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Author Topic:   A Natural History of Rape?
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 33 (90452)
03-05-2004 4:02 AM


Has anyone read Thornhill and Palmer? Or the Thornhill and Thornhill papers on the adaptive properties of rape?
Amazon.com
Any comments? This theory has been hit hard from both sides of the political spectrum but none of the critiques seem to actually bear on any of the content of the studies and only vague naturalistic fallacies.

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by crashfrog, posted 03-05-2004 4:25 AM Parsimonious_Razor has replied
 Message 6 by Silent H, posted 03-05-2004 2:47 PM Parsimonious_Razor has replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 33 (90561)
03-05-2004 2:33 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by crashfrog
03-05-2004 4:25 AM


crashfrog writes:
For instance, it hardly seems likely that rape is adaptive in a species where the females are fertile for only about three days out of the month - and it's a different three days for every female. It seems like the odds of getting a random woman pregnant through rape are fairly low.
Well Jon and Tiffany Gottschall did a study that found rape victims were twice as likely to become pregnant as women having a consensual one night stand. The actual percentage for fertile women was about 8-10% well above a significant level for natural selection to work on.
Also there is a lot of work being done now that SUGGESTS (though its still early) that males do have mechanisms for detecting where on the cycle a woman is probably through pheromones. There is also the fact that a woman at peak fertility will usually act significantly different in public surroundings. This isn’t a blame the victim statement, she didn’t lead the rapist on, but her interactions with guys she might be interested in are much more sexually charged its possible a rapist viewing the scene could pick up these cues as well (unconsciously most likely).
crashfrog writes:
Also I understand that a lot of rapists are people who already enjoy reproductive or sexual opportunity. That suggests that it's more about power than about reproduction. Not to mention the propensity of some rapists to insist on sex acts that are obviously non-procreative.
The reproductive advantage to rape is potentially about eliminating the commitment, time and energy involved in raising offspring as well just the sexual access. If current sexual access were the main factor in male psyches I doubt extra-pair copulation would be as significant as it is.
There are certainly acts of rape that are non-procreative but these are not the majority of acts. Especially in reproductive age females.
Reproductive age females make up the vast majority of rape cases, these victims are most likely to suffer repeated vaginal intercourse.
crashfrog writes:
What are they saying, exactly? That there's a "rape gene?" If rape is an adaptive behavior then how is it promulgated?
Well genes as defined as a heritable unit, see my other thread in evolution about my current problems with defining any trait as DNA based. It is promulgated through the same mechanisms that make men prefer low waist to hip ratio, facial symmetry and estrogen markers. Sexual behavior and sexual preferences are clearly evolutionarily defined and can be "passed" down through heritable mechanisms.
crashfrog writes:
A number of the reviews on Amazon point out that they gloss over a lot of data and fail to address some obvious questions. I guess I'm doubtful that rape in humans is best explained via adaptive factors. I think that the social factors are considerably more influential.
Well Amazon reviews can only really go so far. But I agree the book does have a tendency to go quickly from data to conclusion because its point is more about actively changing rape counseling and prevention education. The papers the book is based on are extensive; it was I believe an 8 part series.
I think power and social theories have to deal with some of these points:
1) The vast majority of rapes are of reproductive age females.
Another similar study found that the likelihood a woman or women are rapped after a robbery is HIGHLY correlated with whether the woman is of reproductive age. If they are post or pre the robber is likely to just rob the house, rarely to you get rape. Reproductive age females suffer significantly more in robbery/rape crime.
2) 90-99% of all rapes victims are female.
3) Forced penile-vaginal intercourse is more likely in sexual assaults of reproductive age females. And these younger women are more likely to be subjected to multiple episodes.
4) Rape has been found in every culture studied. For example the Yanamamo Indians essentially every female has been raped at least once.
And then there are the anti-rape adaptations of women during there cycle:
1) At the peak fertility of their cycle women are more likely to go out to and meet new people BUT they take MANY more precautions when not at peak fertility. They go to safe places, familiar places and will bring friends. They have much more heightened senses of wariness over dangerous or unknown areas.
2) When reading accounts of sexual coercion women at peak fertility have a double or triple increase in grip strength.
3) And the big sub field here is the post-traumatic stress of the rape. Reproductive age females, in a committed relationship, who are vaginally raped, with no signs of external trauma are FAR more likely than say a women of post-reproductive age, single, orally or anally raped, and with obvious signs of abuse. This is an extreme example but each of these factors: Age, Marital Status, Type of rape, Physical abuse, have been shown to independently correlate highly with the amount of post-traumatic stress. This fits in perfectly to the view that the dangers of rape are removal of reproductive choice (age, type of rape) and damage to existing relationships (marital status, signs of physical abuse). If rape were purely about power or humiliation I would imagine you would see the opposite pattern.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2 by crashfrog, posted 03-05-2004 4:25 AM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 8 by Silent H, posted 03-05-2004 3:48 PM Parsimonious_Razor has replied
 Message 15 by crashfrog, posted 03-05-2004 5:51 PM Parsimonious_Razor has replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 33 (90564)
03-05-2004 2:42 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by 1.61803
03-05-2004 1:26 PM


