Xref: utzoo sci.bio:781 soc.men:2364 soc.women:8775 sci.misc:707 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!palmer From: palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu (David Palmer) Newsgroups: sci.bio,soc.men,soc.women,sci.misc Subject: Re: Rape a reproductive advantage? Message-ID: <5159@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> Date: 13 Jan 88 19:25:01 GMT References: <517@gtx.com> <5129@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <2201@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <3755@aw.sei.cmu.edu> <361@rruxa.UUCP> Sender: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu Reply-To: palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (David Palmer) Distribution: na Organization: California Institute of Technology Lines: 118 I think this failed to make it out when I tried to post it, my apologies if you have seen it before. In article <358@rruxa.UUCP> mjm@rruxa.UUCP (M Muller) writes: >I wrote on the topic of the misuse of scientific approaches to support >the status quo (e.g., sociobiology) in an earlier posting. I did not expect >to see two such fine illustrations of my point appear so soon: > >In article <5129@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> David Palmer >(palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP) writes: > >> Rape among ducks is well documented. (The female duck does NOT want to >> be raped, the male duck uses force.) When this happens, the husband of the >> raped duck immediately rapes his wife, to reduce the chances of being >> genetically cuckolded. > >Joseph Wang (joe@athena.mit.edu.UUCP) sensibly replies in article ><2201@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>: > >> > I have a very big problem with the use of the word "rape" (or "monogamy" >> > and "polygamy" for that matter) in describing behavior in animals >> > regardless of how close that behavior *appears* to resemble human behavior. >> > Using "rape" to describe the behavior of crickets, ducks, and humans >> > suggests that its cause is the same in each species. Humans DO NOT >> > engage in forced copulation for the same reason ducks do. Forced >> > copulation in humans and ducks are completely different phenomenon. > >So what's wrong with David's picture? > > 1. He is confusing forced copulation among one species of animal > with forced copulation among another. Yes, I don't know how I could have been confused. After all, forced copulation is not the same as forced copulation. Next thing you know I'll be confusing spouse-rape with date-rape with stranger-rape, which of course are completely different things. > 2. He is confusing sex-for-reproductive-fitness (ducks) with > sexually-expressed _violence_ (humans). Rapists don't know > that their targets will conceive, or are even fecund (see > earlier discussions in soc.women regarding sexual violence > targeted on elderly women). Some rapists don't rape > vaginally: where is the reproductive fitness in violently > coerced oral or anal sex?). Of course there is no similarity. The 'human' rapist is taking control of a woman's body for his own ends (feeling of power) without regards to the resulting effect on the female (psychological distress, possible physical damage) while the duck rapist, on the other hand, is taking control of the female duck's body for his own ends (genetic propagation) without regards to the resulting effect on the female (decreased genetic fitness to the offspring (after all, there must be some reason why she paired with the way she did, probably genetic fitness), possible physical damage. Some people have decided that rape is fundamentally different in ducks from in humans because in ducks the "goal" (in the non-volitional sense mentioned below in 5) is to propagate genes, rather than to do whatever feminists think is the only reason men rape (to dominate women and keep them oppressed). Still, if a man raped because god told him to "be fruitful and multiply", choosing only fertile women who were unlikely to have abortions, I doubt that many people would claim that it was therefore not rape. > 3. He is confusing what might be biologically useful behavior > (ducks) with human power dynamics. Are you saying that human power dynamics is not biologically useful? (In moderation at least). "La droit de Seigneur" (sp? you know what I mean) if it existed (there are people who say it didn't, same as tooth fairies and the moon landing) is a part of human power dynamics which would have been biologically useful to the Seigneur (sp?) > 4. He is certainly confusing temporary pair-formation (ducks) > with a statistically more stable pair-_bonding_ (humans) > in his use of words like "husband" and "wife." I assumed that ducks, like swans, were monogamous. And of course humans always pair-bond, just ask any mormon or arab, ask Solomon himself (apart from his tendancy to cut babies in half, he was considered to be pretty wise. He wouldn't steer you wrong.) > 5. He is attributing purposiveness -- and a very specific, > motivated, thought-out goal-orientation -- to the rape- > by-"husband" behavior he describes in animals. I am attributing a cause to the development of rape-by-husband. No more purposiveness is implied than if I said that a river ran downstream to reduce its potential energy. > 6. Taken all together, David's position can appear to support > some alleged "biological necessity" of rape among humans, > because of its superficial resemblance to what David chooses > to call rape in ducks. David's position can even appear > to support further sexually-expressed violence within a human > "marriage" (the rape-by-"husband" goal-attribution of avoiding > "genetic cuckolding"). > > I'm _not_ saying that David himself favors rape either inside > or outside of marriage. I'm saying that his position can be > used to make pseudo-biological justifications for this type > of violence (see below). And I hope that David will think > about where his line of argument can lead. What I am saying is that if you think that Humans are the only beings which do nasty things, you should think again. If a duck practices rape, should we? If a chimp practices cannibalism, should we? If ants fight wars, should we? If christians burn witches, should we? If a person says "It's natural, there's nothing wrong with doing it", should we? There is sarcasm in this article, so don't be fooled by the absence of smiley's :-) David Palmer palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu ...rutgers!cit-vax!tybalt.caltech.edu!palmer "Every day it's the same thing--variety. I want something different."