Customer Reviews

Evolution, Gender, and Rape

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This is a mixed bag of essays with a common focus of attack on Thornhill and Palmer's 'A Natural History of Rape'. Here and there one comes across interesting and valid comments and criticisms but some of the essays are poor or very poor. P Gowaty's essay stands out as the most interesting.

The middle section is very repetitive making the same points again and again in each essay. Michael Kimmel's essay stands out here as very emotional and self-contradictory eg he argues that human males are devoted fathers and want to be good lovers and to please women yet he also writes of locker-room talk about dating women - 'Don't stop till she hits (or hurts) you'. He confesses that virtually all men are 'failed attempted date rapists'. (As women don't often hit, and may be fearful of doing so and making the man angry, Kimmel may not have been such a failed date rapist as he remembers.) This is a very revealing essay regarding the two contradictory sides of male attitudes towards women and sex.

Overall there are a number of interesting points, a few revealing bits and plenty of poor arguments and repetition. A mixed bag that is just about worth reading.

Just read the essay of J. Coyne included in this book. It is the best rebuttal of the seudoscience in sociobiological books like "A natural history of rape". And nobody can deny Coyne a deep knowledge of biology and evolution. There is much to think about the 'mumbo-jumbo' in present day biology, even in highly SCI rated journals.

It is very common for males of other animal species to rape females. Mating involves little investment on the part of the male and much investment on the part of the female. As a result, males will attempt to mate much more often than females. It is a question of economics. No amount of shouting from the proactively empowered left can change the results of one billion years of contest between males and females.