This is the most atrocious thing I've seen in here for multiple reasons. First of all, it's pop evolutionary psychology garbage that tries to ascribe evolutionary selective pressures to a modern, abhorrent social behavior, which you have absolutely no scientific justification for and chances are, you aren't going to get a peer-reviewed source to back it up either. I mean, I'm not a fan of
pop evolutionary psychology in general, but to ask for "factual evidence" in this thread for something and than go into misguided conjecture is just the most astonishing piece of hypocrisy I've ever seen.
Rape's a known behaviour in our close animal relatives, along with murder and genocide. I think the idea that chimpanzees evolved to rape because of "power" as opposed to because that behaviour was more successful than competing behaviours at passing on the relevant genes is pretty silly.
The possibility exists, of course, that rape behaviour is a byproduct of one or more other qualities that are selected for, but Ockham's Razor says go for the simpler explanation and in any case it makes no difference at all to the point.
I suggest you go find something you understand to go get offended about, since that seems to be your goal here.
You say feminism is a big tent, but I know I've ever seen this in the tent... like ever. It's not only an attempt to rationalize violent misogyny in our society, it's pseudoscience, which I thought was supposed to be bad here.
If you understood what I wrote, you wouldn't be saying stupid things like this. Did you miss the bit where I said "The fact that it's natural and tied up with sexual desire doesn't take anything away from the fact that it's a morally revolting crime", or did you just decide to ignore it completely because it would be more fun to get offended?
I'm not rationalising anything. In fact you're making exactly the same mistake that I was making fun of earlier - you don't seem to understand that there is a difference between an explanation and an excuse, so when you see an explanation of rape you jump on your high horse because you think someone is trying to excuse it.
I provided it: an excerpt from an NCPC article and a reference to a book by DiCanio. I'd LMGTFY them, but I can't link yet.
Meanwhile, I have not seen from others, nor do I see from you, any semblance of academic research to support your explanations.
You just quoted someone asserting this piece of dogma. You didn't link to or cite any actual evidence that it was true. People can and do publish all sorts of rot, particularly in the humanities, which have nothing to do with empirical fact and are entirely driven by their political views. If you cite some scientific research as opposed to some academic "researcher" airing their opinions I'll look at it, but I don't expect to see any because this issue has been discussed before and never yet has anyone found a skerrick of hard evidence for this "rape is about power not sex" dogma.
For crying out loud, rape involves sexual contact. You're denying that sexual contact has anything to do with sex. The very idea is bizarre.
A) Sociobiological rape is hardly a theory at all. Burden of proof is on you, in this case.
B) I don't understand what place this has in this discussion.
I'm just criticising the people (like yourself) quoting the "rape is about power not sex" dogma as if it was scientific fact. As far as I'm aware, and as I said this is not the first time we've had this discussion, that's an article of political faith. It is not and never has been a scientific claim backed up by evidence.
If you want to talk about how we should deal with the fact that some men rape sometimes, political faith-claims with no basis in reality are an active impediment to a sensible discussion. We can't deal with a social problem if we're encumbered by non-evidence-based ideas about it.
As far as I can see the Scottish campaign is probably a good idea, because last time I checked the idea that some women want to be raped, deserve to be raped or can legitimately be raped still has come currency with some men and the sooner and more thoroughly those memes are stamped out the better.
However the bottom line is that while rape is never morally tolerable, some men will do it anyway. Regardless of whether women
should have to bear this in mind in an ideal world, we don't live in an ideal world yet and around strange or dangerous men I think women should still bear this in mind.
There's no contradiction at all in saying "Ted got mugged walking home through the bad side of town in an expensive suit. Morally this should not have happened and the people who did it suck, but simultaneously he took a stupid risk and this outcome could have been avoided had Ted behaved more sensibly". You can call it blaming the victim or not as you like, but it can still be true as a matter of fact whether or not you call it blaming the victim.
I would fully support all measures taken to educate people that mugging (and rape) are not okay, and in my ideal world of course nobody would ever get raped or mugged, and a victim looking rich or sexy does not constitute extenuating circumstances for muggers or rapists that decrease their moral culpability. Nonetheless, bad people exist and acting as if they didn't exist because you think they shouldn't exist doesn't seem very clever to me.
