Claims that Men Are Biologically Inclined to Rape Are Faulty
Table of Contents: Further Readings
Michael Kimmel is a sociologist and author of numerous books about feminism, men, and masculinity, including Men Confront Pornography and Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776-1990.
It was while watching my 22-month-old son playing with our neighbor's daughter the other day that I was convinced to respond in some way to the view [Randy] Thornhill and [Craig] Palmer [authors of A Natural History of Rape] have of my little boy, and their view of his future—a future of unbridled sexual predation, of the evolutionary justification for using any means necessary—fraud or force, drugs or alcohol—to sexually conquer an unwilling female (or male, but Thornhill and Palmer think other males would be more compliant). And the life of our little neighbor is even more bleak: She will have to be constantly on her guard because boys will be boys—which is to say that boys will be violent little rapacious predatory beasts. She will have to modify her behavior, watch what she wears, where she walks, and at what time, because there's certainly no way we're going to be able to protect her from those little male monsters.
I see a different reality, and I want a different future for my children than that which Thornhill and Palmer lay out for them. Fortunately, in the real world, in which I happen to live, Thornhill and Palmer's prognosis is merely political resignation with a pseudo-scientific facade. My son will live in a different world, because he already does, because the real world he and I live in bears little resemblance to the world Thornhill and Palmer describe, and because works like Thornhill and Palmer's, however politically resigned they are, offer no real vision and no real hope.
And no real science either. I will argue that this "natural history" contains dreadfully poor understanding of nature, of history, and of "natural history." The book tells us less about "the biological bases of sexual coercion" than the ideological fantasies of those who justify sexual coercion. It's bad science, bad history, and bad politics—or, more accurately, it's bad politics masquerading as science....
Bad Science
Evolutionary psychology is a social science, which is to say it is an oxymoron. It cannot conform to the canons of a science like physics, in which falsifiability is its chief goal and replication its chief method. It does not account for variations in its universalizing pronouncements, nor does it offer the most parsimonious explanations. It is speculative theory, often provocative and interesting, but no more than that. It is like—gasp!—my own discipline of sociology. And, like sociology, there are some practitioners who will do virtually anything to be taken seriously as "science," despite the fact that individual human beings happily confound all predictions based on aggregate models of behavior.
Telling us that it [rape] is natural tells us nothing about it except that it is found in nature.
Typically, to stake its claim for legitimacy, pseudo-science cloaks itself in vociferous denunciations of all other pseudo-sciences. In this case, Thornhill and Palmer set up straw man arguments, attribute them to a social science utterly in the thrall of feminist rape hysteria, and then claim to demolish them with pseudo-scientific assertions based on selective evidence. No wonder one medical reviewer noted the irony "that a book purporting such devotion to science should have so little in it" and evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne calls the work "utterly lacking in sound scientific grounding," "an embarrassment to the field," and "useless and unscientific."
The "argument" of the book is actually a tautology. Rape, they claim, is "a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of human evolutionary heritage." Well, of course it is. As is any behavior or trait found among human primates. If it exists in nature, it's natural. Some "natural" beverages contain artificial—"social"—additives that give them their color, their texture, their taste, their "meaning" or "significance." This is equally true of rape. Telling us that it is natural tells us nothing about it except that it is found in nature....
Evolutionary Theory About Gender
Proof of this argument is based first on Robert Trivers's reductionist evolutionary theory, which suggests that males and females have different reproductive strategies based on the size and number of their reproductive cells. From sperm and egg we get motivation, intention, perhaps even cognition. Male reproductive success comes from impregnating as many females as possible; females' success comes from enticing a male to provide and protect the vulnerable and dependent offspring. Thus males have a natural predisposition toward promiscuity, s*x without love, and parental indifference; females have a natural propensity for monogamy, l
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