“Yet dilettante followers may still be inclined to detect a misogyny in these investigations that simply is not there.”

...or maybe it really is there but their personal privilege and biases make then unable or disinclined to see the misogyny?

What’s the point of creating more pseudo-science?

“Evolutionary psychology” seems (by definition) devoted to the hoary idea that genetics are destiny.  We already have plenty of retrograde types who want to believe that human beings are mostly (or only) shaped by their DNA.  We call them Republicans…

Oh, and BTW, you can compare research on rape to research on cancer just as soon as you find a large group of people who target women and force cancerous tumors into them while enjoying the power and control they get doing it.  Idiots…

What just happened?

That guy’s been spamming Slacktivist, too.  He probably just got tired of being ignored.

There is nothing to be done about shooting sprees with automatic weapons…Shit just happens, just gotta deal with it by carrying your own auto.

Nothing to be done with spammers either.  We all have to spend time deleting and updating blacklists.  It’s the American Way.

Fuck this shit. 

If men are programmer to rape and just can’t help themselves, then they have no business being in charge of anything.  They should all be locked up and chemically castrated, since they really aren’t more than animals.

Oh?  That’s not what these fuckers meant?  They just meant that men should continue to revel in their power and privilege and rape the bitch if she’s got it coming because she didn’t properly protect herself by only having sex with the proper man at the proper time?

Sorry, no.  Either men are human beings, and as such are responsible for their actions, or they aren’t, in which case it’s LONG past time to just cage them up.

Seriously, what the fuck?  Women only want to avoid rape if they could get pregnant?  If their not ovulating, the stupid cows don’t care who pokes them and owns them?  And this shit gets published?

*programmed

Fucking Apple autocorrect.

*they’re

And now I am finished with copyediting for this thread.

function of horniness and biology and not of violence and misogyny

I agree with most of this post, but in this bit here, I’m not sure why it has to be one or the other.

Actually, I strongly disagree.

We live in a world where men are seen as the default human, and women are not. That’s the only reason why rape apologist bullshit *ever* flies. But “men can’t control themselves, therefore women need to exert self-control” is a completely illogical response to the idea that men are genetically programmed to be violent and cannot help themselves. The *logical* response is “men can’t control themselves… therefore men cannot be given full rights as adults in our society, and women must control them, the way that parents control children and dog owners control dogs.”

In every other situation where a being cannot be expected to control their own violent behavior, they are controlled by others. By owners, if they are dogs. By parents, if they are children. If they are considered a category of people who cannot be owned, they are incarcerated or their rights are severely curtailed, such as the mentally ill. If they cannot be controlled, and they are violent animals, they are killed. If they cannot be controlled, and they are violent minor humans, they are taken from the people who were supposed to be responsible for them and incarcerated.

The *only* situation where the onus for preventing a violent behavior is on the victim is when the victim is considered less human, less worthy of human rights, than the perpetrator. But we only believe that that is true of men because we believe men are as capable, as responsible (in fact, more capable and responsible) as women. But if science were to prove that men are incapable of controlling their own violent impulses as well as women can… then men are, scientifically, inferior humans. The whole *definition* of human includes “can make rational choices and be held responsible for them.” A category of human being that can’t make rational choices and be held responsible for them is considered a lesser kind of human.

The science is probably shit, I agree with you there. But it’s not an inherently bogus premise—ducks, for instance, have in fact evolved means of protecting themselves from being impregnated by force, because so many duck copulations are forced on the females by the males. The fact that it could be misused by misogynist choads is not a good reason not to do science, though; *all* science is misused by misogynist choads. The logical outcome of this particular concept is much, much worse for *men* than women. In fact it’s a good thing for all humanity that the science is likely shit, because if it could be “proven” that men genetically cannot control themselves… it’s never a good thing to turn adult human beings with agency and reason into “minors” under the control of others.

function of horniness and biology and not of violence and misogyny

I agree with most of this post, but in this bit here, I’m not sure why it has to be one or the other.

The whole “this guy resorts to rape because nobody will fuck him” mythology sounds kind of realistic when you hear it, but in reality it just doesn’t play out terribly often.

I’ll also add that, when men do use “nobody will fuck me” as a justification to rape, it’s generally not because they have a raging boner they’re trying to take care of. It’s generally because they’re pissed off, and their language usually takes the shape of “argh those whores spread their legs for all those douchebags but I’m a NICE GUY and they don’t have the sense to realize they should be fucking me.”

It’s not about horniness so much as entitlement. They feel that women owe them sex.

Typical nitpicky me…but if a woman failed to prevent a man from propagating their genes by force, wouldn’t that be a selective pressure *against* the trait of resisting rape?

The “duck’s cloaca” analogy doesn’t hold water to me.

If there’s a connection, I can believe that men who are unsuccessful with women become increasingly alienated from women, dehumanize them, and are more likely to participate in all sorts of violent acts against women, if available - from rape to assault to murder. 

Though there are certainly plenty of rapists who end up there without any history of rejection - Ben Roethlisberger certainly never lacked for anything.  And the fact that the study which claims women find rapists less attractive may miss a pretty major factor:  it’s only looking at convicted/prosecuted rapists, who are probably far less likely to carry the sorts of advantages that generally go into conventional attractiveness.

Also—I LOLed, literally, when the author said that women find rapists unattractive “on the basis of their mug shots.”

Because people usually look their sexiest in mug shots.

I wish I could open the accompanying PDF on this computer—surely they weren’t so dumb as to use actual police mugshots. If they did, how did they confirm that the “non-rapist” mug shots actually came from men who never raped?

I’d say the fact that the rape rate declined by 2/3s since 1980 makes me think that the removal of baby boomers from their physical peak was pretty good for people who don’t want to be raped.

Just to add to the conversation without having to rehash anything, and in case you missed it, here is a wonderful throw-down description of just what the rape culture is, spelled out word for word.
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html
Because without the context of rape culture, this shit would not fly.

@16: Do shut up. For starters, this notion that “the nature of nature is raw selfishness” is pretty easily disproved. Well before civilization as we know it existed, humans formed hunter-gatherer groups for mutual support; as such, I would tend to assume that the “nature of nature” with regard to humans, if any such thing exists, is cooperation and coexistence.

Second, womens’ vested interest in preventing rape isn’t about controlling the propagation of DNA. But, y’know, good job portraying women as breeding machines. Rape is traumatizing and incredibly harmful (why do I have to explain this?), and there’s no reason to believe that that wasn’t the case in prehistoric times as well. As such, and again going with the idea that humans are inclined to cooperate, it’s doubtful rape was the norm in prehistoric human interactions. Even if you want to look at it from an entirely pragmatic perspective, having a bunch of emotionally traumatized people in your hunter-gatherer group would tend to slow you down.

