Ugh. I got an email a week ago from the Michigan Chapter of CFI (Center for Inquiry):
Friday, April 8, 2011, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Join members of Evolution for Everyone (“E4E”) to hear a lecture on “Sexual Coercion and Forced In-Pair Copulation as Sperm Competition Tactics in Humans” by Todd Shackelford, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Psychology at Oakland University.Dr. Shackleford will present a talk on the competing theories of rape as a specialized rape adaptation or as a by-product of other psychological adaptations. Although increasing number of sexual partners is a proposed benefit of rape according to the “rape as an adaptation” and the “rape as a by-product” hypotheses, neither hypothesis addresses directly why some men rape their long-term partners, to whom they already have sexual access.
“Forced In-Pair Copulation?” That’s called rape, in humans. Why in the world is Michigan CFI promoting this guy’s work? As someone posted on my Facebook page: “A scientific treatise on “Reasons Why Bitch Had It Coming” seems like an odd choice of lectures for CFI to promote.” (BTW, CFI is not the sponsor of this talk, but they did use their website and email list to publicize it.)
The whole field of evolutionary psychology suffers from a lack of solid data. It’s easy to speculate about the “adaptive value” of all sorts of traits, from athletic ability to rape avoidance. The most consistent criticism leveled at evolutionary psychologists is that they start with a conclusion, and gather evidence to support it. And that they ignore conflicting explanations–which is not how science is supposed to work.
Sure, all current human behavior has been shaped by our evolutionary past. But to argue on top of that truth that everything we do is not only adaptive, but must have been selected for somehow, is ridiculous and reductionist. There isn’t any data in these studies that shows that behavior is heritable, or that it conveys fitness benefits. It’s usually just “This happens a lot. Ergo, it must be important evolutionarily.”
There isn’t any LACK of information that would point out [ED] that this speaker was problematic. PZ Myers has an excellent rant about why evolutionary psychology studies of rape are “trivial drivel”. Jerry Coyne has written several times about the scientific weaknesses of these rape studies, as well as a critique of Randy Thornhill’s book “A Natural History of Rape.” Almost Diamonds has a detailed critique of Shackelford’s work, and concludes with this statement:
“In order to actually present a skeptical view of a topic, it is not enough to assert, as some evo psych advocates do, that yours is the minority viewpoint or not widely accepted. That is simple contrarianism. Skepticism and honest inquiry require that one deal with all the information available on the topic. They also require that we not use the absence of information that would allow us to choose between explanations to argue for only one of these explanations.”
I have no problem with people coming up with alternative theories about why men rape women — BUT DON’T FUCKING CALL IT SCIENCE. These stories aren’t testable or sometimes even falsifiable. And please don’t invoke evolution to try to give your hypothesis more credibility.
This kind of “research” perpetuates the idea that women who are raped had it coming. It makes up an evolutionary just-so story to imply that rape is “natural.” IMHO, it normalizes a violent crime. And that really pisses me off.
Ahem. Anyway.
Randy Thornhill is cited copiously through the papers of Shackelford. Who is this Thornhill dude, anyway?
Thornhill claims that rape is an adaptation by low status men to reproduce. He’s a pundit that shows up on TV to talk about women’s estrus cycles and tips at strip clubs.
He’s an entomologist.
No. Really.
The source of his insights about women and sexuality? These insects. Scorpionflies.
“Wait a minute, Bug Girl,” you may be thinking. “This dude used his observations of forced copulation in insects to theorize about rape in humans?” Why, yes, he did go there.
And I don’t know how he got from point A to point B either, because he seems to have passed through Points Q, R, S, and 42 along the way.
Knowing that the speaker [ED: this previously said “CFI speaker, but has been edited since CFI is the promotor, not the host.] makes frequent citation of Thornhill’s publications pretty much torpedoes his credibility with me. But, I figured I needed to make sure that I wasn’t painting him with the same misogynistic brush, so I kept reading his papers. And it got even worse.
One of the evolutionary questions this speaker [ED] is researching is “how have women evolved or been selected to prevent themselves from being raped?” He helped develop The Rape Avoidance Inventory (RAI). It asks about 69 behaviors suggested by women as behaviors they performed to avoid being raped. “Avoiding appearing sexually receptive” scores highly. In other words? Don’t look like a slut.
This particular speaker seems to be spending a lot of time trying to figure out what sorts of behaviors women have been “selected for” to prevent rape. He’s starting with an assumption that “Rapers gonna rape” and puts the onus on the woman to avoid that.
Which implies that if I got raped, I was doing something wrong. Or that there might be something to the charge that the 11-year-old girl in texas was gang raped because she “dressed slutty.”
