The Broad Brush? Women and Men; Prejudice and Necessity

Dolphins off the coast of Australia have been seen committing rape. It takes 3 males: 2 keep the female from swimming away.

If I ever meet a biologist who is familiar with this phenomenon, I have a lot of questions. Many species of dolphins use copulation as a pack-bonding ritual--much like our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. (Bonobos have orgies in which even the young and the elderly participate, and they can go on for hours.) So it's not clear why these males are reduced to rape in order to have intercourse. Maybe they're from a different pod?

Female dogs copulate with any male in the vicinity. That way they all think the puppies are theirs, and will protect them.

 

Re dolphins observed in Shark Bay in Australia..

But here’s the thing: even in the clearly aggressive coercion scenarios witnessed in Shark Bay, researchers have never witnessed forced copulation. The kind of coercion being described here is indirect in that these tactics ultimately result in males persuading females to mate with them, but not directly forcing themselves on the females. The scientific experts studying the Shark Bay dolphins had this to say about forced copulation in a recent book:

We have no evidence of direct sexual coercion in dolphins, including forced copulation or other behaviors directly associated with male attempts to mate.​

In other words, if forced copulation should be considered the non-human animal equivalent to rape insofar as it appears (to the human observer) as if the female has not given consent, then this still has never been observed in dolphins. This fact alone is a strong argument against the use of the word rape to describe any dolphin mating strategies.​

 

You're just some guy on the internet who just excused rape to me. I don't particularly care how you may think your self importance matters. It doesn't matter to me. So.. Considering I did put it into my own words and you didn't get it, why should I bother doing it again?

But I haven't misrepresented you. You do think that rape is about sex and that it has a biological imperative to spread one's genes - while you completely disregard that babies, children, men, the elderly and women who cannot have children are also raped in exceptionally high numbers. As scientists noted in response to Thornhill and Palmer, their argument is absolutely flawed, not only because of the lack of data to back up their claims that it is biological, but also because they disregard and ignore the rapes of children, men, the elderly - where it is clearly not for 'biological' reasons.

No, it's just a general observation and especially in the manner in which you dismiss actual scientists who disagree with you and who are the ones who have studied rape in quite a bit of detail. What is it that you do again? Are your subjects of study even human? Or are you like Thornhill and Palmer who based their rape is about sex and biological on the scorpion fly?

Oh look, more evidence of your intellectual dishonesty..

Assuming they are true? So rape apologist and rape denier.

Yet more evidence of your intellectual dishonesty. Is this what I actually said? No. Instead of answering the question, you troll by trying to misrepresent what I actually said.

Here is the question again.. "Which animal species uses sex as a weapon or tool to terrorise and harm others?" .. Come on GeoffP, this is an easy question for even a two bit biologist like you to be able to answer.

Considering that you have been found to have edited your own posts in quoting them, you claim for context, but in reality you altered it when you quoted it so that it was completely different, that you have willfully and deliberately misrepresented what I have said (just refer to above), you have deliberately misrepresented links you provided in claiming that it was evidence of other animals using sex to terrorise and harm others when your links actually do not show that.. Do you really want to try and go with that argument?

Did I say that it was gorillas, bonobos and chimps that lead a very solitary existence? No. I did not. I said "primates that lead a very solitary existence". You do know that the term "primates" covers other animals and not just gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees, yes?

In other words, "a couple that use forcible sex to breed - usually seen in primates that lead a very solitary existence"..

Which is actually wrong. Because what rape apologists like you often disregard when you use the biology argument is that babies, children, men, the elderly and women who cannot 'breed' are raped in equal numbers.

I'm sorry, are you going to try to argue that rape in war is not used as a weapon to humiliate, instill fear, subjugate, control and demoralise the enemy? Ermm okay..

In Bosnia and Herzegovina 20,000 – 50,000 women were raped by Serbian forces during five months of conflict in 1992. (IWTC, Women’s GlobalNet #212. 23rd October 2002). In some villages in Kosovo, 30%-50% of women of child bearing age were raped by Serbian forces (Amnesty International, 27 May 1999).

In her “Mass rape: the war against women in Bosnia-Herzegovina“, Alexandra Stiglmayer et al conclude:

“In war, men rape for various motives, and we can identify nearly all of them in every war. Yet not all wars are the same, and each war provides its own specific motivations for rape. For the Russians who raped German women by turns during the invasion of Berlin in 1945, the key motives might have been revenge, a desire to break the pride of the German master race, and the feeling of having earned ‘thanks.’ For the Americans in Vietnam the motive was more likely the frustration of being in a foreign country and having to fight a war that was not ‘their’ war. In neither case was the goal to drive away the women and their community; both the German and the Vietnamese women were to remain where they were.