But silly me for thinking that men might care about their fellow women and their emotional health. I know the only thing keeping me from raping every woman I know is that they’re stopping me… somehow…

Just shut up.

Just right off the bat, it means that they can throw up their hands in the air, treating rape like it’s an inevitable problem and there’s nothing they can do about it.  But more importantly, they get an excuse to support the main benefit they perceive in rape culture, which is that it puts all responsibility for rape in the hands of the victims, and therefore used to shame and control female sexuality.  After all, the argument here is that men are naturally disposed to rape and women are naturally disposed to protect themselves.  Therefore, the responsibility is shifted towards women, the only gender who has been given any control.  This, in turn, can be used as an excuse to restrict women’s movements and choices, and to, a la Naomi Wolf, say they had it coming if they engage in casual sex.  It also gives men cover to do a lot of abusive things that fall short of rape, saying they can’t help themselves, a freedom a lot of men would like to reserve for themselves.  (Such as, say, cheating while reserving the right not to be cheated on.) Of course, a lot of men aren’t willing to be portrayed as out-of-control beasts, but clearly some figure that’s a reasonable price to pay to get these benefits.

This kind of thinking is dangerous, because it gives up territory in advance so to speak. What you’re saying here is that we better hope that science doesn’t reach any uncomfortable conclusions about human nature, because if they do we’re screwed. If they do all we can do is throw our hands in the air and give up.

What we must do instead is to hammer home the fact that evolution is never an excuse for anything because we can and do rise above it all the time and make our own decisions. I’ve seen this study torn to pieces in several places and I don’t doubt it’s junk, but it shouldn’t even matter. All human behaviour, good and bad, obviously has some kind of evolutionary history and on top of that we have upbringing, history, culture and politics that influence us, but in the end we are responsible for our actions.

@ 16 and 20

You’re both taking ridiculously over-simplified and extreme positions. Human nature is far more complex than any of you make it out to be. I can’t believe I even have to write this, but obviously we’re capable of both great cruelty and great compassion and everything in between.

Oh come now. I was only acknowledging the existence of any kind of unified “human nature” for the sake of argument, and I said so in my comment. I never denied that humans are capable of cruelty.

I mean, 16’s basic claim was that rape is about DNA for both men and women. I was introducing the funny idea of “humans have emotions” into it is all.

Males are physically larger and stronger than females for two reasons. 1) So they can overpower other males to get to their females. 2) So they can overpower their females when they get to them.

Nope.

In primates sexual selection manifests itself in two scenarios:

  * Intrasexual competition, where competition is among males for access to females

  * Intersexual selection, where selection results from the mate choice by females

In male-male competition, selection generally favors those individuals with larger body size, physical weaponry (such as the large canine teeth of baboons), and other characteristics which expedite the male’s control over access to female(s).
[...]
The second case of sexual selection - intersexual mate choice - must also result in higher reproductive success for an individual, but why certain traits are selected revolves around three points:

  1. traits which increase the fitness of females
  2. traits which are indicators of good genes, which would thereby improve the fitness of offspring
  3. traits which have little adaptive significance, but were preferentially selected by females over many generations

The vast majority of primate offspring come from normal relationships, not rape.  Therefore female choice plays a more important role in evolution than male ability to overpower females.

Crudely, you might evolve a large frame to fight other guys for women (- and this is related to harem size; humans seem to be evolved to be only mildly polygamous).  You evolve handsome features, a sense of humour, and a big penis to keep the ladies interested.

I certainly do understand your need to contrast yourself from 16 who’s obviously quite an asshole. Glad you clarified.

If rape is about power and not about sex, then why does the rape rate fall off a cliff as the victims get older? The older a woman gets (to a point), the more social and economic power she has. Conversely, a woman’s “sexual power” to attract males peaks early.

I mean, 16’s basic claim was that rape is about DNA for both men and women. I was introducing the funny idea of “humans have emotions” into it is all.

16’s focus on DNA is appropriate for an evolutionary argument - nature doesn’t care about human emotions save as they affect reproductive chances.

A honey bee male’s penis snaps off when he mates.  The female praying mantis bites off the head of the male.  And some baby spiders eat their mothers.  And there is no reason to assume that this all doesn’t hurt the organisms involved.

Nature doesn’t care what women feel about rape.

We, on the other hand, are not slaves to Nature.

If rape is about power and not about sex, then why does the rape rate fall off a cliff as the victims get older?

Because you’re a dick?

http://www.ncdsv.org/images/SexualAssaultStatistics.pdf

No one is saying that, librarian.  I’m just saying that’s the reason that rape apologists cling to these weak, evidence-free assertions.  If science was going to find the rape gene, I imagine they would have found it.  There are more than enough eager researchers wasting their time looking for it.

Alk, because rapists—-by their own admission—-prefer weaker victims.  By your own admission, if you think likelihood of rape is a good indicator of hawtness, you are admitting you think a 9-year-old is sexier than a 30-year-old.  Do you believe small children are super sexy?  Because, if not, perhaps it’s time to reconsider your darling theory that a woman becomes unbelievably gross at 25.

Here’s some useful stats:

15% of sexual assault and rape victims are under age 12.3

  * 29% are age 12-17.
  * 44% are under age 18.3
  * 80% are under age 30.3

So, what Alk is saying is that men evolved to rape “sexy” women that could become pregnant, and rape rates drop off because said women lose their sexy sexy fertility.  Except, of course, that a 30-year-old is less likely to be raped than an 11-year-old, but more likely to become pregnant from it.  Also, teenagers are statistically less fertile than women in their 20s, but more likely to suffer rape.

Unless Alk is willing to go on the record arguing that elementary school students are hawter than women in their late 20s/early 30s, we’re going to have to close this “rape is the result of hawtness” theory as disproved conclusively.

Another, more likely explanation: when rapists tell researchers they select their victims due to vulnerability, they are telling the truth.  And young women are more vulnerable than older women, as they haven’t developed their defenses. 

BTW, in a book I read about sex crimes by a BSU official from the 80s, he said that stranger rapists who are starting out as teenagers tend to attack elderly women, who they perceive as the most vulnerable.  Widows, usually.  They move on to young women when they get a little bolder, but they are, you know, cowards, and so prioritize perceived vulnerability over all other qualities.

Nature doesn’t care what women feel about rape.

It does, however, “care” if women are injured, killed, or left too traumatized to properly care for the resulting infant.  Any way you want to look at it, rape is just not a very good way of passing on your genes. 

Did you notice that in both of your examples, the “disposable” sex was the male?  Once the sperm is delivered, the male isn’t needed anymore, but the female needs to stay healthy.

kaje, I think the usual argument is that women will preferentially neglect or abandon those babies that are the product of rape, fwiw.

