Yes, provided it’s not given any special weight or treated as more significant than any other theory one could dream up. It’s only problematic if people begin to think that because they could dream up a plausible-sounding explanation, it must be true. Otherwise, we’re just having fun speculating.
Well, if you get to the step of comparing one Just-So story against another, some will fit the available evidence better than others… really just a case of contracting the definition of “plausible”, I guess. Which sounds like what most of our actual conversation was about.
Lamia,
As our binary boy said, hypothesizing isn’t saying it must be so. It is saying that it fits the available facts better than other hypotheses. It is just that there are those who are so livid about even considering the possibility. From Darwin’s categorical statements of how there is “zero” evidence to support it, to those who favor the skirts are part of the male conspiricy to rape and oppress women hypothesis. The concept that rape might be an (immoral) product of natural selection is in many academic circles immoral to even consider. To think about it is be be anti-femnist.
Minimally it can be said that the biological nature of young adult males (relatively prone to violence to get what they want, and very much wanting sex) makes rape not a surprise. It may be that psychopathologic explanations fit better when a full open minded study is done. Even then it is interesting to interpret any aspect of human nature from the POV of evolutionary significance, just an understanding of how it came to be, not an endorsement of it. Meanwhile the sociologic claptrap makes any open minded study verboten.
Oh yeah. Since, and I repeat myself, following certain trains of logic used in this thread, there is “zero” evidence that many psychological phenomena are genetically hereditary, and furthermore the path for evolutionary pressure is not fully defined, I guess that must mean every single one of these unexplained phenomena must not serve any evolutionary purpose… not
I am not familiar with the available facts that indicate that rape behavior is inheritable, which it would need to be in order to be an evolutionary adaptation. Once environmental factors are accounted for, are the children of rapists more likely to commit rape than the average population? How about siblings of rapists? If rape behavior is inheritable, why does it so rarely manifest itself in women? That some people may be born more prone to violence or poor impulse control than others isn’t a particularly radical position (although still not one universally accepted), but rape is a very specific behavior. It’s also a behavior defined in part by the mental state of the victim – if they are not unwilling, it’s not rape. How could one person’s genes “know” about whether or not another person was consenting? I could buy some sort of genetic predisposition towards preferring rough sex, but lots of people enjoy S&M without ever attempting to assault an unwilling partner.
It’s anti mainstream feminism, but you’re wrong if you think that no feminists believe that rape is a biological rather than a social problem. There are self-proclaimed feminists out there on the lunatic fringe who believe that men are inherently flawed, incapable of being socialized into non-violent/non-sexist behavior, and thus not worth dealing with at all. I’m sure many of them would be happy to believe that men evolved to rape women. But that’s not the type of feminist I want to cast my lot in with.
lamia,
No offense, but if you want to read the arguments for inheritablity I’d suggest you read some of this thread including my posts. It doesn’t bear repeating what has already been posted.
I would consider myself a male mainstream femnist in the old fashoined equal opportunity for all sense. And I very much think that we are all flawed. We are not all rapists. We are not all genocidal maniacs. But we all have those potentials built into us. We do not do it mainly because we are not in the circumstances that would provoke us to it and because we have been properly socialized against it. Culture is not the cause of rape; it is the tonic against it. It is when individual males feel that they are outside of culture and its bounds that rape becomes an option.
BTW, yes the children of sexual offenders in general are statistically more likely to be sexual offenders … which proves nothing. They are also more likely abused by their parents.
I’ve read this thread several times over, and I still haven’t seen any solid evidence of genetic factors at work.
I know that. That’s why I said “once environmental factors are accounted for”. Of course, it can be pretty difficult to account for all environmental factors. A fairly mainstream feminist position would be that, as we don’t have much in the way of evidence as to what men’s behavior would be in a culture that didn’t devalue women, we cannot rule out the possibility that rape is purely or primarily caused by social/environmental factors.
Okay. I’ll repeat. And try to spell it out some.
There is no proof that rape is biologically based, there is no identified gene that males have. But there is much to suggest that the tendency to rape under particular circumstances is an inherent part of male human nature and that such a characteristic would be selected for under the environment in which humans existed for most of our evolutionary history.
I suppose the preamble is that one has to accept that human nature has an inheritable biologic basis. Plenty of evidence to back up that assertion. Let us look at a few examples, in an order which approaches the subject of interest.
