A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion

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Summary: This book is a disgrace.
Review: A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. All I can say is how can anyone think this way? It certainly is not based on scientific research. Children are not of child bearing age yet there are thousands, male and female, raped all over the world every year. How can the authors explain that? Is the act of raping children practice for men wanting to sharpen their rape skills in anticipation of raping an adult woman for sexual or reproductive reasons?

I do not know the root cause behind the act of rape but I am only too familiar with its consequences. The authors attempt to scientifically legitimize such violence against women and children was completely unconvincing. Now days it seems anyone can write a book and get paid for it. The more extreme and bazaar, the title and content, the better it sells. The authors surely had that on their minds when they came up with this absurd hypothesis. Just think of all the men buying this book. Now they can rape and feel justified by spending just a few dollars to clear their conscience. This book is ludicrous and dangerous in my opinion.



Rating:
Summary: technical
Review: A technical book intended for those conversant with modern ideas in biology (sexual selection, evoltionarily stable strategies, genetic linkage, etc). The scientific background is not explained, because this is not a book for the general reader.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely Worth Reading
Review: Be very skeptical of what you may already have heard about this book. Read it yourself, and you will find that the authors make a far more compelling case for biology's effects on patterns of sexual aggression than the book's often alarmist critics would have you believe. The authors' argument, put simply, is that if we want to be more effective at preventing rape, then the more we understand about its multiple causes the better. The authors convincingly argue that causation of human behavior is a scientific, empirical issue that biology can help to illuminate. And the book provides a highly readable exploration of biological approaches to understanding sexual coercion in the many species (including humans) in which it appears.

Some critics of the book have attempted to make much of the theoretical possibility that the book may afford rapists a defense at trial. I am a law professor specializing in potential legal implications of human behavioral biology. And as I explain in a recent law review article (Sex, Culture, and the Biology of Rape: Toward Explanation and Prevention, California Law Review 87:827 -- July 1999) I do not think the biological theories presented in this book can or will support successful genetic defenses to rapists. Nonetheless, there are still non-trivial, non-trial, legal implications that may help the system handle and deter rape more effectively. This makes reading the book an essential step in understanding and reducing female victimization.

Disclosures: I Co-Directed a conference on Law, Biology, and Sexual Aggression, at which both Thornhill and Palmer were invited speakers, and I helped to review the Thornhill/Palmer manuscript in a pre-publication phase.

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Summary: Unscholarly, pop-science
Review: I study evolution with a strong focus on the evolution of the sexes. I was initially attracted to this book because I am interested in exploring the evolutionary aspects of sexual violence. Investigating this topic from an evolutionary perspective is complicated by the fact that human sexual violence often works against natural selection, unlike in other species. Despite the interesting nature of this rarely talked about subject, this particular book was not based in good science. The evolutionary links were weakly drawn. The few studies he cited did not address the full scope of sexually violent acts, they were inconclusive, and even contradictory to his own points. The conclusions he drew were opinion, though he did occasionally make that fact clear. The author did not scientifically examine his own cultural biases and the result is a book that asserts his personal agenda. I also found this book lacking in that the author did not include studies of Bonobos, considering they are the primates genetically closest to humans (closer to us than they are even to other primates) and they are one of the few species that do not commit rape and infanticide.

A book that studies the connections between evolution and sexual violence would need to be researched far better than this, and in order to draw well informed conclusions it would need to take into account all forms of sexual violence against women, children, and men. In addition, when studying the biological aspects of human behavior there must also be attention paid to the sociocultural aspects of the behavior. Most behaviors are functions of both genetics and nurture. This is true for both humans and animals. As humans we are subject to our biological drives, but we are also intelligent beings who function within free will, choice, and consciousness. ... If you are interested in evolution please continue your education beyond this book. ... There is so much to learn. Evolution and human behavior are fascinating subjects.

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Summary: People Just don't want to hear the truth
Review: It is so sad thousands of academics are employed to postulate the theory that rape is a power thing when the most important aspect it is mostly a sexual thing by generally powerless and inadequate men who cannot generally succeed in having sexual relations in any other way. (Look for example at male rape in prison where victims are raped because they refused to have relations with the perpetrator) It is sad that the feminist 'lets whip up anger towards male society' viewpoint is created simply for political reasons to aid 'the cause' and increase their funding and offers nothing to stop this abhorrent crime. This book while it is uncomfortable reading at least offers ways forward for dealing with rapists and getting them to control their behaviour. It also helps victims better understand and come to terms with what happened and their disgust at the incident itself. In 10 years I suspect we will be amazed why it took so long to recognise that essentially we Humans are animals, the most successful ones who survived were our ancestors and so we have their genes within us whether we like it or not. I feel sorry for the victims of rape. I do not feel any sympathy for the army of politically correct (and many frightened) academics who are earning fat salaries while probably knowing why rapes often occur, but daren't say because it would affect their own incomes

Rating:
Summary: I'm not convinced.
Review: My criticism of this is not that it tries to find a biological basis for distressing behaviour -- my criticism is that it is simply bad science, packaged to sell.

