Female sexuality

[Monkeytrousers]

hello and welcome

I don't think that anyone has suggested that men can't help themselves. The suggestion is that in the absence of socialisation men are more likely to commit rape, since in the absence of of society it is to the men's genetic advantage to attempt to impregnate as many women as possible.

The victims won't always be women, because (again, in the absence of society) men don't have to invest much in the sexual act either in terms input or consequence, so a scattergun approach suffices. Consequently victims will include "proxy" females such as younger men in prison etc. As I heard someone say last night "men will fuck a hole in a plank when they're out at sea"

Dominance is inevitably involved in the process - I think Monkeytrousers has some scientifically based theories on this.

When men talk about their experiences of male rape in prison, dominance and humiliation are central themes, but it may be that this is in part to do with the need of the rapists to justify their sexually motivated acts in terms of the uber-masculine culture in which they are operating.

Dworkin also said a good thing about women as symbol - that woman becomes "mother of the earth, slut of the universe" - which is a concept all good Catholics will be all too familiar with. I like the phrase "slut of the universe". Think slutoftheuniverse might have to be my new handle.

More quotes
here

You see I would argue the opposite kittock, it appears that socialisation into masculinity plays a big part in men's propensity to rape. Gang rapes for example are a male bonding exercise, about reinforcing relationships between males by using a woman's body.

Etin, I didn't say you said to let men keep on raping, I'm just wondering what you are arguing. I'm not really sure about the scientific validity of using what other species do to explain human behaviour. After all the difference between us and other animals is that we do behave in a very different way from them. I'm struggling to see how the comparisons could be valid.

Aw, not slaglike-mass then?

I just find this all so bloody depressing (particularly the Dworkin material). I hate thinking this stuff about DP, let alone about my dad or my sons. I suppose I find it prefer the dualist approach - some men good, some men bad.

Actually I find pretty much all evolutionary theory immensely depressing, possibly because I don't understand a lot of it. I tried to read the Selfish Gene once and couldn't get past the first page - found it utterly incomprehensible.

You missed off the end of that quote Kittock, the political implications of those labels -

"but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so"

I've got to say that's what I've got from this discussion - it's still women being forced into other people's boxes (this time those of the evo-psychs') rather than women's experiences of ourselves being front and centre. Considering we're about the only animal which can actually express our experiences and what they mean to us, you'd think scientists would start there.

I do find (as a dyed-in-the-wool lefty) that evolutionary behavioural theory seems to reinforce existing power structures, and seems to be saying 'well, there's not a whole lot you can do about it'. kittock's point about maintaining social structures and so on is sensible, but that is inherently conservative of course. What happens if, as feminists, we think that certain social structures (like the justice system, particularly WRT rape trials - McKinnon's point that the presumption of innocence will almost always result in the acquittal of rapists if there are no independent witnesses) need to be fundamentally restructured in order to achieve full parity? Will men allow such changes to take place in an orderly, democratic fashion?

"Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so." Dworkin

Only instead of "her humanity is destroyed" I would say, her former, evolved, relatively more powerful nature is destroyed. Females in other species have counter-strategies to those negative ones of the males, and greater agency than human females.

In humans for various reasons, males achieved the upper hand and females could be constrained in ways that had not previously been possible. This is where human-specific aspects come in, but they are built on millions of years of evolution just like all other species.

I'm working on the perspective that human males have been able to continue to express their 'nature' while controlling and constraining that of human females. It is easier to see what male 'nature' is but we do not yet know what female 'nature' is. I think that's what evolutionary feminists are trying to discover. I think woman is more socially constructed than man.

And I agree with all that about social stability etc. I'm sure there are men with empathy and intelligence etc who respect women and would not rape. And various environmental factors have enormous influence on males who may be less 'naturally' respectful of women.

I guess it depends which you view as the most important - millions of years of evolution or where we live now and what that is like for women.

Also, to say that rape only becomes widespread when there is social instability is untrue - rape and sexual assault are endemic to our society. If women haven't been raped or sexually assaulted, they live in fear of it - fear that has real, profound effects on women's lives.