But dispersion is precisely the goal of the Serbian forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Their purpose is to drive Bosniaks [Bosnian Muslims] and Croats [Bosnian Catholics] away from the conquered territories. Besides brutal terror, deliberate murders, mass executions, internment camps, deportations, and torture, one of the means they are employing is rape. Rapes spread fear and induce the flight of refugees; rapes humiliate, demoralize, and destroy not only the victim but also her family and community; and rapes stifle any wish to return. A rape is a ‘surefire weapon that doesn’t need any fuel or ammunition,’ as the Zagreb feminist Asija Armanda once said… In Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, rape has been an instrument of ‘ethnic cleansing’. The UN Commission of experts that investigated the rapes in former Yugoslavia has concluded. ‘Rape cannot be seen as incidental to the main purpose of the aggression but as serving a strategic purpose in itself,’ reports the European Community mission concerned especially with the situation of Muslim women.The report of the humanitarian organization Amnesty International states: ‘Instances that have included sexual infringements against women are apparently part of an inclusive pattern of war conduct characterized by massive intimidation and infringements against Bosniaks and Croats.’ The American human rights organization Helsinki Watch believes that rape is being used as a ‘weapon of war’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina: ‘ Whether a woman is raped by soldiers in her home or is held in a house with other women and raped over and over again, she is raped with a political purpose – to intimidate, humiliate, and degrade her and others affected by her suffering. The effect of rape is often to ensure that women and their families will flee and never return.’​

Best tell the UN, world governments and all human rights organisations that they are wrong, because GeoffP, the so called biologists, thinks it's just in the genes and biological..

And why do they do that, GeoffP?

I mean heaven forbid it's used to subjugate and terrorise the population because it is used as a form of ethnic cleansing and genocide.. Naw, can't be that, surely..

So by that, I assume you take the raping of babies, children, men and the elderly is also biological because of "inappropriate breeding attempts or hybridization"..? Ermm.. Okay..

I didn't think you could get worse, but you did.

You failed to read the giant clues that this was the case when Fraggle and Tiassa responded to him? As a bare minimum, they were giant warning signs that something was not quite right. But no, you jumped in and defended him, and kept doing so and continue to do so (remember your Hitler wanted trains to run on time, so he wasn't always wrong argument you tried to use to justify your defense of a poster who advocates rape?) even after his encouraging people to rape was pointed out to you. I mean I get it, you have a pathological need to always be right, but to lower yourself to this sort of level where you discredit scientists who have actually been studying rape and your response to the rapes of children, men and the elderly is to ask me if I have ever heard of "inappropriate breeding attempts or hybridization" and to attempt to actually question and deny my own rape? Really GeoffP? Is this how low you plan to go?

So when you responded and argued against Fraggle and Tiassa and advised that darksidZz was not exactly wrong, you did this without having read their posts?

So what is your reason, GeoffP?

You responded by commenting how you were responding to the questions about prison rape and the scenario by commenting about posting one handed, commenting repeatedly about the fictitious name used and using him to describe various sexual acts to support your contention that prison rape is just about sex.

That's okay GeoffP. You see, I am the type of parent who will teach my sons that rape is never acceptable. I get why you would think I would be such a bad parent in that regard. And that's okay. I am absolutely fine with your disgust at my parenting two sons. Because your disgust actually tells me that I am doing something right with my sons. So thank you. See, your comments about my sons and about me tell me that I am on the right track. Had you agreed with me, then I would have been very concerned, because you are simply the guy doing his best to downplay rape.

Ah, righteous indignation. People who resort to biology to explain rape, especially going to the lengths that you have gone to in this thread, often do it to excuse rape. To deny it entirely (you even tried to deny my rape, could you go much lower than that?).. And you complain about being offended? Is that meant to be a joke?

See GeoffP, the arguments you have resorted to in this thread won't really get you anywhere.

I see.

See, that article was a satirical response to the idiocy that is rape is biological..

And yes GeoffP, it means that when the woman shaking your hand has a strong grip, it means she thinks you are a potential rapists. Biology says this is so.

Reap it well.

Well no, because as you have clearly displayed and argued in this thread, the response to rape is too political for your liking. Even with evidence from scientists that you are wrong, to you, it is merely political.

I see you are still misrepresenting what is said..?

Well that is what a couple biologists claim it has to be. That white women react negatively towards black men during their ovulation period, so it must be an evolved biological response - you know, this is the response to you and your ilk who argue that men evolved to rape.

Well it can't be. Because if you, as a man, evolved to rape, then I, as a woman have evolved to resist rape by apparently having a tighter hand grip when ovulating, being racist and viewing all men as being potential rapists.. So because I am none of those things, there must be something wrong with me.

