Xref: utzoo sci.bio:868 soc.men:2512 soc.women:9106 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!ames!sdcsvax!rutgers!bellcore!faline!ulysses!gamma!pyuxp!rruxa!mjm From: mjm@rruxa.UUCP (M Muller) Newsgroups: sci.bio,soc.men,soc.women Subject: Re: Rape: a genetic catastrophe Message-ID: <373@rruxa.UUCP> Date: 29 Jan 88 20:15:57 GMT References: <517@gtx.com> <5129@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <2201@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1966@bsu-cs.UUCP> Organization: Bell Communications Research Lines: 133 Summary: human rape is not an "instinctual" act In article <1966@bsu-cs.UUCP>, Rahul Dhesi (dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP) writes: > [a discussion of the possible genetic basis of cannibalism] > [. . .] Rape in the > absence of alternative mechanisms to propagate one's genes is equally > consistent with the selfish gene hypothesis. > > What's interesting is the following question: Why are some people so > opposed to the hypothesis that rape reflects our genetic make-up? I > can understand people maintaining that this remains unproven, but I > can't understand their vehemently insisting that it's necessarily > false. Okay, here are my reasons for being opposed to the hypothesis (and I feel that I'm being asked to repeat myself). If you get bored, zoom ahead to reason number 8. 1. I don't agree that social behaviors have a direct one-to-one -- or even many-to-one -- relationship to genotypes. Behaviors are not phenotypes. 2. I don't agree with the analogy between animal coerced copulation and human rape. I don't know what's going in the animal events -- they may or may not confer a biological advantage. I'm pretty certain of what's going on the human crime (see below), and I'm quite sure that it does not convey a biological advantage. 3. Human rape is often destructive of the victim; it therefore reduces the viability of the possible issue of the rape. If rape conveyed a biological advantage, then the behavior would involve less abuse to the victims, to increase the biological advantage to the offspring. Men who rape women often beat them both before _and_after_ raping them. Men who rape women sometimes kill them. Please tell me how this provides a biological advantage. 4. Human rape is often committed in a way that can not produce children . . . rape of children, rape of post-menopausal women, rape of male victims, oral rape, anal rape. Please tell me how these provide a biological advantage. 5. Human rape occurs within a power structure. In western culture, it generally correlates with a power differential between rapist and victim. It is perceived by all parties as a humiliating experience on the part of the victim. In those parts of the world where rape is practiced by women upon men, it is done by powerful women on powerless men (e.g., residents commit rape on travelers), and it is accompanied by other acts which humiliate the victim. The social dynamic is the same no matter which sex is the aggressor: the powerful remind the powerless of their status. 6. Human rape occurs within _one_ social structure as a predominantly man-aggresses-against-woman phenomenon, and in _other_ social structures as a predominantly woman-aggresses-against-man phenomenon. We hear (from men, mostly) about the "likelihood" that the first type of rape is biologically ordained; we never hear anyone speaking for the second type of rape as being biologically ordained. Yet the two types of rape function analogously in their social structures. Doesn't this suggest to you that rape is a product of social forces, not of biological ones? 7. Therefore, it seems to me that there is little in the data to support the genetic hypothesis. In the absence of any supporting data, I have to ask myself why some people find this so compelling an argument. Gould and Lewontin and Rose and Rose and Kamin have documented the abrupt decrease in scientific standards which are applied when an allegedly biological hypothesis happens to support a social prejudice (e.g., heritability of intelligence, race and IQ, genetics and mental illness, etc.). It seems that data which would be thrown out as laughable if put forth to support a non-political point, are suddenly highly respectable when brought to the aid of someone's political agenda. As I tried to show in a previous posting, the same style of sloppy social/biological argumentation could be used to state a "biological advantage to child abuse." Briefly: infanticide in some animals can be argued to be consistent with selfish genes. Child abuse is like infanticide. Ergo . . . But no one wants to argue that infanticide is "natural" or "genetically based" or a "heritable tendency." Child abuse is not part of a social prejudice. No one is interested in seeing a biological "justification" for its existence. And that leads me to my last point: 8. My main reason for arguing against the genetic-basis-of-rape position is that it can be used to excuse the existing violence against women in western culture. How? If you believe that rape is in some way "natural," then you can talk about a man's "natural instincts," and this can make it seem that a rapist is somehow "being tempted" to do something "natural" by the "attractiveness" of a woman. Worse, still: this can lead to blaming-the-victim scenarios, in which the woman who has been raped is told that it is her fault for wearing allegedly provocative clothing or for allegedly leading a man on, or some such foolishness which shifts the responsibility for oppression from oppressor to victim. As we've been discussing in soc.women, the legal system insists on victimizing women in related ways -- "what did you do to _deserve_ being raped?" "how many men have you slept with (and what were their names)?" (Note, again with reference to child abuse, that no one is suggesting that there are children who child-abusers are behaving instinctually, and no one tries to explain how abused children "bring it on themselves.") If, on the other hand, we recognize rape for what I believe it is -- a violent act based in social inequities and intended to promote or maintain those inequities -- then we have rather less sympathy for the rapist. He (or she!) is not doing "what comes naturally." He (or she) is not doing something for which Nature is ultimately responsible, which would in fact be of "biological advantage" if the setting were only a little different. Instead, we can see that the violence is in service of politics (the politics of sexual oppression) -- and is a type of terrorism. And we can think about it as we do other hate-crimes. Those are the stakes, as I see them. Simple analysis of the behaviors indicates that the biological-advantage argument is insupportable. The social impact of the idea is costly and destructive. So I don't argue that it's "necessarily false." I do argue that it is a dangerous assertion -- dangerous in terms of its immediate physical and social impact on women. The assertion endangers women's lives. Dangerous assertions ought to be examined carefully before they are broadcast far and wide. I think that this hypothesis belongs back in the desk drawer (or the porn shop) until there are some data stronger than fantasies to support it. Michael Muller Bellcore I wish that my views were Bell Communications Research representative of those ..!bellcore!ctt!mjm of my employer.