# If you are a male who thinks rape is about sex, not power **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 9, 2009, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212 "2009-10-09T17:51:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 20
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212/381 "2009-10-29T08:33:54Z")
I intended to say more on your reply above, but I thought you might be waiting for me to post, so I sent that off ahead. The bottom line is that since rape is deeply and fundamentally a result of biological and sociobiological root behaviors that seek to propagate specific genes and collections of genes and alleles, it is entirely **ill-advised** , highly **counter-productive** , and even flatly **wrong-headed** to ignore or downplay the overwhelming role evolution and natural selection plays in rape. I hold that putting sociological concepts and explanations above sociobiological ones is an effort that is simply doomed to fail. Sociological concepts and intellectual structures cannot _possibly_ succeed as an explanatory framework or theory for rape without first fully recognizing the role of reproductive strategies and natural selection in this behavior! The very worst attempts at an explanatory structure are those that focus on the human-only intellectual concepts of power and subjugation, for they _cannot_ fit properly on top of the compelling sociobiological explanatory platform. This is because if it cannot explain animal rape, it cannot adequately explain human rape. Animals are incapable of possessing the concepts of power and subjugation because they can only exist in the verbal consciousness of humans, which is very much a faculty whose usefulness lies predominantly in how much of realty it _hides_ from us and _prevents_ us from experiencing and having to deal with. Sociology is vitally important, but sociologists must recognize that the intellectual and intellectualizing concepts they deal with are but akin to thin layers of paint on top of our biological and sociobiological selves. Those layers are emphatically very important, but not as important as coming to grips with what lies beneath. - - ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212/382 "2009-10-29T11:15:41Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > My own wording of my stance on free will varies quite a bit because I have not managed to congeal it into a form that I’m really ready to sign off on. It’s certainly closer to “free will” but there is a great deal of “the answer is ‘mu’ the question itself is phrased wrong with tacit assumptions”… but I’m not ready to point to what those tacit assumptions are. It has long been my deeply held view that the core beliefs of one’s own worldview _ **must** _ be rationally, and ideally evidentiarily, well-justified or they will inevitably lead to deeply flawed and non-credible worldviews. It is my position that this aspect of your worldview is not well-justified and is not rational. The notion that we can willfully create _de novo_ event chains – as absolutely required if free will were to exist – is as impossible and absurd as anything I can imagine. It’s no more rational than an economic analysis of tooth-fairy behavior; it may _sound_ rational and it can certainly be dressed up to _appear_ sober and sensible, but only to the credulous and the intellectually lazy or cowardly. It is purest crackpottery. Many people imagine that quantum mechanics gives free will a free pass, but that’s just as nonsensical and ludicrous as tooth-fairydom. Most people are unaware that by far the most popular interpretations of QM among actual quantum physicists are all strictly deterministic (as opposed to the non-deterministic Copenhagen Interpretation, which remains curiously and unjustifiably quite popular, but only among non-specialists). Besides, a random input to an event chain is no more a consequence of human will than anything else in reality. Free will remains logically impossible, so that aspect of your worldview remains logically impossible and irreparably flawed. It _cannot_ have any basis in reality whatsoever. > [@AHunter3](#): > > Certainly I consider myself to be doing things “for a reason” even as I also and simultaneously consider myself to be acting of free will; the reason is not the cause and at the same time who I myself am is not “me right now, an instantaneous me with no history” and also not “me just me an individual distinguished from any connections”. Free will and the notion of deliberate choice are useful fictions, but they’re fictions nonetheless and thus cannot serve to construct any accurate explanatory framework or theory. The studies that show muscle action precedes the “choice” to move, while still subject to the principal of potential future revision and alternative interpretations, is nonetheless powerfully compelling evidence against the concepts and reality of “choice” and “free will” and “agency”. Any theory which implicitly or explicitly posits the existence of choice or free will can **never** be valid! At least not unless the real existence of these can be scientifically established, which certainly does not appear to be on the scientific horizon. Otherwise, it can