Evolutionary Psychology Teaches Rape 101
Judith ShulevitzPosted Thursday, Jan. 13, 2000, at 10:58 AM ETCulturebox was not surprised to learn from the latest issue of The Sciences that evolutionary psychologists have come up with an answer to the question of why men rape. From the beginning, ev psych has portrayed the war between the sexes as both natural and inevitable: Men have to spread their genes around by having sex promiscuously and by whatever means necessary; women lavish their scarce reproductive resources only on partners who'll stick around to ensure that their children thrive. So there was nothing startling about the arguments of Craig T. Palmer and Randy Thornhill (author of a famous study on beauty arguing that throughout world cultures, men and women prize symmetrical features, which correspond to genetic health): Rape, they say, is either a direct reproductive strategy--what men resort to when all else fails--or the byproduct of other reproductive strategies, "such as a strong male sex drive and the male desire to mate with a variety of women." What was newsworthy is what the authors suggests we should do to prevent rape.
Now, before Culturebox reveals Thornhill and Palmer's nifty solution to this age-old problem, she has to digress a bit on the subject of evolutionary psychology. Here's her beef with it: Evolutionary psychology is not very good on the aspect of the human psyche she's personally most interested in, which is how humans are different from animals. Ev psych insists, rightly, that we not ignore our similarities to the higher- and lower-order creatures, but it's weak on subjectivity, self-awareness, self-consciousness, whatever you want to call it--on how we explain our tangled mass of hormonal impulses to ourselves. And yet this ability to reflect on ourselves underlies art, architecture, poetry, government, journalism, and all the other forms of willed culture and communication that animals don't and can't have. The new sociobiologists do address complex social institutions--particularly ones that require cooperation--but only in the broadest of terms. They find ways to boil them down into high-end, unconscious reproductive strategies.
Some evolutionary psychologists understand the limitations of their field. They know that it has explanatory power only in general terms, and is useless in the particular case. They know that their account of human motivation is deliberately reductive--designed to make it easy to grasp large patterns of behavior--rather than a rich and accurate description of what and who we are. Thornhill and Palmer, however, are not among these modest evolutionary psychologists. And so they boldly stray into efforts to modify the behaviors of individuals. They propose a course to teach young men about rape:
Completion of such a course might be required, say, before a young man is granted a driver's license. The program might start by inducing the young men to acknowledge the power of their sexual impulses, and then explaining why human males have evolved in that way. The young man should learn that past Darwinian selection is the reason that a man can get an erection just by looking at a photo of a naked woman, why he may be tempted to demand sex even if he knows that his date truly doesn't want it, and why he might mistake a woman's friendly comment or tight blouse as an invitation to sex. Most of all, the program should stress that a man's evolved sexual desires offer him no excuse whatsoever for raping a woman, and that if he understands and resists those desires, he may be able to prevent their manifestation in sexually coercive behavior. The criminal penalties for rape should also be discussed in detail.
Now, anyone who has read George Orwell or seen A Clockwork Orange can imagine the scene: The strapping teens slump embarrassed in their seats while evolution instructors lay out their state-sanctioned definition of human nature. The first message to be drilled into boys' heads is: We believe you're genetically programmed to rape. The second (and inevitably less impressive) message is: Oh, and by the way, we're not going to let you do it.
Here's what Thornhill and Palmer propose for women:
Young women should be informed that, during the evolution of human sexuality, the existence of female choice has favored men who are quickly aroused by signals of a female's willingness to grant sexual access. Furthermore, women need to realize that, because selection favored males who had many mates, men tend to read signals of acceptance into a woman's actions even when no such signals are intended.
In spite of protestations to the contrary, women should also be advised that the way they dress can put them at risk.
In other words, Thornhill and Palmer are asking the state to say that it believes that men are born rapists and that women are under an obligation not to dress or act provocatively. Culturebox can see the criminal lawyers composing their genetic-determinist defenses already: Why, even the state said he couldn't help himself!
Back in 1994, when journalist Robert Wright popularized the field of evolutionary psychology with his book The Moral Animal, he wrote an article on ev psych and feminism in which he acknowledged that evolutionary psychology would be used to "naturalize" sexist behavior. He thought philandering husbands would be the ones taking advantage of the argument about how cheating was hard to control. He did not foresee the day when evolutionary psychologists would call for the government to sponsor their theories in a way virtually guaranteed to generate the very behaviors they are supposed to prevent. But it was a foregone conclusion that when evolutionary psychology began to focus on genetic predispositions and majoritarian norms to the exclusion of everything else, some literalists would in fact forget everything else. They would forget that we are products not just of evolution, but also of what we imagine ourselves to be. And that if we teach our children to see themselves strictly as beasts, they're bound to act like them.