Not arguing w/ you, PIATOR, so much as the thankfully-banished JumpinJim, and others who would argue that rape is a primary reproductive strategy.  Rape will accomplish reproduction every once in a while, of course, but in a thousand little ways, the most effective sex for reproduction is consensual.

“I was introducing the funny idea of “humans have emotions” into it is all.”

Emotions? 

Come on, we all know that human beings — sorry, human males that is — are only driven by the basic urge to reproduce, everything else being secondary.  There’s no need for any investment in human offspring, only spreading as much DNA around as possible.  It’s a rabbit’s reproductive strategy and we claimed it for our very own…

...except, of course, that isn’t the way it works, is it?  Human infants are some of the most needy and useless creatures imaginable, requiring years of feeding and crapping, learning things other humans have learned for decades/centuries/millennia, getting bigger and stronger, etc.  By the time they’re 18-20 (some would say 25-30 or even older) they might actually have become useful members of their social group.  Having a whole Duggers-clown-car-load of kids does nobody any good if each child isn’t given the time and energy needed to transform them from cute-but-useless lumps of flesh into useful propagators of DNA and learning. 

Culture is like software for the human animal.  A perfect human specimen without any learning/understanding/culture would be damn-nearly as useless as a human infant.  And it’s that critical part of human existence that seems to be ignored by the promoters of the inject-your-sperm-into-as-many-females-as-you-can theory…

Well, and like I said in the XX post, the statistics demonstrate neatly that rape correlates not with horniness—-how would you measure that anyway?—- but with violent tendencies.  If evolution explains rape, then it should explain what the evolutionary benefit of other behaviors rapists tend to engage in are: wife-beating and child abuse are at the top of that list.  Pray tell, what are the evolutionary advantages of violence towards your own genetic offspring?  And towards the woman who will bring them into the world?  Violent men are more likely to kill their partners when pregnant.  What’s the evolutionary advantage of wiping out your future offspring and the woman who could make more?

Did you notice that in both of your examples, the “disposable” sex was the male?  Once the sperm is delivered, the male isn’t needed anymore, but the female needs to stay healthy.

I think it’s almost by definition that males are the disposable sex.

I’m willing to believe the potential for rape is part of human evolution.  However, human reproduction is fundamentally a cooperative act rather than an act of domination - as you say, rape is not a good reproductive strategy.  We’re evolved to talk to each other to do the dirty deed, not to use force.

If evolution explains rape, then it should explain what the evolutionary benefit of other behaviors rapists tend to engage in are: wife-beating and child abuse are at the top of that list.  Pray tell, what are the evolutionary advantages of violence towards your own genetic offspring?

Off the top of my head, a male hominid who evolved to be readily violent might be more capable of scaring off rivals, grabbing resources and securing his territory.  That this bleeds through to violence towards genetic offspring is a side effect.  Not everything is directly selected for.

“We, on the other hand, are not slaves to Nature.”

...which brings to mind a great line from a great movie:
“Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put on this earth to rise above…”

That makes sense, Piator, and I agree.  It also precludes the need for there to be a directly evolved desire to rape.  A more likely explanation is that violence is in us, our culture teaches men that dominating women is part of what makes you a man, and some men (a small percentage, like 5%) take that message so much to heart they develop a taste for raping women.

I haven’t expressed a theory. I don’t know why people rape. I asked a question.

Vulnerability is a plausible explanation, but older women are considerably more vulnerable than women in their 30s. If the narrative about stranger rapists who start off with older women is correct, why do they move on to less vulnerable, but presumably more attractive, younger women?

Nice dodge, and interesting attempt to avoid the bigger, more devastating arguments against your theory. Like I said, the most critical stat here is the assault rate towards pre-pubescent girls. Instead of addressing that directly, you weaseled. So, let’s try again: do you believe 9-year-olds are sexier than 30-year-olds? Without that, your visciously misogynist rape apology falls apart.

I love your blogging but it appears you are the one uncomfortable with, not “the truth”, but the possibility that the facts may not go a certain way that you perceive is vital to the fight against rape culture. The original Slate piece linked several studies and your and Emily’s responses did not fully address these studies. You found two academics to dispute or diminish them, but it’s not hard to find two academics who will disagree with a published study.

Alkaloid’s question still hasn’t been addressed as well. Younger women are more sexually attractive despite having less power than older women, and 80% of those raped are under 30. I feel it still could be about power, because for younger women, the very fact that they are sexually attractive makes their sexual attractiveness are more core and integral part of their identity, and so rape is a type of violence uniquely suited to attack that. The threat of impregnation of the victim is in itself part of the demonstration of power on the part of the rapist. Older women are more powerful, but their power is expressed more asexually, so rape would not be as effective an attack on older womens’ authority. Nor does rape allow the rapist to potentially control a post-menopausal woman’s reproduction.

That is a hypothesis is that aligns the notion of rape being about power with the statistics of the age of rape victims. It is not enough simply to pick at the edges and say that the slightly more endangered teens are slightly less fertile than womens in their twenties, because the numbers on who is endangered are close enough that they fall within the realm of measurement error, but the fact that 80% of victims are under 30 is a rather dramatic break from random sampling.

I feel Alara may be on the right track. I don’t understand why, even if it were somehow proven, that men evolved certain features that helped them to rape, that this is evidence that men cannot control themselves and cannot be blamed for rape. I mean, what if it were shown that humans evolved certain features that helped them to fight and kill others? Does this mean that killing others must be socially accepted as evolutionary destiny? Of course not. So why must it be for rape? Surely we can acknowledge evolution on one hand, and reject building our meanings and values around evolution on the other.

I haven’t presented a theory. I don’t have one. That isn’t a dodge, that’s me not making a vast claim about how much I know. I don’t know all that much. I don’t rape; my friends don’t rape; women I know have been raped, some by strangers and some by family members, and that breaks my heart. But it doesn’t give me vast insight into the process.

I don’t know why 9-year old girls get raped. I am asking questions. Feminists say rape is about power; OK, that’s plausible. You’re saying vulnerability; also plausible. But the plausibility seems relatively thin, or at least, doesn’t explain everything. That NCDSV link says that 51% of rapes happen to 16-21 year old women. That group isn’t the most powerless (vulnerability) - that would be the little kids and the elderly women, or the most powerful (resentment of power) group. So why are they so often the victims?

That little curly thing at the end of the sentence is a question mark. It means I’m asking for information from people who, I presume, know more than I do.

And, God no, 9-year old girls are not sexy. My personal tastes run toward 30something fashionistas with long legs. How is that relevant to anything?

Please use names and times, not just sequence number?  Else you end up yelling at some troll that got deleted.