Individuals inherit a tendency to particular temperments, to particular strengths, to particular weaknesses, to a tendency to being physically aggressive or to impulse control difficulty or to withdrawl. For most of these the genes are not clearly identified, but twin studies have been quite conclusive.
We are wired to learn language according to some very abstract sets of rules. Which specific rules and which words is open to our environment. Similar abstract rules however even apply to created novel sign languages.
We are all prone to learn sets of moral conduct according to some very abstract rules. Which specific rules is open to which culture one is raised in.
Interestingly these include the tendency to altruism but in a very specific order. We are most likely to be altruistic to our children (often above ourselves), next to our immediate family, then to those who we percieve as being part of our kinship, then to members of more extended groups. In those situations we are most likely to be altruistic to those who have helped us and in the presence of witnesses. No genes for altruism have been identified, no hard evidence of inheritabiltiy, yet most scientists accept that the tendency to altruism has a solid evolutionary basis and you can find several past threads discussing it.
Also well accepted is that there is a solid evolutionary basis for the tendency to try to cheat, and for the tendency to try to detect and punish cheaters. These are also inheritable features of human nature. Many humans will cheat others, especially anonymous unrelated others, if they feel secure that they can get away with cheating without being being caught. Think of the willingness to cheat on taxes, or to listen to public radio without becoming a member, even. In this case the evolutionary basis is to garner resources that may allow the individual to survive long enough to reproduce and to bring young to reproductive age. Obviously few are thinking about it that way when they cheat. Young adult males as a group are more likely than females or other male age groups to utilize coercive physical force in order to obtain desired resources.
Many scientists believe that it was this escalating power battle between the need to work together, the desire to cheat, and the need to detect and punish cheaters, that led to the explosion in human brain power more than any other single factor. Of course there is proof of this. It is just a reasoned speculation by respected scientists.
Now with all that behind us, how absurd to believe that human sexual behavior would be exempt from those same pressures! That human sexual behavior would not be subject to an inheritable aspect of human nature with the same forces to comply with moral codes, to cheat against them when outside detection, and to detect and to punish cheaters. Cheating, stealing, other resources only indirectly influences genetic success; forcing a pregnancy upon a women, stealing her reproductive options and investment, without committing resources of his own to the child’s rearing does so directly. A very potent theft indeed from an evolutionary perspective. And thus a very immoral act that causes much suffering upon the female and is roundly condemed by society in all cases, at least when inflicted upon its own members. (In this analysis rape within marriage is a different case analysis and the lack of its universal condemnation across all cultures is the proverbial “exception that proofs the rule”. Think it through.) Those males in power do not want to promulgate rape to keep women oppressed. They have the power, they have the resources, they are fairly guaranteed reproductive success. The last thing that male of power wants is for some anonymous cheater to steal it from one of his women, be it wife, concubine, or daughter. And thus to steal it from him. Remember how it was Dukakis’s wimpy reaction to the hypothetical rape of his wife scenerio that sealed his political coffin?
I guess one can attempt to deny a biologically based human nature. Or to claim that sexual behavior is exempt from such pressures. But such claims strain credulity. And denying those aspects of human nature that are ugly is no way to deal with it intelligently.
Sure…when it works. But there’s no sure way of “forcing a pregnancy upon a woman”, there’s only forcing sperm upon her.
Several times in this thread people have said that it doesn’t cost a man much to ejaculate, and it’s true enough that the actual ejaculation is no more taxing in a rape situation than it is when the sex is consensual. But all these arguments in support of the theory that rape is an evolutionary adaptation are ignoring the reality of rape. I don’t mean the reality from the victim’s perspective, I mean that for the rapist it’s simply not cost effective.
Women aren’t just lying around waiting to be raped. A rapist first has to abduct (the etymology of the word itself suggests this) or isolate his victim. This may require overpowering her family and friends. But even if the rapist gets a lucky break and encounters a potential victim far from anyone who would move to protect her, he’s still got to overcome the woman herself. I personally know several women who managed to fight off would-be rapists, and our Paleolithic foremothers were probably tougher than most modern gals. Our forefathers were correspondingly tougher too, but they didn’t have much in the way of drugs or weapons to subdue or threaten their victims with.
Not only is committing rape a lot of work, it’s risky too. It can take plenty of effort to convince another person to agree to have sex with you too, but if your efforts fail you’re going to come away alive, intact, and free to have sex another day. Rapists are not always so lucky, and in ancient times they wouldn’t have had any means of making a speedy getaway or an urban population to disappear into.