lead nowhere of any real value. > [@AHunter3](#): > > I’m enough of a sociologist (and a generic “contextualist”) to think an overwhelming portion of what average everyday folks attribute to their own individual heads is actually “the culture thinking” or “the species thinking”… Culture certainly contributes powerfully to the content and form of our thoughts, but not anything at the species level. The entire contribution of species-level “input” (for lack of a better term in my mind right now) is nothing more and nothing less than the _limitations_ and _constraints_ that our biology places on our existence and nature. This can be summed up best, perhaps, by noting that we cannot be or live the life of an elephant or an eagle, and they cannot be or live as humans. > [@AHunter3](#): > > … or even things yet larger in scope than that… but that there is nonetheless consciousness and volition even if it is not located quite where we tend to think it is located. Consciousness, yes (though we understand it extremely poorly), but volition? That is as illusory as “choice” and “free will” and “agency”. > [@AHunter3](#): > > Compared to most folks on this board (which skews towards hard sciences) I attribute more of human behavior to social-cultural abstractions that inher in our heads and less of it to our phenotype at any level; but rather than thinking of it as “how much of what is in the bucket is water and how much is salt, as a percent or in grams” sort of composite I think of it in terms of “how much of the area of the square is due to its length and how much to its width” — in both cases none, because it’s all about the intersection. One can “attribute” behaviors quite arbitrarily, but only when they are factually and correctly attributed can such attributions lead to genuine insight and effective strategies. The human world is full to overflowing with false and even absurd attributions and explanations for various behaviors, but the behaviors themselves cannot be understood or moderated unless and until they are _correctly_ attributed! Attributing rape even minimally to human power games or to “free choice” can only absolutely ensure this behavior will not be correctly and productively understood in any genuinely useful manner. It is a complete dead end. > [@AHunter3](#): > > I will say that culture (patriarchy) is why men rape. **There is no scientific validity to that logically, factually and empirically unjustified assertion as it stands.** At _ **most** _, culture is a thin layer of paint on top of the massive sociobiological reality of rape underneath. And paint is an excellent metaphor, for paint can be pretty much any color or combination of colors, and one can only evaluate, comment, and criticize (in the positive and negative senses) it’s appearance in terms of cultural taste and aesthetics. And, as they say, there’s no accounting for taste. > [@AHunter3](#): > > And yet I will also say that there exists no societal structure (hypothetical or otherwise) that would yield a reciprocal/inverted system in which women would rape men and men would be at risk of rape and it would all mean the same thing except with the sexes reversed. So indeed there _is_ a hardwired component. Not in the sense you’re referring to, for the female raping of males is seen in nature more often than most people would imagine. And this raises an extremely important point: **The rape of males by females is _perfectly_ explained in terms of ordinary sociobiological principles – the very same principles that thoroughly explain the rape of females by males!** As well as male-male rape. And power dynamics in the human sense has nothing whatsoever to do with it. The most critical factor is the difference in the fitness-enhancing reproductive strategies between males and females of the same species. One key aspect of that relates to what is known as “parental investment theory”, wherein different [**r-K selection**](http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/RKSELECT.html) in a specific species’ environment will result in widely different reproductive strategies. I’d go on at greater length, but I’m getting very tired, so I’ll deal with the rest only briefly and return later… > [@AHunter3](#): > > With regards to behavior _per se_ it is very difficult to separate potential from how that potential is made manifest when it can only be made manifest in a social context. > > I do think that in order to rape, one must not only desire sex but must also harbor a position within a spectrum of mindsets that meshes with such a behavior. Nonsense! Neither sex nor power nor “mindsets” have any role in producing rape behavior or serve as a stimulus for rape behavior. These very thin layers of cultural paint can certainly play some role in _deterring_ rape behavior from occurring in the real world, but that is all, and that is utterly unconnected to the overwhelming fundamental basis for rape behavior. And that can only be properly explicated in a sociobiological context using sociobiological principles and terms. > [@AHunter3](#): > > It’s not horniness. And I think that to say “it’s a reproductive strategy” is to punt. It’s like saying the behavior of the molecules that constitute the body of the rapist can behave in a certain fashion resulting in a rape. It’s not an explication. At the level of intention it is not relevant. I certainly never claimed that “horniness” had any role to play, as I can’t even translate that term into the language of science. But to deny that by far the most dominant role in animal or human rape is played by sociobiological processes such as different reproductive strategies, parental investment strategies, r-K selection and the like is to deny reality and fact. To paraphrase Medawar’s famous axiom, **the alternative to thinking in sociobiological terms about rape is not to think at all.