A more likely explanation is that violence is in us, our culture teaches men that dominating women is part of what makes you a man, and some men (a small percentage, like 5%) take that message so much to heart they develop a taste for raping women.

Problem, though - in time of war, rape is almost universal, on the bodies of the women of the conquered.  As far as I can tell, it shows up in every war, and speaks to something a little deeper than culture.  Released from moral constraint, ethical oversight, or the limits of community, [male] soldiers rape.

Another possible answer to Alkaloid’s question is that most rape is acquaintance rape. Older women have had more experience in life and time to build relationships with men who they actually trust and who will not rape them. Younger women are more likely to be living in a physical social or family environment outside of their control or be experimenting and meeting new kinds of people who they cannot trust. All of this is a natural part of being young but may mean younger women have a greater chance of being acquainted with a rapist.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula has a terrific article on this.  He is a biology prof at U-Minnesota, and is scathing on the subject of evolutionary biology.

That NCDSV link says that 51% of rapes happen to 16-21 year old women. That group isn’t the most powerless (vulnerability) - that would be the little kids and the elderly women, or the most powerful (resentment of power) group. So why are they so often the victims?

Ok think about it. What happens between the ages of 16-21? We have the onset of drinking, particularly underage binge drinking. We have the experimentation with drugs that is going to happen during this time. Teenagers going away to college; away from the protective influences such as their parents and often in a different city. There is dorm culture where hardly anyone locks their doors… and on and on.

This is actually an extremely vulnerable age group even if they are more physically strong. There just aren’t nearly as many 40 year old women who are being slipped roofies because they happen to be binge drinking at an underage house party filled with 20 year old men.

Also there are two conflicting surveys in the link the one you quoted and then The National Violence Against Women Survey which found that 54% of victims were under the age of 18. Almost 22% of which being under 12.

“don’t rape; my friends don’t rape; women I know have been raped, some by strangers and some by family members…”

and you think this happened because someone was horny? you aren’t five. stop JAQing off. no one is here to wipe your ass. use your brain. do you actually think rape is about being horny? why aren’t you a rapist, then?

One of the major reasons why rape is so prevalent in times of war is also that soldiers are trained to dehumanize their enemies so they are easier to kill. If you see the “other” as less than human, it is much easier to rape, kill, maim, etc.
Of course, it also instills fear and humiliates whole villages (as in Bosnia, where women were raped by Serbian soldiers and then forced to give birth to their enemies’ children: seeing them every day is an added form of humiliation and most probably an act of aggression towards men as well because their women are “stolen” from them - women are often raped in front of their husband and children).
It mainly boils down to seeing women as property and lesser human beings - just a more extreme form of rape culture.

I pretty much have resigned myself to the fact that if some guy ever breaks into my house to steal stuff, he’s going to rape me.  Every time I watch “I Survived” and it’s a lady telling her story about surviving any kind of violent crime, however unrelated to sexteims, the lady gets raped.

Men rape because we live in a rape culture and because they can.  It has nothing to do with [BONERS].

Dodging and dodging, Alk!  You can backtrack, but everyone can see your original comment in all its glory: your smug assumption that feminists are hysterical, your immediate willingness to empathize with rapists instead of their victims, your assurance that your sexist assumptions (by dint of making feminists uncomfortable) were more factual than the actual facts, and, most interestingly, your assumption that the desires of rapists are predictive of men in general.  That you were wrong is something you should just admit, and then take home with you while asking hard questions not of feminists, but of yourself.  Why are you so ready to make excuses for rapists?  Why are you so quick to dismiss a violent act of power and control as just horniness?  Why are you so quick to deny the existence of sadism and misogyny that you deny that even rapists—-rapists!—-might be motivated by it?

There are hard, uncomfortable questions to be asked. That’s the one place you were right. But the people who need to be asked those questions are those like yourself, so quick to defend rapists, so quick to deny what feminists say no matter how many facts they use to back up their arguments in easy-to-click links.

TonyWu, see above.  Look, no one is denying that there may be multiple reasons that younger women are more likely to be attacked.  The #1 reason is that they’re more vulnerable.  The second is that a lot of rapists are angry with women, and as we see from other men who are angry with women, their anger tends to be focused more on younger women that are conventionally attractive.  MRAs, Nice Guys®, etc.  That they find the victims of their violence or mere ire sexually appealing isn’t the reason they lash out.  They lash out because they are hateful and have power issues.  It’s true that they justify this by getting angry at women they often believe have no right to reject them sexually, but I would say that’s more a rationalization than the reason.  The reason is, as the research shows, that they are violent people.  Suggesting that a rapist rapes because he’s really horny is like suggesting a wife beater’s heterosexuality is to blame rather than his violent tendencies.  Sure, that has some influence over the choice of the victim, but it’s really not the reason, and in both cases, the victim choice often has more to do—-by their own admission—-with vulnerability than anything else.

And let’s be clear: even if rape were “just” about sex, and even if most men are basically rapists, it would still be wrong to rape. 

But it’s simply not true that most men are rapists who would launch onto every woman they could except for fear of jail. 

The fact that most rapists don’t go to jail alone should give anyone trotting out this theory pause.

Problem, though - in time of war, rape is almost universal, on the bodies of the women of the conquered. 

That’s not a problem.  In fact, that proves my theory, which is that rape is culturally constructed and not inherent to men’s biology.  That cultural dictates that say rape is what you do make more men rapists shows that it’s a fashion and not an instinct.  There’s a lot of cultural variation between nations on how much rape there is, too, and it’s dependent on how much men are taught to value women’s humanity and to see raping as part of what makes you a man.

That NCDSV link says that 51% of rapes happen to 16-21 year old women. That group isn’t the most powerless (vulnerability) - that would be the little kids and the elderly women, or the most powerful (resentment of power) group. So why are they so often the victims?

If you click through the links, you’ll see rapists have been asked this question.  The answer is pretty simple: it’s easy to get away with raping them, because rape apologists will blame the victims for drinking and leaving the house.

This evo psych crap bothers me first as a scientist, and second as a feminist.  Pharyngula had a great takedown of just how crappy the study was from a scientific POV.  This whole thing was a bunch of poorly-designed studies, and ridiculously overdrawn conclusions from the little bit of flawed data that they got.  Crap like this would have received an F in a freshman university class, and it only passes for real science because it confirms some privileged doodz’ misogyny.  Nearly all evo psych is pseudoscience, just like homeopathy or intelligent design.

the rape of the atheists…

CLOBBERING TIME

dawkins - got you…

who’s the WINGNUT?

http://richarddawkins.net/videos/579240-the-truth-about-the-lunatic-religious-right-in-america?page=1

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION - JAN 1, 2011

OMENS OF DEATH:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/302169

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7776949-5000-black-birds-fell-from-sky-due-to-flu

http://starseedshaman.info/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/redwing.jpg

the end of atheism - only the blind and deaf can deny it…

an example and warning of the fate of those who try to divide people….