The odds of any random sexual encounter leading to the healthy delivery of an infant are quite low, and would have been even lower in ancient times. It can take a couple of months of regular sex for fertile young couples to manage a conception, and there’s plenty that can go wrong between conception and childbirth. The odds of any random rape “paying off” with a baby are even lower. It’s certainly possible, but physical trauma to the victim reduces the chances, as does emotional trauma. Research on fertility suggests that stress can interfere with a woman’s ability to conceive or carry a child to term. A rape victim may also be less willing to take care of herself or the baby.
The average rapist would have to rape a whole lot of women to get even one surviving baby out of it. Setting aside the difficulty of actually carrying out so many rapes, where could a man in ancient times expect to find so many women in the first place? An alternative would be raping the same woman or small group of women repeatedly over a period of time. However, this seems exceptionally unlikely to occur unless there’s some sort of social system in place that makes both outsiders and the women themselves feel that the rapist has some sort of “right” to them. In various human societies there have been marriage and slavery customs that allowed for just that, but that takes us back to rape being the result of The Woman-Oppressing Patriarchy.
The typical rapist is putting a lot of work into a dangerous and difficult attempt to stick his penis in a woman. This attempt is less likely to result in a baby than a consensual one-night stand and much less likely than a lengthier sexual relationship, and all at much greater risk to his future reproductive abilities. This is an incredibly ineffective reproductive strategy, and that is why it doesn’t make sense to me as an evolutionary adaptation. There could still be genetic factors involved; a trait doesn’t have to be beneficial in order to be inheritable. There are genetic diseases that kill children before they reach reproductive age. More relevant here, there are inheritable mental illnesses and developmental disabilities that can make people more prone to violent or irrational behavior. But adaptive traits by definition provide some advantage to those that possess them, and with rape the cost/benefit analysis doesn’t seem to pay off.
This doesn’t have anything to do with my personal value system or some vast feminist conspiracy to suppress the truth, it’s about the numbers. I don’t see the numbers working in favor of rape except under unusual special circumstances.
Again Lamia, you have to keep this in context. When you do all your arguments about why not to rape, you help explain how an evolutionary perspective illuminates why rape generally only occurs when it does.
Committing rape has huge potential costs, in addition to huge potential benefits. Besides the fairly small risk of death from the victim (males are on average stronger/bigger; are now were then), there is, as you mention, the potential punishment from the victim’s kinship and expulsion from the community.
So when does rape commonly occur in tribal cultures?
When those risks are minimal, generally as part of tribal wars, by the victors, stealing the most important resource of the defeated tribe, the reproductive capacity of the females. They win and they grab for the brass ring of spoils. In a context where the risk of punishment from victim kinship is not incrementally increased. With a gang of cohorts to further minimize the risk of harm. In a context where punishment from his own society is a nonexistent risk. No risk, all potential gain. And you see it today in the Sudan.
How about rape committed within a society? I would imagine that within smaller tribal cultures it occurs fairly infrequently, because the risk of detection and punishment was huge and those in power could coerce without violence being needed. My sense is that rape within a society is generaly not committed by those who percieve themselves as the strong and powerful but as those who percieve themselves to be the societal outcasts. Those who have feel that they have little to lose, or who percieve the situation as analogous to war and percieve that they are outside of societal jurisdictions.
I believe someone else has already mentioned this, but the statistics indicate that rape “generally occurs” when a man who already has some relationship with a woman (relative, neighbor, coworker) decides to assault her in or near her own home or the home of someone she trusts. This common scenario minimizes many of the risks of rape from the rapist’s perspective, but it also seems to indicate a social or psychological problem rather than an evolutionary adaptation.
The slight chance of rape resulting in viable offspring doesn’t seem like all that big of a benefit, unless the man in question has no shot at more effective means of reproduction. And call me a romantic, but I don’t believe that can be too common.
Sounds like rape caused by social factors to me.
This isn’t consistent with the information I am familiar with about the personalities of rapists. FBI veteran Roy Hazlewood seems to be the big name in the field (although I’m no expert, so if his work has been debunked or is now considered outdated I hope someone will point this out), and he identified many rapists as being “Power-Assertive Rapists”. These are macho men with big egos who think that women exist to be used and abused by them. I’ve seen conflicting numbers, but this appears to be the most common form of rapist.
