The
comparative method is extremely useful. It uses natural variation and disparity to understand the patterns of life at all levels—from genes to communities—and the critical role of organisms in ecosystems.
Comparative biology: What we didn't know about penis anatomy
No one said that it was "all about sex". They’re saying that the sexual dimension of rape is painfully obvious, err!
"Given that rapists, in most reported cases, are sexually aroused and often reach orgasm, and that some convicted rapists admit to erotic motives, it is hard to disagree with Thornhill's and Palmer's claim that rape is at least partly a sexual act. But this claim is hardly new. Indeed, the sexual dimension of rape is painfully obvious. But Thornhill and Palmer assert that "academic feminists and sociologists" have consistently denied any sexual motivation for rape, insisting instead that "rape is not about sex, but about violence and power." It is true that in recent decades the discussion of rape has been dominated by such notions, though one must remember that they originated not as scientific propositions but as political slogans deemed necessary to reverse popular misconceptions about rape."
http://www.uic.edu/labs/igic/papers/others/Coyne_2000.pdf
Considering how much Thornhill and Palmer whine about feminists when it comes to rape... They have been discredited in every single way imaginable by scientists.
We are still expected to take these buffoons seriously?
A theory that rape has its origin in evolutionary biology is seriously flawed.
By Jerry A. Coyne and Andrew Berry
Jerry A. Coyne is in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, The University of Chicago, 1101 East 57 Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
Andrew Berry is at the Museum of Comparative Zoology Labs, Harvard University, 26 Oxford St, Cambridge MA 02138 USA
In A Natural History of Rape, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer argue that rape is an adaptation - that it has evolved to increase the reproductive success of men who would otherwise have little sexual access to women. Their analysis of rape then forms the basis of a protracted sales pitch for evolutionary psychology, the latest incarnation of sociobiology: not only do the authors believe that this should be the explanatory model of choice in the human behavioural sciences, but they also want to see its insights incorporated into social policy. Thus, in a single slim volume, Thornhill and Palmer give us both an inflammatory analysis of a sensitive topic, and a manifesto outlining evolutionary biology's future conquest of the social sciences.
In the furore that has greeted the book's publication, the scientific evidence for the authors' arguments has been largely ignored. However, it is here that we must start. If their specific claims about rape are not scientifically sound, then the authors' grand vision of the centrality of natural selection to every aspect of our behaviour collapses as well. In their media appearances, Thornhill and Palmer cloak themselves in the authority of science, implying that the controversy over their ideas is purely political, and that the underlying biology is unimpeachable. This is a serious misrepresentation.
What persuasiveness the book does possess rests on an ingenious rhetorical trick. The authors lay out two alternative evolutionary hypotheses: rape is either a "specific adaptation" (i.e., natural selection explicitly promoted the act) or a "by-product of evolution" (i.e., there was no direct selection for rape; rather it is an accidental product of selection for, say, male promiscuity and aggression). Readers unconvinced by the specific-adaptation argument therefore find themselves embracing by default the by-product alternative. Either way, Thornhill and Palmer claim a convert.
But what, in behavioural terms, is an evolutionary by-product? Everything that is not a specific adaptation. Thus playing the piano - an activity unlikely to have been instrumental in the evolution of the brain - is an evolutionary by-product, because it depends on a brain that was itself produced by natural selection. If every human behaviour can be seen as a by-product of evolution, then the by-product idea is useless, for a theory that explains everything is merely a truism. The claims that rape and playing the piano are by-products of evolution are claims without content.
It is not surprising, then, that A Natural History of Rape is a largely an argument for the specific-adaptation theory. Thornhill and Palmer's evidence, however, either 1) fails to support their case, 2) is presented in a misleading and/or biased way, or 3) equally supports alternative explanations. Here is one example of each of these problems:
First, Thornhill and Palmer make much of the claim that rape victims tend to be in their prime reproductive years, suggesting that reproduction is indeed a central part of the rapist's agenda. But the data they present contradicts this claim. In a 1992 survey that attempted to deal with the substantial statistical problem of unreported rape, 29% of U.S. rape victims were under the age of 11. As that age group comprises approximately 15% of the female population, under-11s were over-represented among rape victims by a factor of two. So invested are the authors in their specific-adaptation hypothesis that they try to explain this nonadaptive anomaly by noting that the data do not indicate the "proportion of the victims under 11 who were exhibiting secondary sexual traits."[p.72] Further, "the increasingly early age of menarche in Western females contributes to the enhanced sexual attractiveness of some females under 12." [p.72]. In the end, the hopelessness of this special pleading merely draws attention to the failure of the data to support the authors' hypothesis.
Second, Thornhill and Palmer contend that, based on sociological studies, female rape victims of reproductive age are more traumatized by the experience than are women either too old or too young to reproduce. The rationale is that reproductive-age women are in effect mourning the lost opportunity for mate choice which rape, in the worldview of evolutionary psychology, represents to them. The authors see this apparent heterogeneity in the reaction to rape as supporting their claims about the reproductive essence of the act.