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1176-serves-em-right.html

At least we’re on the same page…

Serves Em Right, eh, Randi….

Just for you, little traitors…

WHAT IS *WRONG* WITH HENRY?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YgdmtkTwO8&feature=related

we’re this far from nuking all of you….

the X-MAS vacuum cleaner for the atheists….

shermer, randi, myers, pz, dawkins, harris

http://thecoolgadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/henry-desktop-vacuum1.jpg

______________________________________

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz4R0GHfM-Y&

why does everyone always want to PUNCH you, shermer?

______________________________

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrWz9XVvls&

take your meds, you little fckers…

http://image.spreadshirt.com/image-server/image/composition/4006595/view/1/producttypecolor/1/type/png/width/378/height/378/e-mc2_design.png

now we are going to bury you…

And the lesson from all of this? DOUBLE!
____________________________

What do you want, you little ****ers?

more of these idiots

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4C5yzFmC80

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_for_evidence_of_the_paranormal

HOW N WON ALL THE PARANORMAL PRIZES!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus

pz myers does not exist…

http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/543672-inhertitance-of-acquired-behaviour-adaptions-and-brain-gene-expression-in-chickens

atheists, we’re gonna cut off your heads…

THE HIGH PRICE OF REVOLUTION

http://www.youtube.com/user/xviolatex?feature=mhum

peterjones, you need to be seen by a neurologist, unless you want to stroke out in the next few days…....................

Oh, for fucking fuck’s own fucking sake.

The lede of the linked article:

Women, gather round, read carefully, because this gay man—who once, long ago, feigned sexual interest in your bodies—is about to shine a spotlight on some hidden truths about your natural design. It’s by no means a perfect system, but evolution has endowed you with some extraordinary, almost preternatural abilities to prevent your own sexual assault. And these abilities are especially pronounced when you’re ovulating.

I respect truth in advertising, so I gotta give it up to Jesse Bering for letting everyone know right up from what an utterly shitheaded douchebrain goober he is right away.

I knew it was a non-Lithwack or Fatsis Slate article before I clicked, so my hopes were not high. I didn’t expect good, but that reads like a parody of evopsych hectoring. If I scroll down, will I find the contact line “Jesse Bering is a fictional caricature of sexist evopsych buffoonery created by feminist writer Amanda Marcotte as part of her attempt to win a bet made during this year’s Skepticon in St. Louis, MO.”

@Catgirl at 10 a.m.
Yeah, I read that (it’s linked in Amanda’s XX piece that she links to) and I hadn’t realized even the penis as previous guy’s semen scooper theory was extremely thin, at best. That’s a great example of a probably bullshit study that’s sort of entered the public consciousness through being hyped. I heard it on Savage Love, I’m almost sure. And it’s also an example of something I should have known better about, because I can’t imagine the model of sex among our ancestors were this adaptation would be useful enough to confer an evolutionary advantage. But I didn’t really think about that part until I read the PZ piece. Dumb me.

If this were true it would be more biologically useful for a woman to kill and eat her mate after sex.
After all, she needs the calories to gestate the baby.

Everyone here and at Slate as well has already pointed this out in exhaustive detail, but man o man is that some bad science.

I don’t know if this thread is dead already, but I just wanted to say “bravo!” again.

If you don’t mind shameless blogwhoring, here’s my take on it:
http://sciencevspseudoscience.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/the-problem-of-evolutionary-psychology/
I linked to your article, PZ’s, and Coyne’s, and added further (probably unnecessary) thoughts about how evo. psych. falls into the trap biologists actively try to avoid.

The items mentioned by TonyWu on 01/19 at 12:36 AM would reinforce the vulnerability case.  hypatia on 01/19 at 12:50 AM adds to the details of how and why this is so.

Alkaloid, the question of why more young women are raped than elderly women isn’t rocket science. It’s quite easy, in fact. Here’s how it goes.

- Most men that rape don’t sneak up behind strangers in alleyways - they rape their girlfriends, their friends, their classmates and acquaintances, and sometimes their own sisters and cousins. The ratio of acquaintance rape to stranger rape is about four to one.

- Rape is driven, often, not by a need to dominate _any_ woman, but a _particular_ woman or her surrogate -  the rapist wants to show that particular bitch who’s in charge here, not just any old bitch.

- Given that younger men are more likely to rape (for a variety of reasons, including, presumably, social conditioning, lack of impulse control, and sheer stupidity), and younger men are more likely to be acquainted with younger women (and the older women that they know are likely to be socially off-limits, such as their mothers and grandmothers), there is no inconsistency in the majority of women that are raped being younger.

- Even though elderly women may be more vulnerable, they are also better protected. Furthermore, elderly women may not report a rape due to the social stigma of being raped, while younger women may be more willing to report a rape, and are more likely to have access to resources like women’s centers and campus health centers that provide the resources and support to do so.

Thus, you see, rape occurring more frequently in younger women than older women need have nothing whatever to do with perceived hawtness, and everything to do with access, vulnerability, and social norms.

Just like libertarianism and teabaggery are pink unicorn pseudo politics, evolutionary psychology is pink unicorn pseudo science. Wishful thinking, all of it.

Thanks for the information, katydid/tony/hypatia. That makes a lot of sense, particularly the particular-target point and the good points about social context and vulnerability. Weird how you were able to answer my question without calling me a vicious misogynist pedorapist.

I’m going to come down on the rather self-interested side of insisting that men are _not_ programmed to be rapists by their DNA.  Because: a) I’m not a rapist, b) I don’t want to be a rapist, c) the idea that I’m somehow inevitably a rapist is really terrifying, d) I agree that if I’m uncontrollably, inevitably violent, I should be caged like a rabid beast, and e) I don’t want to be caged like a rabid beast.

So, yeah.  Gonna have to go with choice here.  The alternative is pretty awful.

There’s another significant reason for “why younger rather than elderly”: a lot of sexual assaults have alcohol or other intoxicants involved, either on the part of the assailant (more inclined to do something with inhibitions reduced), the victim (can seem an easier target, or is incoherent enough for the rapist to argue “she was asking for it”, or is herself less inhibited so again the rapist believes “she was just asking for it”), or both.  Odds are someone is more likely to be in a situation with booze/drugs and the presence of a younger woman than they are with an older one.

If this were true it would be more biologically useful for a woman to kill and eat her mate after sex.

I believe that the term for this is “marriage”, and it’s a matter of death by slow degrees…

This is culturally mediated though.  There was a big difference in the rape rates of russian and american soldiers in occupied germany.