What rape avoidance behaviors did I forget? I was sitting in my own apartment with a cute boy I met in a PE class my first semester at college. Technically, as both this Speaker and Thornhill define rape, I wasn’t really raped. Only non-consensual vaginal-penile intercourse counts–Anal rape isn’t proper rape. Because you can’t make babies up the butt. And rape is about reproduction, see? It is an adaptation for reproduction by disadvantaged men.
And that is bullshit. Rape is a sexual hate-crime.
It’s not some Neanderthal Nookie legacy.
I have been as open as I can be online and IRL about my status as a rape survivor, mostly because I feel that it’s important for people to know that rape does happen, and it happens to people that they know.
There are, however, many days when I am just not up to the heavy lifting of explaining, AGAIN, what rape is really about. To discover I need to have this conversation with Michigan CFI makes it doubly exhausting and upsetting.
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For anyone thinking that I am calling Thornhill out behind my online pseudonym: I’ll be at the Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting this year in November outing myself as Bug Girl. I invite Thornhill to step up and hear in person just what I think about him.
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Edited 1:30pm to add: -I- personally hold Michigan CFI responsible for promoting this speaker. I think that their denial that “we aren’t the sponsor” is lame, frankly since they are using their website (see screenshot here) and their branded emails to promote him. Obviously, my views are NOT the views of Skepchick, or the other writers. I think most of our readers know we are not a Borg collective that all agree all the time about everything. To make the Michigan CFI non-sponsorship issue clearer, edits [ED] are marked above in the text where I was not clear enough.
1. “Adaptive” does not mean “good.”
2. Strategies to increase your chances of avoiding rape are not accusations that it’s your fault.
3. Psychologists do not research whether rape is adaptive because they are rape apologists. Like people who study any other sort of harmful behavior, they want to understand it.
4. I really wish people would dispense with the matter of rape’s morality when discussing the validity of research on the subject. We all know rape is wrong. Is the research good, or not? That’s the question at hand.
The research is NOT good. That is my problem with it. There is no data that supports any of his assertions.
Additionally, there is NO data that the strategies do anything. They are focused on stranger rape, which is the *least* common type of rape.
“Strategies to increase your chances of avoiding rape are not accusations that it’s your fault.”
Horsehit. Not one single piece of “rape avoidance advice” does anything to prevent rape. What it does do is place idiotic and pointless restrictions on a woman’s freedom so that when something does happen to her, we can blame her for not following the rules. We just ignore the fact that most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows and tell her “don’t walk alone at night”.
I’ve walked around in the middle of an urban area at night by myself and more than slightly tipsy and never been even vaguely in danger. I was raped by my boyfriend.
What “rape avoidance rules” did I break?
Why are they “rape avoidance rules” as opposed to “crime avoidance rules”? Isn’t most of that advice applicable to all sorts of things humans of either sex might fall prey to? But, we only focus on what women need to not do . How convenient.
Okay, let me point out that there’s no reason that rape can’t be both adaptive and a “sexual hate crime” at the same time. And I appreciate that you’re candid about having been raped, but you seem to think that it makes you right about rape in general and Thornhill/Shackelford wrong. It also sounds like you think the sheer offensiveness of suggesting that rape is adaptive (which does not remotely amount to “A scientific treatise on “Reasons Why Bitch Had It Coming”) is more important than whether the theory is true or not. That’s what I get from this commentary on the subject– not an argument against the quality of their research.
Actually no it can’t. What you’re saying right now is that somehow some way; for reasons that we can’t know and understand, rape became a Darwinian fitness pressure. That pressure was so pronounced sometime in the EEA (evo-psych’s term not mine) that males who engaged in this kind of behavior left more offspring at a higher rate than males who did not. In order to accept this hypothesis you must assume that 1. Rape was adaptive at all. 2. That this would show up in the physical record of human material culture. 3. That any behavior observed from other species of animals such as ducks and insects is at all applicable to more complex organisms such as primates (Graves 2003) in concerns to life history. 4. The assumption that males in these early cultures suffered no culturally negative repercussions for there actions.
Unfortunately for you NONE of these things have any support to them at all. Now bare in mind before you reply I am an student of archaeology and anthropology and I DO NOT SUFFER FOOLS LIGHTLY. I get sick and tired of people who know nothing about culture trying to tell us all about culture. There is no evidence for your claims scientifically AT ALL PERIOD!!!!
“We all know rape is wrong”
I want to live in your privileged fantasy land.
I think that the concept of rape being an adaptive trait is kind of redonkulous, if you pardon my wording.
I don’t see how it makes sense – so raping children before puberty, that’s for reproduction? Raping mentally handicapped people – that’s for the better of the species (I mean no offense to anyone who is handicapped)? Anal rape or raping homosexuals? What about women raping men? It doesn’t. Make. Sense. To me, at least.
I may be missing something.