Example: Thornhill claims that a study has shown that reproductive-age women are more traumatized by rape than older or younger women who are not in danger of pregnancy, and he takes this as one of the pillars of his argument that rape is a strategy for reproduction.

Problem: His reference for this study is one of his own articles, dated 1991. When you go find this article, you find that it contains a reference to one of his articles, dated 1990. When you find this, it references the study yet again, but in an article of his dated in the early 1980s. When you find this article, you find another reference, but at least this is to the original research -- a study of 27 women that was done in 1974, and which, in fact, the original researchers (not Thornhill) found to indicate that women of all ages and reproductive status were equally traumatized. It was only after Thornhill ran this study through a series of computerized "filters" to factor out things he felt to be extraneous, was he able to turn this interpretation on its head. And it seems that he and Palmer went to extraordinary lengths to make the original data hard to find, in order to obscure the small size and age of the study as well as the original interpretation. The _accepted_ method for citation is to list the original study "as quoted in" one's own article -- not simply to quote one's own series of articles.

He and Palmer consistently make use of obfuscation to avoid answering criticisms of their arguments, as well. For instance, one of his arguments is that scorpionflies regularly "rape" (i.e. force copulation) as a reproductive strategy. At one point, they address the real and relevant question that must be asked -- "How is scorpionfly behavior relevant to *human* behavior" -- by immediately diving off into a rant about the evils of assuming that they advocate biological determinism. In fact, they do not answer the relevancy question at all, but bury it under a load of righteous indignation against a different argument.

Rape of children was not included in any of their analyses; rape of teens and adults was reclassified into only two impossibly broad age categories, thereby obscuring the actual curve of incidents. In fact, the vast majority of rapes target pre-reproductive girls, going by FBI and National Crime Victim Survey statistics -- something that the authors waffle between not mentioning or denying outright, but without naming a source for their statistics. Sex attacks that do not involve a possible result of pregnancy (that is, same-sex rapes, penetration with objects, and penetration of "other orifices", etc.) are not mentioned at all, anywhere in their work -- a strange omission for a book that claims to deal with the entire phenomena of rape. One can only think that they leave these inconvenient facts out of the book because they look awkwardly like evidence against their theory.

This was published as a "popular science" book to make money; such a volatile and emotive topic will always sell. The pity of it is that it would never have passed peer-review as a genuine scientific argument.

I was deeply disappointed, first because of all of the above, and second because the only suggestion they could come up with for actually combating the male tendency to rape was to suggest women dress and speak modestly, and in general do all the things to appear unavailable and spoken for, and to understand that "males are driven by biological needs" -- in other words, the same advice that has failed to work to stop rape in any culture, over a period of centuries.

The book really doesn't advance anything, except Thornhill and Palmer's royalty checks.

Rating:
Summary: no mysogyny here
Review: Nature, and natural selection, are not PC. We and all livingcreatures exist because of this process. It is impossible that ourenduring behaviors have not been shaped in some way by natural selection. This does not mean that all human behavior does not occur within an environment, which is crucial. Genetic determinism does not exist. That said, I don't think that Thornhill and Palmer have shown that humans male have an actual adaptation to rape(may instead be a by-product of male sexuality). I think that this book should not have been written at this point. The evidence is not there, which is not to say that it will never be there (to be fair, the evidence for social scientist's theories is even more flawed). More research is needed, which the authors concede, but it is somewhat damaging that this book was written before having this sort of proof. If the hypothesis has not yet been supported, why write a book about it that attempts to be comprehensive? This book does a good job of explaining the position of evolutionary psychology/sociobiology and of illustrating the ways that is has been misrepresented to support a feminist/cultural anthropologist political agenda that seems to not be interested in basing itself in science. It is amazing to me that most people cannot comprehend the obvious- the mainstream refusal to understand the difference between ultimate and functional causality or the naturalistic fallacy is a formidable obstacle. Nature is amoral. Humans have a capacity for morality. If rape is shown to have some biological basis (which it must), this says nothing about excusing men for their behavior. We can all agree that rape is wrong and something that we must work to prevent. Studying ALL of the reasons that compel men to rape, is crucial, and finding the ultimate, biological reason is the best way of all we have to learn how to prevent human rape. END

Rating:
Summary: a well-supported thesis
Review: Several of the reviewers below recite the tired platitude that "rape is not about sex." Any critical thinker who knows a rape victim or who has otherwise become acquainted with the topic knows that that is false. The fact that the effect of a rape is far more traumatic than the effect of, say, a punch to the nose belies such a claim. The fact that many rape victims experience problems with sexual intimacy etc. further demonstrates the fact that for post-menarchal, pre-menopausal women (see the Thornhills' prior work) rape is always (though not exclusively) about sex. There has never been any scientific controversy on this point.

The more interesting question -- elucidated here -- is the extent (if any) to which the rapist's actions are "about" sex. The authors make a convincing case that rape is "about" sex from the rapist's standpoint.