My problem with this emphasis on rape's "naturalness" or its foundation in evolution is that that approach isn't taken to any other form of oppression that humans experience. People don't generally spend much time looking for the evolutionary basis for racism or enslaving people. Men have always claimed that rape is "natural", this argument appears to be just another extension of it.

And really, until women are free and no longer live under this threat from men, it's almost impossible to talk about female sexuality.

I don't know if this was the book that got a name-check earlier, but this is a good review of the kind of evo-psych apologism for rape that is so very, very popular now:

link

"In Rape Debate, Controversy Trumps Credibility

"Natural" sexual assault theory "irresistible" to profit-driven media

By Jennifer L. Pozner

When Taliban leaders claim women incite sexual assault by wearing clothing more revealing than a burkah or leaving their homes unchaperoned by male relatives, it's not hard for U.S. reporters to recognize these statements as products of misogyny. But when two evolutionary psychologists recently put forth the same basic notion under the guise of objective science, they became highly sought-after media stars.

Book excerpts in small science journals don't tend to receive torrents of mainstream media coverage. But that's what happened when The Sciences (1-2/00) ran an essay titled "Why Men Rape" by evolutionary psychologists Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer. Excerpted from their then-unreleased MIT Press book A Natural History of Rape, the essay claimed that rape is not a crime of violence but a "natural, biological phenomenon."

During January alone, before their book was even published, a Nexis database search shows that news outlets rushed out more than 50 reports on Thornhill and Palmer's theory that rape evolved as a reproductive adaptation on the part of socially disenfranchised men who needed to pass on their genes by force.

Since "rape is in its very essence a sexual act," Thornhill and Palmer told reporters (New York Times, 1/15/00), a woman's risk of attack rises along with her hemline, and her willingness to socialize without the company of "male protectors" (CNN Talkback Live, 1/18/00). Accepting this "scientific knowledge" (Washington Post, 1/28/00) about forced sex "empowers women to avoid" it (CNN, 1/18/00) by helping them understand the "costs associated with dressing provocatively and going out alone at night and so forth." (Today Show, 1/24/00) Thornhill denied blaming the victim: "All we're doing is giving women the information about male sexuality and thereby letting them choose" (NPR Talk of the Nation, 1/26/00).

Science vs. feminism

Using empowerment rhetoric to promote their brand of speculative and untestable science, Thornhill and Palmer outlined the terms of the debate early on: "We have to get rid of all the ideology, the polemics and the claims and deal with rape scientifically," Thornhill told the first major outlet to carry the story (Scripps Howard News Service, 1/10/00). Feminists and social scientists who don't leave "the dark ages" (NPR, 1/26/00) and embrace evolutionary psychology as the "truth" (L.A. Times, 2/20/00), they asserted, "will essentially be pro-rape" (Scripps Howard, 1/10/00).

Since Thornhill and Palmer claimed that "the rape-prevention measures that are being taught to police officers, lawyers, parents, college students and potential rapists are based on the prevailing social-science view, and are therefore doomed to fail" (The Sciences, 1-2/00), they offered news outlets this suggestion for an "scientifically informed" alternative (Washington Post, 1/28/00): Before teenaged boys receive driver's licenses, they should be taught 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," and why he "may mistake a woman's friendly comment or tight blouse as an invitation to sex." (New York Times, 1/15/00)

Following Thornhill's lead, journalists generally framed the "Darwin made me do it!" story as a battle between angry activists and dispassionate scientists. Headlines like "Study of Rape Hits Ideological Wall" (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/27/00) and subheads like "Feminists Incensed" (MSNBC.com, 1/28/00) were common, as was Thornhill's refrain that the equation of rape and violence is "based on empirically erroneous, even mythological ideas" (New York Times, 1/15/00) promoted by "scientifically bankrupt" feminists like Susan Brownmiller, author of Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, whom they attack by name in their book and in numerous interviews (e.g., Washington Post, 1/28/00).