** I have to stop now. I’ll return when I can. Thank you for continuing this debate! - - ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212/383 "2009-10-29T15:55:21Z")
If the behavior (genetically coded) of an individual is counterproductive to group survival, the individual and that individual’s progeny _die_. That does work at an individual level (it is the individual and her specific set of genes that does the dying) but we understand it at a group level because it is at the group level that the behavior itself is maladaptive and it is the group as a whole that perishes, taking its individuals with it. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212/384 "2009-10-29T19:44:41Z")
if i could steal and not ever ever ever get in “trouble” i would. if i could sex up whomever i wanted whenever i wanted and not ever ever ever get in “trouble” i would do that too. if someone cut me off on the high way and i could knock into his bumper and there would be zero repercussions… guess what? ramming speed. some people wouldn’t. is rape sexually motivated or power-motivated? of course it’s sexually motivated. otherwise why would serial rapists confine their targets to one gender? a robber wouldn’t confine his victims to one gender. a terrorist wouldn’t target only women. you ejaculate at the end of this, for pete’s sake. anything that ends in ejaculate obviously is sexually motivated. the power aspect is ancillary. how is there 8 pages of this? i refer all of you to post #2. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2009, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212/385 "2009-10-29T20:22:02Z")
> [@pancakes3](#): > > if i could steal and not ever ever ever get in “trouble” i would. if i could sex up whomever i wanted whenever i wanted and not ever ever ever get in “trouble” i would do that too. if someone cut me off on the high way and i could knock into his bumper and there would be zero repercussions… guess what? ramming speed. When you say “sex up” do mean consensual sex that you might otherwise not be able to have (like people in other relationships, etc.) or are you saying you’d commit rape if you could get away with it? ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212/386 "2009-10-30T06:44:39Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > If the behavior (genetically coded) of an individual is counterproductive to group survival, the individual and that individual’s progeny _die_. That does work at an individual level (it is the individual and her specific set of genes that does the dying) but we understand it at a group level because it is at the group level that the behavior itself is maladaptive and it is the group as a whole that perishes, taking its individuals with it. **That is a false and highly misleading analysis because it once again ignores the predominant role of of even _basic_ natural selection, let alone sociobiological processes.** It’s so extraordinarily wrong-headed and off-base because it rejects outright the most basic of evolutionary principles. Don’t you see? Darwin understood this more than 150 years ago! _ **Once the individual’s or the individual’s kin propagates their genes and alleles and gene combinations into the gene pool, it matters little when the individual or group dies!** _ Consider, for an extreme example, [Sexual cannibalism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_cannibalism). One mate, most often the male, will die **immediately** after reproduction! Such cases make plain that the survival of individuals or groups is of lesser and decreasing importance to evolution and natural selection once the genes and alleles and gene combinations have been propagated. As for your claim regarding the death of progeny, unless each and every offspring dies before reproducing, the genes will survive. Large numbers of offspring die in a great many species, but usually at least a few will survive to further propagate their genes. If no offspring survive, which is not unusual in nature, a large portion of their genome may well already be in the species’ gene pool. If not, the elimination or non-presence of defective genes is just important in natural selection as gene propagation. A related irreparably flawed aspect of your argument is that for the factually unjustified scenarios you’ve presented to have any parallels in the real world, the genetically-predisposed behaviors would have to kill _each and every member_ of the group, including all their offspring. But if such a scenario existed, the genetically-predisposed behavior that caused it **could never exist beyond that one and only generation!