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Rape is a Natural Product of Evolution
http://www.anusha.com/rapeevol.htmScientific Study Concludes: Rape is a Natural Product of Evolution
Scripps Howard News Service - January 11, 2000
Rape is not, typically, the crime of male domination it has been portrayed as by sociologists and feminists in recent years, says a University of New Mexico biology professor.
Instead, UNM's Randy Thornhill and Colorado anthropologist Craig T. Palmer have developed a new theory that rape is a complex sexual crime with strong roots in human evolution.
Moreover, contend Thornhill and Palmer, rape "prevention efforts will founder until they are based on the understanding that rape evolved as a form of male reproductive behavior."
"We have to get real about rape," Thornhill said in a recent interview.
The two scientists co-authored an article titled "Why Men Rape" in the current issue of the journal The Sciences. The journal is published by the New York Academy of Sciences.
Thornhill and Palmer are to expound on their research in an upcoming book, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion, scheduled for release in April by MIT Press.
In the article, Thornhill and Palmer take aim at the prevailing societal notion that rape isn't about sex but about male power and is "a symptom of an unhealthy society in which men fear and disrespect women."
Palmer and Thornhill say some sociologists advance a view that, they think, incorrectly assumes that rape is "unnatural behavior that has nothing to do with sex and one that has no corollary in the animal world."
They counter that rape is part of the male mental sexual psyche; was at least part of a successful male reproductive strategy in human evolutionary history; and is strong enough to survive today despite strong social sanctions and legal penalties.
But they do not equate "natural" as good and agree that their public mission is to make rape extinct as a trait in human beings.
In an interview, Palmer said the article aims to convince "those who accept evolution but don't see it as applying to the brain and behavior and particularly the behavior of rape.
"We have to convince them that behavior, including sexual, evolved, just like our morphology and anatomy," he said. "The brain evolved along with the rest of the body."
Palmer said they aren't arguing that men who rape are "genetically predisposed to rape" or that there is a rape gene. Rather, they say that all males appear to be genetically capable of rape, and it is an act which can be triggered by environmental conditions or interactions in life.
The two scientists contend that current thinking about what causes rape is so bankrupt that it ignores the reality that by definition rape requires sexual arousal of the rapist.
Thornhill cites his own study of insects called scorpionflies, in which males are equipped with an appendage used solely to grab a female's forewing and prevent her escape during involuntary mating. The "rape clamp" is used when a male scorpionfly fails to attract a female through the alternative reproduction strategy of offering nuptial gifts, such as a dead insect.
Palmer said the argument actually might get greater acceptance among lay people than in some scientific quarters because people instinctively know that men and women are not just biologically different but think differently, have different sexual agendas or goals and "respond to certain behaviors in different ways."
"These differences are what lie at the basis of rape and what made it a possibility in our evolutionary history," he said.
The scientists say this broke a long tradition of professional journals' sidestepping the issue of rape's evolutionary underpinnings as being politically incorrect.
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Waiting for the great discoveries about pedophilia, bestiality, coprophagia, etc.
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