Re: dat book cost $
1.61803 writes:
plus the fact that I'd have to shell out 35 bucks to read it. I'll wait for the DVD. Joking aside, I would hate to think rape as an adaptive strategy rather than a abberant psycological deviant behavior of one who feeds his needs by commiting rape. But I remember hearing something about Jane Goodall reporting that Chimps commit all sorts of behaviors we deem as morally wrong such as murder, rape, incest, and cannalbalism. My question would be are these behaviors adaptive and can they be applied to the human condition as well?
There are cheaper ones, its available in the library, and the papers Thornhill wrote are available in any university library. I can dig up all the citations if people want. Rape has been found in many different species, and more than rape you can find primitive forms of most types of coercion. For example, mud dauber's (sphecid wasp) use harassment as their primary means of gaining sexual access. These behaviors certainly seem to have adaptive benefits under certain circumstances.
It's these certain circumstances that are important especially in humans. Rape is a conditional adaptation. It relies on a whole host of cues to be activated and it is not the preferred reproductive strategy for most men (courtship offers huge advantages like repeated access to the same female and higher quality females) but rape can be advantageous if practiced under specific conditions.
Rape does not seem to be something practiced only by a small number of phenodeviants. A quick examination of wars can tell you all you need to know about the potential for just about any male to rape.
A quick point: just because rape might be natural or have offered reproductive advantage this does NOT make right in any way. The naturalistic fallacy always seems to works itself in. I even have a hard time myself always keeping it straight.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by 1.61803, posted 03-05-2004 1:26 PM 1.61803 has not replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 7 of 33 (90578)
03-05-2004 3:13 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Silent H
03-05-2004 2:47 PM


quote:
So they admit they are NOT talking about genetics, and yet they have the gall to use the term evolution in discussing their theory? The admit the MOST they are saying is that there is not a genetic break to stop people from raping? Oooooooooo.
Thornhill has a healthy respect for the idea that not everything in evolution is about DNA. While there may not be a specific rape DNA sequence there is a heritable mechanism that promotes rape under certain circumstances. Just because it’s not in the DNA doesn’t mean it cannot be subjected to natural selection.
The most that they are saying is that there was a reproductive advantage for raping under certain circumstances in the human EEA. This reproductive advantage was selected for and exist today. They say it is a functional adaptation (though they give some credence to the view that it could be a byproduct of indirect selection this view has produced nearly the evidence as a functional adaptation). A functional adaptation I don’t think can be described as simply a brake to prevent the opposite. The cause of the human hand is not a brake to stop the development of a flipper.
quote:
They are making extremely strained arguments when they start with those admissions, then say that behvior must be evolved (which at this point hinges on genetics or symbiosis), and to support this claim analogize to an obvious genetic trait of the "rape clamp" in scorpionflies.
Reproductive strategies that evolved convergently in multiple species provide a big hint that there is an advantage to the strategy. It points directions into trying to determine why it exists even if on the face it seems counter-productive. Cross-species comparisons are not used as proof. Sexual reproduction as a whole had a hard time be justified asexual seems superior in everyway. But the large number of species that exhibited it pointed to there being a REASON for it. That led to the current idea of host/parasite interactions as being the mechanism for sexual reproduction being selected for.
quote:
I like how they also admit what baloney their theory is by saying it will be more acceptable to lay people that scientists, because... ahem... lay people have some better understanding of human nature? Man, are these guys from the Discovery Institute?
What he said was SOME scientific circles not biological circles. I am pretty sure this is a reference to the political and sociological sciences on universities that don’t have the biological training. I have taken multiple classes from Thornhill and talked with him personally many times. He clearly seems to think people with strong evolutionary backgrounds will see this as a duh theory. It is obvious, but most of rape education, prevention and crisis management do not take it into account.
quote:
But they make an obvious error by sayng that rape by definition requires sexual arousal of the rapist. In fact, some rapists have been impotent. Some may also never use their own genitals for sexual satisfaction and instead use objects to rape where humiliation is clearly the end goal.
Case studies do not make or dismake a theory. There are always exceptions, but these exceptions are DROWNED under the weight examples that show just what is to be expected.
quote:
They also seem ignorant of the fact that women also rape, and... as others have mentioned... that the targets of rape those who are patently incapable of reproducing.
90-99% of all rapes are of men raping women, almost all of those rapes are of women of reproductive age. As above, there can be exceptions but these are drowned out by the shear number of cases that fit the expected pattern. Science is done through random sampling and statistical analysis because of the bias a few counter examples seem to hold in our psyche.
quote:
This sounds like two guys trying to get some notoriety for themselves and perhaps introduce whatever "fix it" gimmick they have for rape, merely asserting that all others are bankrupt because they do not mention evolution.
They are referring to people who advocate rape prevention and education on outmoded theories that are sometimes more harmful than good.
quote:
Ironically what they don't admit is that they DO mention the very things they themselves say rape comes down to: it is an act which can be triggered by environmental conditions or interactions in life.
But the environmental triggers are specifically defined. They are those triggers that lead to the greatest reproductive advantage that could be gained through rape. If there were no selective pressure on the rape adaptation why would only specific environmental triggers bring out rape? And why would these triggers be primarily triggers of REPRODUCTIVE opportunity.
quote:
Can we say, duh?
Actually they do say duh, what prompted the book was the fact that people ignored the evidence of an obvious theory.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Silent H, posted 03-05-2004 2:47 PM Silent H has not replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 10 of 33 (90620)
03-05-2004 4:21 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Silent H
03-05-2004 3:48 PM