In checking the cited reference (one of whose authors was Thornhill himself), we find that the original work's conclusions differ critically from those given in the book. According to Thornhill and Palmer, the cited study shows post-rape trauma to be higher in reproductive-age women (12-44) than in the two other age classes (under 12 and over 44). In fact, the data show that the only heterogeneity in response to rape comes from the under-12 class: the over-44 class is just as traumatized as the 12-44 one.
However, when the over-44 and under-12 classes are pooled, the under-12 effect of less trauma makes this combined "nonreproductive" class significantly different from the 12-44 one. The authors have used statistical sleight of hand to buttress their argument. And we need hardly point out that the relative lack of trauma in the youngest age group may be unrelated to sexual immaturity: rather, children may be less able to express their feelings. Furthermore, the original study's data are questionable because much of the assessment of trauma in the under-12 class was necessarily based on reports of the child's caregivers rather than of the child herself. Direct comparison of observer-reported and self-reported data on such a subjective issue is extremely problematic.
Finally, the fact that women of reproductive age experience more violence during rape than do older women or children - suggesting that they fight back harder - is taken by Thornhill and Palmer as evidence that they have more to defend. There is, they contend, more at stake - reproduction, no less-for reproductive-age women. While it is true that reproductive women who resist rape may be partly motivated by the fear of unwanted conception, it is also true that such women, at the peak of bodily strength, are most physically capable of fighting back. Children cannot fight off a full-grown man, and older women may also find resistance beyond them. In exclusively championing their preferred explanation of a phenomenon, even when it is less plausible than alternatives, the authors reveal their true colours. A Natural History of Rape is advocacy, not science.
We have highlighted just three examples of the book's flawed arguments. There are many more. The evidence that rape is a specific adaptation is weak at best. In keeping with the traditions established early in the evolution of sociobiology, Thornhill and Palmer's evidence comes down to a series of untestable "just-so" stories.
Sociobiological approaches to human behaviour may yield interesting insights. But it is disciplinary hubris - a longstanding feature of evolutionary psychology- to suppose that natural selection underlies our every action. Because of the central role of reproduction in Darwin's theory, sexual behaviour is in principle a good candidate for fruitful sociobiological study, but even here it usually fails dismally. The most imaginative and committed sociobiologist would be hard pressed to show that masturbation, sadomasochism, bestiality, and pornography's enthusiasm for high heels are all direct adaptations. In its insistence on forcing everything into the straitjacket of adaptation, evolutionary psychology offers a woefully incomplete perspective on human behaviour. Thornhill and Palmer have inadvertently revealed just how deficient that perspective is.
What a shame
Thornhill and Palmer were not scientific in how they applied science in their book..
Moreover, just because we cannot experimentally test evolutionary hypotheses on humans like we can on scorpion flies does not validate the sorts of “hypothesis testing” by survey data and speculation in which Thornhill and Palmer engage. For examples, among their proposed “rape adaptations” are “psychological mechanisms that motivate men who lack sexual access to females (or who lack sufficient resources) to rape” (p. 65) and “a victim-preference mechanism designed … to maximize the reproductive benefits of rape” (p. 70). As support, they state that “rape is disproportionately committed by men with lower socioeconomic status” (p. 67), although occasional rape by “high status men with sexual access to females” complicates things. But they fail to justify assigning men to categories of relative “sexual access” based on socioeconomic status, sidestep questions about reporting bias, and ignore crucially important and hotly contested political influences on definitions of “rape” and on the willingness of legal authorities to accept women’s claims of rape. Lacking data on “reproductive benefits”, they argue that the age distribution of victims (e.g., highest rates for 16 to 24-year-olds) points towards “adaptations.” However, if men’s minds are designed to target maximally fertile women, why should 29 percent of the victims in one survey have been under 11?
Gillum, like Thornhill and Palmer, too quickly equates forced copulations in non-humans with rape. How sexual coercion influences male reproductive success in species like scorpion flies, mallards and orangutans is unclear. Surely we should not argue that men and scorpion flies share evolved psychological mechanisms. Why, then, call forced copulations in scorpion flies “rape”? As the rape prevention workers whom Gillum criticizes rightly argue (“Why we can’t divorce culture from rape,” 9/22), rape involves power relationships, violence and usurpation of control over women’s bodies by men in uniquely human cultural contexts. Asserting that arguments grounded in this uniqueness are inevitably ideologically motivated and biased is itself an ideological act: It fallaciously presumes that biological arguments are inevitably politically neutral and objective.
Then again, Thornhill and Palmer argue that only a certain group of rape victims are traumatised by rape.
That it was only women of child bearing age who were truly traumatised.
In an e-mail response to Coyne's objection, Thornhill and Palmer said the information about trauma in over-44 women was included in a study cited in their book. Yet the book's main text omits any mention of high trauma in older women, saying only that "reproductive-age victims suffered significantly more psychological trauma than non-reproductive-age rape victims."
And we are supposed to take them seriously?
I'll pass thanks. Especially when you factor in just how dodgy they were in how they presented science.