It would have been relatively easy for reporters to compare Thornhill and Palmer's claims against the exhaustive research conducted on rape victims and rapists over the past 30 years. According to Dr. Mary Koss, a professor of public health and psychology at the University of Arizona and a leading rape researcher, "The bulk of available data makes fiction of [Thornhill and Palmer's claims], thus eliminating all the data that the authors purport are supportive of their theory except their observations of insect and bird behavior." (Violence, Trauma and Abuse, 4/00) For example, Koss notes, no existing data prove a causal link between a victim's location, attire or time of day and heightened risk of rape. (For a copy of this review, email Dr. Koss at [email protected].)

But since feminists' adverse reaction was the popular news hook, Thornhill and Palmer's theory was rarely subjected to scientific criticism. When it came time for balance, reporters generally sought responses from anti-rape advocates, rape victims and feminist activists, often described as reacting to these ideas with "fear" and "anger." (Scripps Howard, 1/10/00, 1/27/00)

Controversy over content

San Antonio Express News reporter Susan Yerkes told Extra! that broadcast coverage of A Natural History of Rape was a sad illustration of how "TV producers think they need to do shows with people who will kill each other over spurious issues just to get the audience's attention." This boxing match approach was most stark in televised debates, where feminist guests seemed to be brought in primarily to express outrage.

Facing off against both Thornhill and Palmer on CBS's Early Show (1/20/00), NOW president Patricia Ireland tried to break out of this formula by pointing to examples in nature that don't mesh with Thornhill's reproductive adaptation concept--only to be cut off by host Bryant Gumbel. "We're not going to get into the full science of it here. We're just not going to be able to get that done," Gumbel said swiftly. Gumbel's next question illustrated what he considered a more relevant query: "Mr. Thornhill, Mr. Palmer, did you fully expect your book to cause the uproar it has?"

Stoking this "uproar" allowed outlets to appear skeptical, even as they failed to scrutinize the sensationalistic theory's underlying science. Frustrated by what she considered undeserved credibility given to Thornhill and Palmer by the media, NOW Vice President Kim Gandy told CNN (1/18/00) that while the authors don't have much accurate information to impart, "one thing these guys know is...how to get themselves on television." Host Bobbie Battista's response was telling: "Well, it is provocative."

Rather than including biologists who could add scientific counterpoints to the debate, Today (1/24/00) pitted Thornhill against New York sex crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein. As was the case in every debate where Thornhill was the only scientist in the conversation, he appeared by default to be the defender of natural reality, allowing the sociobiologist to round off his claims with the assertion, "these are not debatable issues." When Fairstein criticized Thornhill for doing no research on rape victims or rapists, and instead basing much of his theory on his studies of the sexual practices of scorpion flies ("This is not, professor, A Bug's Life," Fairstein said), Thornhill huffed, "It's very, very tragic for critics of our approach to try to mislead the public about the nature of science."

Ignoring the scientific credentials of critical peers, Thornhill said his work is "misunderstood" because of "political correctness, the public's lack of scientific sophistication, and distorted coverage by the 'American media disco.'" (L.A. Times, 2/20/00) All these criticisms, Thornhill was fond of saying, will fall by the wayside when people's "initial emotions" subside (L.A. Times, 2/20/00) and they give the theory a "fair trial" by making an effort to "look at the actual data and read the book." (NPR, 1/26/00)

"Bad science"

Despite Thornhill's dismissal of detractors as people who simply "hadn't read the book"and despite much similar media framingmany of his and Palmer's most vocal critics were scientists who carefully read A Natural History of Rape and found its methodology and proclamations highly problematic. Unable to find any serious scientific critiques in mainstream science reviews, Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolution and genetics at the University of Chicago, teamed up with Harvard University comparative zoology professor Andrew Berry to produce a comprehensive, point-by-point debunking of Thornhill and Palmer's book for Nature (3/9/00). (Coyne also wrote an excellent, extended scientific review for the New Republic--4/3/00.)

"In their media appearances, Thornhill and Palmer cloak themselves in the authority of science, implying that the controversy over their ideas is purely political, and that the underlying biology is unimpeachable. This is a serious misrepresentation," Coyne and Berry write. They detail instances where the authors' "evidence either 1) fails to support their case, 2) is presented in a misleading and/or biased way, or 3) equally supports alternative explanations."