I have always seen rape or sexual assault or harassment as an exercise of control, enforcing your power over the other person. It’s a punishment of another person for being weaker than you. I could see it being an adaptation for people to assert dominance, yes, but not for reproductive purposes. And it’s definitely not something that would occur for the better of the species, so if anything, it would be against the idea that adaptations have a purpose to improve fitness of the species.
I’m not a scientist or anything, but that’s my view on it.
being a man i’m almost scared to reply with anything but “you go girl”, but since i’m filled with testosterone which has been known to lead men to do stupid shit at the risk of their lives for very little obvious benefit other then showing off, i’ll take a swing at a counterpoint here.
to start with i’d like to ask about the accepted theory of why men rape women, since you mentioned you being ok with alternate theories as long as it’s not called science (followed by an assertion that they can’t be tested or falsified),
well sure i agree, it’s not science IF it can’t be tested of falsified, but if there comes an alternate theory, you can’t just dismiss it out right and claim it’s non-science because you assume it can’t be tested/falsified.
going on a limb here but i’m assuming your current theory of why men rape women is
“Rape is a sexual hate-crime”
and that’s the it of it, no conversation needed.
please correct me if i’m wrong.
personally being in a group with low chance of having to endure rape, i may seem disgusting by just wanting to know, but i would really really like to know why rape occurs, child-rape as well for that matter (a more serious crime as we’ll all agree on).
i’m not disputing that what on the table atm is just stuff you could come up with via couch speculation whilst alone in a room sipping whisky, so what he is doing is probably close to the definition of non-science, but daring to ask the question “why do men rape women” at the risk of having “stop blaming women you SOB” thrown right back into his face is imo a step in the right direction, i.e. the daring to ask and wanting to know why.
because why would he want to, if not to try and come up with methods to prevent or lower the rate at which rape takes place in our world?
—
another point that some what irked me a little bit is the “dont dress slutty” part.
indeed i agree, dressing slutty does not give a man permission to rape woman in question, and he is the one to blame, but (/takescover) , how you dress and/or present yourself can put a target on your back for would be rapists.
i say again,
IT DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE RAPE !!!!
but lets create a scenario to help me make my point.
a woman is alone at night heading back to her hotel at night, in an unfamiliar city.
there are 2 paths to take, and 2 ways to travel in this scenario, both are exaggerated to make the point as clearly as i can.
path A ) is longer, but through a crowded street, filled with people of all ages.
path B) is shorter, but through an empty neighborhood, with little lighting and a lot of the houses seem vacant.
way X) dressed in a bikini whilst drunk and singing I love the nightlife, I like to boogie.
way Z) dressed in an army clothes, with a shotgun you back, swinging a machete, whistling the same tune Omar from the wire does.
the woman making the trip has 4 options, which option has the most and which the least chance of her being sexually assaulted?
everyone knows the answer, you may wanna reason out of it by saying “well actually someone might get antagonized by the shotgun and be more inclined to attack bla bla bla” but skip that part since it isn’t that important to the point.
the point is, what decisions you make, and it’s you and only you making those decisions, play a role in the outcome, be it the chances of being raped, mugged, laughed at, helped by strangers etc.
how you conduct yourself, how you present yourself, all play a big role.
and all though the blame is always 100 % with the person committing the crime, the responsibility for your safety has to lie in part with yourself, no matter if you’re a man or a woman.
in a perfect world, a woman could dress up in a 4 square inch of clothing bikini and walk around saying “i’m sooooo drunk” all she liked in what ever place at what ever time of day she liked and never get in any trouble ever.
but sadly we dont live in a perfect world.
i get semi annoyed when i hear the “i should be able to wear what ever i want and not get raped”, said in a tone that claims the rest of the world should create the perfect world for said person in order for him/her to be able to do just that without the risk of rape.
because i agree with the statement as such, you SHOULD be able to, but sadly you aren’t able to, just own up to it.
and nobody should assume i thought at the end of that sentence “so dress like nuns and stop bitching” or something to that effect.
because here’s the thing, i’m a man, i have never raped anyone, dont plan on raping anyone, but given that i am ONLY a man, and i dont mean that sarcastically, i accept that i could possibly be tempted to do it, if someone were to create a scenario with the sole purpose of having me commit that crime, it would be easy for said person to make me do that, i’m lucky enough to know there is nobody out there doing just that, but given certain parameters, i could be a future rapist, and that scares me.
and it should only scare me, nobody should feel uneasy about spending time in my company, but i am trying to imagine being in a woman’s shoes when she goes out at night with her friends for a drink and dancing, she has to, and usually does have a little bug at the back of her brain reminding her to be careful, dont take the taxi alone, dont walk home alone after dark, dont be the last person to leave the party at that really nice guy’s place, etc, and if i could i’d want to apologize for my sex to your sex, because of all the rapes and beatings that happen and have happened and will happen in the world.
but i can’t, so all i can say is, you have a right, i’ll defend that right like a caged animal, but please be careful, even of me, i’m imperfect, but i’m trying my best.
