Tara

This I found to be a good article that deflates some of the claims of the main proponents of rape as a biological adaptation, Thornhill and Palmer.

But what about all the other animal species exhibit rape behavior? There are many.

The general sociobiology stance is that rape is all about violence and nothing about an underlying urge to reproduce (sex). As much as I don't like the idea of rape being "natural" (could easily be misinterpreted as meaning “acceptable”; natural doesn't necessarily mean okay!!) . Remember these traits evolved in a time very different from the society we live in today.

The above authors give this to debunk the by-product notion:

“But what, in behavioural terms, is an evolutionary by-product? Everything that is not a specific adaptation. Thus, playing the piano — an activity unlikely to have been instrumental in the evolution of the brain — is an evolutionary by-product, because it depends on a brain that was itself produced by natural selection. If every human behaviour can be seen as a by-product of evolution, then the by-product idea is useless, for a theory that explains everything is merely a truism. The claims that rape and playing the piano are by-products of evolution are claims without content.”

Last thought, how would we explain male’s comparatively greater sex drive, undoubtedly evolutionary, right? So how can rape not fit under the umbrella of sex drive? It has to unless you define rape as ALL about a misogynist urge to control/harm women and NOT about sex…

Arbogast

I would bet (no way to prove it), that nearly every Caucasian of European Descent has an ancestor that was the offspring of a rape by a Roman soldier.

It is obvious the African American gene pool is profoundly altered by rape by Caucasian Americans.

Rape has unfortuanately played a great role in human evolution in the past.

In the past, rape and pillage cannot be seperated from the subject of warfare.

pz

It's a lousy reproductive strategy.

It might be an adequate method for a few men to get their penises into some unwilling vaginas, but here's some news for you: there's much, much more to reproduction than that. We are a rather highly social species. Individually, we are relatively wimpy -- even your bruisers armed with knives are going to be easy prey for a big cat. Behaviors that discourage female cooperation and disrupt the social structure are not likely to be very good survival strategies for us.

We were not less dependent on cooperative social behavior in previous eras. Go back 100,000 years, and what you find is that people were living in tightly knit bands of 20-30, and while the biggest, strongest, healthiest guy might well have had his pick of the women, it wouldn't be because he was able to rape them. And some rogue loner who was unable to find willing mates was not going to be able to succeed by rape.

Arbogast

"It's a lousy reproductive strategy."

Very defective history.

Genghis Khan and his 4 grandsons and other relatives is an amazing story of the using the violence and rape to spread your gene pool into the upper class of society throughout most of the continent of Europe and Asia.

Probably little long term hereditary nobility in Europe and Asis unrelated by geneology to Genghis Khan.

Dr Rick

The burden of proof is upon the one making the assertive claim; you have provided no evidence to support your claims that rape is an effective reproductive strategy or that it is "clearly related to reproduction." In the absence of any evidence, we cannot conclude that human rape behavour is the product of natural selection any more than speeding or building violation codes are.

Imagination is a poor substitute for scientific inquiry; I'll stick with science:

Med Sci Law 2002 Jan;42(1):51-7
The sexual profile of rapists in Singapore
Gwee KP, Lim LE, Woo M.
Institute of Mental Health, Singapore, Republic of Singapore.

To our knowledge, this is the first paper that examines the sexual profile of rapists in Singapore. A semi-structured interview based on a questionnaire about sexual habits was conducted on 62 convicted rapists and a control group of 63 prisoners comprising 32 convicted for violent non-sexual offences and 31 for non-violent non-sexual offences. Significantly more rapists masturbated at least once a month and were exposed to pornography within six months before the offence when compared to non-violent controls. Violent controls did not differ significantly from rapists in any aspect of the sexual history. The greater similarity between rapists and violent controls lends support to the concept of rape as a violent rather than sexual offence. A subgroup of 17 'hypersexual' rapists were identified who were either having sex or masturbating very frequently but had still resorted to rape. Compared to the other 46 rapists, the 'hypersexual' rapists were more likely to have fantasised predominantly about rape or bondage and to cite domination, aggression or hostility as reasons for committing rape, suggesting an even stronger element of power and aggression than in their less sexually active counterparts.


Am J Psychiatry 1977 Nov;134(11):1239-43
Rape: power, anger, and sexuality.
Groth AN, Burgess W, Holmstrom LL.

