimate rape" (p. 383 in [112]) and "it is reductive and reactionary to isolate rape from other forms of violent antisocial behavior and dignify it with adaptive significance" (p. 382 in [54]). Outbursts of this sort occur because the commentators believe that if rape were shown to be adaptive, as defined in evolutionary terms, then it would also be morally legitimate and socially defensible. Although the distinction in meaning between "evolved" and "moral" evidently is not easily grasped, nothing commands us to believe that biologically adaptive traits are necessarily socially desirable.
Furthermore, the standard feminist position on coercive sex is founded on ideological, as opposed to evidentiary, grounds. Inspired by Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will, where she writes, "all rape is an exercise in power" (p. 256) and "is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" (p. 15), the basic feminist argument has become that coercive sex is about power rather than sex. According to this view, rapists and their ilk are motivated purely by the proximate desire to dominate and intimidate women, a desire that stems from the influences of a patriarchal society dedicated to the preservation of male control [53]. According to this view, the idea that rape has anything to do with sex is a myth, pure and simple.
Although many versions of the standard argument exist among the many feminist factions, when college students are asked about their understanding of rape, most have heard of and many accept the Brownmillerian viewpoint. Familiarity with the "rape has nothing to do with sex" hypothesis stems from the energetic efforts of many feminists to educate others on the feminist position vis-a-vis the causes of rape. As a result, documents containing the "myths about rape" are widely available on the Internet. The "rape myths" presented to students at the University of Wisconsin, Texas A & M, Tulane University, and Monash University in Australia, to pick a few, contain statements like the following: "Since sexual assault is all about power, not sex, the age or appearance of the victim is irrelevant" and "Rape is not about sexual orientation or sexual desire. It is an act of power and control in which the victim is brutalized and humiliated" (see, for example, www.med.monash.edu.au/secasa/html/rape-myths.html).
Now the idea that sexual motivation plays no part in rape seems decidedly counterintuitive, given that the vast majority of rapists are sufficiently sexually aroused to achieve an erection and to ejaculate in their victims. Yet many persons have no doubt about it; sexual desire is not an issue in the rapist's behavior. The appeal of this assertion must stem from the fact that most people consider sexual desire a "natural" phenomenon, which some feminists fear will make the public more willing to excuse the rapist, at least in part, on the grounds that rape is in some sense "natural." In contrast, if rape is said to be violence pure and simple driven by a criminal desire to brutalize and humiliate, then no one would be tempted to forgive the rapist or be more understanding of his behavior. In other words, acceptance of the naturalistic fallacy provides the impetus to insist that there is nothing "natural" about the causes of rape.
To this end, it is also valuable to claim that rape is a purely human phenomenon, not part of the sexuality of other species: "No zoologist, as far as I know, has ever observed that animals rape in their natural habitat, the wild" (p. 12 in [53]). Moreover, why not assert that rape is a purely cultural phenomenon, the invention of some men in some warped societies. If true, then one need "only" educate the members of that society in order to change the ruling male ideology of rape, which will eliminate the problem. To this end, many feminists assert that rape is not a universal feature of all societies but rather a manifestation of just those societies in which a particularly unfortunate ideological perspective has come to shape male attitudes and behavior.
The advocates of the "rape has nothing to do with sex" hypothesis have been circumspect in dealing with the relevant data. For example, with respect to the so-called uniqueness of rape, even when Brownmiller wrote her book in 1975, ample evidence existed that males from a very wide range of animals sometimes force themselves on females that struggle to prevent copulation from occurring. Over the years, much more information has been assembled on the practice of forced matings in everything from insects to chimpanzees, orangutans, and other primate relatives of man [295, 311].