Lygypsy,
Context. I was talking about us, the people who are discussing this subject and researching it. I’m not going to accuse of someone of thinking rape is a-okay just because they’re theorizing about the psychology of it, just like I wouldn’t assume someone is into fist fights because they research that.
As for your previous comment– “Avoidance strategies are created so we can blame women for getting raped if they don’t abide by them” and “Avoidance strategies don’t work” are two very different claims. Even if the latter is entirely true, that doesn’t mean the former is. If I told you something really stupid like that only red cars get stolen, that doesn’t mean I think that if you drive such a car and it gets stolen, it’s your fault. It means I’m trying to help you protect yourself, as misguided as I might be.
apologize for the wall of text btw.
ps. that should be “shotgun on your back”, little typo i noticed now.
I would like to reiterate that Center for Inquiry Michigan is not hosting this event, nor did we have any say in the choice of the speaker or the topic.
You acknowledge this but continue to refer to it as the CFI Michigan speaker throughout your post which is unnecessary and misrepresents the situation.
We were asked by the student group – Evolution for Everyone at Grand Valley State University which is affiliated with the Psychology Dept. – if we would inform our members of this presentation – which we have done.
http://www.gvsu.edu/psychology/evolution-for-everyone-141.htm
CFI’s participation in promoting this event DOES NOT mean that we endorse or promote any of the views presented by the speaker. We promote critical thinking and science, but it is up to the individual to make their own decisions based on the evidence presented.
I encourage you, and anyone else, to critique and analyze Shackelford’s and the other researcher’s claims that you cite – but please represent the situation accurately – and direct the critiques to the researchers.
Where he went off the rails is to bring rape into the subject of general reproductive strategies. Rape is a purely human phenomenon. It is the result of many problems and causes many more. To ignore everything but reproductive angle is idiotic.
@Egillvs:
*sigh*
Okay, I’ll try to make this short. THE VAST MAJORITY OF RAPES ARE NOT STRANGER RAPES! I can look like I just woke up and be running around in my PJs and be more likely to be raped than in the scenarios above. I AM MORE LIKELY TO BE RAPED BY SOMEONE I KNOW THAN SOME STRANGER IN AN ALLEY.
It’s all about power and domination. It’s not about sex.
I’m done.
sigh ?
like that was the point i was making. christ get your head out of your poopshoot, never did i say that, the example i made was not to say most rapes are stranger rapes, it’s to point out that your choices matter when it comes to your own safety.
like drinking too much and being the last person to leave the party at that really nice hot guy’s place you sorta like.
some rapes are going to happen, no matter what the victim did or didn’t do, yes.
but there are some steps you could acknowledge that have some effect on the chances of you getting assaulted, be it by your friend, boyfriend, husband, uncle, etc.
i might even be ok with saying that most rapes you have no way of knowing they’ll happen to you, and only way to prevent them yourself would be to live in a cave alone in the desert and not have any contact with friendly male who became the rapist, but my point was never to say you can prevent all or even most of them.
@euterpechild: Thanks for jumping in with the obvious response to Egillvs.
But I don’t think it is quite accurate to say that rape is all about power and not about sex. It is using sex to dominate, and presmably rapists get a sexual thrill out of that kind of dominance.
If rape was only about power, then beating someone up without any sexual assault would be the same thing as rape, which it clearly isn’t.
i work with handicapped teenagers and young adults and they are at more risk the women of being sexually abused.
my mother works at the offices of a woman’s shelter, for battered/abused women/children.
so throwing that in my face like i didn’t know it, is close to kicking me in the balls.
please die in a closet screaming if you still think i’m stupid enough not to realize most rapes aren’t stranger rapes.
grrrr .. i’m somewhat pissed at that stupid quotemining-brush off whilst ignoring the point of my post.
Your criticisms of Shakleford are understandable…but why are you making this into an attack on CFI Michigan? They didn’t invite him, they aren’t hosting him…they most certainly didn’t endorse his views. Grand Valley State University is hosting the speaker. My wife works for CFI MI and when whenever a speaker comes to town to give a talk related to an area science, philosophy, religion that we think our members might be interested in we put it on our online calendar. This includes speakers and ideas our membership might not agree with (Michael Dowd, Stephen Prothero, events hosted by colleges, churches etc.) because, as freethinkers, we believe in actively seeking out and debating all types of viewpoints. Its just to let our members know there is an event in the area they might be interested in. So are you saying we cannot have a community bulletin? CFI’s been catching a lot of flack lately and our communities are suffering for it. Arguably, some of it may be deserved…but not over this.
i have no words for kalowtfidontcare
“Wait a minute, Bug Girl,” you may be thinking. ”This dude used his observations of forced copulation in insects to theorize about rape in humans?” Why, yes, he did go there.