Highlights from the Fray:
Culturebox seems to have missed the glaring inconsistency of her own position. Claiming that "we are products not just of evolution, but also of what we imagine ourselves to be", Culturebox decries the classroom teaching of the evolutionary roots of rape (even as a prelude to explaining the hows and whys of resisting those roots), on the grounds that "[t]he first message to be drilled into boys' heads [would be]: We believe you're genetically programmed to rape." The inevitable consequence: "criminal lawyers composing their genetic-determinist defenses....: Why, even the state said he couldn't help himself!" Apparently, in Culturebox's eyes, if "we imagine ourselves to be" rational, sensible creatures capable of distinguishing between biological drives and moral imperatives, it won't help us one bit--we'll still be compelled by our natures to view objective descriptions of those drives as moral justifications for giving in to them.
Now, Culturebox may well be correct that hungry young males (or hungry old defense attorneys, or jurors of all ages and appetites) are incapable of resisting the temptation of "tout comprendre, tout pardonner." But if so, then it is hardly a triumph for her preferred "willed culture" over the animal model; rather, it is a subtler, richer application of the evolutionary psychologists' fundamentally wise observation: that social institutions fail unless they treat humans as the instinct-driven creatures they are, and avoid pretending that they are the self-defining logical and aesthetic intellects that Culturebox would like them to be. After all, if we could truly will our culture to meet our ideals, then we could tell our citizens the Darwinian truth and the moral Truth without fearing that human nature will inevitably confuse the two.
--Dan Simon
(To reply, click here.)
Dan Simon misses my point. I'm arguing that by teaching boys about the so-called evolutionary roots of rape we are not teaching them the truth. We're teaching them a deliberately diminished view of human nature that has been useful in helping scientists establish long-overdue connections between human and animal psychology--but that is not the end-all and be-all of who we are, what we do, and why we do it.
In other words, evolutionary psychology is a reductivist fiction, good at helping scientists point out a few interesting and as yet not-well-understood analogies between animal and human behavior. Teaching a bunch of unsophisticated boys that this helpful little fiction is the gospel truth, that "men are driven to rape because their genes tell them to," as if we really knew why some men rape and others don't, as if we were in possession of the complete truth about human motivation, as if we had the information to say authoritatively, X occurs because of Y, is at best naive, at worst arrogant and irresponsible.
--Judith Shulevitz
(To reply, click here.)
That the authors' recommendations might be abused is, at best, a tangential criticism. And the assertion that we are not animals and thus can do better (guided by our unique capacity for self-reflection) says nothing about the issue at hand, which is whether a biological imperative underlies rape.
The angry Fray posts claiming that rape is about power, not sex, are equally un-illuminating. A lot of sex is about power.
--AD
(To reply, click here.)
The suggested approach is perfect for a government program. Not only will it empower bureaucrats, but it's sure to make the problem worse, thus generating massive followup funding. I predict its enactment far and wide. Added bonus: It sounds just like what my grandmother has said forever.
--Glenn Reynolds
(To reply, click here.)
Culturebox states that Thornhill and Palmer propose to teach young women that evolution favored men (that is, the survival of the genes of men) who had many mates. We have no evidence of that, and evolutionary theory doesn't support that assumption. Evolution favors the survival of men (and women) who have many surviving offspring. One can look among various other animals on this planet to find that there is more than one strategy for assuring offspring survival, and promiscuity is one of those. But so is investing time and energy in the care and feeding of offspring. Richard Leaky has suggested that primeval men may have adopted that strategy since a child would have been much more likely to survive to reproduce (without which the genes could not have contributed to subsequent human evolution) if the child and mother had adequate food and protection from predators.
I think it's highly likely that more strategies may have been used, but it does suggest that men are even at the basic biological level something more than born rapists. It's just as easy to see them as born nurturers, protectors, and fathers.
--Carol Ann
(To reply, click here.)
Culturebox carries the argument a bit farther than the authors intend, I'm sure. Imagine that we taught children that food was unnecessary and that they were only choosing to eat because eating was a culturally acceptable thing in the U.S. and added that in Borneo, most people got their food through the process of photosynthesis. I doubt very much that this would alter the process of hunger. If we taught that breathing was a habit and that we could live underwater easily, it would not spawn the creation of underwater colonies.
There are either biologically valid facts of human reproductive strategies that have been created by the evolutionary process or there are not. Remember that there have been excesses on either side of this debate, unless you agree with the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin's assertion that all sex is rape.
Some people overeat or hyperventilate. Teaching the processes of digestion and respiration do not make children fat and hyperpneic. Teaching the facts of humanity's biologically conditioned reproductive pattern doesn't cause rape, any more than teaching women that all men are rapists makes them all want to be lesbians.
