Most Men Don't Rape, Studies Tell Us

Such questions came to mind when a new book called A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion hit the media circuit, receiving so much fanfare that its publishers, MIT Press, moved up the date of publication by several months. The Sciences, an academic journal put out by The New York Academy of Sciences, featured an excerpt of the book. The authors, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, were given the spotlight on Dateline, The Today Show, CNN, as well as National Public Radio. The book received major, often uncritical, coverage in newspapers around the world and, of course, was extensively promoted by hate-radio personalities like Tom Leykis.

The media's excitement is based on the book's argument that "rape is, in its very essence, a sexual act" that developed through evolution. Evolution created men's desire to rape, the argument goes, by favoring unattractive men who raped over unattractive ones who didn't. The unattractive men who raped passed on their sexuality through their genes, and therefore all modern men are biologically wired to rape women.

Because the authors and their publishers cannot admit to having a pro-rape agenda, they claim to be motivated by the desire to prevent men's sexual attacks on women. Rape is best prevented, the authors argue, by requiring "educational" classes for those trying to obtain a driver's license. At these classes, the instructors would explain to young men how natural rape is, and then tell them that they shouldn't rape. Instructors would advise young women to cover their bodies so they don't provoke sexual attacks. In their scholarly concern for women's safety, The Sciences illustrated Thornhill and Palmer's argument with pictures of naked women and women's body parts.

In her critical response to the book, Mary Koss, professor of Public Health, Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, points out that Thornhill and Palmer never subjected their deductions to peer review, and did not respond in their book to the peer criticism they have received over the years -- a very unorthodox practice, given the cloak of "science" they wrap their argument in. Furthermore, the authors relied on documentation about insects and birds to support their theory about the nature of man, but they made virtually no reference to empirical findings on sexual assault.

The "evidence" that Thornhill and Palmer present to support their rape theory ranges from the misleading to the patently absurd. To support their misleading argument that men have a rapist sexuality aimed at increasing their chances at reproduction, they claim that most rape victims are women of childbearing age. At first glance, the claim that such a large group of women is the most frequent target of rape seems quite plausible. However, as Koss points out, studies have shown that rape victims are disproportionately prepubescent. The Rape in America national survey reported that one third of victims were under eleven years old when first raped, and that a total of two thirds were under seventeen. Many other victims are post-menopausal women. Still others are men.

The authors also make the absurd assertion that the more violence that victims are subjected to the less trauma they suffer -- because of evolution's preference for females who want, above all, evidence to prove to their mate they were raped and did not have an affair (the more violence, the more evidence). Of course, studies show the exact opposite -- the level of trauma increases with the severity of violence.


by Adriene Sere
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