In honeybees and some spiders the male’s penis breaks off inside the female to reduce the chance for other sperm to compete. So the fuck what? (and ouch)
Excuse the non sequitur, just an interesting fact I don’t get to use enough, but it’s as apropriate to the arguement as his quote.
@Egillvs: I’m assuming you are sincerely interested in preventing rape – though your comment that you think you could “possibly be tempted to do it” is disturbing. Do you think that about yourself because you have bought into the popular notion that men are naturally sexual predators, who struggle, sometimes in vain, to control their raping impulses? Give yourself more credit.
Anyway, if you are sincerely interested, think about all the things women would have to do to be sufficiently “cautious” to avoid rape. It IS important that most rapes are not stranger rapes. Do women have to make sure they are never alone with their boyfriends or husbands? Do they have to make sure they never say no to sex with their boyfriends or husbands (thus obviating the “need” for rape)? Do they have to get their boyfriends or husbands tested with some sort of polygraph machine to see if they harbour any raping characteristics?
You see, a rapist, who is not just any ordinary bloke who gets carried away, but who is a particular kind of sexual predator, is pretty good at getting his potential victims into a vulnerable position. To decide that a rape victim ought to have done something different IS to blame her (or him – rape victims can of course be male, just as it is possible, though rare, for a woman to be a rapist).
I agree to a large extent with what you say, Bug Girl. The only problem I have with this line of argument is that if someone did show that rape was an adaptive behavior with solid science, you’re left holding the bag.
If there were evidence presented that rape is adaptive (which maybe be unlikely, but it’s entirely possible,) comments like this, “IMHO, it normalizes a violent crime.” would mean a fact normalizes a violent crime. And that’s just not so.
The truth of the matter is, whether it’s adaptive or not is completely irrelevant to morality. Anyone who would justify rape by saying it’s adaptive is committing the naturalistic fallacy
The research you refer to may in fact be total bollocks, and if so it should be criticized on that basis. But the naturalistic fallacy is just as much a fallacy when skeptics do it as when creationists do it. To propose (or even assert) an evolutionary origin of rape does not serve as a justification for it, any more than assertions about the evolutionary origins of violence justify murder.
@delphi_ote:
“The truth of the matter is, whether it’s adaptive or not is completely irrelevant to morality. Anyone who would justify rape by saying it’s adaptive is committing the naturalistic fallacy”
Bingo. Or more generally, the is-ought disconnect (from Hume) disqualifies such logic.
And yet, if you did buy the red car and it was subsequently stolen, perhaps not you Rillion, but there would be someone out there going “Tsk, tsk, I told you not to buy the red car.” And as pointed out by many others, it’s not as simply as controlling that one factor.
@Egillvs:
Actually no, there are no steps one can take to avoid rape by a boyfriend. Short of a gun.
please for the love of all good and nice, stop making up ideas that i have, you’re so… SO wrong here, i dont have those ideas, i dont consider it unimportant that most rapes are not stranger rapes.
i never said it , i never meant it, the example i created wasn’t about pointing that out as a very common type of rape.
it was about how your choices effect you.
like … again i’m making this example now for the 3rd time and it gets ignored again i’m guessing, like being the last person to leave the party at that really hot guy’s place, while you’ve had a bit too much to drink.
that really hot guy you like. might indeed be someone capable of rape (him being a man(i’ll go further into this)), leave with the last group of people.
and also, about the latter 50 % of your post where your agreeing with me and thinking i have the opposing view.
the examples of wives/girlfriends never being along with their husbands/boyfriends.
read my post again where i’m pointing out that in many if not most cases, there is NOTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE TO PREVENT IT !
please get that, I KNOW THAT !
i’m only talking about the very very very very fucking few times where your actions increase or decrease the chances of you getting raped, occur.
remember when i started this, i mentioned an all too familiar line of “i should be able to dress how ever i like and not get raped”
which i then promptly go on to point out i agree with, you should, but in some cases you aren’t, that’s the only tiny little part i was talking about … getting tired now :(
ok
on to the consider myself someone that could given certain parameters be tempted to rape, part.
the fact that it’s disturbing to you is pointless, what matters is that i’m honest about it, and no i have never fantasized about it, i dont consider men to be naturally sexual predators etc
all i’m saying is this.
we all have urges, most of them are good, hunger/thirst/a need for socializing/sexual urges, usually are, in most situations at most times for most people good. they keep us alive, sane, happy and reproducing.
