Thank you, Bith–my copy of The Blank Slate was from the library, and I no longer have it.
Talking about strawmen, geez! That’s not what I say. I say it’s incorrect to deny that many rapes, especially acquaintance rapes, are motivated primarily by lust. Notice the word “many”? That kinda keeps it from being a blanket assertion.
People like money. People like sex. Some people will take what they want without any consideration for those who are harmed by their taking. Has this thread really gone on this long? Are people still so desperate to evoke McKinnon et. al. and her bullshit reasoning? Give it up. There is no argument here. It is rather simple. Take simplicity at face value. Give it up, please.
Is power (threats of some sort) ever used as a means to an end (sex)? Of course. Yet rape is about sex. The thinking is: I want it, and I’m going to take it from you. Very bad, very wrong, very simple. The end.
It’s a strawman to portray the power catchphrase as if it’s a serious theory applied to all rape by anyone inside the criminiology field. Call me crazy, but none of what was pointed out by Pinker in Bith’s post is all that earth-shatteringly profound. Rape is seen in all societies? Most victims and assailants are young? As amazing as these observations are, I’m still left wondering how this data is enough to change how you view rape.
Earlier you mentioned that rape is exhibited by animals in the wild, and offered this as proof that rape is a sexual strategy evolutionarly speaking. Interestingly enough, lions and hamsters (and a boatload of others) are also known to eat their babies from time to time, presumably for the same reasons that some animals rape. Should this change the way we regard people who murder babies?
Why should it?
Well, besides the fact that killing people isn’t pleasurable for most people, the situations are pretty analogous. To claim that killing babby always comes from a desire to kill in cold blood reinforced by an anti-baby bias in society, point blank, end of discussion, and ignore the biological factors which might have originated this, would be just as short-minded as it would be to claim that rape is as simple as a desire to exert power, and not an alternative strategy of obtaining sexual intercourse that can have positive effects on male reproductive success despite its immorality.
What the fuck kind of question is that? Of course it shouldn’t–but only because we don’t have a fuckin’ stupid theory about how baby-eaters are doing so to maintain patriarchy, nor do we have an epidemic of baby-eating in our society. If we had such a theory and such an epidemic, then pointing out the existence of non-human baby-eaters would be relevant. Jesus.
Yeah…most rape victims are probably young because the rapists will probably rape people they’re around. I.e., young people.
Also, why would the rape victim’s reaction to rape have anything to do with the rapist’s motivation? (Assuming that it’s about sex if the victim is more traumatized if it leads to conception or if they’re in their fertile years.)
It should change our views. If we determine a certain criminal behavior is mainly biologically driven, then that means it cannot be deterred by any amount of reasoning or rehabilitation. The only way for dealing with it is with punishments that are an equally strong biological deterrent, i.e. life imprisonment, castration, death. Biology isn’t an excuse for jack shit except to be treated like an animal.
If men rape because it’s part of male biologically-driven characteristics, such that generally speaking males who have the opportunity to rape will do so, we need a male curfew. Or perhaps a more permanent solution.
Is that where you’re going with this?
Did you hear of making love? The best sex is about giving . I see power as not belonging in sex at all. The more you give the more you receive. You are sharing the experience, not dominating it.
Young people are around older people all the time, including older people they might wish to establish power over. Why don’t they rape them? Because rapists want to have sex with an attractive woman, and older women aren’t attractive.
I don’t necessarily think that a rape victim’s reaction to rape is going to be directly related to the rapist’s intention.
In evolutionary terms, women want to have sex with men are are genetically fit and get the sort of care that helps in raising a child. By raping a woman, a man can get what is evolutionarily good for him (passing on his genes) without getting involved in a relationship with her. And she can’t deny him sex out of disinterest, because he’s forcing her to do it.
In evolutionary terms, then, it makes sense that a woman would be more traumatized by rape if the rape could result in a pregnancy, because a pregnancy would work against her own biological interests.
I can hear the sirens going off…“TheBithShuffle is another chauvanist who thinks that women are just baby-making machines.”
Not at all. I’m just saying that just because certain behaviors appear to be an evolutionary strategy doesn’t mean we excuse them… in fact the opposite. If it’s biological then it means that person can’t be rehabilitated.
But saying that rape is biological is not the same as saying it’s on the more extreme side of basic horniness. Rapists are driven to acquire sex but they’re also missing the mental piece that makes them capable of refraining from cruelty to get sex. Such people are no different from murderers, they need to be simply eliminated from the gene pool altogether.
Except that I’m pretty sure we had a cite around here showing that it was “unattractive” and people low in the social order who get victimized because they’re considered easy prey. I’ll try to find it again.
Then how come most rapes don’t result in pregnancy?
Who in the hell introduced raping animals in this discussion in the first place?
