The Unwelcome Truth about Rape

[TheywontletmehavethenameIwant]

I thought I'd post a link to this interesting article, it's likely to be received with hostility by those who bother to read it.

But I think it makes important points and might call for a complete rethink on how we as a society think of 'rape', especially in these day of increased VAWG. We can't protect against it if we can't identify it.

The Scientists Persecuted for Their Rape Research

"In their work, Thornhill and Palmer excuse nothing and absolve no one. They simply remind people that sexual violence has something to do with biology and that ignoring that fact means—at best—misunderstanding the nature of rape and, at worst, harming victims. In the face of such heresy, the outrage machine went into overdrive. There were defamatory articles, bad-faith readings, insults, and even threats from which the researchers needed police protection. At the end of it all, both their lives had been irreparably damaged."

I’m not sure why people think it has to be either/or. I think generally it’s about both sex and power.

Louise Perry makes an argument that is broadly similar to this, essentially, that at least some of the time, maybe a lot of the time, rape is mainly about sexual gratification.

On the face of it that seems fairly obvious, it's odd that so many feminists seem to think that its a problem. As if that would make it ok?

Sexual violence pretty clearly has some biological usefulness, or it wouldn't be such a common phenomena, and we see it in parts of the animal kingdom as well. That doesn't make it ok, any more than other forms of anti-social behaviour.

I think the whole point is, only by accepting the possibility can we come up with the right strategies, and the article disagrees with you about them 'victim blaming' women for male behaviours. They weren't given the opportunity to explain their research because they were shut down by the 'perpetually offended of their day.

It's not about attraction or desire alone. These men are excited by violent sex. The same tendency in their ancestors led to reproductive success, and therefore got passed on. But the men can still get the excitement without any prospect of a pregnancy.

I agree, I'm currently reading her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, I think the possibility that it's biological is worth considering, (not by me I'm a dimwit), but by those who are in a position to make a difference when it comes to dealing with the victims of rape.

It's about dominance. Gross egos.

Yes, but we’re no longer on the Serengeti, which limits the relevance of evolutionary psychology for me. I do find it interesting and can see that it is sometimes onto something important, but some people see it as the be all and end all for explaining human behaviour and I do not. I think lovers of evo psych (many of whom that I’ve encountered are fairly sexist men) are equally likely to reject more culturally based social analyses of human behaviour as feminists are to reject evolutionary explanations.

Lots of things. Power, fear, coercion, anger, ‘peer pressure’, pack mentality, nihilism, a wish to seem powerful to others, a need to somehow imprint oneself on one’s victim. It’s also deeply humiliating for victims in a way that other kinds of torture might not be. And it’s free and accessible.

Saying it’s just about sexual satisfaction seems like a really strange argument to me. There may well be sexual elements intertwined in it, it would be surprising if that was completely absent, but it doesn’t take much imagination to think of lots of other motivations.

I suppose I meant that the desire arises from the actual physical overpowering of the victim, hence it could be thought to be primarily about power, but I also take the point that looking at the age range, some men have what could be considered as highly perverted sexual fetishes.

This.

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 sometimes seen people say that sex can't be coercive or it isn't sex.

I think that this does result in some pretty basic issues that people who think this way have around understanding rape. If it isn't fundamentally sexual, than the way society deals with/understands sexual desire doesn't have anything to do with rape. The way this would impact an understanding of how we might understand or try to limit rape in settings like university campus drinking parties, for example - if it's not about loss of self-control due to alcohol and drug consumption mixed with sexual desire, but is instead mainly an attempt to assert a power dynamic, the remedies look rather different.

It would mean a sex saturated society would not be something that might make rape more of a problem.

Saying it’s just about sexual satisfaction seems like a really strange argument to me.

Nobody is saying it's just about sexual satisfaction, they're saying the impulse is is routed in sexual desire, power and control are also part of it, but are not necessarily the primary moving factor.

I am going to add to this and just point out - rape isn't evenly distributed. It's very much concentrated, in fact. Statistically rapes cluster around women at the peak ages for fertility.

The Guardian article mentioned in the OP article. It seems quite reasonable to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/jan/25/society

Plenty of people do say it’s just about sex. There are often two polar positions.

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."

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.

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

Sorry I was just referring to the article not the world in general. Maybe the reason why it's such a polarising topic is because there's been no proper debate about their research.

It could be they are wrong, it depends on how much subsequent research has been done to prove them so.

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

Thank you for answering the question.

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.

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.

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 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.