but mix those urges with the urge to last out at those you get angry with, put a dash of alcohol on top of that to loosen inhibitions, then mix in a unconscious state of target of the person’s anger, and you have a recipe for disaster, and in most cases, i hope, nothing happens, but there is a statistical chance of it happening, and until we find out why some men rape and some dont, or until we find out that all man can rape, but most just have been lucky enough not to be in a situation exaggerated enough for them to go through with it, i’ll live in a tiny bit of fear of sometime becoming one.
and in fact i am hoping that fear keeps me on my toes and prevents me from doing anything, or at the very least, making sure the situation would have to be so extreme to trespass into the stupid unlikely movie fiction of craptastic assery, for it to happen.
i’m talking, a woman kills all my family in front of me, making fun of me whilst holding me captive for 20 years that i had to endure the death of my entire family, she during this time expresses her biggest fear when drunk one night to be to get raped, then after i spending the last 3 years planning an escape, find her drunk in her room, about to kill a schoolbus full of children distantly related to me (because she already killed all my close relatives already), i while running bump into her . she falls down, drops her assault rifle and falls down on a mattress, next to which i see handcuffs and a pack of condoms, she turns around pleads for her life.
would it be ok to assume i might rape her out of anger there?
or am i a sexual predator now?
This whole article reads to me as reflex reactionary, and it’s based primarily in the logical fallacy of false dichotomy. I won’t defend either of these researchers’ work because I’m not familiar with it, but even if we grant that everything they find is true and that rape is an adaptive behavior, that in no way excludes the possibility that it is also a “sexual hate-crime.” This article doesn’t read to me like a scholarly criticism of the work – it sounds like a reactionary response from a person who is predisposed to deny anything that could be used, appropriately or not (and in this case, as delphi_ote correctly observes, it would not be), to explain rape as anything more complex than a base, violent, and deliberately malicious act.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your position, bug_girl, but you’re not doing a very good job of defending it here. In this case, as in the whole DDT argument, you’re coming off, to me at least, as somebody who reacts disproportionately to a stimulus not solely on a rational basis (where I would think a more tempered response, calmly pointing out the flaws in these arguments would be more effective), but instead because of its adjacency to a subject area where you have some personal concern. I’m sorry to say that it makes it hard to trust anything you write when you do that sort of thing, and I want to trust what you write.
heidho. .. eh .. i’ll just ask you to point out where i said
“some rapes are going to happen, no matter what the victim did or didn’t do, yes.”
or did you not read that. or think i didn’t meant it or something …
Wow, this got ugly fast.
I’m pretty sure Uncle John didn’t feel an evolutionary imperative to propagate as he raped me when I was a small child. But then again it was in Michigan – the land with the highest percentage of neanderthals.
Can’t we agree that Bug_Girl is understandably a bit harsh towards bullshit science that tries to absolve men of the responsibility for their actions? And that Egillvs tried to – in the nicest way possible – discuss a slightly alternative viewpoint?
davew – Purely human phenomenon? In nature, unwanted and forced sexual assaults happen all the time. Humans might be the only animal that can and should make the choice to control their behavior. Right?
I have worked in the field of sexual assault and domestic violence for over 17 years. I have also read “A Natural History of Rape”, as recommended to me by Dr. Elisabeth Cornwell, who was on the Science and Sexuality Panel at TAM8 with me.
At no point does “A Natural History of Rape” claim that rape is a GOOD or ACCEPTABLE thing. What it does is propose a hypothesis that has been discussed above, that some men gain reproductive/evolutionary advantage with forced intercourse.
I am still on the fence about this one. After having worked in this field so long, it is heresy to even say that some rapes CAN be about sex. But here is how even those are related to power and control.
Some rapes are violent (using physical harm or threats of physical harm) from the beginning.
But SOME rapes start out as consensual sex play that becomes violent when one partner expresses boundaries that the other partner disagrees with. Therefore, the incident was STARTED because of sexual desire, but when one person said no, the other person decided that they could use their physical/cultural/emotional power over the other person to get what they wanted.
Not all rapists get off on hurting women. Not all rapists are using it as a tool of the patriarchy. But when a rapist decides that HIS will is more important than the will of the person he is with, he has used his power and control to force sex. And the patriarchy and the culture we have created assist him in thinking he is entitled to make this decision.
i just got a braingasm, and i want to hug spellwight now, and give her massages and flowers and chocolate and trips to hawaii and wish her happiness and well being for the rest of her life.
Clearly this is a sensitive issue, and separating the science from the morality can be difficult.
If I’m understanding Bug Girl’s perspective, it’s that rape is evil, and nothing should be permitted to abstract that moral judgment.
Science must usually set aside questions of morality in order to accurately observe, but there are some exceptions.
The thing I take issue with is this: “This kind of ‘research’ perpetuates the idea that women who are raped had it coming. It makes up an evolutionary just-so story to imply that rape is ‘natural.'”
