The Unwelcome Truth about Rape

I guess that doesn't support their theory of sexual attraction being a large factor 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don't think the fact that individual behaviour is reproductively counterproductive (rape of males, rape and murder of females) means that the tendency to it can't be linked to ancestors whose reproductive success rested on coercive mating strategies.

Yes, any primitive tribe that practised forced impregnation of the women of rival tribes would have a reproductive advantage, so it's not surprising such behaviour is common in wartime.

The calculation is different for an individual man in peacetime, because a rape strategy and a cooperative strategy can both pay off (the latter because it increases the chances of progeny surviving to reproductive age). I don't find it unbelievable that there are some men who are genetically inclined to rape, which will express itself as finding sexual pleasure in violent, coerced, or deceptive sex. A paraphilia, in other words.

I don't find useful the concept of rape as a last resort: for these men, it's a first resort.

X posted with @Theeyeballsinthesky and no I don’t think they focus much on male on male rape.

Try again. Young and teenaged boys were raped in Ukraine by invading Russian troops. Ukraine is not unique in this respect.

I also agree with Marie.

There is always power involved, because however much it’s motivated purely by sexual desire the rapist knows they can’t have the sex they want to without exercising it, and they will generally know they are violating the victim’s right to consent over what happens to their (generally her) body. People tend to grasp this much more easily when they think about male rape.

does their research touch on male on male rape at all?

I am familiar with Thornhill and Palmer’s work on this and it’s fairly typical evo psych, hardly groundbreaking, and there was definitely a suggestion that women can “prevent” rape, and that policy should reflect this. Obviously they shouldn’t have been treated like that for presenting their research though and I agree it’s an early example of cancel culture.

Interesting read thank you for posting it @TheywontletmehavethenameIwant.
It would seem that the book burning gender idealogs didn't start the cancellation craze but merely adapted it to their cause

edited to add that I've seen the other posts now, and agree that rape in war is a very relevant challenge to their theory.

On the contrary, rape as deliberate promotion of sexual reproduction using the aggressors' genes is a strong vindication of their theory that rape may have an evolutionary basis in successful reproduction. "Sexual" definitely includes reproduction as well as sexual desire.

(With the apparently necessary disclaimer that an evolutionary basis is no kind of excuse for a criminal act.)

Thank you for the link, OP.
From the article:
Here are a few examples of the arguments they present: the victim’s physical appearance matters to the rapist; rape is first and foremost a sexual act, and only secondarily (and not always) motivated by a desire to dominate, humiliate, or annihilate; rape can be a means for the rapist to transmit his genes; reproductive biology plays a role in sexual coercion. Both researchers hammer home the point that while certain criteria—such as the victim’s age, appearance, and vulnerability—are important to the aggressor and this explains why men rape—this can never excuse rape, much less justify it.

My first thought is - does anyone deny that rape is by definition a sexual act? it is the motivations for the act that are debatable,
And surely it is accepted that rape is sometimes motivated primarily by 'biology', for instance the rape of a specific woman who the rapist knows would never have consensual sex with him?
But whatever the primary motivation, the whole context of such a rape is exercising power over a woman. I don't understand how the researchers think that power is not involved.

In other cases, as we all know, the only specificity sought by the rapist is that his victim is a woman - what she looks like, what she is wearing, who she is, is irrelevant. I don't see how they can build a whole theoretical framework about rape without looking at the range of motivations.

The Thornhill and Palmer affair is an ugly story. It is the story of two researchers who challenged intellectual orthodoxy and found themselves trapped in a world in which rumour counts as proof, the motivations falsely attributed to you matter more than what you actually wrote and people would rather punish men than refute ideas.
Is there an 'intellectual orthodoxy' that says that rape has nothing to do with sex?

Thornhill and Palmer “threatened a consensus that had held firm in intellectual life for a quarter of a century,” writes psychologist Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature_ (2002), the first book to detail the witch hunt.
Now it's a 'witch hunt'! And a reference to a book published in 2002.
I'm not convinced by their narrative of plucky researchers being silenced, not because their theories don't hold up, but because they are 'challenging orthodoxy..'

edited to add that I've seen the other posts now, and agree that rape in war is a very relevant challenge to their theory.

I have read about conflicts where soldiers have been given viagra to facilitate the rape of captive women. Editing to add: which strengthens the previous post that rape in conflict is not about normal sexual desire. It is firmly violence perpetrated on one side by the other.

And for ethnic cleansing reasons too - to impregnate the women and girls. 😢

Poorly written article which does not cover the relevant perspectives. The women raped as part of wars and civil unrest are raped to dehumanise and humiliate. It’s not about sexual desire.