The Unwelcome Truth about Rape

That’s an excellent point.

Translated from the French. I did start to read the French to see if the translation was poor, but could only see the beginning.

It's a particularly prickly subject, not just because it's objectively horrible, but because rape itself can only exist because of the sexual dimorphism of humans. So it's an example of how the oppression of women can always ultimately be traced back to physiology, and therefore much disliked by transgenderists, MRAs, and intersectional 'feminists' alike. They can write twenty page essays about gender as a social construct if they like, but it's bullshit, and they know it.

The article was oddly written, the writing style was all over the place.

I would have thought it to be common sense that the reasons for rape are multiple. However, all rape is sexual because that is the nature of it. It's not sensual, which is what some people might want to think "sex" is, but rape is a sexual act. It's multiple other things too, and not necessarily all of them all of the time.

I don't think it's particularly helpful for anyone, least of all victims, to almost reason away rape by saying the man was biologically compelled. It reads almost like some men have some sort of biological right or entitlement to sex, lest they take matters into their own hands. There needs to be some widespread social and cultural changes. Why are young men gravitating to the likes of Andrew Tate, why is incel culture increasing, and what could/should be done about it.

I do think a lot of the time that people are talking past each other though.

I think people are referring to the idea that there is always power involved in rape, which T&P and other evo psych fans see as an unhelpful feminist dogma.

YY.

I think we can agree it's multifactorial - nature and nurture and culture. But it's not very useful just saying 'any man can rape' and 'fertile females are the most likely victims', even though it's true.

For policing, important to know men are variable, and a subset are highly dangerous and need detecting and containing.

For our own self-preservation, important not to trust any man initially, to look out for DV red flags, and have a means of escape.

I'm not sure what claim you're making with "rooted in biology". T&P claim that rape is an evolutionary adaptation. That would mean we would expect to see it across human cultures with little variation, & in our closest non-human relatives.

If by "rooted in biology" you mean something more like "sexual desire is biological, and men who rape experience a sexual desire to do so" or "male/female physical size & strength differences are biological, and make it easier for men to rape women & girls" I don't think anyone would disagree with you.

TempestTost Yes, people do deny that it's sexual act. It seems very common in some feminist circles, almost taken as a kind of first principle.

I've been a feminist for a very long time, but I have never heard anyone saying that rape is not a sexual act as well as an expression of power and dominance.
Wrong feminist circles, perhaps. Or the right ones!

Does it depend on their definition of 'sex'? Is their argument that men think they are 'having sex with' an unwilling women, because the act is sexual, whereas the unwillingness means that it is not a shared sexual act and therefore should be called something other than 'sex'?

It seems like unnecessary complication, but as I've never come across this 'first principle', I've never seen it properly explained.

As far as I'm aware, the most common understanding of rape is that it is a sexual act with a number of possible motivations, but always with the common denominator of the exercise of power by the rapist to deny the victim the right to say no.

There are TRAs who argue that a trans identifying male cannot rape a woman because transwomen are more marginalised and powerless in society than women - that's taking the 'its all about power not sex' to the limit, and is equally unconvincing.

I’m a biologist so I definitely come from the viewpoint that I find it easier to view us humans as the animals we are. I agree with @ApplebyArrows post.

What I find fascinating is how hyaenas are portrayed in Disney and newspaper articles etc. Their portrayal as sinister, deceitful creatures is nothing like the reality. They’re a peaceful, female dominated mammal, the females are physically strong and the anatomy of the female genitalia means it’s impossible for them to have non-consensual sex. I believe (not 100% sure) that makes them the only mammal that can’t be raped. Their genitalia is often referred to as bizarre and masculine-like.

Rule the women, rule the world! I’m not anti-religion (kids even go to a c of e school) but, IMO, the bible is a classic example of men writing a book that “coincidentally” aids dominating women within which women are largely portrayed as virgins, prostitutes or deceitful liars.

Have you not noticed the massive child abuse image (loathe to call it CP) problem we have? And there is a huge amount of 'granny porn' online.

Theres millions of animal abuse porn fgs. Men find almost anything 'attractive/arousing'

I'm not sure I agree with this.

Would you say that violence isn't rooted in biology? And yet we also see that violence varies a lot across cultures.

Humans are pretty adaptable, including to differernt social structures, and varied environmental conditions.

Why do some cultures produce a lot of violence, is the question I'd want to ask based on your observation here. Violence and rape are clearly connected, but that doesn't mean that rape is just a form of violence. There is always the question, what is violence for?

Bonobos, and chimps to come extent too, have sex all the time, so it's not a surprise there isn't a lot of rape.

Yes, I would definitely say their positions reflected their male perspective on the subject. I’m not sure there was much actual research data, it was theoretical.

The Russians raped Ukrainian women as a reproductive denial-of-service attack. The raping soldiers told their victims that this was why they were raping them.

This doesn't preclude Russians also raping men and boys.

I have a lot of questions about the research for this article.

In the mid-eighties, Palmer, in his early 20s, like many others before and after, dropped out of a doctorate in anthropology, moved across the US and became a lobster fisherman in Maine. No mention of what his doctoral research was on. He didn’t ’go into self-imposed exile’. He dropped out. A lot of doctoral candidates do. He didn’t ’cut short his academic career’. He didn’t have one yet. He was still a student, possibly teaching a few intro classes.

A rape and murder in his Maine neighbourhood made him think about a statement he had supposedly made to his thesis advisor about rape being sexually motivated not being generally acknowledged by the social sciences, and he returned to finish his doctorate.