Indeed.  If you go read the article on ‘war rape” on the wikipedia, it’s a clear history of people fumbling upwards to attempting to eliminate this as one of the great evils.

But things which have to be culturally mediated exist before culture.  This ties into the idea that our morality and ethics are for the most part contextually determined - again, this book springs to mind.

Amanda claims that the phenomena proves her theory that rape is culturally constructed and not inherent to men’s biology.  It’s just as possible that men are accultured away from rape by stories of family, nation, the-male-as-defender-and-protector.  I can’t think of any way to determine which of the two is more likely (or if some sort of complex blend of the two is more realistic).  I do think that rape as a nexus of male sex-and-violence may be inherent, and also culturally constructed, and I think that most people are capable of great evil under the right circumstances - which specifically includes male soldiers in conquered territory and rape.

Interestingly enough, both ideas speak to the same solution - to reduce cultural narratives that support rape and promote those that oppose it.  I’m just more cynical about any supposed inherent goodness in human beings.

For those interested, the source review cited by the Slate article is publicly available here.

It includes the comparison to the study of cancer, and some rather odd facts about rape behavior in orangutans. 

It also includes the following: “Therefore it is possible that selection may have acted to minimize the time it takes for a man to ejaculate during a rape. Research is needed to test this hypothesis. For example, one might compare the average pre-ejaculatory length during rape versus consensual copulation.”

Iron-clad experimental design, there.  The consent form for participation in the study must be very carefully worded.

I think science works better when you can do experiments that don’t involve raping people.

It’s annoying that we’re over a hundred years after Peter Kropotkin teared down Social Darwinism in “Mutual Aid” and we’re still seeing its progeny hanging about and claiming that it’s the only possible interpretation if you happen not to be some moron creationist.

Pseudo-science is annoying. Pseudo-science that happens to be the mainstream understanding of an actual science is worse.

I’m not inclined to put rape down to male horniness or even to male aggressiveness, because I don’t think that men who commit rape are overcome by lust or even by rage.  I think they’re calculating bastards; I think they have a plan.  Mull the question over and you’ll see that rape can be an excellent method of training women, though everything depends on what you want the women (eventually) to do.  If you want women not to be able to trust men (and therefore not to compete with you for the attention of men)—well, rape is a really efficient way of accomplishing that.  If you want women to be uncertain of themselves, to start at shadows, to be disinclined to want to venture out of doors, not reliably to be able to be able to distinguish friends from enemies—then a few well-timed sexual assaults, especially if they’re carried out at an early age, stand a pretty decent chance of getting you to your goal.  A smidge of sexual molestation experienced in childhood can unsettle a woman for life.  (If, on the other hand, you want women to be energetic and productive, subjecting them to rape won’t help you out, but protecting them from it will.) 

I believe that this is why nine-year-old girls sometimes are targets for this kind of behavior while ninety-year-old women only very rarely have it aimed at them.  The fact that nine-year-old girls are cuter than ninety-year-old women may be a contributing factor*, but it’s not the main reason.  The main reason is that the character of a ninety-year-old woman is already formed, and that energy spent in trying to change it is likely to be energy wasted.  If a ninety-year-old woman is already self-assured you won’t be able to excise her self-assurance entirely by subjecting her to trauma; and even if you can, who cares?  She’s going to die soon, her story is already mostly told.  Your chances of being able to affect her future are slim, because her future is going to be limited, no matter what you do.  But get to a girl before she hits puberty and you can be a factor in her decisions for another fifty or sixty years, at least.

I think the same logic may underlie “battlefield rapes”.  Women are going constitute half (or more than half) the man-power of any nation.  Put half the strength of a nation in peril and you’ve made a significant step toward disabling that nation.  Plus which, as an extra added bonus, you get a shot at adulterating enemy genes—since it just so happens that women in the prime of life are also women in the midst of their fertile years.  (And since many of the societies in which battlefield rapes are commonplace are societies which reject women who have been sexually compromised, you get to deal a solid blow to the enemy’s family structure as well.  An all-round bonanza.  Who could refuse?)  It comes down to whether you want women to be energetic and productive or not.  If you don’t want a group of women to be energetic and productive, since they are enemy women—then assaulting them makes some tactical sense, morally abhorrent though it may be.  More, if you are convinced that it will suit your book to adopt rape as a tactic (which is what I’m convinced it mostly is) you will pick out women who either very young or very fertile since it’s in just those two cases that your actions will have maximal impact.  In my view, men who rape within their own society, or peer group, or whatever, are men who have grown accustomed to seeing all women as “enemy women”; they are men for whom women are the enemy per se.  (This is what I think; that doesn’t mean it’s true.)

*left to myself, I would probably upgrade that to “may be a major contributing factor”, but only as long as I could re-emphasize that it isn’t the main cause.

bekabot—much of what you hypothesize about battlefield rape corresponds pretty closely with what Nicholas Kristof and others report from Darfur and elsewhere. Assuming that murderous raping bastards can be expected to report their motivations accurately, I suppose…

bekabot—much of what you hypothesize about battlefield rape corresponds pretty closely with what Nicholas Kristof and others report from Darfur and elsewhere. Assuming that murderous raping bastards can be expected to report their motivations accurately, I suppose…

dang, sorry for the duplicate. server error.

Released from moral constraint, ethical oversight, or the limits of community, [male] soldiers rape.

Yeah IDK why that would be considered being “released” from anything rather than being indoctrinated into and following the norms and morals of an extremely unnatural form of society that particularly values power and destruction.

If rape is about power and not about sex, then why does the rape rate fall off a cliff as the victims get older? The older a woman gets (to a point), the more social and economic power she has

Answered your own question.

“This is culturally mediated though.  There was a big difference in the rape rates of russian and american soldiers in occupied germany. “

See also the differences in the way German soldiers treated American POWs v Russian POWs, or french civilians v Russian/Eastern European civilians.

Dan, Alk wants you to believe that he thinks, when people say rape is about “power”, what they actually mean is that rapists are attempting to steal power from their victims, rather than exerting power over their victim.

Really, it’s hard work being that big of a douchebag. hard, hard work.

Yeah IDK why that would be considered being “released” from anything rather than being indoctrinated into and following the norms and morals of an extremely unnatural form of society that particularly values power and destruction.

Because, IMHO, civilization is an uphill battle that must be fought every day, a civilised community is an unnatural situation that must be maintained against the forces of entropy, and a soldier in an occupied territory is closer to the state of nature - Hobbes’ war of all against all - than a civilian at home.

I’m not inclined to put rape down to male horniness or even to male aggressiveness, because I don’t think that men who commit rape are overcome by lust or even by rage.  I think they’re calculating bastards; I think they have a plan.