The other major rapist profiles identified by Hazlewood are the “Anger-Retaliatory Rapist” (rapes because he hates women), the “Power-Reassurance Rapist” (rapes because he hates himself, and because he doesn’t believe he could obtain his victim’s consent), and the “Anger-Excitation Rapist” (true sexual sadist). The only type that corresponds very well to your description is the “Power-Reassurance Rapist”, as he generally sees himself as lacking in power and masculinity and doubts he’s going to get what he wants (usually sex with a specific victim he has developed an obsession with) through legitimate means. But this kind of rapist is also the kind a woman has the best chances of escaping from. Causing pain isn’t a part of the fun for him as it is for the other types, and in his fantasies the woman is willing. If the victim is lucky just making it unignorably obvious that she isn’t willing may be enough to dissuade him, and since hurting her is not part of his goal she has better odds when it comes to fighting him off. In other words, he’s the type I’d imagine as being least likely to succeed against a healthy Stone Age woman, and probably only succeeds as often as he does in the modern day because his victims are afraid that he might be one of the more violent kinds of rapist.
Like, say, an alpha male?
Like, say, an alpha male?
Do alpha males typically get females drunk so they can take advantage of them, or offer to escort females homes so they can assault them privately? Those are two of the typical strategies of the “Power-Assertive Rapist”.
Of course, if you’re married to the idea of rape being an evolutionary adaptation, I doubt any research on the actual behavior of rapists is going to make any difference. It’s much easier to support such a theory if you base it entirely upon non-human behavior and unsupported speculation about the behavior of ancient humans and proto-humans. But I have yet to see any evidence in the way of statistics, genetic research, or criminal profiles of rapists that indicates that rape behavior as we know it provides rapists with any reproductive advantage over non-rapists. In the absence of such evidence I have to dismiss adaptive theories about the origins of rape behavior.
Hazelwood is professional profiler. His job is to create stereotypes, not collect real data. Some real data from a 1992 study of convicted rapists … www.drc.state.oh.us/web/Reports/sexoffnd.pdf
Another 19% were divorced.
These are not the strong and powerful with plenty of reproductive options. These are the dregs of society. Unmarried drug-addled alcoholics who are outside of normal societal constraints, usually all the more so out of normal societal constraints by virtue of being drug-addled at the time of the offense. Already feeling outside of society as evinced by previous non-sex convictions.
They are not about causing pain. 5% or less of all rapes result in serious injury, other than the rape and its emotional toll itself.
Think of it this way. Rape is not the selected for feature; the desire to take what one wants (and males want to spew their seed into any attractive, read fertile appearing, orifice, due to eons of evolution) using whatever means necessary is the baseline. What has been selected for is the ability to control those impulses when under society’s rubric. Those who could not control the impulses in that context were selected against by virtue of being punished by society. But there was no selective advantage to controlling the impulses where society had no control. So those who feel outside of society, by virtue of war, or disenfranchisement and little to lose, or just too drug-addled to maintain impulse control, resort to the baseline of acting on drives alone.
And remember that that “slight chance” is a lottery win in addition to a every day job salary. A big something for virtually nothing in addition to the long term major investment in a consensual relationship.
I had a lengthy response written out, but I now see after continuing to read through the posts that it is not necessary:
Which tells us nothing we didn’t already know: humans, particularly males, have a strong sex drive, and that drive - that instinct - is the product of evolution. If this is truly your current position, then I have no significant problem with it. The bolded part says that what I’ve been asking for evidence for all along is not present, which also supports what I’ve been saying all along: if rape behavior isn’t selected for, it’s not an evolutionary strategy.
Well, then here’s a task for you: demonstrate that they did evolve for an evolutionary purpose. Seeing as how you can categorically deny that they might not have, it should be easy.
I do not deny that they might have. I deny that there is sufficient evidence to say they did. Surely you can see the difference. Or is critical thought only allowed to be applied to areas outside of scientific inquiry?
That pretty much sums it up for me, too.
Darwin, you do realize that what I’ve said is the same thing I’ve said all along, just reversing the figure and the ground? Call the glass half empty or half full, it is the same damn glass. In both cases evolution would select for what is called rape in the circumstances in which it usually occurs. The only difference is what you artificially decide is the starting condition: all males rape or none rape. Both cases lead to the same stable state as an optimal evolutionary strategy from the point of view of the male’s genes. A tendency rape under circumstances in which societal punishment is percieved as unlikely or felt to be of little consequence.