Now do you understand why your repeated assertions that rape is biological is completely bunk?

Cute. That would be you. By "anti-rape", the author means those who argue that rape is not really a bad phenomenon. You know, they argue that rape is simply biological and thus, natural.

Well your side argues that if rape is biological, then it must be natural and if it is natural, then as that creationists argues, it must be as God intended.. But there was a very Christian politician who argued that any pregnancy that results from rape is what God intended, and as such, God must intend for women to be raped.. I mean I get how that would offend theists. It offends anyone with more than two brain cells.

But the same contention is argued for rape is biological by those like you.

Well of course it wouldn't to you. All those scientists are arguing against rape is biological and using fact and science to do so. I get how that might escape you.

 

Ah yes, Steven Pinker.. The man who deems women are too sensitive and incapable of understanding why men may want to rape..

Owen Lloyd's takedown of Pinker is still one of the best that I have read.. Doesn't Pinker also complain that rape figures are inflated by what he perceived to be the influence of lobby groups (like feminists for example - he is very disparaging of feminists in his books) in having things like getting a woman drunk to then rape her now classifies as rape?

"Junk statistics from advocacy groups are slung around and become common knowledge, such as the incredible factoid that one in four university students has been raped. (The claim was based on a commodious definition of rape that the alleged victims themselves never accepted; it included, for example, any incident in which a woman consented to sex after having had too much to drink and regretted it afterward.)

[HR][/HR]

It’s not certain why the numbers you found for 2011 are so out of whack with those in this dataset, and it would take some digging to resolve the discrepancy. But the warning in this spreadsheet about previous methodology changes suggests a likely answer. Under pressure from activist groups, common definitions of “rape” and “sexual assault” have recently been broadened to include, for example, a man verbally pressuring a woman into sex, and a man getting a woman drunk and having sex with her; even, in some surveys, sex that the woman regrets afterwards. These expansive definitions are the source of some of the incredible claims such as that one in every four female college students has been raped. I doubt that the NCVS uses such a definition which is quite that expansive, but if the question asked in the past few years differs from those asked in 1973-2008, we would have an explanation for the discrepancy. And you may be correct that the restrictive and expansive definitions correspond to “rape” and “sexual assault,” respectively, but it would take some digging into the recent survey methodology to verify this." **
​

** Pinker, Steven (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Viking Penguin.


Yes GeoffP, do you agree with Steven Pinker?

I am avidly curious.

Just keep in mind that in The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, Pinker also argues for women to take measures for rape prevention - such as how they dress, drink, who they are with, etc.

People who argue that rape is biology always, always make the exact same stupid arguments. Always.

 

"Common sense never gets in the way of a sacred custom that has accompanied a decline of violence, and today rape centers unanimously insist that "rape or sexual assault is not an act of sex or lust-it's about aggression, power, and humiliation, using sex as the weapon. The rapist's goal is domination." (To which the journalist Heather MacDonald replies: "The guys who push themselves on women at keggers are after one thing only, and it's not a reinstatement of the patriarchy.") Because of the sacred belief, rape counselors foist advice on students that no responsible parent would ever give a daughter. When MacDonald asked the associate director of an Office of Sexual Assault Prevention at a major university whether they encouraged students to exercise good judgment with guidelines like "Don't get drunk, don't get into bed with a guy, and don't take off your clothes or allow them to be removed," she replied, "I am uncomfortable with the idea. This indicates that if [female students] are raped it could be their fault - it is never their fault - and how one dresses does not invite rape or violence .... I would never allow my staff or myself to send the message it is the victim's fault due to their dress or lack of restraint in any way."**

** Pinker, Steven (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Viking Penguin, page 406.

​

So you were saying? Not entirely true?

It is on the same page as his whine about the Myrmidon theory and his complaint about feminists viewing rape as being about power. The quote above is right after this quote that you posted above:

"If I may be permitted an ad feminam suggestion, the theory that rape has nothing to do with sex may be more plausible to the gender to whom a desire for impersonal sex with an unwilling stranger is too bizarre to contemplate."**


** Pinker, Steven (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Viking Penguin, page 406.

​

Which, by the way, you misquoted.

You quoted it like this:

Which is a complete misrepresentation of Steven Pinker's works..

"I believe that the rape-is-not-about-sex doctrine will go down in history as an example of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. It is preposterous on the face of it, does not deserve its sanctity, is contradicted by a mass of evidence, and is getting in the way of the only morally relevant goal surrounding rape, the effort to stamp it out." Is not from "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined".

It is actually a quote from "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature".. A completely different book.

Could you please explain why you presented it like you did, two different comments from two different books, but you presented it as though it was from the same work and worse yet, as though one followed on from the other?