For example, I have on occasion seen a male of the desert beetle Tegrodera aloga run to a female and wrestle violently with her in an attempt to throw her on her side (fig. 9.4). If successful, the male probes the female's genital opening with his everted aedeagus (the entomological label for "penis") and he sometimes is able to achieve insertion of same, despite the female's attempts to break free. What makes this behavior so striking is that male Tegrodera aloga are perfectly capable of courting potential partners in a decorous manner. In these nonviolent interactions, a male cautiously moves in front of female, often one that is feeding on a tiny desert plant of some sort, and uses his antennae to sweep her antennae into two grooves in the front of his head (fig. 9.4). The two may stand facing one another for many minutes while the female feeds and the male strokes her antennae over and over again.
Judging from what is known of a somewhat similar beetle [117], the male's courtship maneuvers probably permit the female to assess the concentration of cantharidin in the male's blood via analysis of odors emanating from pores in the grooves in his head. Cantharidin is a toxic biochemical manufactured by males of some beetles for transfer to their mates during copulation; females safely store the material for later use in coating their eggs, the better to repel ants and other egg eaters after the eggs are laid in the soil. In other words, courting males communicate their capacity to provide their mates with a useful nuptial gift. If a female perceives her suitor to be in possession of valuable resources that she will receive, she may eventually permit him to mount and copulate sedately. If not, she pulls her antennae free and walks away. Males that attempt to short-circuit the female choice mechanism in this species probably lack the qualities, especially high levels of transferable cantharidin, that motivate females to become sexually receptive, although this prediction remains untested. Under these circumstances, males may have the conditional capacity to try to inseminate females forcibly, reducing female reproductive success to some extent in the process, which is why females of this species resist. The idea that forced copulation only happens in humans is therefore simply untrue.
And what about the claim that rape is haphazardly distributed among human cultures, present here, absent there, thanks to arbitrary variation in cultural histories and influences? You will remember Margaret Mead's incorrect assertion that rape was absent in traditional Samoan society. Analysis of similar claims about other groups has shown them to be equally erroneous [246]. Rape is a cultural universal.
These findings are part of the reason why some sociobiologists think that the "rape has nothing to do with sex" hypothesis is not only implausible but untrue. One sociobiological alternative is that rape is partly the product of evolved male psychological mechanisms, including those that promote ease of sexual arousal, the capacity for impersonal sex, the desire for sexual variety for variety's sake, a desire to control the sexuality of potential partners, and a willingness to employ coercive tactics to achieve copulations under some conditions. Why would these: proximate mechanisms have spread through ancestral hominid populations? Because they almost certainly contributed to an increase in the number of females inseminated by some ancestral males with a consequent increase in the number of offspring produced.
According to this approach, rape itself could either be a maladaptive side effect of sexual psychological mechanisms that have other generally adaptive outcomes or rape could be one of the tactics controlled by a conditional strategy that enables an individual to select the option with the highest fitness payoff given his particular circumstances. Note that these are two separate hypotheses, each of which generates distinctive predictions, so that either one or the other or both could potentially be rejected via standard scientific testing. The maladaptive byproduct hypothesis is plausible because it is clear that in humans and other species, the intense sex drive of males sometimes motivates them to perform acts that cannot possibly result in offspring. Male elephant seals not uncommonly attempt to copulate with young pups only a month or two old while males of some species of bees work themselves into a sexual frenzy over a deceased female or even a part of her body. Human males engage in masturbation, oral and anal sex, homosexual sex, and sex with children, to name just a few of the sexual activities that no one has ever claimed will generate surviving offspring.
On the other hand, the adaptive conditional tactic hypothesis for rape is also plausible because rape appears to be associated with both low socioeconomic status and low risk of punishment, two conditions that would tend to increase the fitness benefit to fitness cost ratio of rape for certain individuals acting under certain circumstances. For example, poor men may have much less opportunity to engage in successful courtship because women favor wealthier individuals; rape could enable some in this category to gain sexual access to women. The mean fitness benefit from rape need not be great for individuals who have little or no chance of forming a partnership with a willing woman. Likewise, when rape occurs with little risk of punishment, as has traditionally been the case for soldiers in combat, then the fitness benefit need not be great to outweigh the relatively low costs associated with the behavior, which is indeed widespread in times of war.