quote:
Could this be because women having one night stands are able to control that sexual encounter's procreative results, rather than someone who is raped? I think a study comparing these two things are comparing apples and oranges.
Actually the women in Gotschall study were not taking any precautions of birth control and had expressed interest in having a baby.
quote:
If the point was sex or sexual reproduction, it seems that they should have been examining the results of rape versus a couple trying to get pregnant. I think a steady partner (or partners) over a course of time would result in more chances at reproduction, than hit and miss single encounters.
Exactly why rape is not the preferred mechanism for reproductive strategy. There are better ones for most situations. But under the right situations there is significant advantage that can be gained. Its similar to the Hamiltonian inclusive fitness principle. If the benefits out way the cost than something can evolve. And a mechanism that controls behavior in regards to the relative cost of the situation can be seen everywhere.
quote:
What about survival advantages, and costs of the hunt advantages, in that NOT raping means less competitors out to capture/kill you, and all the time and energy involved with trying not to be caught after the fact?
Again rape is a circumstance dependent adaptation. It is most frequently found in raids and wars where these effects are least likely to be significant.
quote:
I'll check out your other thread, but I know in a thread on sexual orientation this idea has already been somewhat smashed. It is not CLEARLY evolutionarily anything.
Waist to hip ratio as a strong preference has been demonstrated cross-culturally with no exceptions. Facial symmetry, hormonal markers, handicapping, ect. Have all been found cross-culturally. These are mating preferences and mating behaviors that have been inherited. Even context dependent attractiveness priorities were demonstrated by the Buss study that found that parasite load predicted with great accuracy the relative importance applied to physical attractiveness in a mate.
quote:
This just makes sense. A person goes to rob a house, he finds someone inside sexually attractive so he "takes" that as well. This also makes sense for those who commit rapes without regard to robbery... generally a person will go after someone he finds attractive. Is it unusual to suspect that most people find women between 13-50 most attractive? That happens to be a pretty huge chunk of most women's lives as well as the general range of people commiting rape.
It an’t 13-50 where the rape concentrates at. The main concentration point is 18-30 with rapidly falling tails from there. And the point about attractiveness is exactly it. Men find women attractive who are most fertile. If rape was about power why would attractiveness matter that much?
quote:
This tends to suggest men are the ones most likely commiting rape, but hardly WHY they are doing so. It also does not deal with the other instances of rape (against men), and woman on woman rape.
It doesn’t suggest the why but certainly marginalizes the number of cases that are not potentially reproductive.
quote:
This also makes practical sense. Rapists are more likely to use vaginal intercourse as there are no TEETH, vaginal penetration is considered more personal and so humiliating than oral penetration, and anal penetration may have unintended consequences many rapists may not be interested in having done to themselves.
Why would a woman feel more humiliated with vaginal intercourse and not anal or oral? Women do suffer significantly more post-traumatic stress after vaginal rapes than other forms. This correlates with a large number of other factors that indicate that variables that increase the likely hood of conception are the major intensifiers of a rape.
quote:
This does not suggest anything other than rape is an option all humans have with regard to behavior... there are no barriers to it.
But if all of these societies have similar or even identical trigger events for when, how and to who the rape is committed it suggest a functional adaptation. The fact that most people have hands does not simply imply that there is a barrier to developing fins. There is some function in it.
quote:
How is this an anti-rape strategy? Why is this not simply saying that women at the peak of their cycle are more aggressive, due to hormones, than at other times? They are certainly more likely to desire partners and seek them out.
Well on a side point only certain partners (symmetrical to be precise this is another example of an evolved sexual preference). But aggression doesn’t explain the tendency for women to go to only safe, familiar places with friends. Even if they are usually much more bold when off the peak fertility cycle.
quote:
This one is particularly not conclusive. As I said, during the peak of their cycle women are more aggressive in general, the fact that their grip strength would increase is not surprising... and what that has to do with rape is beyond me.
The grip strength is only seen after reading scenarios or watching scenarios of sexual coercion. You don’t just have it all the time, or simply by watching a boxing match. If it were only aggression why would it be so specific?
quote:
You will have to explain this one a little better, I do not see your conclusion coming from the evidence.
The predictors for intensity of post-traumatic stress after a rape are those that fall into two categories: those that increased the likely hood of conception, and those that increased the potential harm to an existing relationship. Reproductive age women had more trauma than pre or post. Vaginal had more trauma than any other form of rape. Ejaculatory rapes had more trauma than non-ejaculatory. Married women had more trauma than single women. Women with obvious physical injury had LESS trauma than those with little to no signs of injury.
quote:
Just to be clear... I have no vested interest one way or the other on the issue of whether rape is a product of evolution. However, I have a vested interest in not doing sloppy science and the growing popularity of assigning all human behavior to a product of evolution is sloppy science.
Not all human behavior but there is certainly a LARGE component of what humans do that fall under evolutionary theory. Everything from language acquisition device to cross-cultural standards of beauty indicates there are many innate functions that were selected for in the human EEA.
quote:
That's what's wonderful of the evolution of the brain, it has freed us from hardwired action/reaction (like say insects have, and which Thornhill appears to make so many of his dubious analogies to human behavior).
But so much of what humans do is not freed from hardwired action. Mate selection, language, disgust reactions, reciprocal altruism, nepotism, status seeking, and many more all have been shown to be cross-cultural and cross-historical in there mechanisms. There is certainly a large body of functions that are innate into the human mind. This does not mean that we cannot escape these biases but they are certainly there. If evolution did not define these innate faculties I would like to know what did.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Silent H, posted 03-05-2004 3:48 PM Silent H has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 18 by Silent H, posted 03-05-2004 9:17 PM Parsimonious_Razor has replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 11 of 33 (90625)
03-05-2004 4:27 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Trixie
03-05-2004 4:03 PM


