sullster

The June "Scientific American", has an article called,"Disturbing Behaviors of the Orangutan".
The article describes the results of studies on the primate which reveal that offspring are not always the result of female sexual selection of dominant males.

An immature "rogue" male is found to have virutally equal reproductive success as the aggressive and larger dominant males. The disturbing reason is: rape. The immature males force copulations on resisting females when they are outside the purvue of the mature males.

Thus being a less stressed, scrawny, unattractive male can be a good reproductive strategy by using rape to pass on your genes.

The article ends by alluding to the idea of rape in homo-sapiens as a naturally selected strategy but recoils in horror.

Oddly enough, I am reading,"The Fall of Berlin 1945", by Antony Beevor about the Russian Army's conquest of Berlin and eastern Germany during the end of WW2. The author mentions the new biological ideas on rape in the context of the Russian Army's conquest and mass rape of German women. The total absence of controls during war could bring forth the rape instinct especially among the masses of low status males who make up vast armies during war.

Interested in anyone's ideas on rape as a selected reproductive strategy for males.

Liquidrage

Ever seen "barn cats" breed?
It's allmost always rape.

sullster

No I haven't, but that must be quite the orgy!

The issue of rape being a selected strategy challenges some assumptions of sexual selection it seems. The powerful male who fights for territory with other males and has the energy investment in a large body could end up having the same amount of reproducitve success as some scrawny little male who just sexually subdues a female and goes on his way.

Obviously rape is dangerous for the scrawny male because if he gets caught by the powerful male he is going to be a pile of lean meat and bones. Female selection may produce the large males yet the skinny nasty males may be perpetuated by their ability to rape. Females would not be best served by mating with the scrawny males but the genes in those males don't care what the female position is,(so to speak).

I think that Dawkins would consider the rapist a cheater and he always admitted that cheaters can win a lot of the time in the gene race. Interesting take on rape in this context.

Dr Rick

It usually isn't. Female orangutans don't so much select their mates as the males select among themselves. Once a male establshes his dominance, a female orangutan has little choice in the matter.


<strong> There is no evidence that human males possess an instinct to rape, and the evidence suggests that those human males that do rape do not do so for purposes of reproduction. About 1/2 of all rapists do not even ejaculate during their crime, many rapes are committed on infertile premenarche girls or post-menopausal women, and many rapes are anal, forced oral sex, and/or object penetration, all of which carry very little chance of producing progeny.

Absent any other supporting evidence, it takes an unjustified leap of faith to draw conclusions about complex human behaviors from orangutans.

Rick

The Lone Ranger

Actually, as I recall, Randy Thornhill and a few others have provided evidence that there may be a predisposition for men to commit rape, under certain circumstances. [Note that no one is suggesting that this makes rape in any way morally defensible.]

I'm not intimately familiar with the literature on this particular topic, but if I recall correctly, even when one takes into account the relative numbers of women in different age groups, women in their late teens to early 30s are much more likely to be the victims of rape than are pre-reproductive or post-reproductive women. Furthermore, some studies have claimed that women who are generally regarded as physically attractive are considerably more likely to be sexually assaulted than are same-age women who are less physically attractive.

It's also worth mentioning that in many mammals (including many primates), forced copulation -- including male/male copulation -- is a common way of establishing dominance.

In many cases, I suspect that rape is -- as the saying goes -- more about power than sex. On the other hand, the disproportionate frequency of rapists targeting women who seem to be fertile suggests that sometimes it is a viable reproductive strategy.

Cheers,

Michael

sullster

The idea of a selected reproductive predisposition to rape has been inserted in the book I previously mentioned about the Russian conquest of Berlin and eastern Germany in 1945.
I found it interesting because such a view is not usually mentioned in a straight work of history. It shows how some scientific ideas are being recieved in other academic areas.

The mass rape of German women by the Russian soldiers has always been looked at as motivated by revenge and hate of the Germans. At closer analysis the issue is more complex according to Antony Beevor's writing. When the Russian soldiers first got into Germany they raped and killed virtually all the women they assaulted whatever age they were. After a few months in German territory, mostly relatively young women were raped and the murder declined.

We cannot come to a vast conclusion here about human rape. This was the end of a war horrific beyond belief. Yet, the normal controls on male behaviour were disrupted and war is an essentially male area of activity. There may be a male rape predisposition in evidence here.
Male hatred and anger may motivate rape only so far, and a biological urge may indeed be there.

beausoleil

Robin Baker's "Sperm Wars" covers this topic in some depth. Some of it is interesting and convincing, but I think his coverage of homosexuality as a reproductive strategy underlines the absurdity of much evolutionary psychology.

A behaviour is observed, a story is constructed about how it conveys some evolutionary advantage. The test of the story is the observation that prompted it. It's not science, it's mythology.

Vorkosigan

Robin Baker's "Sperm Wars" covers this topic in some depth. Some of it is interesting and convincing, but I think his coverage of homosexuality as a reproductive strategy underlines the absurdity of much evolutionary psychology.

&gt;whew&lt; Thanks. I'm sure we'll all stop reading evolutionary psychology now that you've set us straight.

A behaviour is observed, a story is constructed about how it conveys some evolutionary advantage. The test of the story is the observation that prompted it. It's not science, it's mythology.

It's hard to argue with devastating logic like this....

But back to serious discussion:

The rape-as-reproductive-strategy arguments fail because human females are not orangutang females. Rape is a dangerous strategy in a species where kin networks are well-developed. Additionally, human females have numerous ways to avoid having or keeping a fetus. A rapist seriously interested in reproduction would have to sequester the pregnant female and then take care of the kid -- but that is precisely what the rapist is presumably trying to avoid.

It is easy to understand why rapists pick the 17-35 crowd among females. Who else is likely to be on the street alone? Children rarely go out unaccompanied, and older women tend to be either wary or married or both. A rape victim ideally must be alone, unwary or inexperienced (or both) and female. What kind of females qualify for that?

Vorkosigan

[ June 02, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

jayh

The thing that bothered me about that article and this discussion is the anthromorphising in use of the term 'rape' when viewing a very different species. Seemingly coercive mating occurs in many species (including dolphins which are anthromorphised extensively by 'new-agers') and in the species where it is common there is no reason to believe it is the trauma that it is in the human setting. There are many species where it appears that ALL mating is coercive (snapping turtles, for example).

[I am intentionally using very neutral terms in this discussion to highlight the evolutionary issues... certainly not to trivialize the experience of rape]

My guess is that rape is so painful for human females because of our complex emotional structure and of our long and very resource intensive reproductive cycle. It becomes essential pragmatically and emotionally for a human female to have complete control over her own reproductive resources.. rape completely violates this control and essentiall invades her body with unwelcome genetics.

There is NO reason to assume that coercive mating (unfortunately called 'rape' by the article authors) is at all comparably stressful for female orangutans or dolphins for that matter.

jay

RufusAtticus

Yep, the ancient Italians made some herb go extinct because they used it so often to induce miscarriages.

I think the analog strategy in humans would be the sneaker male (the male man or pool boy), who can seduce other men's women.

~~RvFvS~~