Contrary to the puzzling description of this book as "outdated" (made by two reviewers below), this book is on the cutting edge of scientific discovery in the wake of decades of obscurantist anti-science practiced by Boasian anthropologists et al.

Highly recommended. If you are interested in this topic, I would also recommend David Buss's "Evolution of Human Desire" for a more general exploration of human sexuality from an evolutionary standpoint.

Rating:
Summary: It does not help understand WHY men rape
Review: Take a good look at the title "A NATURAL History of Rape"; just ask is Rape natural behavior for man or human? Do you need scientific statistics historically (?)to know it is unnatural inhuman behavior! So what is the book trying to advance in scientific and social circles? That it is natural and there are biological bases for it; and what does it matter whether the reason behind rape is need for power or need for sexual gratification or both?

Is one reason more acceptable than another? If man or woman does it for sex it is OK, it is in the biology or genes!

Perhaps this book legitimizes and gives greater social-scientific acceptance of something we would not normally accept, in the same way society is made to accepts or dilute its resistance to violence, pornography, wanton-sex, pornography, propaganda of all kinds in the politics, media, science, and the marketplace!

The quality of human life is eroded everyday through rape of our minds (by implanting memes or mind-viruses like this). Our Natural Human Self, which has a cosmic/divine electromagnetic connection with our physical-animal-instinctual-impulsive self is being eroded everyday through the pollution of food chain, air, water, oceans and our bodies ridden by foreign elements in the name of vaccine-public health drugs (thinktwice.com)and our minds numbed by dumb TV and media,solicitations of all kind.

Human are the only species given free will (and we have been equated with animals precisely to put a blinder on that) and how each of us use our free will to advance or regress ourselves evolution wise says a lot of who we chose to be.

Only truth will set you free from all falsehood and enslavement. The funding and proponents for this kind of "Scientific" work comes from special interest (a few who rules the mass through our herd mentality). We have to remember there is much secret-cultish, prejudicial, superstitious and coercive behavior within mainstream science and technology. Not everything that comes under the name of science, advance it. It is actually intended to do the opposite: Thy shall not think for or by thyself!

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Summary: A trumpet call to better understand ourselves.
Review: This is the first book on rape to present an objective Darwinian view of a human behavior that is universally and rightly condemned as criminal. That rape is a violent, sexual, reproductive act reflects the all too human evolved capacity to contingently express tremendously selfish and loathsome as well as kind and caring behaviors. The observation that local cultural influences and personal developmental histories will influence the probability of an individual "choosing" any behavior (including callous criminal behaviors) in response to short and long term personal histories, evaluations of present circumstances, and expectations concerning how present behavior will impact their future prospects compared to alternative behaviors exhibited in the present, is central to modern evolutionary psychology. All behaviors are understood by biologists as necessarily being joint products of gene-environment interactions.

Understanding that rape is fundamentally "sexual" (that is, for a biologist, ultimately, albeit perhaps unconsciously, about gene propagation) helps to illuminate the circumstances under which virtually any man's probability of being sexually coercive increases. All creatures choose behaviors that, under current their social and environmental conditions, have expected fitness that exceed expected fitness costs as estimated from the perspective of the ancestral environment in which that animal's nervous system (i.e., it mind) evolved. This knowledge provides real insights into (1) the functioning of our own psyches (potentially enabling more personal self-control), and (2) how to tune laws, societal norms, and personal behaviors of both sexes in ways that are maximally effective in preventing and punishing rape, as well as helping its victims.

The largely bimodal reviews of this book here at Amazon should alert one that ideological forces are at work in many evaluations of this book, as well as a lack of understanding of the evolutionary perspective. It is not easy to understand the implications of evolutionary theory for human behavior, nor is it always pleasant. This book will help you understand it if you approach it intellectually, with a critical mind, putting your ideology to the side in your evaluation (which does not mean, of course, that you have to abandon your morals in actual practice).

By the way, do advocates of the traditional violence hypothesis of rape think that violence is not natural and not ultimately, often indirectly, about reproduction? Study nature honestly and you will change your mind about that. Gratuitous violence in nature is rare. All behavior, even highly PC and endearing forms such as play, have compelling Darwinian rationales.

Note that there is no reason to expect that natural selection will design a mind that reliably and consciously understands what it is ultimately up to, what the biological "end game" is about - gene propagation. It does not matter if you are talking about children at play or rapists raping. Ask yourself, if rape is not about sexaul reproduction, why does it typically involve an erection? Then ask, are men typically thinking primarily or at all about having babies when they are sexaully aroused. No, they are just sexually aroused, a state that clearly can be combined with many other emotional states. But it does not matter from the point of view of natural selection what a creature thinks, only that they act in a way which, in the ancestral environment, would have, on average, increased the individual's lifetime reproductive success.

Humans have the unique ability to desire the above-mentioned understanding. To obtain such knowledge it is necessary to check one's subjective personal experiences, biases, and imagination by observing human nature in others and in oneself under an objectifying influence, such as modern science. This book is a major step, not necessarily the final one with respect to rape, in this direction.