Re: Did anyone bother to ask.....
quote:
.....the rapists why they rape? That just might give a hint as to the motivation behind rape. I have to admit to NEVER having heard a rapist say that they raped to get someone pregnant without the liability of child support payments!!! Men can do that without raping and they do it every minute of every day (don't mean to sound anti-male, but it is a fact).
I'll need to try to dig out some info on this. I'm sure I've seen a study on serial rapists who, when asked why they did it, said it was all to do with power and humiliation of women. Some hated women, some were "getting their own back", none said that it was to father a child.
We should leave "date rape" out of this as this can be construed as a guy too keen, too thick or both, to understand that "No" means "No". A sort of crossing of wires.
Actually, humans don’t have to be conscious of why they do something, and they can often be wrong or fail to separate the difference between a proximate and ultimate causation.
For example: Attractiveness rankings of faces. Facial symmetry is the primary correlate for how attractive a face is going to be ranked. But people have NO idea why they are making the rankings they are making. Many times they will make of just-so stories to explain it.
Would you say that since people use birth control that means sex really isn’t about reproduction and never really was? You don’t have to know WHY a behavior is adaptive to have it as an adaptation.
Humans are very good at rationalizing there behaviors post-hoc and I don’t think it can be used as a mechanism for assigning ultimate causations to actions.
If we were good at explaining why we did behaviors psychology would never producing any surprising results.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Trixie, posted 03-05-2004 4:03 PM Trixie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 12 by Trixie, posted 03-05-2004 4:40 PM Parsimonious_Razor has replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 13 of 33 (90637)
03-05-2004 4:58 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Trixie
03-05-2004 4:40 PM


