Evolutionary psychology can be a bit like London's Millennium Dome. From
the outside it affords an impressive structure, constructed with the help
of cutting edge science and technology. But take a peek inside, and you often
find an alarming scarcity of real content. So it is with A Natural History
of Rape, the latest attempt to apply Darwinian theory to human behaviour.
Biologist Randy Thornhill and anthropologist Craig Palmer believe that human
rape 'arises from men's evolved machinery for obtaining a high number of mates
in an environment where females choose mates'. At the heart of their argument,
as of all evolutionary psychology, is the claim that although we live in a
space world, our skulls still house Stone Age minds. Human behaviours, Thornhill
and Palmer argue, were originally designed by natural selection to facilitate
the reproduction of our genes in our ancestral world. Many behaviours, such
as rape, which may have been adaptive then, still haunt us now.
In humans, as in most animals, males and females have developed different
reproductive strategies. Men are adapted to mate as frequently and with as
many women as possible. Women, on the other hand, are designed to be monogamous
and to ensure that their mate stays with them as long as possible. Rape, Thornhill
and Palmer argue, is a consequence of these differences. Men rape because
it helps spread their genes. The good professors are unsure whether men possess
specific brain circuits that tell them to rape, or whether such coercion is
the unfortunate outcome of a relentless male desire for casual sex. Either
way, they insist that men rape because nature has designed them that way.
If men rape to increase their chance of fatherhood, women are traumatised
by rape because it 'lowers their reproductive success'. Rape is painful, apparently,
because it 'reduces a woman's ability to choose the timing and circumstances
for reproduction, as well as her ability to choose the man who fathers her
offspring'. And there I was thinking that the pain of rape had much to do
with violence and forcible sex. Thornhill and Palmer, however, will have none
of this. Rapists, they argue, do not as a rule use overmuch violence because
they don't want to threaten their victim's chance of getting pregnant. Even
more contentiously they believe that the trauma of rape decreases with more
violent attacks, as injured women are more likely to be believed that they
didn't 'ask for it'. The more battered a woman is, the less trauma she endures?
It truly is an Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass world that Thornhill and Palmer
inhabit.
Much of the book is a polemic against social science and feminist theories
of rape, in particular the belief that rape is a crime of violence, not sex.
Social scientists, claim Thornhill and Palmer, are motivated by ideology which
has blinded them to Darwinian truth. This rant might have more substance if
Thornhill and Palmer's own arguments were not so flimsy and inchoate.
Take, for instance, the claim that natural selection has furnished men with
behaviours that makes it easier for them to commit rape. One such possible
adaptation is a 'psychological mechanism that help males evaluate the vulnerability
of potential rape victims'. Another mechanism may help 'motivate men who lack
sexual access to females (or who lack sufficient resources) to rape'. As evidence
of the first mechanism, Thornhill and Palmer point to that fact that 'men
are most likely to rape when rape's proximate benefits exceed the chances
of injury and punishment'. The fact that 'rape is disproportionately committed
by males with lower socioeconomic status' is, they suggest, evidence for the
second kind of mechanism. The trouble is, you don't need a PhD in evolutionary
biology to know that rapists are less likely to strike if they think they
will be injured or caught, or that poor, resourceless men are more likely
to commit crime, whether burglary or rape. You only insist that such behaviours
are natural adaptations if, like Thornhill and Palmer, you are blind enough
to believe that all behaviours must be evolved.
Thornhill and Palmer buttress their dubious 'scientific' arguments with even
more dubious anecdotes. Men, they claim, get hot under the collar when their
partner is raped because 'it reduces his confidence that he sired the mate's
previous offspring, and his confidence that he will be the sire of the next
offspring if his mate becomes pregnant at the time of the rape.' As evidence
they drag up a hoary old tale of an orangutan which had raped a female cook
at a primate research centre Indonesia. The woman's husband seemed unconcerned.
'Why should my wife or I be concerned?', he is supposed to have asked. 'It
was not a man'. The husband, Thornhill and Palmer tell us, 'reasoned that
since the rapist was not human, the rape should not provoke shame or rage.'
Neither the husband nor the victim, they suggest, 'seemed to suffer greatly'.
It seems astonishing that two learned professors should seriously believe
that being sexually attacked by an ape would be of little concern to a woman.
It seems even more astonishing that they should attempt to sustain their argument
with the kind of salacious anecdote that used to pepper Victorian travellers'
accounts of exotic cultures and their sexual mores.
Thornhill and Palmer end the book with as series of proposals to combat rape
from an evolutionary viewpoint. Like the rest of their work, these are a mix
of the banal, the bizarre and the reactionary. Evolution psychology, they
tell us, has come to the conclusion that 'punishment can influence the frequency
of rape' and that 'long incarceration' is most effective because it 'removes
the offender from everyday male-male status pursuits that young men spend
so much time practising.' Now, why didn't I think of that before?
Thornhill and Palmer want all young men to receive 'an evolutionarily informed
educational program' which 'gets them to acknowledge the power of their sexual
impulses.' Teenagers should be taught 'why they get an erection just by looking
at a photo of a naked woman' and why they might 'mistake a woman's friendly
comment or her tight blouse as an invitation to have sex.' They must complete
such a course before they can get a driving licence. Why evolutionary knowledge
about rape should make young men better drivers, Thornhill and Palmer don't
explain. But if they truly believe that such an educational programme will
curb young men's sexual desires, then they must have long forgotten what it's
like to be a teenage boy. The last way to change a teenager's mind is by force-feeding
him an adult education programme.
Thornhill and Palmer have advice for women too: don't dress provocatively
and don't wear too much make up. A woman's behaviour, they insist, plays an
important part in encouraging rape. Thankfully, they accept that the 'seclusion
of women' is 'understandably abhorrent to many people', but they worry that
'the common practice of unsupervised dating in isolated environments such
as automobiles, often accompanied by alcohol consumption, has placed women
in environments conducive to rape to an extent unparalleled in history.' Perhaps,
they suggest, young couples should be chaperoned a bit more. Don't wear sexy
dresses. Don't get drunk. Don't have a grope in the car. And this from a book
that is supposedly ideology-free.
A Natural History of Rape is a deeply dispiriting work that provides
little insight into either human psychology or the character of rape. It's
a pity because evolutionary biology has much to say about sexual behaviour.
But the dogma that human behaviour can only be understood in evolutionary
terms is as foolish as ignoring evolutionary theory altogether.