** Thus, such a thing simply could never be affected by natural selection and evolution in the first place. It would be a one-shot evolutionary dead end, which of course has happened unknown trillions of times in the history of life on this planet, but they are of no account because those genes cannot exist in any continuing species. Note that there are a great many fatal genetic diseases that have persisted throughout the ages, and the parallel to potentially harmful genetically-predisposed behaviors is essentially perfect. The fatal genetic diseases survive because their existence in the gene pool provides some other compensating positive benefit to at least some of those who carry those genes or alleles. It is physically and logically **impossible** for natural selection to operate on groups (with the caveats I mentioned previously). You seem to be speculating quite loosely and without any evidence, unless you can provide scientific evidence for your claims rather than inventing mere plausible-_sounding_ but un-evidenced scenarios. Can you? - - ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212/387 "2009-10-30T06:56:30Z")
> [@pancakes3](#): > > if i could steal and not ever ever ever get in “trouble” i would. if i could sex up whomever i wanted whenever i wanted and not ever ever ever get in “trouble” i would do that too. if someone cut me off on the high way and i could knock into his bumper and there would be zero repercussions… guess what? ramming speed. > > some people wouldn’t. > > is rape sexually motivated or power-motivated? of course it’s sexually motivated. otherwise why would serial rapists confine their targets to one gender? a robber wouldn’t confine his victims to one gender. a terrorist wouldn’t target only women. you ejaculate at the end of this, for pete’s sake. anything that ends in ejaculate obviously is sexually motivated. the power aspect is ancillary. > > how is there 8 pages of this? > > i refer all of you to post #2. What an extraordinarily **stupid** post! I haven’t read anything this sub-moronic, uninformed and brainless since I picked up Glenn Beck’s books for their hilarious value as the ripest sort of bulldada! You are right to equate your post with ultra-stoopid **MOIDALIZE** ’s infantile post # 2. I’d encourage you both to read [Anti-Intellectualism in American Life](http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256885614&sr=8-1) and [The Age of American Unreason](http://www.amazon.com/Age-American-Unreason-Vintage/dp/1400096383/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256885614&sr=8-2), but it’s quite obvious that you lack even basic reading comprehension skills. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212/388 "2009-10-30T08:16:48Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > - > - > > > [@ambushed](#): > > > > I’ve voluntarily placed myself in mental hospitals three times and agreed to take the prescribed meds while there. One was for the powerful, overwhelming determination to kill myself that was not related to any life event, and because I still had the cognitive wherewithal to realize that didn’t make any sense, I’m extremely happy with that decision (not the least of which reason being that I wouldn’t be writing this otherwise). > > > > The other two times I committed myself because I was far too happy and upbeat, in which again I recognized _myself_ that quite a few very loud alarm bells were pealing in the attic. On the most recent of those occasions, I wrote a 70+ page autobiographical email (I’ve gone through a couple of screenplay-worthy major life events), but though my illness was powerfully manifest, I nevertheless had enough social cognition and concomitant awareness of potentially negative psycho-social consequences left to know to only send that email to three very close friends. > > > > The point being that while there are many instances where people are aware they desperately need major mental health treatments, very often the individuals are _not_ aware of this! In those cases, I am very strongly of the opinion that they should be involuntarily treated, subject most emphatically to thoughtful and wise scientific medical and legal oversight. Alas, thoughtfulness and wisdom cannot be adequately codified, with results that threaten damage to the _families_ of the severely mentally ill at least as much, if not more, than the ill person him or herself. > > > > Allow me to relate a true story relating to this issue. The brother of my friend R. had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic (I’m aware of the many controversies regarding this label and the diagnostic criteria, but please allow me to employ those common terms for simple clarity’s sake). He been involuntarily committed and treated with forced medication several times, which worked splendidly. But as a consequence of the meds, he recovered sufficiently such that he passed the release criteria, whereupon he was “freed from treatment”. As is so often the case, he stopped taking his meds immediately, and consequently soon returned to being the bizarrely non-rational threat he posed to his family and others. > > > > The law protected _him_ much more than it did his family, and when the law didn’t set him free, the insurance companies effectively “freed him from treatment” when they stopped paying his bills. > > > > His delusions and threatening behavior had frequently been a nightmare to his parents and to R., which in turn had devastated the entire family dynamic and all their psychological health. Life was a horror show whenever my friend’s brother was out in society, whether he was at home or not, because he always refused to take his meds whenever he was free. Can this truly be justified primarily because the severely ill person doesn’t _like_ taking his meds? > > > > When Ryan’s brother was “freed from treatment” for the last time, he returned home to live with his widowed mother. She loved him but was also terrified of him and went to the police and the mental health authorities crying and begging for her son to be committed once more, but again, the law protected _him_ much more than his mother, for they said the law allowed them no alternative. > > > > Some time passed. > > > > He butchered her with an ax. > > Similar logic could be used to argue that IF males, as a group, are innately inclined to rape if given the opportunity (even if NOT ALL individual males are so inclined), we should impose a male curfew and tightly control male behavior. Which was the post to which you responded upthread. I’m tempted to viciously rip into that ultra-bullshit “logic”, but perhaps that’s because I’m innately inclined to viciously rip into gob-smackingly ultra-bullshit pseduo-logic. The innate predisposition to rape, murder, lie, steal, etc., etc., is in every one of us, men and women alike! Doubt me? See: [Rape of Males by Females](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_gender#Rape_of_males_by_females). As I pointed out previously, the rape of males by females, in humans and other species, **cannot** be explained by either sex -or- power, just as the rape of females by males cannot be so explained. What more proof does anyone need? What’s going on in all the cases of female teachers raping their male students is that these women – or more precisely, these women’s genetically predisposed behaviors, (almost always without their conscious awareness, just as in the reverse cases) – are seeking to maximize their genetic / reproductive fitness by selecting younger, stronger, and healthier partners who are more likely to propagate more copies of their genes into the future! **That is precisely what our sociobiology is constantly whispering for us to do.** Humans invent fictional and often delusional fake narratives in order to try (and fail) to understand what their sociobiological impulses are pushing them to do, just as those who fabricate the myths of “sex” or “power” or “patriarchy” as ostensible causes or explanations for these behaviors. In humans, males compete against other males for the eye of a desirable sex partner (whether female or male, in the case of male homosexuality). Scientists have long known that what individuals find sexually attractive or “sexy” or “hotness” correlates surprisingly well with those attributes that are most strongly indicative of sociobiological reproductive fitness (even in the case of homosexuals of either gender who cannot normally reproduce). Logic or “reasons” really don’t enter into it. The boys these teachers go for and rape are closer to the teacher’s reproductive ideal than are their husbands or boyfriends. That’s nearly all there is to it. So since all of these potential behaviors are present in each and every one of us, if we were to imprison those with these potentials, we’d have to lock up the entire human species, every last one of us. > [@AHunter3](#): > > I myself am not supporting either position. I am totally in favor of psychos having the complete freedom to refuse unwanted psychiatric treatment (even if as a GROUP stats might show that letting us do so is at least marginally more risky to the rest of you), and I am also in favor of males not being treated as potential rapists (even if as a GROUP males would appear to be the ones who do nearly all the raping and even if we have some kind of evolutionary propensity to rape). There’s only one word that best describes those views: **Evil**. How appropriate that it’s Halloween. **What a despicable crock of shit!** No one forces anyone to undergo mental-health treatment because of any “GROUP stats”, and no such practices could ever pass Constitutional muster! In fact, as I compelling described in the first part of this post, the law terribly unjustly protects the dangerously mentally ill far more than it does the rest of us! This is a genuine societal evil! The dangerously mentally ill should be given a choice: Either live out in society while provably taking your meds (by long-term delivery devices or by frequent drug tests), or remain locked up in a suitable facility. I am not cold or uncaring in the least simply because I wish that the credibly threatened’ rights be protected against the credibly threatening ones’ rights to “freedom from treatment”. - - - - [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-are-a-male-who-thinks-rape-is-about-sex-not-power/513212.md?page=19)