And why do lame responses like this seem to be the best you can do in this thread? I thought you were a sharper debater than this, but you’re striking out all over the place. Other posters had to speak up for you when you failed to address two of my questions to you.
Rape is at a 20-year low, so if you’re suggesting that we have a rape epidemic, I’m wondering in comparison to what.
The popular theory for why people murder babies and other defenseless people is that these individuals are Simply Fucked Up. For some reason, no one bothers to question this conventional wisdom, even though these people aren’t doing anything that tons of animals aren’t also doing.
Prevalence has nothing to do with why energy isn’t spent on debunking conventional wisdom for murderers. People murderering babies is not exactly rare; makes news all the time. But if a theory is associated with feminism, it will be attacked. Your kneejerk reference to “patriarchy” makes this point for me. Why would blaming baby murderers on patriarchy be sufficient reason to draw (ultimately pointless) parallels to the natural world? This only makes sense to someone biased against feminist ideas in the first place.
How different is the pregnancy rate for rape different from the pregnancy rate for consensual unprotected sex?
If you factor in non-statutory child rape, granny rape, and rape that concludes in murder, the difference is probably pretty damn big.
Doubt you’ll come across any stats on this.
So you’re not saying that evolutionary processes have resulted in males in general being predisposed towards rape (and therefore being incapable of rehabilitation) but that evolutionary processes have resulted in some individual males being predisposed towards rape (and therefore being incapable of rehabilitation)?
I don’t know that much about the subject, but the rapist typology used by the FBI doesn’t classify rapists according to their level of sexual desire. The four main types of rapist in the FBI typology are “power-reassurance”, “power-assertive”, “anger-retaliatory”, and “anger-excitation”. (See this interview with FBI profiler Roy Hazelwood for more about what this actually means.) Sexual desire is a significant factor for all except the anger-retaliatory rapist, but either power or anger is considered the primary motivation for all four major categories. There are also two secondary categories described in the interview, the opportunistic rapist and the gang rapist.
The FBI system was apparently developed largely by Hazelwood, and is based on the work of psychologist Nicholas Groth. It looks like Groth was one of the first to make the claim that rape is not motivated primarily by sexual desire. He considered power, anger, and sadism the primary motives for rape, with power being the most common of the three.
I’d never heard of Groth until today when I was looking this stuff up, but I’m guessing the catchphrase “Rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power” was inspired by his work. I don’t know that Groth ever used those exact words, but it seems to be his idea (or at least one that he was an early advocate of). His book Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender was published in 1979 and would likely have been of interest to second-wave feminists, so that may how the catchphrase originated. This is just my speculation though, I haven’t been able to trace the history of the phrase.*
The FBI system is the rapist typology I’ve seen referenced the most before in popular sources and self-defense literature, but a little searching in PsychINFO indicates that the Massachusetts Treatment Center Rapist Typology, Version 3 (MTC:R3) may be preferred by psychological researchers today. The MTC:R3 recognizes four primary motivations for rape: opportunity, pervasive anger, sexual gratification (sadistic or non-sadistic), and vindictiveness. I don’t think these are meant to be mutually exclusive, I gather that a rapist could be classified under the MTC:R3 as being motivated by any combination of these things.
I didn’t turn up any other motivation-based rapist typologies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if others did exist. The above comes from an hour or two on Google and in PsychINFO, so it’s hardly exhaustive. All the other classification systems for rapists I turned up were based on their behavior rather than their motives, perhaps because it’s a lot easier to establish what a rapist did than it is to figure out what a rapist was thinking.
*It sometimes appears as “Rape isn’t about sex, it’s about violence”, which I would take to be not a claim about the motivation for rape but rather a statement about how society should view rape. I’m not sure which form of the catchphrase came first.
No, I’m a sharp debater–but I have little patience with the sort of idiot bullshit you’re throwing up, and so I respond, well, sharply to it.
As I pointed out, less than one in five hundred rapes conclude in murder. How common is granny rape?
And child rape has a totally different explanation altogether: child rape is the result of pedophilia.
Sound bites were longer in the 1970s, but even today nobody is forced to use 7 word simplifications. Just off the top of my head, I provided a 15 word version in title.
It is admirable to master one’s ignorance-- this reflects both curiosity and aids in investigation. Conjecture is all fine and well, but it’s best to know when you’re doing it. Kudos.
And nice job digging up Hazelwood’s name. I suspect that 2nd wave feminists had poor secondary research skills due to an over-riding agenda and the fact that their audience didn’t have much of a professional background. By the 1990s and 2000s lots of women did have formal training in the social sciences, as well as a degree of professionalism that comes with participation in the workforce, so lazy arguments were more difficult to swallow. But in the 1970s, unsupported and pure rhetoric was taken far more seriously than it should have been.