Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2000 13:27:22 -0500 From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> Subject: Re: Rape
At 07:21 AM 2/1/00 -0500, sweet kelley wrote:
>
>
>
>PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2000
>
> FEATURE
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> Why Men Rape
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> Prevention efforts will founder until they are based on the
>understanding that rape evolved as a form of male reproductive behavior
>
> BY RANDY THORNHILL AND CRAIG T. PALMER
-- snip
[yawn] so, here's another tripe produced by so-so biologists. It is pseudo science - not because it challneges the culturalist consensus(which is a good thing), but because it is either logically non-sequitur or teleological i.e. claiming that beneficiary outcomes cause behaviors that produce them.
Using C. Wright Mills "translation strategy" - in essence, these folks argue that:
1. Rape is a form sexual behavior in males 2. The primary goal of sexual behavior is reproduction of species, aka evolution. 3. Humans are an evolutionary successful species (i.e. their reproductive mechanisms are successful) ergo: Rape is a form of reproductiove behavior reinforced through evolution.
The premises 1, 2 and 3 are true, yet the conclusion is a non-sequitur. Why? Because to draw that conslusion from these premises, one need still another premise, namely:
4. rape is a successful reprodcution strategy - which in evolutionary sense means that rapists have more offspring who live to tehir reproductive age than non-rapists.
Without that assumption - which posits that behavior in question gives a greater chance of reproduction for individuals who engage in it than those who do not - evolutionism becomes teleology. That is the success of a species at some later time is construed as the cause of an arbitrarily selected form behavior of that species at some earlier time. To illustrate the fallacy of this line of thinking consider the following example:
premise 1: The US was drawn into 2nd world war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. premise 2: The Japenese attack on pearl Harbor was triggered by US unprepearedness for war. premise 3: US won (i.e. was successful) in the 2nd world war. ergo: US unpreparedness for war lead to its success in that war (purported cause of a successful outcome of war).
In short, Tornhill and Plamer need to demonstrate that rape is a *successful* reproduction strategy, that is, human males who rape have a greater chance of producing offspring that survises to reproductive age than human males who do not. Yet, that claim seems to be patently false even in the light of their own writings. Nobody could seriously deny that rape is a socially undesirable behavior, causing great trauma in the victim, often severely punished, and that childredn conceived through rape rejected by mothers and society (the so-called bastards). Hence, social disaproval decreases the chances of a raping male to repeat his behavior (he is either killed or imprisoned) as well as the chances of the child to live to his/her sexual maturity (it is either aborted or neglected by the mother) or to find a mate ("bastards" had it often more difficult to marry than "legitmate" offspring). Moreover, until modern times, women who had been raped had it more difficult to marry (and thus produce offspring), that women who were "chaste."
It thus follows that rape is probably one of the least successful reproductive strategy among human species. Therefore, for the so-so biologists perspective and assuming its own premises, we can only conclude that rape should be brought to an exticntion by the evolutionary process. If it persists, it is a proof that sexula behavior is shaped, to a substantial degree, by social-cultural factors, irrespective of their reproductive function.
It looks like Thornhill and Palmer are a gang than cannot argue straight and put forth a logically consistent syllogism. They seem to be quacks, not doctors. Where did they get their PhD's from, K-Mart?
wojtek