Re: Did anyone bother to ask.....
quote:
True, but if you want to know why someone made the choice to go out and rape a woman, you might get closer to the truth if you ask them, rather than making assumptions based on a pet theory. With help, people are able to perceive their own hidden motivations, but in many cases a rapist makes a concious, active decision to commit his crime. For example, he may want to humiliate women and that's his driving force, but the reason behind this need to humiliate women may be obscure to him.
How about asking him why he chose his victim? Was she young, exhibiting all the classic signs of a healthy fertile woman? Why did he choose to vaginally rape and not anally? This is different than questions like "What in your childhood upbringing lead you to believe you could dominate women?" This is ultimate/proximate causation mix ups and then just generally a bias. Humans are just not good at figuring out their motivations without some level of statistical, objective, replicable analysis. It’s why science is the preferred method rather than arguments by authority.
But lets say you find 100 serial rapist, they all talk about the same things. Are serial rapists really the most accurate portrayal of rape and sexual coercion? Do you get closer to the truth about why most people kill by asking serial killers? I would hazardous a guess that the answer is no.
The VAST VAST VAST majority of rapes worldwide are committed during raids and wars. This fits perfectly into the rape adaptation hypothesis, and perhaps other hypothesis as well. But other data suggest to me at least that power/humiliation hypotheses are not nearly as good at predicting rape factors as the adaptation hypothesis. Serial rapists in American jails are a tiny portion of those who commit acts of rape. I bet most solders in rape camps are probably there to have sex with hot girls. These "hot" girls are girls that exhibit strong signals of fertility.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Trixie, posted 03-05-2004 4:40 PM Trixie has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by Trixie, posted 03-05-2004 5:29 PM Parsimonious_Razor has not replied
 Message 17 by crashfrog, posted 03-05-2004 6:04 PM Parsimonious_Razor has replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 19 of 33 (90736)
03-06-2004 2:49 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by crashfrog
03-05-2004 5:51 PM


quote:
Can you explain the pattern a little more clearly? I didn't understand your paragraph. Which group has the higher trauma?
I tried explaining this again a couple times, should I expand again?
quote:
I'm not claiming that evolutionary adaptations don't play a factor in human sexual interaction. Clearly they do. But if rape were an adaptation you would expect rapists to be universally men who had failed to achieve sexual access in any other way. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Why would it require men who had failed to achieve sexual access other ways? Rape is a circumstance dependent adaptation, and the circumstances when its cost out weight its benefits are very precise and rare. Individuals who did abandoned the courting rituals normal to the species would certainly not have an advantage. And if rape offers an advantage (it certainly does lead to pregnancies) those who never raped would be at a slight disadvantage and over long periods of time the slight advantage to the potential rapist could lead to wide spread of the adaptation.
quote:
What I see as the cause of rape is simply antisocial violence being expressed through a "vocabulary" of sexual interaction, which itself is characterized through many traits that are obviously adaptive. But the root cause is still ultimately social.
Lets see some evidence for why you think rape is purely social. Why is it universal to all human cultural and across all of known human history? At some point wouldn't there be a cultural that didn't create the monsters? Any man will show almost identical penile response to a sex scene of either consensual or non-consensual sex. Is this excitement purely a social construct raised into male’s heads? I have avoided using a lot of the adjectives that people have being using about the rape adaptation theory. But the social theory seems to be straining a whole lot more than anyone wants to admit.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by crashfrog, posted 03-05-2004 5:51 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
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Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 20 of 33 (90738)
03-06-2004 2:51 AM
Reply to: Message 17 by crashfrog
03-05-2004 6:04 PM


quote:
Also your model doesn't explain why some rapes end in murder.
Tiny percentage of rapes end in murder, there is always the tails of the bell curve for any trait.
Your model doesn't describe why most rapes exhibit little to no physical violence beyond what is used to restrain the women.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by crashfrog, posted 03-05-2004 6:04 PM crashfrog has replied

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Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 23 of 33 (90760)
03-06-2004 3:38 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by Silent H
03-05-2004 9:17 PM