One of these instances is particularly glaring. Thornhill and Palmer support their evolutionary adaptation theory in part with the contention that female rape victims of reproductive age suffer more psychological trauma than pre-pubescent or post-menopausal women. They base this contention on a paper Thornhill wrote with his former wife, Nancy Wilmsen Thornhill (Ethology and Sociobiology, 1990, Vol. 11), a reanalysis of data from a 1973-74 survey of rape victims' responses within five days of their assault. Alarmingly, when Coyne and Berry checked the cited reference, "We [found] that the original work's conclusions differ critically from those given in the book.? The authors have used statistical sleight of hand to buttress their argument."

This alarm at Thornhill's misrepresentation of statistics is shared by Anthony Goldsmith, director of the Joseph Peters Institute (formerly the Center for Rape Concern), the group that conducted the 1973-74 research on rape victims. Describing Thornhill's claims about victims' varying rates of trauma as "a bad reanalysis of the data," Goldsmith told Extra!, "The research doesn't support what they claim, and that's bad science. It's not nice when our data is misused. I don't like it?particularly when it's used to support a theory that hinders the way we work with offenders."

Thornhill's misrepresentation isn't limited to papers he authored himself, or to sociological research on humans. Koss told FAIR that she identified 52 separate points of error when she read the book. And in an online review(www.feminista.com/v3n9/brownmiller.html).Susan Brownmiller writes, "By ellipsing sentences he misinterprets evolutionary biologist Patricia Gowaty's study of forced copulation in ducks."

Coyne told Extra! he is surprised that the press did not expose Thornhill and Palmer's faulty research in the glut of coverage of A Natural History of Rape. "Any science journalist could have gone to these sources and looked them up," Coyne said. "It makes me so annoyed that if scientists like myself and Mary Koss hadn't gone to the actual research they refer to? the truth about Thornhill and Palmer's findings would have remained buried forever."

"Sad state of journalism"

Certainly, there were a handful of journalists who scrutinized the implicationsand the coverageof Thornhill and Palmer's slippery science in excellent and critical reviews (e.g., Barbara Ehrenreich, Time, 1/31/00; Margaret Wertheim, Salon.com, 2/29/00; Dave Hill, London Observer, 2/27/00; Laura Flanders, In These Times, 3/6/00).

But controversy, not an examination of scientific credibility, is what most news outlets wanted, so controversy is what we overwhelmingly received--with little real information to help the public determine whether the evolutionary rape theory was scientifically sound, let alone newsworthy.

What Thornhill and Palmer received as a result of hundreds of stories in the national and international media was much more tangible. MIT Press capitalized on the book's PR hype by moving its publication date from April 1 to February 1, and by highlighting the book's media reviews on their web site.

Just as A Natural History of Rape hit bookstores, MIT Press ran an ad with the tagline, "You've seen the coverage. Now read the book." (Publishers Weekly, 1/31/00) Apparently a good number of people followed that advice: an MIT Press representative confirmed that the initial print run of 10,000 copies sold out by the first week in February, and at least another 10,000 copies were ordered.

In the lead paragraph of a Plain Dealer story on the "backlash" against Thornhill and Palmer's book (2/27/00), we are told that the authors "shed light on how difficult it is to have meaningful public discourse on a subject as scientifically complex and emotionally charged as rape." Perhaps this is truebecause media were seemingly uninterested in "meaningful public discourse," focusing instead on the clash between feminists and sociobiologists. But this construction didn't only overlook the book's sloppy researchit also ignored the reality of the rape education and prevention field over the past three decades.

As Brownmiller rightly notes, feminists, not scientists, accomplished social policy advances such as rape crisis centers, acquaintance rape prevention programs, and legal reforms to shield victims from having their attire and sexual history used against them in court. These are the types of advances Thornhill brands "scientifically bankrupt" and "doomed to fail. " Is it any surprise that, when asked by NPR's Melinda Penkava "if it's possible to have both worlds, here?" (1/26/00), Brownmiller responded with a question of her own: "Why are you conceding so much to a couple of guys with a crackpot theory?"

