'Natural' rape theory creates instant storm
Jan. 18, 2000
"It's absurd. This theory doesn't fit what we know about sexual assault."- Robert Geffner, psychologist
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Rape is a "natural, biological" phenomenon, springing from men's evolutionary urge to reproduce, say scientists promoting a controversial book.
"We're not saying that something is good even if it's natural," says anthropologist Craig Palmer of the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, co-author of a recent article in The Sciences, a New York Academy of Science magazine. "Plainly, rapists are responsible for rape and should be punished."
He and biologist Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque write that social scientists promote "erroneous solutions" to rape because they incorrectly view the crime as controlled by deviant urges to control and dominate, not by sexual desire. The two plan to publish a book, A Natural History of Rape ($28.95, MIT Press), in April.
"We're not saying that something is good even if it's natural." - Craig Palmer, anthropologist
The scientists are drawing fire for, among other things, their suggestion that women should take steps to deter irrepressible male impulses by not dressing provocatively or participating in unsupervised dating.
"It's absurd," says psychologist Robert Geffner, president of the Family Violence and Sexual Assault Institute in San Diego. "Where's the data? This theory doesn't fit what we know about sexual assault."About 302,100 females and 92,700 males are raped each year nationwide, a 1998 federal study shows. Only 14% of female victims are assaulted by strangers, the study says. Experts suggest this indicates that a passing attraction to a provocatively dressed woman is a limited motivation for rape. Also, 22% of rapes involve girls 12 or younger, with whom reproduction is rarely a possibility.
Palmer argues that those cases represent maladaptions of the male drive to procreate. He and Thornhill are proponents of applying evolutionary biology to human behavior, where activities take place as a result of Darwinian pressures to reproduce.
"Natural selection favored certain things," he says, including rape, as "strategies" for passing on genes.Neither author directly conducted research on rapists or victims to form the theory; much of Thornhill's work involves insect sex.
"Obviously, rape is a sex act, but the key component is domination of another," Geffner says. He cites studies suggesting:
Rapists "not uncommonly" lose sexual arousal during assaults but continue to attack victims.
Rapists target victims based on judgments of how much resistance they expect, not on attractiveness.
Rapists are aroused by images of violence done to women
"Rapists can have lots of motives," Palmer says. "But sex is central to rape."
He predicts that psychologists will adapt evolutionary biology to their rape theories over time.
"After all, we're all on the same side, trying to stop rape," he says. And although his article attacks Susan Brownmiller - author of Against Our Will, one of the first feminist books on rape - by name, he declares himself sympathetic with feminism, aside from disagreeing on rape's causes.
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