An adaptation is a trait that increases survival or reproductive success. In order for an adaptation to be qualified as most likely evolved it must also exhibit a functional design. There has to be something to the trait that suggests it was suited for the benefit it gives. Also the trait should be common to most members of the species. Context dependent adaptations will not always show complete universality because of the context dependent part. But for example the Tiger salamander cannibal morph is clearly an evolved adaptation but it expresses itself only in SOME members of the species under only VERY specific circumstances.
So if you don’t have a direct DNA strand that describes a behavior or trait how do you go about trying to figure out if it is an adaptation or not? Especially if it is context dependent. The salamander adaptation they simply took members of the salamanders and put them in environments they thought would trigger the morph. They correlated the factors and discovered the causes. You can’t do this with humans and rape. Instead you have to ask what are the advantages, what are the costs, under what circumstances would the cost out weigh the benefits, and under what circumstances would the benefits out weigh the cost. You then look to see if most rapes occur cross culturally when the reproductive benefits out weigh the reproductive cost.
If you could demonstrate that rape is localized to only a few cultures and is not a human universal it cannot be an adaptation. I don’t think anyone here is really trying to argue this point. So the next area to focus on is does rape provide a reproductive advantage?
The Gottshall study was quoted because crashfrog had made the statement that he doubted there was any significant chance that rape could produce a child. I cannot find an electronic copy of the article but here is a summation of what they did (and thanks for questioning my ‘reality’ I am not sure metaphysical theory is exactly on topic).
Gottschall examined the results of National Violence against Women Survey, a study by the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The women studied were phoned at random and interviewed about their experiences. The Gottschalls focused on 405 women who had suffered a single incidence of penile-vaginal rape at some point between the ages of 12 and 45. Of these, 6.4 per cent became pregnant. But that figure jumped to nearly 8 per cent when the researchers allowed for the women who’d been using birth control-US government statistics show that 1 in 5 of the women in the sample were likely to have been using the pill or an IUD.
To complete the comparison, the Gottschalls needed to know how many women in that age group get pregnant from one-night stands and other one-off acts of consensual sex. The answer-reported this year in a separate study by Allen Wilcox, head of the epidemiology branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences-was a mere 3.1 per cent.
My phrase wanting to get pregnant was unfortunate, you can’t apply that motivation to all the women but they were women who were NOT using birth control either during the time of rape or during one-night stands.
This demonstrates that rape is ATLEAST if not more of an effective mating strategy than single one-night stands or extra-pair copulations. And these behaviors have an even richer literature about their cross-cultural occurrences.
So rape can offer a reproductive advantage.
What are the cost/benefit factors? The benefit is increased reproductive success, on the order of 8-10% if you rape reproductive age women (why does everyone keep placing this age range at 12-50 it is MUCH smaller primarily 18-25 with tails declining rapidly off of that, at 35 women have lost a significant amount of their potential fertility). But the costs are fairly significant. Rape is a horrible act for the victims. It removes one of the corner stones of sexual selection theoryfemale choice. It’s also a huge liability to the family and loved ones of the victims and any one she is romantically involved with. If you are caught you will suffer some of the most horrendous revenge.
If it were an adaptive trait you would expect to see men raping women at peak fertility. They would rape most frequently when the chances of being caught, or the ability of family/loved ones to retaliate is limited. This is why most rapes performed in the world and through out history have been during times of war. Conquered groups lack the ability to retaliate against the rapist actions. And the rapist certainly are focusing on reproductive age females.
You keep talking like the fact that men are raping women that they find attractive is a meaningless statement, why in the social/power/humiliation theory would there be such a strong emphasis on this attraction? Unless of course a large component of the rape is about sex and sexual excitement.
Some of your other statements are very curious. You seem to suggest that men need to beware of the statistical advantage of rape in order to reap its advantage? No organism needs to know that a behavior has a statistical advantage in order for the trait to evolve. Nor is it Lamarckian in anyway. There is some mechanism for inheriting reproductive strategies. I am not convinced it’s a DNA strand but I am not convinced DNA is the end all of end all anyway. If extra-pair copulation, long term and short term mating strategies can all have developed in the EEA so could rape. What is the exact mechanism that passes it along? I am not sure, but I don’t think we know the exact mechanism for almost any trait.
Also the statement that women would have just as much a reproductive advantage as men in rape exhibits some poor understanding of sexual selection. The goal is not simply offspring but high quality offspring with a high quality mate. And in species that form pair-bonds offspring with good paternal investors is also important. Rape removes this female choice mechanism. It is the exact opposite of what evolution has programmed in most species. A lot of species have females that mate with a wide variety of males, but almost all of them have some mechanisms of cryptic choice, hell sperm competition alone is a form of cryptic choice that requires little to nothing on the part of the female. But selective mating is just as an effective, if not more effective mating strategy and it is what has evolved in humans. Rape circumvents the reproductive advantages of the greatest tool women have. It offers NO advantage and has huge costs.
I am still at a lost for how you guys really think a power/humiliation model of rape necessitates the kind of patterns we see in how rapes are performed.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 18 by Silent H, posted 03-05-2004 9:17 PM Silent H has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by crashfrog, posted 03-06-2004 3:44 AM Parsimonious_Razor has replied
 Message 27 by Silent H, posted 03-06-2004 11:36 PM Parsimonious_Razor has not replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 25 of 33 (90766)
03-06-2004 3:56 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by crashfrog
03-06-2004 3:44 AM