Debate continues on these alternatives because definitive tests needed to discriminate between them have yet to be carried out. But both hypotheses are based on the premise that rape is linked to evolved psychological mechanisms that contributed more, not less, to the chances of successful reproduction by men in the ancestral hominid environment. This premise is testable. For example, both hypotheses could be dismissed if it were shown that raped women in the past could not have borne children as a result of the assault. However, even in modern populations where birth control and abortion are available, some rape victims do become pregnant and bear the rapist's child.
In addition, both hypotheses yield the prediction that rapists will especially target women of reproductive age. Tests of this prediction have also been positive (fig. 9.5) with the age distribution of raped women heavily skewed toward the years of peak fertility. Yes, a small proportion of the victim population consists of women either too young or too old to bear children, but the chance that a twenty-four-year-old will be raped is somewhere between four and twenty times greater than the risk that a fifty-four-year-old will be sexually assaulted [312], And note that the age distribution of women subject to homicidal attack is quite different from that of rape victims, a result that further reduces whatever residual attraction might be associated with the rape has nothing to do with sex hypothesis. If rape were unadulterated violence designed to brutalize women, one would expect convergence in the age distributions of rape and homicide victims. The convergence does not exist.
Furthermore, the standard feminist position on coercive sex is founded on ideological, as opposed to evidentiary, grounds. Inspired by Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will, where she writes, "all rape is an exercise in power" (p. 256) and "is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" (p. 15), the basic feminist argument has become that coercive sex is about power rather than sex. According to this view, rapists and their ilk are motivated purely by the proximate desire to dominate and intimidate women, a desire that stems from the influences of a patriarchal society dedicated to the preservation of male control [53]. According to this view, the idea that rape has anything to do with sex is a myth, pure and simple.
Although many versions of the standard argument exist among the many feminist factions, when college students are asked about their understanding of rape, most have heard of and many accept the Brownmillerian viewpoint. Familiarity with the "rape has nothing to do with sex" hypothesis stems from the energetic efforts of many feminists to educate others on the feminist position vis-a-vis the causes of rape. As a result, documents containing the "myths about rape" are widely available on the Internet. The "rape myths" presented to students at the University of Wisconsin, Texas A & M, Tulane University, and Monash University in Australia, to pick a few, contain statements like the following: "Since sexual assault is all about power, not sex, the age or appearance of the victim is irrelevant" and "Rape is not about sexual orientation or sexual desire. It is an act of power and control in which the victim is brutalized and humiliated" (see, for example, www.med.monash.edu.au/secasa/html/rape-myths.html).
Now the idea that sexual motivation plays no part in rape seems decidedly counterintuitive, given that the vast majority of rapists are sufficiently sexually aroused to achieve an erection and to ejaculate in their victims. Yet many persons have no doubt about it; sexual desire is not an issue in the rapist's behavior. The appeal of this assertion must stem from the fact that most people consider sexual desire a "natural" phenomenon, which some feminists fear will make the public more willing to excuse the rapist, at least in part, on the grounds that rape is in some sense "natural." In contrast, if rape is said to be violence pure and simple driven by a criminal desire to brutalize and humiliate, then no one would be tempted to forgive the rapist or be more understanding of his behavior. In other words, acceptance of the naturalistic fallacy provides the impetus to insist that there is nothing "natural" about the causes of rape.
To this end, it is also valuable to claim that rape is a purely human phenomenon, not part of the sexuality of other species: "No zoologist, as far as I know, has ever observed that animals rape in their natural habitat, the wild" (p. 12 in [53]). Moreover, why not assert that rape is a purely cultural phenomenon, the invention of some men in some warped societies. If true, then one need "only" educate the members of that society in order to change the ruling male ideology of rape, which will eliminate the problem. To this end, many feminists assert that rape is not a universal feature of all societies but rather a manifestation of just those societies in which a particularly unfortunate ideological perspective has come to shape male attitudes and behavior.