Now reality is that evolution does start at point a or b. Hard to say where it starts. But the stable state is one in which the same behavior is likely to result from evolutionary pressures no matter where you start. The mathematicians call this an attractor basin. Whether assume that impulse control is inheritable and that without it all males would be willing to violently coerce for sex at any time (implicit in my “whatever means necessary”), or that the willingness to use violence to coerce for sex is inheritable and that without it all males would comply with women saying no and never utilize violent coercion, you get to the same spot.
Which again does not condone rape and does say that psychological factors are irrelevant. Why does a particular individual person percieve themselves as outside of society or outside of punishement?
sigh
No, it would not. It is becoming clearer with each post that you really do not grasp the fundamentals of natural selection. Rape is only selected for if it is the damn trait which determines differential reproduction. Is that really such a difficult concept? If rape is not the selected for trait, then it is not the product of natural selection, and is therefore not an evolutionary strategy. Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp?
And may I point out that your statement “evolution would select for” supports my contention that you do not fully grasp the workings of NS. Evolution does not “select for” anything. Evolution is the result of selection! Of course, evolution can also occur without selection. Evolution is not a mechanism - it is a result.
No. Just…no. That “stable state” in one case is only achieved if rape can be selected for. Otherwise, something else is the reproductive strategy that results. If one begins with the assumption that the starting conditions were " no males rape", and now one observes that some do, you have not demonstrated that rape is an evolutionary strategy. You have demonstrated that rape occurs, but have not specified a mechanism. Could be random fluctuations via genetic drift, could be natural selection, or it could be entirely non-genetic (which means it could be developmental in origin, learned, the by-product of chemical or hormonal imbalances, etc.). So that initial assumption demonstrates nothing about the mechanism of its increase in prevalence.
If one instead begins with the assumption of “all males rape”, then the argument is no better off, as it is clear that now all males do not rape. This means the prevalence of the behavior has declined over time, which would rule out rape providing a selective advantage, so one cannot subsequently claim it serves as an evolutionary strategy.
Frankly, I am not interested in whether it is condoned or not. You seem to feel that you must constantly repeat this, as though you yourself are feeling guilty for even thinking that rape is evolutionary in origin. I will state yet again, I don’t care what the politics are, I care only that the argument is not supported by the evidence!
You previously stated, “I have to show that such a hypothesis fits the available facts better than any other extant hypothesis”. You have most certainly not shown that that is the case. Rape-as-evolutionary-strategy does not explain rape against men, or anal rape, or rape against those who are clearly of non-reproductive age, or rape as punishment, or gang rapes, or rape using objects, etc., etc.
Your entire case is built upon speculation and assumption. That is not good science. I have admitted, on more than one occassion, that it might be true, but that the evidence does not support it. Do you admit that it might not be true, and that that could, in turn, explain the lack of supporting evidence?
I just want to point out that, whatever the truth of the matter regarding rape and evolution, this statement is completely false. If trait x leads to behaviour y, and behaviour y is strongly selected for, and trait x also leads to behaviours a, b, and c, where a, b, and c are largely neutral or even slightly disadvantagous, then y-as-evolutionary-strategy certainly does explain behaviours a, b, and c, even though those behaviours look stupid or even counterproductive.
Bullshit. And here’s why:
There is no “trait x leading to behavior y” here. The trait itself is rape behavior, which has not been demonstrated to be influenced by any selective pressures at all.
Furthermore, I was not arguing for a general case, I was making a point about this specific case. None of those make the least bit of sense if rape behavior itself is specifically an evolutionary strategy. And I don’t see where you or anyone else has pointed out that rape is merely a side-effect of some other trait that is actually being selected for. The topic at hand is not “aggressive behavior is an evolutionary option”, now is it? Indeed, had that been the case, I wouldn’t have said a word against it.
So unless you are changing the entire argument, it amounts to nothing more than straw.
“Rape as evolutionary strategy” is nothing more than an ad hoc hypothesis to explain some forms of rape, while completely ignoring the larger scope of the behavior. And it does a piss-poor job at explaining those forms which it might actually have some influcence over, at that, since ultimately those arguments further rely on assorted societal pressures being present or absent in order to be implemented. So IF this, and IF that, and given this other ASSUMPTION, rape COULD, in SOME circumstances, be said to work in an evolutionary context. And you think that’s a rational scientific argument?