In which case, you are massively underestimating the breadth of human behaviour.

Are all unjustified homicides committed by calculating bastards? A rather quick observation would indicate that no, they aren’t. Some are spur of the moment decisions, some are driven by emotional reasons, some are coldly calculated, and some are committed because the person lost control.

Some rapists are idiots who lose control because of intoxicants (and this doesn’t excuse them, any more than it excuses someone who gets in a car drunk and commits vehicular homicide), some because they are misogynistic bastards who take advantage of a given situation, some don’t know what they are doing actually is rape, some are predatory, some do it out of revenge, some for the thrill, whatever.

Assuming one single cause tends to lead one to assume that there is one simple solution, and there isn’t. The problem of date rape can be reduced by making sure that (generally young) men know what is and isn’t acceptable, and that anything aside from fully consensual isn’t acceptable. That isn’t going to do sweet fuck all to deal with habitual, predatory rapists.

It’s simplistic thinking just as wrong as people claiming rape is inherently preordained in the genes.

some don’t know what they are doing actually is rape

This is a particularly insidious case, which breaks down into further subcategories, because part of the point of rape culture is attempting to shrink and restrict the definition of rape in order to justify as many rapes as possible. So you’ll have guys who are like “oh she took off her clothes, so after that she can’t really say no” or “oh she said yes an hour ago, she can’t say no now.” And while that is a really misogynistic line of thought, some of those guys really believe it because they want to believe it.

I’m not disagreeing with anything you’re saying, mind you.

“Some rapists are idiots who lose control because of intoxicants…”  Actually, no. 

What the alcohol does is provide a handy excuse. That’s it.

I suggested over in Slate that an obvious thing to do would be to see if rates of rape are higher in adoptees whose biological family includes rapists, as compared to adoptees whose biological families do not. An obvious extension (suggested by comments on this thread) would be to see if rapes correlate to violent crime in general by the biological family.

I’d expect not, but anyone who thinks there’s some adaptive basis to rape should expect it to be genetic and thus testable through adoptee studies. Unless, I suppose, they think all men evolved to be rapists—but, as everyone already pointed out, that would be absurd. The best they can claim is that all men have evolved traits that could, under the wrong circumstances, be expressed as rape. But this is uninformative; we knew it already.

Posted a response to two of the replies above, but the response got eaten.

2nd try…

bekabot—much of what you hypothesize about battlefield rape corresponds pretty closely with what Nicholas Kristof and others report from Darfur and elsewhere.

That wasn’t deliberate.  In the response which I posted before, but which disappeared, I admitted that, though I know that a body of literature which deals with this stuff exists, I could not be more ignorant of it than I am.  So I wasn’t copying or citing anything on purpose.  (Then again, I sure wasn’t trying to be original.)  That having been said, I’ve got no problem with echoing Nicholas Kristof, if that’s what I did, since from everything I understand about him he’s a seriously cool guy.

Next letter:

...you are massively underestimating the breadth of human behaviour.

You could be right.  I do that a lot.  But I’m going to ruminate a bit, then see if we can’t agree.

Are all unjustified homicides committed by calculating bastards? A rather quick observation would indicate that no, they aren’t. Some are spur of the moment decisions, some are driven by emotional reasons, some are coldly calculated, and some are committed because the person lost control.

I’d say that all homicides (those not brought about by brainstorms or by similar events) are performed by people who, at some level, have thought their actions through and who have reached a determination.  When faced with the question of “go or no” they make up their minds to “go”.  I hasten to add that I don’t imagine they necessarily do this with the same part of their brains they would use to read a grammar textbook or listen to Mozart.  But then, I don’t buy into the notion that there’s as severe a division between what we call “calculation” and what we call “emotion” as some people claim.  Spur of the moment decisions are more easily reached by those who have gotten used to allowing their minds to travel for some time in one habitual groove.  “Emotional reasons” are still reasons, and like any other reasons, they can be manipulated.  (Conversely, cold calculation is often driven by passion.)  When human beings “lose control” they tend to do it in settings they’ve come to feel are safe—among surroundings they feel will not tell against them and with people who are either staunch allies or who aren’t in a position to retaliate.  (There are so many illustrations of this that I urge you to come up with your own.  Fill in the blank.) 

When one human being murders another (absent the effects of a major brain malfunction) I would say that that human does it because he or she expects to gain something from the killing in some manner, be it abstract or concrete.  (That’s why you can get situations in which people are ready to kill other people on the basis of what they themselves “stand for”, want to “stand for”, or are willing to believe their victims “stand for”.)  And of course when a soldier kills an enemy he does it because he thinks it will benefit his nation.

Some rapists are idiots who lose control because of intoxicants (and this doesn’t excuse them, any more than it excuses someone who gets in a car drunk and commits vehicular homicide)...

I’m not 100% convinced by your argument here, Keith, because your analogy is bad.  The drunk driver who wobbles around a curve and kills a bunch of people intoxicates himself before climbing in behind the wheel.  But the type of guy who likes to get women stupefied and then take advantage of them stays comparatively sober.  He pours liquor down the throats of his targets, not down his own.  A young woman who gets bombed at a frat party takes her fate into her hands (it’s not blaming the victim to acknowledge that much) while a carful of people which is hit by the drunk driver may be occupied exclusively by teetotallers.  These are tracks which fail to run parallel.  So, in my opinion, not the best example.

Maybe I should add that when I talk about somebody having a plan or acting according to a plan I don’t insist on its being the kind of plan which is inscribed on a drawing board or typed out on a deck of index cards.  When I speak of somebody planning something I speak of their having a general end in view, an end which they are willing to act to encompass, and which may be reached by more than one means.  I’ve got a typically feminine and vague understanding of the word “plan”.  I wasn’t trying to refer everything back to one cause.  (Though it’s loads easier to wrangle when you do it that way.)

Because, IMHO, civilization is an uphill battle that must be fought every day, a civilised community is an unnatural situation that must be maintained against the forces of entropy, and a soldier in an occupied territory is closer to the state of nature - Hobbes’ war of all against all - than a civilian at home.

Well, this is true and untrue—since a dissipated human is also a denaturalised human: a creature at odds with himself and with his own feelings of self respect.  Perhaps it is hardest for a human to maintain the condition of dissipated naturalism than it is for him (or her) to apply some order to life and take control of it.  Expressions of one’s ‘animal nature’ are always for this reason short-lived.

The comment system just ate another of my essays.  Lets see if it posts this.

The drunk driver who wobbles around a curve and kills a bunch of people intoxicates himself before climbing in behind the wheel.  But the type of guy who likes to get women stupefied and then take advantage of them stays comparatively sober.

Those aren’t the rapists I’m talking about.