The advocates of the "rape has nothing to do with sex" hypothesis have been circumspect in dealing with the relevant data. For example, with respect to the so-called uniqueness of rape, even when Brownmiller wrote her book in 1975, ample evidence existed that males from a very wide range of animals sometimes force themselves on females that struggle to prevent copulation from occurring. Over the years, much more information has been assembled on the practice of forced matings in everything from insects to chimpanzees, orangutans, and other primate relatives of man [295, 311].
For example, I have on occasion seen a male of the desert beetle Tegrodera aloga run to a female and wrestle violently with her in an attempt to throw her on her side (fig. 9.4). If successful, the male probes the female's genital opening with his everted aedeagus (the entomological label for "penis") and he sometimes is able to achieve insertion of same, despite the female's attempts to break free. What makes this behavior so striking is that male Tegrodera aloga are perfectly capable of courting potential partners in a decorous manner. In these nonviolent interactions, a male cautiously moves in front of female, often one that is feeding on a tiny desert plant of some sort, and uses his antennae to sweep her antennae into two grooves in the front of his head (fig. 9.4). The two may stand facing one another for many minutes while the female feeds and the male strokes her antennae over and over again.
Judging from what is known of a somewhat similar beetle [117], the male's courtship maneuvers probably permit the female to assess the concentration of cantharidin in the male's blood via analysis of odors emanating from pores in the grooves in his head. Cantharidin is a toxic biochemical manufactured by males of some beetles for transfer to their mates during copulation; females safely store the material for later use in coating their eggs, the better to repel ants and other egg eaters after the eggs are laid in the soil. In other words, courting males communicate their capacity to provide their mates with a useful nuptial gift. If a female perceives her suitor to be in possession of valuable resources that she will receive, she may eventually permit him to mount and copulate sedately. If not, she pulls her antennae free and walks away. Males that attempt to short-circuit the female choice mechanism in this species probably lack the qualities, especially high levels of transferable cantharidin, that motivate females to become sexually receptive, although this prediction remains untested. Under these circumstances, males may have the conditional capacity to try to inseminate females forcibly, reducing female reproductive success to some extent in the process, which is why females of this species resist. The idea that forced copulation only happens in humans is therefore simply untrue.
And what about the claim that rape is haphazardly distributed among human cultures, present here, absent there, thanks to arbitrary variation in cultural histories and influences? You will remember Margaret Mead's incorrect assertion that rape was absent in traditional Samoan society. Analysis of similar claims about other groups has shown them to be equally erroneous [246]. Rape is a cultural universal.
These findings are part of the reason why some sociobiologists think that the "rape has nothing to do with sex" hypothesis is not only implausible but untrue. One sociobiological alternative is that rape is partly the product of evolved male psychological mechanisms, including those that promote ease of sexual arousal, the capacity for impersonal sex, the desire for sexual variety for variety's sake, a desire to control the sexuality of potential partners, and a willingness to employ coercive tactics to achieve copulations under some conditions. Why would these: proximate mechanisms have spread through ancestral hominid populations? Because they almost certainly contributed to an increase in the number of females inseminated by some ancestral males with a consequent increase in the number of offspring produced.
According to this approach, rape itself could either be a maladaptive side effect of sexual psychological mechanisms that have other generally adaptive outcomes or rape could be one of the tactics controlled by a conditional strategy that enables an individual to select the option with the highest fitness payoff given his particular circumstances. Note that these are two separate hypotheses, each of which generates distinctive predictions, so that either one or the other or both could potentially be rejected via standard scientific testing. The maladaptive byproduct hypothesis is plausible because it is clear that in humans and other species, the intense sex drive of males sometimes motivates them to perform acts that cannot possibly result in offspring. Male elephant seals not uncommonly attempt to copulate with young pups only a month or two old while males of some species of bees work themselves into a sexual frenzy over a deceased female or even a part of her body. Human males engage in masturbation, oral and anal sex, homosexual sex, and sex with children, to name just a few of the sexual activities that no one has ever claimed will generate surviving offspring.
