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| A collaged photograph called, "Las Animas" by Kiki Smith from 1997, pictured at the top of the web article, "Why Men Rape." |
2. Citation:
Thornhill, Randy, and Craig T. Palmer. "Why Men Rape." The New York Academy of Sciences 40.1 (2000): 30-36. Why Men Rape. The New York Academy of Sciences, Jan. 2000. Web. 09 Mar. 2015. <http://iranscope.ghandchi.com/Anthology/Women/rape.htm>.
3. Summary: In this scholarly article, adapted by The Sciences from their book A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion, biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig T. Palmer argue that rape is a "natural, biological phenomenon and a product of our evolutionary heritage." They regard rape as an act of sex, not violence. They state that this does not justify rape. They compare rape to natural disasters, claiming that just because something is "natural" does not make it right.
4. Authors: Randy Thornhill is a biologist and distinguished professor at University of Mexico. He has his B.S. in Zoology from Auburn University, M.S. in Entomology from Auburn University, and a Ph.D in Zoology from the University of Michigan. His research interests include human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology among other things. His Curriculum Vitae indicates that some of his research-in-progress has to do with the evolution of female sexuality. I really hate the sound of this man, to be honest, but I am sure he is intelligent enough... Craig T. Palmer is an anthropologist and professor at University of Missouri. He earned his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Arizona State University. His research focuses on incorporating cultural traditions into evolutionary explanations of human behavior. His publications include co-authored books on religion (The Supernatural and Natural Selection), sexual aggression (The Natural History of Rape), the ecological collapse of the Canadian cod fishery (When the Fish are Gone), and altruism (Kindness, Kinship and Tradition in Newfoundland/Alberta Migration).
5. Key terms:
- Darwinism: a theory of the origin and perpetuation of new species of animals and plants that offspring of a given organism vary, that natural selection favors the survival of some of these variations over others, that new species have arisen and may continue to arise by these processes, and that widely divergent groups of plants and animals have arisen from the same ancestors. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/darwinism)
- Natural: existing in nature and not made or caused by people; coming from nature; usual or expected. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/natural)
- "Why do men rape? The quest for the answer to that question has occupied the two of us collectively for more than forty years. As a purely scientific puzzle, the problem is hard enough. But it is further roiled by strong ideological currents. Many social theorists view rape not only as an ugly crime but as a symptom of an unhealthy society, in which men fear and disrespect women. In 1975 the feminist writer Susan Brownmiller asserted that rape is motivated not by lust but by the urge to control and dominate. In the twenty-five years since, Brownmiller. s view has become mainstream. All men feel sexual desire, the theory goes, but not all men rape. Rape is viewed as an unnatural behavior that has nothing to do with sex, and one that has no corollary in the animal world... But social scientists have not convincingly demonstrated that rapists are not at least partly motivated by sexual desire as well. Indeed, how could a rape take place at all without sexual motivation on the part of the rapist? Isn't sexual arousal of the rapist the one common factor in all rapes, including date rapes, rapes of children, rapes of women under anesthetic and even gang rapes committed by soldiers during war?"
- "As everyone knows all too well, however, sex and the social behaviors that go with it are endlessly complicated. Their mysterious and tangled permutations have inspired flights of literary genius throughout the ages, from Oedipus Rex to Portnoy's Complaint. And a quick perusal of the personal-growth section of any bookstore- past such titles as Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and You Just Don't Understand- is enough to show that one reason sex is so complicated is that men and women perceive it so differently. Is that the case only because boys and girls receive different messages during their upbringing? Or, as we believe, do those differences between the sexes go deeper? Over vast periods of evolutionary time, men and women have confronted quite different reproductive challenges. Whereas fathers can share the responsibilities of child rearing, they do not have to."
- "Like most of their male counterparts in the rest of the animal kingdom, human males can reproduce successfully with a minimal expenditure of time and energy; once the brief act of sexual intercourse is completed, their contribution can cease. By contrast, the minimum effort required for a woman to reproduce successfully includes nine months of pregnancy and a painful childbirth. Typically, ancestral females also had to devote themselves to prolonged breast-feeding and many years of child care if they were to ensure the survival of their genes. In short, a man can have many children, with little inconvenience to himself; a woman can have only a few, and with great effort. That difference is the key to understanding the origins of certain important adaptations. features that persist because they were favored by natural selection in the past. Given the low cost in time and energy that mating entails for the male, selection favored males who mated frequently. By contrast, selection favored females who gave careful consideration to their choice of a mate; that way, the high costs of mating for the female would be undertaken under circumstances that were most likely to produce healthy offspring. The result is that men show greater interest than women do in having a variety of sexual partners and in having casual sex without investment or commitment."
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