I will answer a couple more points tonight then 'crash' out for the night .
quote:
But according to your study, it only appears to offer an advantage over men who weren't trying to get women pregnant. To determine if it has reproductive advantage you would have to compare it to men who are trying to impregnate women - that is, men who have courted women and convinced them to bear their child. Wouldn't you?
Not necessarily. If I was arguing that rape is the primary reproductive strategy men use I would have to argue that it was superior or on par with every strategy they use. I agree that courting a female is THE best and most effective strategy and that’s why it is the primary strategy used. But men and women have certainly used single mating opportunities as a form of strategy. the Extra-Pair copulation studies are rich in evidence in predicting what kind of males women have affairs with, under what circumstances, and even the types and frequencies of orgasms she will have. If this mating strategies could evolve because of the slight advantages they offer than rape could too because it is at least as effective.
Also men do not have to WANT to get a women pregnant. The ultimate purpose of sex is offspring but the proximate reasons for sex is a oxytocin (okay okay I am simplifying for rhetorical effect its late). That means men will have sex with women without any intent of having a child. But evolutionarily speaking the reason they have sex is reproductive success. Same can be said for rape, the ultimate cause of why rape even exists could be the reproductive advantage it allotted while the proximate causes can be a whole host of other factors that have nothing to do with reproduction.
quote:
You're overlooking the fact that most rape is acquaintance rape - the victim knows her rapist in the majority of cases. That doesn't sound like a situation where the rapist expects to get away with it, but rather a situation where the rapist feels entitled to sex.
Help me out here, do you have a source for the breakdown of what kinds of rape are most frequent, I would say that reported rapes would be biased towards occurrences where the female knew the rapist. I would also say that world wide rape is far more common in war and raids than even date rape.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by crashfrog, posted 03-06-2004 3:44 AM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 26 by crashfrog, posted 03-06-2004 4:21 AM Parsimonious_Razor has not replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 29 of 33 (92088)
03-12-2004 2:40 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by crashfrog
03-09-2004 3:33 AM


Just a heads up I haven't abandoned my arguments yet . I have been wrapping up midterms and some of my own research the last week or so. I am going to work on my replies and hope to have them up by this weekend. I have gone around looking for research to help bring in some more stats and less platitudes. I found a copy of the Gotschall study on pregnancy frequency on PDF and those interested I can e-mail the copy providing its for educational purposes only, ect. ect. ect.
Also Gotschall has a study in-press, or soon to be, about rape frequencies around the world in relation to what context they take place under. Hopefully this will help address the question of crashfrog and I. He is supposed to e-mail me a copy and I will take a look. I will post the findings/method but its not yet gone to publication.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by crashfrog, posted 03-09-2004 3:33 AM crashfrog has not replied