The article now tells us that this doctorate was on lobsters. Despite him being an anthropologist.) Then it says it was on the biological bases of sexual coercion. Then it says he encountered an entomologist, Thornhill, who was researching mating in scorpionflies and claims they were interested in ‘the same topic’ (?). Then there’s a lot of detail about coercive scorpionfly mating and the writer, Peggy Sastre, a philosopher, jokily telling us that ‘because they’re not complete idiots’ they know that scorpionflies and human aren’t the same.

The two co-authored several studies during the 90s. Their book on rape came out with a prestigious university press in 2000. The writer seems to forget about the fact that it was actually published as contracted, though a lot of space is given to the authors facing hostility from within the press before publication. The book got a mixed reception from reviewers in their academic fields, and a huge response in the non-academic media, mostly hostile, seeing it as justifying rape as biology-driven. Their classes were disrupted, they received threats, they took security measures. The writer specially blames this for Thornhill’s divorce and Palmer’s chronic depression. Both continued with their academic careers. Palmer is retired. Thornhill is a professor at the University of New Mexico.

Why she’s dragging up a story from a quarter of a century ago only becomes clear when Peggy Sastre complains that the dust hasn’t settled, that she is accused of being a rape apologist because she ‘follows in their footsteps’, and that a module she had planned to teach at Sciences Po in Reims had been cancelled —she doesn’t say what the module was about or what reason she was given for the cancellation, which is strange. (I mean, I’ve had classes cancelled last-minute because of low numbers signing up.)

She remains remarkably coy about her own position, research etc. A quick google says she’s the writer of an open letter in Le Monde criticising #MeToo (signed by Catherine Deneuve and other high-profile women), and defending men disciplined in the workplace ‘when their only crime was to touch a woman’s knee or to steal a kiss’, and their right to make a pass at women was ‘indispensable to sexual freedom’.

So I think what she doesn’t say is just as important as what she does, and that her own biases are clear.

If rape were driven purely by evolution & men's sexual desire, we'd expect to see little variance in rape incidence across cultures. This isn't the case, & researchers who have studied it have found higher levels of rape correlate with high levels of interpersonal violence in general, and with an ideology of male toughness and aggression. Cultures that prioritise the mother-child bond & structure society around maternity, not paternity, have low levels of rape.

Primate behaviour also undermines the idea that evolution drives men to rape. Thornhill & Palmer see the fundamental situation as men competing over women's bodies as reproductive resources, but if this were explanatory we would see the same behaviours in our closest relatives. But we don't - rape is very rare among chimps & nonexistent among bonobos. T&P are attributing to evolutionary pressure behaviours which are pretty clearly features of particular societal arrangements.

I have not read the original research but would ask, from those who have, how were these 2 male researchers epistemological positions accounted for in their methodology to avoid bias in their data? And dud their stated positions truly reflect their obviously male viewpoint?
This question comes from simply reading the title of the article ‘The Unwelcome Truth about Rape’ which suggests a single irrefutable rationale, which the comments so far clearly show is not the case.
Holding any single piece of research up as a holy grail of truth obviously simply shows how blinkered an author is.

Encourage sexual self-disapline, generally? Don't teach that we are at the mercy of our sexual desire and that it's unhealthy to suppress sexual desire. Teach ways to keep it under control.

Don't have a media or culture that focuses a lot of energy on inflaming desire. Don't teach people that their sexual thoughts have no wider effects, they can whack off to images of whatever weirdness they want without it impacting anything real. Don't teach that sexualaization of women in everyday society, for example through clothing, is somehow unconnected to sex? Admit that actually, young women wearing hot pants to school (not in the UK obviously) does create a sexualised environment for young men and that affects them.

Jordan Peterson was not on the wrong track either when he said a society with monogamy as the normative model, rather than having large swathes of the younger male population unable to marry, was also a protective social structure.

Don't mix situations with a lot of sexual elements with use of substances that inhibit judgement, self-control, and empathy. Discourage the use of substances like that generally.

But you said ‘what but sexual satisfaction could explain such revolting behaviour?’, so I answered the question!

I agree that it’s wrong to say it’s not about sex at all.

To me it's like saying eating isn't about hunger.

Can people have weird food issues? Sure, there are people who have food issues where they try and deal with emotional issues through the satisfaction of food. There are people who eat to make themselves unattractive. There are people who eat weird exotic foods to look rich and cool. Lots of people eat unhealthy foods, or too many of them, for a quick dopamine hit. There are companies dedicated to selling food that try and make us prone to eat improperly, or social customs that encourage poor eating habits.

But no one thinks we have to find tortured explanations that improper eating issues aren't rooted in normal processes to get us to feed the body.

Again, what are the “remedies”? This is what Thornhill and Palmer came up with, as quoted in the Guardian (and they don’t seem to be misrepresenting them in my memory)

Human males will rape, they contend, whenever their capacity to reproduce is thwarted. Thus every man is a potential rapist, and given the right conditions may become one. If rape prevention is to succeed, they say, evolution must be taken into account. And it is the practical application of this belief that has caused so much controversy.

Palmer and Thornhill recommend that young men taking their driving test be instructed that "Darwinian selection" is the reason why a man "may be tempted to demand sex even if he knows that his date truly doesn't want it" or "may mistake a woman's friendly comment or tight blouse as an invitation to sex".

For women, the pair provide similar questionable prescriptions, arguing that women must acknowledge that the way they dress can put them at risk of attack. "Surely the point that no woman's behaviour gives a man the right to rape her can be made without encouraging women to overlook the role they themselves may be playing in compromising their safety."