On the other hand, the adaptive conditional tactic hypothesis for rape is also plausible because rape appears to be associated with both low socioeconomic status and low risk of punishment, two conditions that would tend to increase the fitness benefit to fitness cost ratio of rape for certain individuals acting under certain circumstances. For example, poor men may have much less opportunity to engage in successful courtship because women favor wealthier individuals; rape could enable some in this category to gain sexual access to women. The mean fitness benefit from rape need not be great for individuals who have little or no chance of forming a partnership with a willing woman. Likewise, when rape occurs with little risk of punishment, as has traditionally been the case for soldiers in combat, then the fitness benefit need not be great to outweigh the relatively low costs associated with the behavior, which is indeed widespread in times of war.
Debate continues on these alternatives because definitive tests needed to discriminate between them have yet to be carried out. But both hypotheses are based on the premise that rape is linked to evolved psychological mechanisms that contributed more, not less, to the chances of successful reproduction by men in the ancestral hominid environment. This premise is testable. For example, both hypotheses could be dismissed if it were shown that raped women in the past could not have borne children as a result of the assault. However, even in modern populations where birth control and abortion are available, some rape victims do become pregnant and bear the rapist's child.
In addition, both hypotheses yield the prediction that rapists will especially target women of reproductive age. Tests of this prediction have also been positive (fig. 9.5) with the age distribution of raped women heavily skewed toward the years of peak fertility. Yes, a small proportion of the victim population consists of women either too young or too old to bear children, but the chance that a twenty-four-year-old will be raped is somewhere between four and twenty times greater than the risk that a fifty-four-year-old will be sexually assaulted [312], And note that the age distribution of women subject to homicidal attack is quite different from that of rape victims, a result that further reduces whatever residual attraction might be associated with the rape has nothing to do with sex hypothesis. If rape were unadulterated violence designed to brutalize women, one would expect convergence in the age distributions of rape and homicide victims. The convergence does not exist.
Footnotes:
Code:
53. Brownmiller, S. 1975. [i]Against Our Wil[/i]. New York: Simon & Schuster.
54. Brownmiller, S., and B. Merhof. 1992. A feminist response to rape as an adaptation in men. [i]Brain and Behavioral Sciences[/i] 15: 381-382.
76. Coyne, J. 2000. Of vice and men. [i]New Republic[/i] 222: 27-34.
112. Dupre", J. 1992. Blinded by "science": How not to think about social problems. [i]Behavioral and Brain Sciences[/i] 15: 382-383.
115. Ehrenreich, B. 2000. How "natural" is rape? [i]Time[/i] 155 (4): 88.
117. Eisner, T., et al. 1996. Chemical basis of courtship in a beetle (Neopyrochroa flabellata): Cantharidin as precopulatory "enticing" agent. [/i]Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences[i] 93: 6494-6498.
246. Palmer, C. T. 1989. [i]Is rape a cultural universal? A re-examination of the ethnographic data[/i]. Ethnology 28: 1-16.
295. Smuts, B. B., and R. W. Smuts. 1993. Male aggression and sexual coercion of females in nonhuman primates and other mammals: Evidence and theoretical implications. [i]Advances in the Study of Behavior[/i] 22: 1-63.
311. Thornhill, R., and C. T. Palmer. 2000. [i]A Natural History of Rape: The Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion[/i]. Cambridge: MIT Press.
312. Thornhill, R., and N. W. Thornhill. 1983. [i]Human rape: An evolutionary analysis[/i]. Ethology and Sociobiology 4: 137-173.