  
Parsimonious_Razor
Inactive Member


Message 31 of 33 (94361)
03-24-2004 4:52 AM


Hey guys sorry about the long pause, funny how when you have nothing to do you do nothing and when you have too much to do you get it all done. I have dug up some of the research talked about here that isn’t really available through normal lit searches. I have the Gotschall study on rape pregnancy frequency in PDF and another article by Gotschall that I will be talking about a little in this post about rape and war and a break down of his version of the pro/cons of the different rape hypothesis. If someone wants to look at these papers and since the first one I can’t find in any lit search and the second on is in-press I am sure I can e-mail you the relevant parts. So with that out of the way on with the show.
The first thing I want to address is the idea that I have seen pop up in two different post. This is the idea that rape has to have some sort of advantage to the female and if it does not it destroys the rape adaptation hypothesis. This is completely false. The rape adaptation hypothesis says out right that rape is NOT a benefit to the female. What you have to realize is that evolution and evolutionary psychology (in particular reference to humans) sees female choice as one of the defining aspects of selection. The ability for a female to choose who will father her offspring is the source of a GREAT deal of sexual selection. Vast branches of evolution have been built on male competition to have the right and even larger branches have been built on females developing some extraordinary means of controlling both mating and even ejaculates. Females are evolved to desire this choice above all else. Those females that were very choosy about those partners who would father there children would do significantly better than those that simply wanted children by anyone around. In humans this is even more salient. With a minimum of probably 4-5 years of investment in each offspring and a very small number of offspring per pregnancy the need to pick high quality is easily apparent. This means that rape does NOT offer an advantage to women and is a serious cost. It is this cost that has lead to predictions about the kind of trauma women will experience in rape. A huge portion of Thornhill’s research has been in the avenue of predicting what type of rape will produce the greatest trauma under which circumstances. The predictions of course are built on the ideas of this choice cost analysis. The second point is that rape being a cost to the female some how shoots down this view. For something to evolve it does not have to offer equal benefits to both sexes. Cryptic ovulation cycles in women might be a good example of this. By hiding when she is most likely to become pregnant a women gains a significant advantage with the use of extended sexuality to keep men bonded to her. But this cryptic cycle is not a benefit to the male which has no idea when he is likely to get his mate pregnant.
I have been asked to talk about what rape would look like if it was not an adaptation. Let me try an analogy. What if I were to make the claim that the use of paper currency is a psychological adaptation for resource management? What kind of problems would I have in making this claim? I see the following: first it is an evolutionarily novel phenomenon and therefore there has been no time for it to be selected for, second there is no evolutionary history of it emerging before this is not that significant but if there was truly an advantage to it I would expect maybe to seem something somewhat analogous in other species if nothing less than maybe some simpler versions that could have been used as fodder for selection, third the use of paper currency over any other economic system doesn’t seem to offer a specific reproductive or survival benefit to anyone, and finally the BIG one the use of paper currency or any other type of currency fluctuates HUGELY both in history and across cultures. So how might this apply to rape as not an adaptation? Well rape is clearly not a novel phenomenon it has been around for millions of years, you can see it most of the primate family and in many other species. This is big, many species that have no cultural as we know it exhibit the use of rape under certain circumstances. It is clearly different than humans but there is analogous nature to it. If rape had a prohibitably high cost or the cost were completely ignored it could not be the function of selection. But the REALLY big on here is that I would NOT expect rape to be in every society in every time through out history and for it to be so similar in how it manifests itself. I would expect to see at least ONE culture where rape did not occur, or even one culture that did not focus rape primarily on reproductive age females. I would also not expect to see rape follow biological logic in who rapes and who does not rape and who is selected for rape. If it was cultural only I would expect to see some place where maybe women raped or that victims were of ages not evolutionarily associated with fertility. It was mentioned that the fact that women don’t rape is a problem for this theory. To me this is ridiculous. See the above paragraph for more in depth but it comes down to the simple idea that men have an incredibly small minimum investment they have to make in making a child (about two tablespoons of protein) while women have 4 years of high investment. Men are designed to inseminate when ever the chance presents itself while women are designed to be extremely choosey.
I want to add a little personal note on the issue about my claim in the Gotschall study on rape pregnancy about women wanting to get pregnant the claim was based on something Gotschall had said in an interview, I should not have said it because he did not do the statistical analysis to show it. But he said it because many of the women in the one-night stand voluntary condition said they were not using birth control on purpose and would not mind a pregnancy. It was both of us probably being too loose with our rhetoric. But I don’t think it is important so I guess we should move on. I think the point remains that an 8% pregnancy rate is more than enough to provide enough fodder for selection. The question proposed is how this choice gets passed down. I am going to say right out that I don’t know. But I am also going to say that a whole lot of traits that are obviously evolutionarily selected we can’t claim to really know how they are inherited. We think it’s in the genes but how much of it is in genes what is the effect of epigenetic, embryological development, hormones, ect is still unknown and being argued about. I don’t think we have a clear blue print for how any complex trait has been inherited. To stay in this same vein of thought I want to talk about Estrous. The previous poster mentioned the idea that women do not have an estrous period. Well new research seems to suggest otherwise. During the fertility window right before ovulation women develop all kinds of interesting traits that attract them to men with good genes. My personal favorite is that women during this window can actually smell how symmetrical a guy is. Also the big finding is that women drastically increase the frequency of extra-pair copulations during this period. There defiantly seems to be an estrous effect here. The extended sexuality of women seems to be focused on long term partners with high investment and good parental skills while the estrous sexuality seems to be related to good genes. Since even the effect of an estrous period on women was thought to not exist I don’t see how this is cultural. This is a highly complex, highly condition dependent sexual strategy. Rape seems rather simple in comparison. I think there is strong evidence that both of these strategies are evolutionary adaptations, and how they get inherited to me is one of the important questions to ask in the coming decades about evolution in general and human evolution inparticular.
Now on to rape and war, Gotschall in his study sites a few examples of reported rape during world war II. These numbers are likely to be undervalued but the estimates range from 20,000 to as high as 100,000 with in a few week period. The over all estimates of the Red Army rapes in Berlin climb as high as 1,000,000. I found one statistic that says there is probably 100,000-200,000 reported rapes a year in the United States. Rape in war is a common theme and it seems that these rape frequencies dwarf normal rape frequencies. Also another somewhat different example is the Yanomamo Indians in south America were documented to perform raids into other villages. One of the main goals of these raids was to rape and steal women. It was reported that almost every single women in the Yanomamo tribes had been raped at least once during these raids/wars. So what’s the point of all this? Well the main point I am trying to bring up is that it appears those people capable of rape is not limited to a select sick few. Normal men who go to war will rape when they would never think about it at home. A lot of hunter-gather cultures and cultures during wars have out-group rules that allow for or look the other way when a solider rapes a woman during conflict. This is an example of where the normal costs of the rape are eliminated. Under these conditions it appears that vast array of people are capable of rape. This something else that I find interesting in regards to what rape would look like if it was not an adaptation. The fact that it appears that most men are capable of rape (other studies have measured sexual arousal in relation to watching movies of consensual vs. nonconsensual sex scenes and found no difference) would be something I would not expect (especially cross-culturally) if rape was purely cultural.

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by crashfrog, posted 03-24-2004 5:08 AM Parsimonious_Razor has not replied
 Message 33 by Riley, posted 03-25-2004 2:42 PM Parsimonious_Razor has not replied

  
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