This seems to presuppose that rape cannot have any adaptive value BECAUSE it’s evil. Which is a ridiculous statement (and perhaps a strawman; don’t let me misrepresent your perspective, Bug Girl). It’s entirely possible that rape grants no reproductive benefit, but that’s a separate issue than the morality of rape.
Thing is, it’s entirely possible for me to hypothesize ways in which rape may be reproductively beneficial to the male. Human males are not physiologically committed to a pregnancy like females are. As evil as it is, a male may impregnate his wife, then his daughter, thereby doubling his reproductive success.
This sort of behavior is difficult to research, but it can be researched. The hypothesis of “rape can permit a male to have a greater number of offspring” is certainly testable and falsifiable. One need simply to do a large-scale survey of convicted rapists and look at the resultant pregnancies. (Side note: induced abortions and imprisonment are a relatively recent phenomena.)
Anyway, point being that we can’t dismiss hypotheses related to negative moral issues simply because they are related to negative moral issues.
@davew:
I would say that rape is a human concept as, obviously, you can find instance of what can be seen as “rape” all over the animal kingdom.
See also- Scorpionflies!
But the kicker here is we can’t ask the female flies if they consented to the sex…consent and the ideas of body autonomy are right now a completely human thing….which is another criticism oft lain at the feet of Evolutionary Psychologists (I think Pigliucci said it first?): It is difficult to draw conclusions based on an ‘n’ of 1.
However, I definitely agree that viewing rape in Homo sapiens, especially modern specimens as purely reproductive in nature is fatuous.
Additionally, to a few of the other people leaving comments. Sorry guys, but it doesn’t matter what the victim is doing or what the victim was wearing- people have a right to their own body and that should never be violated. What they do, wear, look like – that doesn’t matter.
Implying that there is a situation where it is or was a bad decision to do X on the part of the victim gives the rapist that much more power over them and lets them slightly off the hook. That is not alright.
Think I am done here for now…keep up the good work BugGirl!
Additionally mossface, I am fairly certain that those studies have been done, but others please feel free to correct me!
(guess I wasn’t done after all!)
@Egillvs: Perhaps the problem is that you are coming up with bizzarre, unlikely scenarios and trying to imagine what might happen.
In the real world, I can imagine that a potentially nice guy might have been trained by rape culture to think that women are a fundamentally alien species whom it is impossible to understand, and that sex is about taking something from a women that she will be initially unwilling to give – and that getting what she initially felt hesitant about giving is like winning a contest (whereas being told “no” is like losing).
I don’t know how many of this sort of rapist are around. But I doubt you, given your apparent awareness of what rape is, could find yourself accidentally in such a situation.
that’s an interesting point heidho and a big kudos for working in that field, it needs more good people like you!
the point that some rapes start out as sex and then when one person expresses a boundary.
just to explore that, since i’m guessing you’re a woman, and i already mentioned that i’m a man.
and since i can never fully understand what it’s like to have sex as a woman, and you vice versa.
at what point should one partner be ok to stop the festivities.
lets say 1 second from an orgasm, as a man i can safely say that you could tell me the house is on fire, i would have that orgasm first before i checked for smoke and/or made my way out to safety, my brain isn’t wired to stop at that point and think of more important things.
i’ve never asked my partners or other women that question, but is there a point of no return for you?
@Egillvs: You’re on!
My point of no return doesn’t exist. I can and have at any point before and during, chosen to stop immediately. It’s not fun, but it can be done.
For anyone who think that the rape avoidance tactics are just “common sense”, let me ask you this;
If there were random snipers in your neighborhood, would it be your fault that you got shot if you stood to close to a window? What if you had been warned? What about if you dared to open your door? What if the gunman was someone you trusted and you let them inside?
Are you starting to see the absurdity of this line of argumnent?
Rape is about violence and control, sex is just the method used. If there were fewer hang-ups about sex in this society it would be easier to understand that.
@Kaloikagathoi:
remember when i said “there are 2 paths to take, and 2 ways to travel in this scenario, both are exaggerated”
exaggerated, so yeah i know the example i made up is fictional and would never happen in the real world. and i wasn’t trying to imagine what would happen really, i was just making a point that decision you make effect you and sometimes your safety, not always, not in all situations, like some have extrapolated from my post much to my dislike, but sometimes.
but if you could read my commented about urges and it’s unpleasant mixture with other things, how that could open a path for some men to commit this crime, and indeed it does.
since it’s not like rape is rare, sadly.
perhaps i am safe to assume i will never rape anyone, but i’m on the “never say never” bandwagon until proven it’s ok to say so.
and so far nothing remotely close has come from the world of science, so i’ll stick to attempts to imagine where i could be tempted, whilst enraged, drunk, horny, hateful and in direct view of someone i could aim my hate at, who were in no or frail position to stop me, to be a rapist.
i want the taboo out, i want more conversation in, i want to figure stuff out, and this is pretty high on my list.