Accounts from both offenders and victims of what occurs during a rape suggest that issues of power, anger, and sexuality are important in understanding the rapist's behavior. All three issues seem to operate in every rape, but the proportion varies and one issue seems to dominate in each instance. The authors ranked accounts from 133 offenders and 92 victims for the dominant issue and found that the offenses could be categorized as power rape (sexuality used primarily to express power) or anger rape (use of sexuality to express anger). There were no rapes in which sex was the dominant issue; sexuality was always in the service of other, nonsexual needs.

Perspect Psychiatr Care 1995 Oct-Dec;31(4):9-13 Understanding the rapist's mind.
Janssen E.

TOPIC. The motivations and psychology of the rapist. PURPOSE. To provide a framework of sexual perversions so that the motives and psychology of rapists can be better understood. SOURCE. Analytic literature. CONCLUSION. Unconscious motives leading to rape appear related to issues of control, power, and dominance.

J Pers Soc Psychol 2000 Mar;78(3):559-81 Social motives and cognitive power-sex associations: predictors of aggressive sexual behavior.
Zurbriggen EL.
Department of Psychology, New York University, USA. zurbrigg@dynamic.uoregon.edu

The present study investigated whether implicit social motives and cognitive power-sex associations would predict self-reports of aggressive sexual behavior. Participants wrote stories in response to Thematic Apperception Test pictures, which were scored for power and affiliation-intimacy motives. They also completed a lexical-decision priming task that provided an index of the strength of the cognitive association between the concepts of "power" and "sexuality." For men, high levels of power motivation and strong power-sex associations predicted more frequent aggression. There was also an interaction: Power motivation was unrelated to aggression for men with the weakest power-sex associations. For women, high levels of affiliation-intimacy motivation were associated with more frequent aggression. Strong power-sex associations were also predictive for women but only when affiliation-intimacy motivation was high

Am J Orthopsychiatry 1990 Apr;60(2):268-80 Motives and psychodynamics of self-reported, unincarcerated rapists.
Lisak D, Roth S.
Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.

Fifteen men, classified by self-report as rapists and attempted rapists, but who had never been arrested or convicted, were compared to a matched control group on standardized instruments and content-coded interviews. Differences in hostility toward women, power motivations, and hypermasculinity were similar to findings from studies of convicted rapists. However, results suggest a greater role for the father in the etiology of rape-associated dynamics than has previously been reported.

pz

This is an assertion for which you have no evidence. Who says males have a "comparatively greater sex drive"? In my experience, women's interest in sex has been just as great as men's. It's often expressed differently, and may be more carefully hidden, but that's a cultural imposition.Rape is about a forced sex act. It is not about reproduction, which is the evolutionary issue.

In this discussion, I see a lot of implicit panadaptationism, the idea that all features exhibited by a species must be explained as a consequence, direct or indirect, of a selective advantage. Furthermore, there is the assumption that all of these features must be heritable -- that a rapist has genes that make him a rapist, and that his children will be thereby predisposed to become rapists.

This is all wrong.

Rape is a pathological act, carried out by damaged people who have difficulty operating under the normal rules of society (which is, obviously, the optimal way to achieve reproductive success). There is no evidence for "rape genes", which is actually a rather ludicrous idea in the first place.

Rape happens. It happens quite frequently. You cannot argue that simply because something happens, it must have an evolutionary advantage, or it wouldn't happen at all. Greenstick fractures also happen quite frequently, much more often than rape -- yet no one argues (I hope!) that there must therefore be a gene for broken legs, and that there must be a selective advantage to breaking legs, or evolution would have stripped it from the species long ago.

Rape is a consequence of broken brains and broken social conditions. No evolutionary, causal explanation is necessary.

Tara

What would you guys say about this reasoning???
http://www.antithesis.com/commentary/darwin.html

pz

Sweet jebus. The Discovery Institute??!? Those guys are lying creationist twits -- you'd be hard pressed to find a less credible source.

Personally, I also thoroughly despise the work of Pinker, who continually makes the same stupid error that the author of your article makes.

Yes, the biological world is the result of material, natural causes which include evolution. No, that does not mean that every feature must provide some "benefit".

Tara

Why are most sex offenders male? Because they are more agressive and not more sexual? Not sure about that.

Tara

I know the source is unreliable! I wanted to hear debunking of the reasoning

"No, that does not mean that every feature must provide some "benefit"."

So the argument is still... has rape been beneficial IN THE PAST? No one has tackled the question of why other species exhibit rape behavior... Do you know how many rapes occur every year? A lot. All those people are just deranged as are the lower animals that rape? I need to locate references...

I don't belive this position myself, I'm only trying to develop good reason to say it's false, other than the knee-jerk, "that's really a horrible notion" reaction.