His "If I may be permitted an ad feminam suggestion, the theory that rape has nothing to do with sex may be more plausible to the gender to whom a desire for impersonal sex with an unwilling stranger is too bizarre to contemplate." quote is actually his complaint and response to what he perceives to be the feminist movement arguing that rape is about power and dominance - such as the myrmidon theory he whines about..

So why did you word it and present it as you did?

 

Because it puts the onus on women to not be raped.

You know, it demands that it is the woman's responsibility to not be raped. Not for the man to not rape. It also clearly disregards that college rape - such as what he discusses in the above quote - is often not stranger rape, but acquaintance rape, such as girls being raped by their boyfriends/lovers/friends. Unless of course you are going to argue that women should never drink in the presence of men, get into bed with their partner/spouse/lover or get undressed in the presence of their partner/spouse/lover's to avoid getting rape is a good prevention strategy? Good luck with that one..

Then again, Pinker does not believe that having sex with a girl who is so drunk that she is not in a position to consent should constitute as rape, so yeah, it's not much of a stretch that he puts the onus on women to simply not be raped.

 

You are comparing women to a laptop?

Ermm okay..

See, there are inherent dangers to treating women like objects or comparing them to objects like laptops. Because if she is to be 'safe' or protected, as you recommend, locked in the boot, then by that very argument, it would simply be safer for women to not associate with any male whatsoever. In short, she's in the boot. And this is especially so when you consider that the majority of rapes are committed by people the victim knows and trusts. Such as the boyfriend/girlfriend/partner/spouse/relative/friend. In which case, women are to never be alone with males, because while he's not justified in raping her, it's just wiser for her to be put in the boot - ie just stay away from men completely..

I'm sure you'll agree. Yes?

 

Was just curious.. thanks.

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And Pinker, really?

How insulting!

 

How are you going to apply the self-preservation rules when your rapist is your intimate partner, spouse, relative, friend of teacher?

What kind of message does it send to women when they are raped after receiving such lectures on "self-preservation"? Especially if she is raped by someone she knows?

Unless of course you advocate for women to always be living in a heightened state of fear and awareness of possible rape situations 24/7?

What such rape prevention supposed strategies does is set it up so that women quite literally have to be living a state of fear of being raped at all times. I can assure you, I am there right now and have been there for a month now and it destroys you completely. And it is not acceptable.

When you tell women about preventing rape by not drinking, not taking her clothes off in front of men, not getting into bed with men, what happens if she does this and she is raped? By demanding such supposedly preventative measures, you have already portioned some of the blame and responsibility onto her instantly. Because her responsibility to not be raped is to not get drunk or drink around men, not take off her clothes in front of a man and not get into bed with a man, not dress a certain way.. And if she fails any of these (and there are so many that people come up with that quite literally, it would entail women living solitary lives with no contact with anyone).. and if she fails any of this, even with an intimate partner or with a man she knows and trusts, then she will automatically feel responsible.

And if she feels she is somewhat responsible, then she won't report it. After all, if she believes that she was raped because she got drunk or she took her clothes off in front of a guy, why would she report it? And frankly, she could do 1000 things to prevent being raped, and she can still be raped. I mean, do you want to live in fear 24/7? Is that acceptable to you?

What about intimacy rapes? Are you going to tell women in relationships that they shouldn't be getting undressed in front of their partners, having a drink with their partners or getting into bed with their partners, because you know, if she wants to prevent herself from being raped, well a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do.. Just avoid contact with all men altogether if she really wants to prevent herself from being raped... Where does it end?

At what point can a woman then live her life without living in fear or with that exceptional heightened sense of awareness that she could be raped at any time and anywhere? Can she ever do that when rape prevention advocacy happens? Considering that women in their 80's and 90's are rape victims, is this our lot in life? Living in fear of being raped and living like a hermit to prevent it?

Let me ask you a question.. How do you tell your kids about sexual predators?

Do you tell them about stranger danger and to tell you if someone ever touched them in ways that they should not be touched and that if they ever felt uncomfortable, to come straight to you? Okay.. Because that's what women and men are told.. That if someone ever does something to them that is not appropriate or that is rape, for example, then they should tell someone, talk to someone.. You know, we don't put the onus on them to not be raped or sexually abused. But back to teaching kids about sexual predators..

Do you tell them to not ever sit on the laps of any relative or friend if they are small? Not be alone with any adult they know, even family members or friends of the family, teachers, and all other acquaintances? Not ever take their clothes off in front of any adult they know, even close family members or friends? Because your child is more likely to be raped by someone they know and trust than by a complete stranger. So how do you teach your child about prevention of sexual abuse in that case? Or do you think it's okay to have them living in fear and terror of everyone around them, because anyone could be a potential child molester?