@mrmisconception:
in your sniper scenario, if there were lets say a 1000 people living in that area where the snipers were killing people.
100 got killed before the snipers were caught,
first 5 never had any warning, to stay away from windows, not to open doors for anyone, dont go outside, until the snipers have been caught.
the next 95 were all killed because they didn’t follow the instructions well enough.
do they bear no responsibility for what happened to them?
they dont share the blame of course, that’s 100 % on the sniper’s side, but putting yourself in harms way knowingly, wont guarantee your demise, but it will increase the chances of it happening will it not?
So many items to address here..
Let’s start with CFI. -I- do hold them responsible for promoting this speaker. I think that their denial that “we aren’t the sponsor” is lame, frankly since they are using their website (see screenshot here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bug_girl/5596734616/) and their branded emails to promote him.
Obviously, my views are not the views of Skepchick, or the other writers (yadda yadda–I think most of our readers know we are not a Borg collective that all agree all the time.)
Second: WTF are some of you doing? Are you really trying to have an argument about who’s fault a rape is? Really??? *head desk*
it’s always 100 % the rapists fault..
everybody here agrees with that i’m sure
we’re just talking about if in some situations, you can have an effect on if you become a victim or not.
“And I don’t know how he got from point A to point B either, because he seems to have passed through Points Q, R, S, and 42 along the way.”
That line is awesome, Bug_Girl.
#10 jenbeahan That’s a bit much, frankly. You didn’t have to advertise it just because a student group asked you to. In my experience with CFI Toronto, if they are bringing in something controversial that most members likely won’t agree with, they throw in a couple of lines about why the talk is important and will use words like “controversial” or “provocative” to distance themselves from endorsement.
@Egillvs: Yes, I know you were exaggerating for the sake of argument. But what I was saying was that exaggerating for the sake of argument takes the discussion away from the realities we’re trying to discuss.
@delphi_ote: I agree to a large extent with what you say, Bug Girl. The only problem I have with this line of argument is that if someone did show that rape was an adaptive behavior with solid science, you’re left holding the bag.
If there were evidence presented that rape is adaptive (which maybe be unlikely, but it’s entirely possible,) comments like this, “IMHO, it normalizes a violent crime.” would mean a fact normalizes a violent crime. And that’s just not so.
Actually, if they had any actual data, that would be useful information. My beef is that there *is nothing there.* It is trivially easy to poke holes in their research. Just read Almost Diamond’s quick dissection of one of Shackelford’s papers.
The “normalization” I’m talking about mostly happens in the media. Look at how often these bits of research are presented as “facts” in news stories. Bad reporting happens all over–but in this case, the bad reporting reinforces rape culture.
@Egillvs: Well consider this, say you agreed to let your gf peg you in the ass. After about 20 minutes of her giving it to you good, you start to hurt or feel weird or find Jesus and decide it is wrong.
Can she hold you down and keep pegging? When you agreed, was that the point of no return?
@Egillvs:
The victim shares no responsibility ’cause guess what, in my scenario the media is telling people to stay away from windows but you are far more likely to be shot by someone you trust from inside your house.
Like in real life things are not always what they appear. Women should look after themselves the same way men should, period. To suggest other wise is simply to allow for blame to be placed on the victim.
Again, it’s about power and control, how you dress does not change any of that.
I’m disappointed that every time rape is brought up, it gets dragged into this exact same conversation every. single. time.
Bug girl wrote an excellent piece on a very specific piece of research and I was really looking forward to a discussion about that. For example, I find it mind boggling that Shackelford suggests that a man would only rape his partner because he suspected her of cheating.
It would be great to actually talk about rape that happens within an established relationship (the topic Shackelford is giving his talk on) for once instead of the very tired “don’t walk through dark alleys and you won’t get raped by a stranger” bull.
@Egillvs:
By that logic, I can never be out actually pursuing sex without being responsible for a crime committed against me. If I’m out, looking to meet men, dressed in a way that would attract men, then I kind of have to accept that a man I didn’t want to attract would assume that means he should remove those clothes and put his body parts into mine.
What you’re implying is that the default is that a man sees a scantily clad woman and is automatically compelled to put his penis in her. There’s nothing that can rationalize that away. Thinking about her vagina is more powerful than anything she could do or say to try and stop him.
Clearly this is not the case. How do we know this? Because women dress scantily in public without being raped…. ALL THE TIME. Every day. Everywhere. Right now they’re doing it. And most of them will never be raped.
Whereas in countries where women are forced to cover themselves to keep men’s eyes averted, rape is much more common.
The “don’t dress like a slut” argument is you saying “But men can’t help it. We’re slaves to our penises.” And us saying, “No. We really believe you are smarter and better than that.”