All right, time to offer a more detailed criticism of this piss-poor "analysis."
Thornhill and Palmer argue that it is possible that the underlying motivations of rapists evolved because they were at one time conducive to reproduction. One of the primary facets of their research is an analysis that the overwhelming majority of rape victims are of childbearing age, suggesting that childbearing ability is involved in a rapist's choice of victims. Thus, men are at least somewhat sexually, and therefore reproductively, motivated.
The problem with this assumption is that their research is based upon FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED data on victims, as virtually ALL analyses of rape are, whether it is feminists alleging that rape is a crime that reflects historic male violence and repression, or Thornhill/Palmer.
So, while trying to rebut the feminist portrayal of rape as a crime of violence and control, Thornhill/Palmer rely on THE SAME FLAWED DATA, which is no more trustworthy in their hands than it is in the hands of feminists.
As I've pointed out, there are two sets of data relating to rape: victim self-report data, which tends to skew younger based upon the feminist definition of rape, which includes categories of sexual contact that even the victims themselves DON'T CONSIDER TO BE RAPE (and which include penetration, a key component of Thornhill/Palmer's assumptions), and police incident reports, which have similar data integrity issues.
That is not an accurate summary of the data available regarding evolutionary theories of rape. Firstly, you're obviously confused as to the distinctions between ultimate and proximate explanations of rape. Ultimate origin analyses of rape cannot be contested by those who dispute evolutionary theories of rape because forced copulation is routinely observed as a reproductive strategy of nonhuman animals.
Even in dealing with data regarding the possible evolutionary motivations for rape in humans, you are deluded, the primary reason for which being that you only have a vague familiarity with a very minute sample of data regarding evolutionary theories of rape, despite attempting to pretend that you have some expansive knowledge of the topic. I shall present a more extensive summary of evidence indicating that evolutionary motivations for rape exist so that you don't make a similar error in the future.
Firstly, I would advise you to consult E. Kanin's work in
An examination of sexual aggression as a response to sexual frustration and
Date rapists: Differential sexual socialization and relative deprivation The abstract of the latter is particularly revealing:
Deviant sexual behavior has often been portrayed as the consequence of the frustration of legitimate sexual outlets. This study of date rapists reveals that these men, as a result of a hypersexual socialization process, are sexually very active, successful, and aspiring. These exaggerated aspiration levels are seen as responsible for instituting a high degree of sexual frustration. This acute relative deprivation, it is hypothesized, is a significant process responsible for precipitating these rape episodes.
Hence, deviant sexual behavior (specifically, sexual coercion), is likely precipitated by exaggerated sexual aspiration levels. Though these men experience little in the way of actual sexual deprivation, the relative deprivation that they experience likely results in sexual frustration, as Kanin noted. On those grounds, sexual coercion can be observed to be related to some degree of sexual frustration, which indicates a motive of extreme lust, not a mere desire for power or control.
Moreover, analyses of the motivations of rapists, specifically of the sexual response of rapists to alternate depictions and narratives of consensual sexual encounters and coercive sexual encounters have indicated that they are typically not more stimulated or aroused by violent encounters than by nonviolent ones, as opposed to non-rapists, who were most stimulated by narratives of nonviolent encounters and least stimulated by narratives of violent encounters. This research has been conducted in studies such as Abel, Barlow, Blanchard, and Guild's
The components of rapists' sexual arousal and Quinsey, Chaplin, and Varney's
A comparison of rapists' and non-sex offenders' sexual preferences for mutually consenting sex, rape, and physical abuse of women.
In Quinsey and Chaplin's
Stimulus Contro! of Rapists' and Non-sex Offenders' Sexual Arousal, they document the following:
Fifteen rapists and fifteen non-sex offenders penile circumference responses to audiotaped narratives were compared. These narrative involved neutral heterosocial scenes, consenting heterosexual activity in which the female partner was active or passive, and rape scenes. The rape scenes varied according to whether the victim assertively refused or pleaded for mercy and according to whether the victim ultimately experienced pain or pleasure in the assault. Non-sex offenders responded most to the consenting sex narratives and least to the stories in which the victim suffered whereas rapists responses did not vary over the various categories of consenting and nonconsenting heterosexual activity. These data are consistent with the theory that nonrapists sexual responses are inhibited by nonsexual cues given by the female whereas those of rapists are not.
If rapists were motivated primarily by desires for domination and control of women, then they would have experience greater arousal from the audio narratives of violent sexual encounters, but there was no indication of any variation between their responses to narratives of violent sexual encounters and consensual sexual encounters, indicating a sexual motive, a proclivity for rape being related to a lack of inhibitions regarding the use of violence or coercion.
Inasmuch as you were obviously unaware of this research, you lack the capacity to pass judgment on the merits of evolutionary theories of rape, since you are uninformed as to the extent of the research in the area, and are only vaguely acquainted with a small degree of data used by Thornhill and Palmer.
You're so convinced, Agna, that you inhabit a world in which you are the smartest person you know, and thus, you feel entitled to be incredibly dismissive of other people's experiences and knowledge. You have no idea on the relative scale how much you have to learn.
It's a shame you never took a debate class in high school, it would have taught you to recognize the massive holes in your argument by switching sides and arguing the counter.
This is what is incredibly humorous about your schooling/educational assessment. You believe that because you've read books that other teenagers haven't read, that you have a superior intellect, and that you didn't need schooling.
What you seemingly don't understand is that a solid school provides not only information on specific subject areas of interest to the student, but also requires students to learn about areas that they AREN'T interested in so as to create a well-rounded person. A sixteen year old in almost every case simply has no idea how much he doesn't know, and thus, is incapable of making informed decisions about his own education.
Like many self-educated people, you are not well-rounded. You're just hyper informed in one subject area, with little to no awareness of how that subject relates to the rest. In fact, the person you remind me of the most on this board is, ironically, William Joyce, the author of this thread. Because he has specialized in reading material that feeds his beliefs about the worst of darker hued humanity, he has curious blind spots in his sources.
On the contrary, your arrogant assumptions are related to your inaccurate belief that you have specialization or expertise that others have not. For instance, you consider yourself sufficiently qualified to make vastly differing judgments regarding my age and life experience, the majority of them being flagrantly inaccurate, on the sole grounds that you have "worked with troubled youth." This has led you to wildly inaccurate assumptions. (Such as your claim that I was "suburban" and unacquainted with the experiences of minority and poor youth.)
You also have the audacity to claim that you have "eviscerated" my views regarding education, despite the fact that you have essentially no familiarity with the topic of libertarian education styles at all, and have likely read nothing of A.S. Neill, John Holt, or Ivan Illich. You certainly haven't read Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis's work regarding the purpose of authoritarian schooling functioning as a form of indoctrination for students entering the hierarchical workplace.
Most egregiously, you claim, on the basis of a
New York Times article that studied the pro-pedophile movement and their claims to favor "children's rights," that I have sympathy or connections with that movement, thus revealing your extensive ignorance of the most basic and rudimentary issues, such as the elementary distinction between "children's rights" and "youth rights." You are therefore absurdly uninformed and in absolutely no position to make value judgments on the ethical nature of my beliefs regarding youth rights, inasmuch as you are completely unfamiliar with the topic.
But then again, that ignorance and unfamiliarity is but a small manifestation of your ignorance of all varieties of social and political topics, and indeed, about life in general.