There are people (vastly more men, but a rare few women) who commit sexual assault when they get themselves blitzed and lose self-control. It isn’t just, as GeekGirlsRule said, just an excuse. I’ve met a few of them. I don’t deny that the fact they’re willing to rape says something about them, but at the same time they don’t get drunk with the intent of committing a crime. When they get drunk they lose the capacity to prevent themselves from doing it. There are people who get violent when they get drunk: the vast majority of them don’t drink with the intent of getting into a fight, the fight is a consequence of their drinking. They might be the nicest people in the world when sober.

Now, that doesn’t excuse them, as I said. My personal feeling is that if you know you’re a mean drunk, that getting sloshed leads to fighting a good portion of the time, well, then maybe you shouldn’t get sloshed. Similarly, anyone who thinks (or has some evidence) that drinking could cause them to sexually assault another person, well, perhaps they should consider not drinking that much.

I have no idea what percentage of rapists fall into this category, but I know they exist because, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve met them.

And again, this makes a difference in how you deal with that particular segment of the population. If the crimes they commit are a result of their drinking, then focusing on the problem of the drinking tends to solves the problem of the crime as a consequence. If you try to deal solely with the crime, that isn’t going to do shit if the crime is committed as a consequence of the loss of control due to drinking.

I’ve met a few of them. I don’t deny that the fact they’re willing to rape says something about them, but at the same time they don’t get drunk with the intent of committing a crime. When they get drunk they lose the capacity to prevent themselves from doing it.

What makes you think they’re not lying?

“Some rapists are idiots who lose control because of intoxicants…” Actually, no.

What the alcohol does is provide a handy excuse. That’s it.

THIS.

The whole comparison of intoxicated rape to drunk driving is such a willful misunderstanding of human behavior and the dynamics of both situations.

Generally speaking, getting drunk does does not induce you to do things that are outside the realm of normal behavior - it just makes it more likely you will do it in way or place that is outside the norm.  (singing loudly in public, dancing on a table instead of a floor, etc.)

People don’t drive drunk bc they get drunk and suddenly think “I’ve had some beer.  You know what would be really fun to do?  Drive home!”  Drunk driving happens because, well, people need to get home.  Getting home is something that needs to happen whether they are drunk or not.  Which is why a huge chunk of drunk driving prevention is about finding other ways to get home, or taking turns having one person not drink, not necessarily about not drinking ever or only drinking when you are already home.

The problem with intoxicated rapists is not that they are intoxicated, but that they place getting laid (trying to get laid) on the same level as getting home.  It’s not an optional thing - like getting home and drinking itself it’s a vital part of the evening’s plan. And this is not a priority that springs fully formed from the alcohol - this construction is present in the minds when they are sober as well as drunk.  You can’t prevent this kind of rape by telling people to drink responsibly or treating them as the same category as drunk drivers.  You prevent it by attacking the mindset that places getting laid on the same need level as getting home.

One does not rape while drunk in the same way that one crashes a car while drunk.  In the case of the drunken car crash, the drunken person meant to do one thing (get home) and was unable to be successful.  Rapists who drink before they rape are not committing mistakes, it’s a deliberate choice to lower one’s inhibitions prior to engaging in complicated social interactions.  Sometimes to combat fear,,, but quite often, it’s a deliberate choice to make themselves look less in control and therefore less dangerous - and to encourage their target to drink and be unable to make a choice or fight back.

SomeGuy on 01/19 at 08:06 PM, I think your research group would have to be separated identical male twins.  That is probably too small a group for solid conclussions.

GeekGirlsRule on 01/19 at 07:41 PM, I think alcohol lowers inhibitions and lessens self-control while also making some people more oblivious to social cues.  I agree that mostly it is just a hand-dandy excuse, but it is also true that a very small minority may not realize very quickly that the “yes” has turned into a “no” (though that would not make it not rape).  I do not think alcohol would make anyone “lose control” leading to rape.

Also agreeing with bekabot on 01/19 at 10:50 PM that the drunk driver analogy is for shit, though she was far more polit and specific.

I agree that mostly it is just a hand-dandy excuse, but it is also true that a very small minority may not realize very quickly that the “yes” has turned into a “no” (though that would not make it not rape).  I do not think alcohol would make anyone “lose control” leading to rape.

Thank you, that first part was was I was trying to say. As to the second, what I mean by “losing control” is that they may very well have the inclination to commit the crime but are held back by the realization that there were repercussions. For some of these people, when they’re drunk the ability to keep that in mind is weakened and they’re more likely to give into their impulses. The social control that inhibits that behaviour when they’re sober becomes weakened when they’re drunk.

I’m NOT saying that booze is the Magical Personality Transmogrifier, that someone under the influence alcohol magically becomes a completely different person, that someone who’s drunk and wouldn’t ever rape a woman suddenly becomes someone who would. But it can make someone who would possibly rape someone more likely to do so, just as sticking them into a unit of soldiers raping and pillaging their way across a conquered foreign country would. In one case they lose the social pressure not to do so because of intoxicants, in another because the social pressure has been changed from “Don’t do that” to “C’mon, all your buddies are doing it.”

To helen h. w.: You’re probably right—which would mean legitimate evidence one way or another will be difficult to get. For the time being, we should stick to the null hypothesis.

On intoxication: If you voluntarily become intoxicated you’re choosing to do whatever your intoxicated self might do, even if you don’t already know your proclivities while drunk. The precise details of what goes on in people’s heads are both inaccessible to us and irrelevant.

On intoxication: agreed.

That’s what I said in the beginning. There are various reasons for why someone should not be held entirely culpable for committing a crime, but they chose to drink, or at least chose to drink in a situation where things can happen, and therefore have to bear some responsibility. Probably not as much as one would were one to set out to do the crime, but you still have to be held to account.

KeithM;

We’re not quite in agreement. If a drunken person only bears part of the culpability for what he does, then where else would the rest go, if not the person who chose for him to become drunk? But that’s pretty much always the same person, so the rest of the responsibility falls back on him anyway.

The precise details of what goes on in people’s heads are both inaccessible to us and irrelevant.

O.o

I think we can safely say that intending to spend the night cruising around while drinking is a very different situation than planning on drinking and then driving home later, even if the two potential crashes would involve the same damage.  And that one would approach curtailing such behavior in (slightly) different ways.

Making it extremely counter-productive and very much rape-apology to pretend that the common construction of “drink AND pick up women” is simply a matter of possibly not “[knowing] your proclivities while drunk.”  It’s more like deliberately planning to drink while driving.

We’re not quite in agreement. If a drunken person only bears part of the culpability for what he does, then where else would the rest go, if not the person who chose for him to become drunk?

I phrased it wrong: I should have said “reduced culpability”, as culpability isn’t a single, unalterable quantity.