It's a good question. When incendiary ideas based on sloppy, contested science become such big news (think of The Bell Curve), we need to ask not only how this theory got presented to the public, but why it was so ballyhooed in the first place. Just because a topic is "provocative" doesn't mean it is inherently credible or newsworthy. But such distinctions are becoming increasingly vague in a media climate that considers news a "product" and readers and viewers "consumers."

When Brownmiller asked a USA Today reporter why he was giving Thornhill so much publicity, she says he replied that his paper had to remain competitive with other outlets also covering the story. Besides, he told her, "the irresistible combination of sex, violence and science" was impossible to pass up: "It sells newspapers and magazines, and that's the sad state of journalism today."

I've read 'Why Men Rape' and though I did not agree with parts of it, other parts I found relevant.

I find myself so stuck in the middle here because I have always been something of a radical feminist - my roots are in 70s feminism - but when my kids hit their teens about ten years ago I felt compelled to learn about our inherited biology due to the obvious and massively powerful impact of hormones around me.

Steven Pinker is an evolutionary psychologist I like. This is part of a response of mine to his writing on rape:-

"Steven Pinker in 'The Blank Slate' ridicules women for suggesting that rape is encouraged by men in their mutual self-interest because then, he says, men would have never made rape a crime in the first place.

But rape was originally a crime against the husband or father of the woman and not the woman herself so female sexuality was (and globally often still is) normally controlled by fathers and husbands.

So whether it's a rapist or a husband 'taking' sex from a wife who has no choice ie whether it's legitimate or not, it is still about males controlling reproduction.

Men made rape a crime for the same reason they made theft in general a crime. What all men agreed on was that women, like a thing being stolen, should be owned by men and not have rights over their own body or destiny - and this is surely a conspiracy against women.

Male sexual success - and human evolution - has been so intimately entwined with removing female mate choice that to say rape is not intimately connected to the oppression of women is far too short-sighted. Men will have ambivalent feelings towards rapists - fearing rape by other men of their own women but not really wanting women to have total rights over their own bodies."

Why should some/most men not want women to have reproductive rights over their own bodies? What does it matter to men? Why should men be bothered by sexual rejection?
Though in humans it is of course more complex, it is surely no coincidence that males of all comparable species seek to out-compete other males in sexual access to females which can and does include persistent harrassment of females and sometimes use of aggression.

As long as females are more discriminating about whom they mate with, males will be facing potential rejection much of the time. Along with males of most other species.

And certainly, as Yama said earlier and it hasn't been properly responded to yet, what about men who would not rape. What can we learn from them about their attitudes to women and sex. Or is it thst they have experienced less rejection? What about men who are regularly rejected - how do they deal with it?
Certainly in other primates the personalities also vary. Some males are more friendly towards females than others. They all have their own strategies.
In evo.psych., variation is something that is often, and wrongly, overlooked, not only re. humans but also re. other species.

I'm shocked and confused by the idea that men rape simply because they want/need to have sex.

Unless a man is a complete social outcast he will be able to find a willing partner, whether for a single encounter or relationship. I find it impossible to believe that a "normal", non-sociopathic man would be capable of keeping the erection required to rape a woman while holding her down and hearing her pleas, let alone get off on it (clearly I am naive). Why would he choose to rape rather than find a willing partner? Because what he wants is to see fear and distress in his victim.

How do you explain handsome, successful men committing rape when they could easily find willing partners. How do you explain date rape, when the woman is clearly attracted to the man enough to want to go out with him and would therefore be fairly likely to have consensual sex eventually?

sparklyjen - I was raped (drink spiked) by a handsome (ish) successful man & I have for the last 10 years wondered what I did to make him do this? I wasn't particularly flirting, just being friendly. I didn't fancy him at all but maybe I gave out the wrong impression I really don't know why he did it.

I do wonder why men who are more than capable of pulling a woman go out and to this? I wish I knew.. sorry haven't read all the thread.

