FirmhandKY
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quote:
ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf
Hiya Firm,
One of the things I have found in reading Thornhill and a few other things, is that there is a big difference in forced procreation, and what causes most rapes. Now some of the fundamnetal repressions in rapist may be consistant with the Thornhill theories, which seemed very interesting to me. In most of the books, papers, etc. it seemed easier to discuss when looking at it as forced procreation and what triggers that as a compulsion that cannot be controlled.
It is unlikely that any individual's conscious goal during rape is procreation. One of the major discussion points in the book is whether or not rape is really a "reproductive mechanism" or just a byproduct of the less descriminating male sex drive.
An extract from the book:
Chapter 3
Why Do Men Rape?
Selection favored different traits in females and males, especially when the traits were directly related to mating. Although some of these differences could have arisen from what Darwin called natural selection, most of them are now believed to have evolved through sexual selection.
The males of most species--including humans--are usually more eager to mate than the females, and this enables females to choose among males who are competing with one another for access to them. But getting chosen is not the only way to gain sexual access to females. In rape, the male circumvents the female's choice.
To appreciate the significance of female choice in human evolution, it helps to remember that adaptations evolved because they helped individuals overcome obstacles to individual reproductive success. In ancestral populations of many species, including humans, the difficulty of obtaining the parental investment of a choosy member of the other sex was a prominent obstacle to reproductive success for individuals of the sex with the lesser parental investment. That is, the difficulty of gaining sexual access to choosy females was a major obstacle to reproductive success for males. Owing to the significance of this obstacle throughout evolutionary history, there would have been strong and effective selection pressures favoring traits in males that increased their access to mates.
One means of gaining access to a selective female is to have traits that females prefer. If possession of certain resources increased a male's chances of being chosen as a sexual partner by a female, there would have been selection for males who were motivated and able to accumulate those resources. If the ability to influence other males increased a male's chances of being chosen as a sexual partner by a female, there would have been selection for males who were motivated and able to attain influential status. If success in physical competition with other males affected the number of sexual partners a male could secure, there would have been selection for traits in males that made them more successful in such competition. Perhaps most important, there would have been selection for intense sexual desires in males that motivated them to seek sexual sensations and, hence, drove them to strive in the activities that led to those sensations. And these desires would have been designed to peak in adolescence and early adulthood, when males attempt to enter the breeding population and when competition for mates is most intense.
Many traits of human males clearly are adaptations designed by sexual selection for success in obtaining resources and status and in winning various forms of male-male competition (Alexander 1979; Symons 1979; Ellis 1992; Grammer 1993; Buss 1994; Barber 1995; Betzig 1995, 1997; Geary 1998). There is also evidence that, in human evolutionary history, sexual selection favored males who exaggerated their status and their resource holdings in order to be chosen by females (Buss 1994; Geary 1998). The evidence of powerful sexual desires in males, peaking around adolescence and early adulthood, is even more overwhelming (Symons 1979; Alexander 1979).
...
Rape as a Type of Sexual Selection
Smuts and Smuts (1993) have suggested that sexual coercion is best conceptualized as a third type of sexual selection (in addition to mate choice and intrasex competition) rather than as merely a form of intrasex selection. (Sexual coercion, a broader term than rape, is defined as obtaining sexual access by intimidation, harassment, and/or physical force.) Like intrasex competition and intersex mate choice, sexual coercion affects differential access to mates. Of course sexual coercion interacts with the other two forms of sexual selection, but it is conceptually distinct from them for the following reason: A sexually coercive male may succeed in the competition for mates by coercing mating even though he loses in male-male competition for females and is not chosen as a mate by a female.
Because all three forms of sexual coercion--physically forced mating, harassment, and intimidation 1--have significant survival and/or reproductive costs for females, a variety of female traits evolved because they reduced those costs. Indeed, many aspects of female social behavior-- including pair bonding with a male and female-female alliances across species--may be explicable as adaptations against male sexual coercion (Smuts and Smuts 1993; Mesnick 1997).
...
Human Rape: Adaptation or By-Product?
There are currently only two likely candidates for ultimate causes of human rape:
It may be an adaptation that was directly favored by selection because it increased male reproductive success by way of increasing mate number. That is, there may be psychological mechanisms designed specifically to influence males to rape in ways that would have produced a net reproductive benefit in the past. "How could rape increase reproductive success?" ask Wrangham and Peterson (1996, p. 138). "There is," they continue, "a blindingly obvious and direct possibility: By raping, the rapist may fertilize the female." Remember, however, that identifying an effect that may have increased reproductive success in past environments is not the same as identifying the function of an adaptation.
It may be only a by-product of other psychological adaptations, especially those that function to produce the sexual desires of males for multiple partners without commitment. In this case, there would not be any psychological mechanism designed specifically to influence males to rape in ways that would have produced a net reproductive benefit in the past.
There are reasons for seriously considering each of these hypotheses. On one hand, rape is usually costly in evolutionary terms, owing primarily to potential punishment of the rapist or to his potential injury by the victim or by her social allies. When associated with any trait, such costs imply that the trait has had overriding reproductive benefits. The existence of such costs might be expected to act as a selective pressure, producing psychological mechanisms that caused males to be more likely to rape when the potential costs were low. On the other hand, many human behaviors other than rape clearly are by-products of the intense sexual desires of human males and the sexual choosiness of human females: Sexual abuse of children can be seen as an example of males attempting to gain sexual access to individuals who, because of their age, are relatively unable to control sexual access. Bestiality is a means of experiencing sexual stimulation somewhat like that experienced in intercourse with a human female with-out having to be chosen by one. Frottage (rubbing a woman's body through her clothing, usually in crowded quarters such as an elevator) and genital exhibitionism give sexual stimulation to male perpetrators by circumventing female choice. Masturbation--far more common among males than among females--is the most widespread male behavior that can be seen as a means of obtaining sexual stimulation without being chosen by a human female as a sexual partner. Although all these acts are examples of males' attempting to gain sexual gratification without meeting the criteria of an adult human female's mate choice, none of them are likely to be adaptations. They are apparently all merely by-products of the adaptations governing male sexual desires.8
We will now examine the evidence concerning whether human rape is a product of adaptations designed specifically to increase a male's reproductive success or whether it is a by-product of adaptations designed for attaining sexual access to consenting partners.
Firm
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