Rape

Everyone in this story agrees that rape is bad. It’s morally repugnant. Its perpetrators should be imprisoned, and it demands eradication. But that’s where the agreement ends and the arguments begin around an incendiary new hypothesis: All men are potential rapists.

That’s the unavoidable conclusion of “A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion,” a controversial new book from MIT Press that has reopened the all-but-settled debate over the impetus for the crime.

The authors--two academics in evolutionary biology and anthropology--argue that rape is primarily about sex and propagation, not about violence and humiliation, as has generally been accepted for 25 years.

While the prevailing view absolves the victim of any responsibility, the new book suggests women can, indeed, provoke rape and should take steps to prevent it, such as taking chaperons on dates and dressing demurely. And society shares a responsibility to inform men of their primitive sexual drives so they can better control them.

“We were aware of the misguided criticisms that would rain down upon us,” said Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, who co-wrote the book with Craig T. Palmer of the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. “We knew people would see this as blaming the victim.”

Thornhill was right about that. Since their book was published this month, the scientists have been hit from all sides. Fellow scientists, legal scholars, sexual abuse counselors and feminists have slammed the book as a dangerous step backward in the war on rape. Some even fear the hypothesis could be used in a sort of “Darwin made me do it” legal defense for rapists.

Among the most vocal critics is Susan Brownmiller, whose 1975 book, “Against Our Wills: Men, Women and Rape,” spearheaded reform of the nation’s rape laws. Her work, which postulated that rape is about dominance and degradation, put the legal focus on the rapist instead of the victim’s sexual past.

“I haven’t been this outraged in years. I nearly choked reading their book,” said Brownmiller from her home in New York City. “These guys are desperate to mock feminist theory.”

Evolutionary scientist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago was hardly any kinder.

“It’s a dreadful book,” he said. “The whole enterprise is not dispassionate and objective science but a heavy-handed and tendentious attempt to push their thesis and to make fun of sociology.”

Thornhill, 55, remains undaunted by and even forgiving of the book’s detractors. He believes the work has been misunderstood, in part because of political correctness, the public’s lack of scientific sophistication and distorted coverage by the “American media disco.”

“We don’t begrudge our critics,” Thornhill said. “We only hope that as the initial emotions that have so colored their responses subside, they will take the effort to read our book as it is, not as they have feared it was.”

At stake, Thornhill said, is the possibility of significantly reducing or even eliminating rape. But first the truth, as he calls his view of rape, informed by evolutionary science, must come out. Until it does, current rape-prevention programs are doomed to fail because they identify only the environmental part of the problem.

Arguments Stem From Animal Behavior

Thornhill draws his theory from the animal kingdom. Evolutionary theory holds that the characteristics found in certain animals that allow them to survive to produce more offspring will eventually appear in every individual of the same species. Why? Because those animals will have more offspring. Those that don’t, die out.

“Crudely speaking, sex feels good because over evolutionary time the animals that liked having sex created more offspring than the animals that didn’t,” Thornhill writes.

Applying this principle to humans, Thornhill argues, means that natural selection over millions of years favored promiscuous males and discriminating females. On the one hand, males need to invest little time and effort to reproduce. They can share in child-rearing but don’t have to. Females require at least nine months to reproduce and additional months, even years, to breast-feed and raise the child.

Because of these biological differences, females learned to carefully select their mates. But men still had to find a way to be selected. The most common methods through eons of time have been to demonstrate physical prowess and to gain wealth and status.

Here is where Thornhill departs from most evolutionary scientists when he argues that rape was a third strategy to reproduce. Males resorted to rape when they were “socially disenfranchised” or when they found women vulnerable to attack.

Even the authors disagree about how deeply rape is embedded in the male psyche. Thornhill believes that rape is a more powerful force and is an “adaptive” behavior passed along in the genes. Palmer disagrees, arguing that rape is merely a byproduct of the other adaptations--namely, the strong male sex drive and male promiscuity.

In either case, the authors agree rape has evolutionary origins.

“The common thread that binds nearly all animal species seems to be that males are willing to abandon all sense and decorum, even to risk their own lives, in the frantic quest for sex,” writes Thornhill, who notes that rape occurs in a variety of insects, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, marine mammals and nonhuman primates.

Rape data support their evolutionary hypotheses, the authors claim. First, most rapes are perpetrated upon women of child-bearing age.

