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From: g451252772ea@deneb.ucdavis.edu (0040;0000009765;0;327;142;)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,soc.men,soc.women,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Rape a reproductive advantage?
Message-ID: <800@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 88 06:18:09 GMT
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"...as we know it...", rape exists only among humans.  And in
our case, fitness is among the least important aspects of rape, in contrast to 
social dominance or pathology.  

David Barash has popularized mallard-duck forced copulations as 'rape'.
This earned an acerbic rebuke in the journal Animal Behaviour (UK&USA)
about 1985-6 by either Felicity Huntingford (now an editor) or Linda 
Partridge, which I recommend reading.  

Because of the emotions which the term rape evokes, a discussion which 
aims at light rather than heat is well-advised to use 'force copulations'
(abbreviate as desired 8-)

-- 

Ron Goldthwaite / UC Davis, Psychology and Animal Behavior
'Economics is a branch of ethics, pretending to be a science; 
 ethology is a science, pretending relevance to ethics.'