I blamed myself for my rape for years (I didn't fight back because I felt so helpless and defeated by him and I was frightened) until someone asked me if he knew that I didn't want to have sex with him. The answer was that he knew fine well I had no interest in him, in fact I'd pushed him off a pavement once because he touched me, but he still went ahead but waited until I was at my most vulnerable. The guy that raped you, Ally, would have known that you didn't want done what he did to you - that's why he had to spike your drink. I don't want to speak to your experience, but from your description that's how it sounds.

Men aren't some kind of separate species who can't read situations. They might decide that what they want is more important than whatever the woman might want (and certainly that's what society tells them) but that's projection, not some kind of innate inability to read sexual situations. There are certain men who see women as obstacles in the way of them getting access to their vaginas.

Ally, that is the sort of situtation I'm talking about, that man could have gone out the next night and found a woman who did want to have sex with him. The reason he decided to do what he did was not simply because he wanted to have sex.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I think women are "asking for it" in date rape situations in any way. My heart goes out to you, I can't imagine how awful you feel.

"As long as females are more discriminating about whom they mate with, males will be facing potential rejection much of the time. Along with males of most other species."

Well I don't know about anybody else here but certainly when I was on the market so to speak, I've had men not being interested in me and rejecting me. Rejection in sexual areas isn''t a one-way street the way men would like to pretend. A lot of men pretend that they get rejected basically because Mr Average doesn't get to sleep with supermodels.

Evo-psych arguments are so simplified that they exclude vast swathes of what actually happens.

Policywonk - I don't think you need to think about DP/sons/fathers as potential rapists. Men and women are absolutely the product of their environment, culture, relationships and all the other aspects of socialisation.

And re social stability I didn't mean this in a conservative sense, but in the sense of a society which looks after and educates its citizens to the extent that you're not left with large numbers of people who have nothing to lose.

Elizabetth - I think that I would agree with you to the extent that in excessively masculine cultures (such as in prison, war etc) you do end up with a situation where rape is not only tolerated but becomes a mark of status for the perpetrators, as I think I mentioned in my earlier post. That's why I think it is so important for women to exert their influence in society in whatever way we can.

Not sure if this makes sense - am in hurry - tell me if not I'll be back later. Possibly as slutoftheuniverse.

Rape is tolerated in our society. Most rapes go unreported because women know they won't be believed unless some very specific criteria are met and even then it's touch and go whether a conviction will result - we have a 5% conviction rate and it's still dropping.

I use this example quite a lot but it's because I am unable to get over it - Ian Huntley sexually assaulted or raped 11 young women and girls and was never even charged. Perhaps if rape wasn't tolerated by our society something could have been done about him earlier.

Etin and MT thank you for your responses. I have to say (yet again) I have learned much and especially about the nature of some men.

I really would be very interested to learn what drives those men who do not rape. Personally I think that they are the majority. Excuse my ignorance but could it be a genetic mutation which is passed on because it is advantageous to procreating in our societies? Am I way off the mark here?

Elizabeth I agree that most rapes go unreported. IAs I mentioned I was raped, was at a nightclub had my drink spiked can't remember going back to the rapists house, everything was very sketchy but all I can remember is when I tried to leave he pounced on me and I guess you can guess the rest..

The reason I didn't go to the police is a) I went back to his house (even though I couldn't remember) so I guess I asked for it right? b) He threatened me if I went to the police and if it went to court I wouldn't have a leg to stand on - and to be honest I agree with him. He was a well-off business man, me a low paid secretary - he already told me he had the best lawyer around. c) I didn't want to hurt my parents. d) sheer embarrassment.

I can totally understand why women don't take it further.

Yama - I think what drives most men not to rape is the same as what drives most men not to commit other acts of violence. They have been brought up in a culture where to transgress these boundaries would be at terrible cost firstly to their own sense of self (or conscience), next to their personal relationships and finally to their standing in society generally. We are not just our genes, we are the product of the interaction between our genes and our environment. The two elements are in no way mutually exclusive.

