why nature smiles on
RAPE
by
ROBERT J. LEWIS
___________________________________
MEN IN GENES
AND RAPE CULTURE
From
the Latin rapere (seize by force) are the words rape,
rapt and rapture.
Rapists
are very correctly but not universally despised by both women
and men. The laws of most lands are written to reflect the gravity,
disgust and abhorrence the act of rape invokes. In cultures
where rapists enjoy more favourable ratings, the judicial system
shifts the weight of responsibility from the perpetrator to
the victim.
Rapists
find their highest approval ratings among themselves. They play
by a different set of rules, making their accomplishment a function
of defiance of the law and brute conquest.
The
genes the rapist wears never go out of style because -- compared
to authors, athletes and electricians -- rapists are disproportionately
prolific breeders. To be noted without flinching is what they
admire in themselves is what natural selection sees fit to admire
During
the Bosnian war (1992-95), an estimated 50,000 women were raped,
many in special rape camps. In South Africa one in every four
women is raped. In South Africa a woman has a greater chance
of getting raped than learning how to read, which means an unconscionably
high percentage of men are undeterred by the brutality, violence
and dehumanization of women rape invariably occasions. Based
on the ubiquity of the act and the appalling numbers, more and
more human rights groups are signing on to the notion that rape
is a global epidemic.
Popular
psychology, spear headed by publications such as Psychology
Today, contends that some women entertain rape fantasies.
Well before Freud published his revolutionary theories on the
relationship between the unconscious mind and sexuality, the
philosopher Schopenhauer understood that nature has one goal:
reproduction “the most marvelous of all instincts, and
its work the most astonishing . . . the sexual passion is the
kernel of the will to live.” So while the sexually aroused
individual selfishly chases his pleasures, the beyond purpose
is procreation (propagation of the species). It is likewise
for the sake of her offspring and the health and vigour of the
species that women desire what is best for their eggs, and the
rape fantasy, if only subconsciously, not only identifies the
instinct that predicts a female's attraction to the alpha male
but makes the case that rapists, as a group, are alphas. Which
make our laws that punish rapists inconsistent with nature’s
first purpose: reproduction.
Is
there the male equivalent of the female rape fantasy? Do males
secretly admire, envy rapists for their exceptional ability
(virility) to conquer and breed under the most trying circumstances?
Is there an unacknowledged fraternity of closet rapists, and
if yes, how big is the closet?
All
life forms are characterized by the blind will to live and not
die, and reproduce. Genes that survive from one generation to
the next are deemed the fittest. Hostile environments, that
limit the winner’s circle to the exceptional, best guarantee
gene fitness.
Until
quite recently in man’s history, natural selection favoured
physically dominant males who could provide for as many women
as they could feed and defend. Environments hostile to arousal
and reproduction (war, scarcity) isolated those exceptional
males who could successfully reproduce under stress. It’s
one thing to consummate with a consenting, loving partner in
the midst of plenty, but altogether another story to mate with
a woman whose village you have razed, whose husband and children
you have killed, who hates you, is revolted by you and wants
you dead. If the mixing -- diluting -- of the enemy’s
blood is the definitive biological conquest, men who are not
capable of consummating in negatively charged sexual environments
run the risk of seeing their genes eliminated from the gene
pool. Males who are physically and emotionally equipped for
rape, especially multiple rapes with multiple partners, are
rewarded by nature: their copious seed is transmitted to the
next generation. Evolutionary biology’s toughest truth
is that natural selection rewards sexual coercion; it is not
interested in sensitive, caring, compassionate males –
the wimp contingent.
Left
to their own devices and fantasies, most men, the majority of
whom discreetly suffer from Don Juan envy, would seduce and
procreate with as many women as possible. There isn’t
a man alive who at some primordial level doesn’t wish
to scatter his seed. If the ultimate prize of war -- the heavyweight
event that separates the breeders from the non-breeders -- is
unrestricted access to conquered women, the rapist is the first
in line. His seed will get a future hearing, while the omegas
on the sidelines console themselves with booty and plunder.
Reducing
the rapist to his essential place and purpose, he represents
those exceptional men who are capable of procreating under the
most trying conditions. He is able to consummate in the presence
of judgmental males, in times of war, in environments with the
smell of death in the air, and with women who want to see him
dead. He will prevail when least expected, and it matters not
a whit to natural selection whether he is admired or detested
for his breeding prowess. His DNA lives on.
Richard
Dawkin, in River Out of Eden, explains that we don’t
have to go far back in time to find a common ancestor. If in
the Middle Ages it was not uncommon for an alpha male -- with
the backing of jus primae noctis (law of the first
night) or droit du seigneur (the lord's right) -- to
sire a hundred offspring, whose subsequent offspring sires only
ten for five generations (a century), his dominant genes will
be present in more than a million children, grandchildren and
great great grandchildren etc, all of whom might be recognizable
by an outstanding physical feature (shape of nose, chin, mouth)
which is why we are often able to identify someone as German,
or Scandinavian or Greek. The science of genetics, the branch
of biology that deals with heredity, combined with the laws
of exponential distribution force the conclusion that many of
us, and perhaps most of us, are the sons and daughters of nature’s
favourite brute – the rapist.
Since
in the modern era rape is more or less universally outlawed,
and abortions are safer and more readily available than ever
before resulting fewer births from coercive sex, there has been
a major shift 
in
consequences away from procreation to using rape as a weapon
against institutionalized social iniquity. In 1968 Eldridge
Cleaver (Soul on Ice) infamously described rape as
an “act of insurrection,” the great leveler, the
orgasmic means to the end of blurring the distinction between
society’s winners and losers. Rape is the quick and efficient
answer to a frustrated alpha male’s ambitions, or minority
status or negative self-esteem. When an unemployed, uneducated
rapist forces himself on a society woman who would otherwise
have nothing to do with his kind, he is addressing an imbalance
that his nature cannot abide by. He doesn’t regard his
rape as a crime but a correction against an exclusionary social
order that has robbed him of his dignity and self-esteem. Rape
is the temporary means by which he takes his rightful place
in society. He rationalizes it as justified affirmative action
without consent. In the unacknowledged but ongoing war among
males for access to the most prized females, he proves to himself
and ‘the boss’ whose woman lies beneath him carrying
his seed that he is an equal. He feels no regret or remorse
but is hooked on an endorphin high that will bid him to rape
again and again until he is caught. Sixty per cent of rapists
become serial rapists.
When
we pass our genes on to the next generation, we are passing
along knowledge: a set of survival instructions, the most important
of which is the ability to reproduce under stress, which is
why the rapists’ genes are very present in the overall
human gene pool. Estimates vary widely but worldwide, among
reported incidences, a woman is raped every second, which speaks
to the DNA that predicts the act and the ineffectiveness of
the laws against it. Sometimes it doesn’t take more than
a drink or two, or a couple of hours spent in boisterous male
company, to feed the notion that it is OK to force a woman to
have sex against her will. Men, soldiers in particular, often
bond around the act of rape. Among certain men, rape is confused
for a right, which in turn confers bragging rights, which is
why it is not unusual for rape to be carried out in the public
domain.
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