Next, in a vast majority of cases, rapists are only as violent as they need to be to subdue the victim. One study the authors cited found that rapists engaged in acts of additional violence--such as beating, slapping or choking--less than 22% of the time, thus not hampering their chances for reproductive success with the victim.

And finally, the authors say, rape is an enormously traumatic psychological event, more so than other violent crimes. And among those raped, women of reproductive age suffer even greater psychological trauma, according to studies cited by the authors.

These reactions make sense from an evolutionary standpoint, the authors argue. Rape threatens a woman’s reproductive interests by potentially robbing her of the opportunity to choose the best father for her offspring, they say.

A Few Supporters, but Even More Critics

The book has enjoyed some favorable reviews from the scientific community. MIT professor of psychology Steven Pinker called it a “courageous, intelligent and eye-opening book with a noble goal.” University of Michigan professor of natural resources and environment Bobbi S. Low praised the book for contributing a “much-needed perspective and analysis to a topic that is emotionally charged.”

But critics outnumber supporters. Evolutionary scientists were among the first to take aim.

“You really have to be an evolutionary scientist to understand the full range of problems with their arguments,” said Coyne, who has debated the topic with Thornhill on national radio.

Coyne attacked as meaningless the book’s primary hypothesis that rape is an evolutionary byproduct. According to that logic, Coyne said, “drinking chardonnay or anything we do” could be considered a byproduct.

Coyne said the authors fail to sufficiently explain why men rape old women, children and other men. Also, Coyne believes committing rape millions of years ago was probably a lot more difficult than it is today. Humans traveled in smaller groups, making women easier to protect. Also, women during childbearing years were usually pregnant or lactating.

“You pick a woman [to rape] at random, and the chances that you’d have a baby were pretty remote,” Coyne said.

Even colleagues who respect the authors as scientists and support their right to explore rape argue their case isn’t very compelling.

“The evidence simply isn’t there,” said David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin.

The book fails to show that rape has a special purpose from an evolutionary standpoint, Buss said. He knocks the authors for drawing incorrect causal connections.

“Human males use violence to achieve a variety of ends. They steal televisions. They steal food,” he said. “But you wouldn’t say, because men use violence to steal televisions that it’s an evolved food-stealing strategy.”

Other critics, most notably Brownmiller, blast the authors for claiming to be able to measure a woman’s psychological response to rape. She questions the validity of the studies the book cites to demonstrate the depth of wrenching emotions a rape victim undergoes.

“How do you quantify rape pain?” Brownmiller asked. “That whole section about guilt and pain is the weakest part of the book.”

From Academia to the Courts

Many critics aren’t as concerned about the science of the book as the social and legal message it could convey. In an era when society has witnessed a steady stream of defendants slipping out of justice’s grasp because of legal arguments about a variety of mitigating circumstances, some worry a creative rapist might argue he was at the mercy of his genes.

“The concern is understandable,” said Owen D. Jones, a professor at Arizona State University College of Law in Tempe. “Nothing is stopping anyone from raising an absurd defense. The question should be, what is the likelihood that it will succeed? None.”

Susan Estrich, a legal professor at USC and a rape victim, agreed. Just because there might be an explanation why someone commits a crime in no way excuses its commission, she said.

“I would be horrified if the thesis of this book were accepted,” said Estrich, who has written extensively on rape and the law. “But it’s an irrelevant question legally.”

If anything, some legal scholars believe that if the book’s hypotheses are true, penalties for rape may actually grow more severe. Harsher punishments may further compel men to control their sexual urges, legal scholars say.

Authors Favor Stricter Punishments for Rape

Some attorneys are nevertheless troubled by the notion that the book could be used to lessen a rapist’s sentence.

“You never know with policymakers,” said Marci Fukuroda, an attorney with the California Women’s Law Center in Los Angeles specializing in violence against women. “They might take this thing way too seriously and push for some sort of mitigation. Like, they were born this way, how can they help it?

“Of course, if they did try to push it, there would be 10 times as many advocates to push the other way,” she added.

For their part, Thornhill and Palmer, who dedicated their book to “the women and girls of our lives,” have made it clear they support stricter punishments for rape. There is no excuse, they say. Men may be genetically predisposed to rape, but environmental factors--including education and a certainty of punishment--can overrule them.

The authors don’t dwell on the legal or moral fallout of their work. They see their mission as simply to disclose the facts.

“As scientists who would like to see rape eradicated from human life, we sincerely hope that truth will prevail,” they write.

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Martin Miller can be reached at martin.miller@latimes.com.