(Sorry I know I'm not the right person to answer this but couldn't help myself - Etin or Monkey Trousers will correct me I hope if I'm making ridiculous evolutionary schoolgirl blunders - the extent of my knowledge is what I've picked up from them on this thread and reading the Selfish Gene about 20 years ago)

Elizabetth, Ally70 and anyone else who has been raped, words cannot be found to express my anger at what you have been put through and the resulting sickening frustration with the attitude to rape in our, and every other, society.
I assure you, I am as furious and as desperate to see things change as the nexr woman.

Elizabetth, of course women are rejected - by particular desired males but more often rejected as a relationship partner than a sexual partner. Even at my age I know as a woman I could go out tonight and get sex. God, I could even get paid for it. When it comes to sex per se, women can get it far more easily than men. But we don't normally just want sex. Men often do. Just sex. This is a real difference and not a result of socialization.

As you say, "There are certain men who see women as obstacles in the way of them getting access to their vaginas." Yet women don't see men as obstacles in the way of getting to their penis. Why not? Bodily reproductive fluids travel one-way, they're not shared during sex. It can't be a coincidence that the sex that is receiving the others DNA has a different attitude to sex than the other.

Like in most species, the pool of desirable sex partners is much larger for the male than for the female.

So imagine the consequences of arguing and telling men that actaully, male and female sexual response etc is the same. So the male, constantly fertile, constant levels of testosterone keeping him primed to mate, then thinks women are feeling just the same. why shouldn't women be feeling just the same? If women want sex just as much and as often and as indiscriminately as he does, what's all the 'nay-saying' all about? Is it a power thing women are using against men?
Of course it isn't but we need to to explain as clearly and expicitly and scientifically as we can why women are different.

In fact, if female sexuality was understood better and eg it was understood why a woman absolutely would not want sex and would mean no when she said no then we would have scientific explanations for why it IS rape when women are raped.

.......

yama, I think this is important about why men do not rape. There is obviously variation in male behaviour. What is lacking in the writing etc on rape is men's voices - honest voices about how men experience women and sex, what would make one man rape and another man not. What men believe women are experiencing when interacting with men.
There are clearly men, as Elizabetth says, who know precisely that the woman would never want sex with them and simply don't care. But when a woman has already had sex with the man, maybe plenty of times and is not saying no to sex ever again but only no at this particular time, the 'natural' ebbs and flows of female sexual desire, and how this differs from the male's, needs to be made explicit too.

Why do we need scientific explanations etin when we have the woman's word for it? I don't need science to tell me what that shit did to me was rape. I certainly don't think the little bastard who raped me was doing it as a reproductive strategy, I think it was because he had a deep-seated hatred of women that he kept pretty well hidden, apart from the time he lent me his copy of the Marquis de Sade (I was too uninformed to realise the significance of that at the time). Men who respect women and regard them as human beings don't rape them.

"But we don't normally just want sex. Men often do. Just sex. This is a real difference and not a result of socialization. "

Well it's difficult to know isn't it, given the severe social strictures against women who have sex for sex's sake. They get called all sorts of names, their social capital drops etc, etc. Perhaps in a society where men didn't lay claim to controlling female sexuality as they do in ours, women might have a lot more sex for sex's sake.

So what can be done to stop men from raping? What can be done to encourage women to report rapes? What can we do as women to increase the sentences men get for rape? - nothing that's what.

kittock, I think your posts are great and you are absolutely right: "we are the product of the interaction between our genes and our environment. The two elements are in no way mutually exclusive."

Afghanistan is a good example of this. Back in the 60s in Kabul women were drinking coffee at road-side cafes, dressed fashionably, students at university, doctors, teachers etc etc. Then the environment changed dramatically due to war and religion, and even men who would have previously treated women with respect and as equals (at least relatively) slipped into being their lords, masters and rapists again. (though other men at least privately continued to treat female family members with the same respect.)

This sounds as if it's all environment, but it isn't, otherwise we would have other environments where women are the lords and masters, where it is women visiting male prostitutes, women going to war, men raising children, men being raped etc etc.
Environment makes big differences but only in interaction with what our inherited differences allow.

Environments vary and the genes vary from person to person within certain parameters.