--Evan Allen
(To reply, click here.)
Culturebox states that one of her main problems with evolutionary psychology is that it does little to explain what makes us uniquely human, in matters such as art and literature. I tend to agree with her, but I think this shortcoming also exists with respect to the evolutionary psychologists' explanation of rape.
While a frustrated need to procreate may explain some types of rape, it doesn't explain uniquely human attitudes and behaviors like misogyny, sexual torture, sadism and post-rape murder. Animals (at least as far as we know) don't have the capacity for such things. What is perhaps most chilling is the possibility that some of the most atrocious things that people are capable of have little or nothing to do with "animal nature" and are more closely linked to the things that separate (but don't necessarily elevate) us from other animals. evolutionary psychology can tell us a lot about procreative behavior, but nothing at all about the problem of evil.
--Mark
(To reply, click here.)
The biologist in me recalls that male-centered dominance hierarchies in many mammal species could certainly be characterized by an intra-psychic "misogyny" on the part of the males in that species. Other animals have biologically sound impulses that go awry as well, such as homosexual behavior and dominance rituals involved in courtship. My dog will, for no good reason, lick herself until her skin is raw.
No doubt that these behaviors are evil and should be condemned. Yet, to say that they have nothing to do with our biological sex drive is the same as saying that obesity has nothing to do with hunger.
--Evan Allen
(To reply, click here.)
IMHO, evolutionary psychology is not addressing the question of why humans, say, binge on cake, but instead why cake tastes good to us. Similarly, Thornhill and Palmer seem to be describing why the urge to rape might pop into a man's head in the first place, not excusing him from acting on that impulse. This is an interesting and useful insight, just as analysis of an individual's experiences also contribute to an understanding of his or her impulses and desires.
--Steve Goldfarb
(To reply, click here.)
Where Thornhill and Palmer have gone astray is not necessarily in their theoretical model (though I would argue with their facile analysis of a highly complex behavior), but in their prescription: that "[W]omen should also be advised that the way they dress can put them at risk."
I'm afraid the distinction between warning women that wearing what might be construed as "inviting" clothing could result in a violent attack, and holding them at least partly responsible for bringing that violence upon themselves, is tenuous at best.
--Peter Rott
(To reply, click here.)
(1/13, 1/14--Shulevitz)
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Highlights from the Fray:
Culturebox seems to have missed the glaring inconsistency of her own position. Claiming that "we are products not just of evolution, but also of what we imagine ourselves to be", Culturebox decries the classroom teaching of the evolutionary roots of rape (even as a prelude to explaining the hows and whys of resisting those roots), on the grounds that "[t]he first message to be drilled into boys' heads [would be]: We believe you're genetically programmed to rape." The inevitable consequence: "criminal lawyers composing their genetic-determinist defenses....: Why, even the state said he couldn't help himself!" Apparently, in Culturebox's eyes, if "we imagine ourselves to be" rational, sensible creatures capable of distinguishing between biological drives and moral imperatives, it won't help us one bit--we'll still be compelled by our natures to view objective descriptions of those drives as moral justifications for giving in to them.
Now, Culturebox may well be correct that hungry young males (or hungry old defense attorneys, or jurors of all ages and appetites) are incapable of resisting the temptation of "tout comprendre, tout pardonner." But if so, then it is hardly a triumph for her preferred "willed culture" over the animal model; rather, it is a subtler, richer application of the evolutionary psychologists' fundamentally wise observation: that social institutions fail unless they treat humans as the instinct-driven creatures they are, and avoid pretending that they are the self-defining logical and aesthetic intellects that Culturebox would like them to be. After all, if we could truly will our culture to meet our ideals, then we could tell our citizens the Darwinian truth and the moral Truth without fearing that human nature will inevitably confuse the two.
--Dan Simon
(To reply, click here.)
Dan Simon misses my point. I'm arguing that by teaching boys about the so-called evolutionary roots of rape we are not teaching them the truth. We're teaching them a deliberately diminished view of human nature that has been useful in helping scientists establish long-overdue connections between human and animal psychology--but that is not the end-all and be-all of who we are, what we do, and why we do it.
In other words, evolutionary psychology is a reductivist fiction, good at helping scientists point out a few interesting and as yet not-well-understood analogies between animal and human behavior. Teaching a bunch of unsophisticated boys that this helpful little fiction is the gospel truth, that "men are driven to rape because their genes tell them to," as if we really knew why some men rape and others don't, as if we were in possession of the complete truth about human motivation, as if we had the information to say authoritatively, X occurs because of Y, is at best naive, at worst arrogant and irresponsible.
--Judith Shulevitz
(To reply, click here.)
That the authors' recommendations might be abused is, at best, a tangential criticism. And the assertion that we are not animals and thus can do better (guided by our unique capacity for self-reflection) says nothing about the issue at hand, which is whether a biological imperative underlies rape.
The angry Fray posts claiming that rape is about power, not sex, are equally un-illuminating. A lot of sex is about power.
--AD
(To reply, click here.)
The suggested approach is perfect for a government program. Not only will it empower bureaucrats, but it's sure to make the problem worse, thus generating massive followup funding. I predict its enactment far and wide. Added bonus: It sounds just like what my grandmother has said forever.
--Glenn Reynolds
(To reply, click here.)
Culturebox states that Thornhill and Palmer propose to teach young women that evolution favored men (that is, the survival of the genes of men) who had many mates. We have no evidence of that, and evolutionary theory doesn't support that assumption. Evolution favors the survival of men (and women) who have many surviving offspring. One can look among various other animals on this planet to find that there is more than one strategy for assuring offspring survival, and promiscuity is one of those. But so is investing time and energy in the care and feeding of offspring. Richard Leaky has suggested that primeval men may have adopted that strategy since a child would have been much more likely to survive to reproduce (without which the genes could not have contributed to subsequent human evolution) if the child and mother had adequate food and protection from predators.
I think it's highly likely that more strategies may have been used, but it does suggest that men are even at the basic biological level something more than born rapists. It's just as easy to see them as born nurturers, protectors, and fathers.
--Carol Ann
(To reply, click here.)
Culturebox carries the argument a bit farther than the authors intend, I'm sure. Imagine that we taught children that food was unnecessary and that they were only choosing to eat because eating was a culturally acceptable thing in the U.S. and added that in Borneo, most people got their food through the process of photosynthesis. I doubt very much that this would alter the process of hunger. If we taught that breathing was a habit and that we could live underwater easily, it would not spawn the creation of underwater colonies.
There are either biologically valid facts of human reproductive strategies that have been created by the evolutionary process or there are not. Remember that there have been excesses on either side of this debate, unless you agree with the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin's assertion that all sex is rape.
Some people overeat or hyperventilate. Teaching the processes of digestion and respiration do not make children fat and hyperpneic. Teaching the facts of humanity's biologically conditioned reproductive pattern doesn't cause rape, any more than teaching women that all men are rapists makes them all want to be lesbians.
--Evan Allen
(To reply, click here.)
Culturebox states that one of her main problems with evolutionary psychology is that it does little to explain what makes us uniquely human, in matters such as art and literature. I tend to agree with her, but I think this shortcoming also exists with respect to the evolutionary psychologists' explanation of rape.
While a frustrated need to procreate may explain some types of rape, it doesn't explain uniquely human attitudes and behaviors like misogyny, sexual torture, sadism and post-rape murder. Animals (at least as far as we know) don't have the capacity for such things. What is perhaps most chilling is the possibility that some of the most atrocious things that people are capable of have little or nothing to do with "animal nature" and are more closely linked to the things that separate (but don't necessarily elevate) us from other animals. evolutionary psychology can tell us a lot about procreative behavior, but nothing at all about the problem of evil.
--Mark
(To reply, click here.)
The biologist in me recalls that male-centered dominance hierarchies in many mammal species could certainly be characterized by an intra-psychic "misogyny" on the part of the males in that species. Other animals have biologically sound impulses that go awry as well, such as homosexual behavior and dominance rituals involved in courtship. My dog will, for no good reason, lick herself until her skin is raw.
No doubt that these behaviors are evil and should be condemned. Yet, to say that they have nothing to do with our biological sex drive is the same as saying that obesity has nothing to do with hunger.
--Evan Allen
(To reply, click here.)
IMHO, evolutionary psychology is not addressing the question of why humans, say, binge on cake, but instead why cake tastes good to us. Similarly, Thornhill and Palmer seem to be describing why the urge to rape might pop into a man's head in the first place, not excusing him from acting on that impulse. This is an interesting and useful insight, just as analysis of an individual's experiences also contribute to an understanding of his or her impulses and desires.
--Steve Goldfarb
(To reply, click here.)
Where Thornhill and Palmer have gone astray is not necessarily in their theoretical model (though I would argue with their facile analysis of a highly complex behavior), but in their prescription: that "[W]omen should also be advised that the way they dress can put them at risk."
I'm afraid the distinction between warning women that wearing what might be construed as "inviting" clothing could result in a violent attack, and holding them at least partly responsible for bringing that violence upon themselves, is tenuous at best.
--Peter Rott
(To reply, click here.)
(1/13, 1/14--Shulevitz)