Reviews for A natural history of rape

The average rating for A natural history of rape based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-15 00:00:00 Nate Devries Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer's A Natural History of Rape represents the worst excesses of evolutionary psychology. Contra the authors framing of the controversy, the book was critically panned in scientific journals and resulted in a book-length response edited by Cheryl Brown Travis, Evolution, Gender, and Rape. (Elisabeth Lloyd's excellent chapter is available online: ) Thornhill and Palmer argue that rape is either an adaptive behavior or the by-product of adaptation. Both positions ultimately fail as they hinge on the veracity of David Buss's Sexual Strategies Theory (SST). SST boils down to a mis-application of Bateman's Principle to humans and has invited refutation from a number of fields, including biology, psychology, and anthropology (refer to Travis' volume or Buller's critique in Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature). Much of the other "evidence" presented is arbitrarily analogized from animals such as scorpion flies and overgeneralized, shoddy one-off studies. I have no compunction about investigating humanity's more unsavory aspects from a biological perspective -- we see violent behavior (as well as altruistic behavior) all throughout nature. The authors rightly note that to object would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy. However, they forfeit the right to use this as a defense when they use their own "science" to support policy prescription. Shouting "naturalistic fallacy!" does nothing in that case. It is impossible for me to know what resides in the minds of the authors, but if they wanted to be seen as the impartial investigators they attempted to portray themselves as, they did a god-awful job of it. A good deal of the book is taken up by uninformed screeds against feminism and the social sciences in general. Their policy advice includes such gems as reminding women not to dress like sluts, in slightly gussied up language. The framing of the "debate" smacks of old sexist tropes such as the image of the rational and objective male scientists against the emotional and "politically correct" feminist women. Though it would still be hack science, they could have easily written the same book without it reeking of misogyny. One wonders why they didn't do so if they wanted to be taken seriously. (Although it must be admitted that what they have to say about men could have come from the pens of the most radical of radical feminists, so it could be said that the work smacks of equal parts misandry and misogyny.) This book is highly recommended as an example of how not to do science.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-22 00:00:00 Yasuyuki Koketsu "The ability of ideology to blind people to the utter implausibility of their positions is perhaps the greatest threat to accumulating the knowledge necessary to solve social problems." (p. 152) This book uses a ton of data/research in evolutionary psychology/biology to explain why rape exists in all human societies. It has been panned by a lot of people as somehow justifying or rationalizing rape, which is not the case at all. Those who hate this book (and the research behind it) fall victim to the naturalistic fallacy--the misconception that what is "natural" is "good." It is "natural" for lions to rip apart and eat zebras, it is "natural" for a virus to attack your body, and it is "natural" for volcanoes to erupt and kill thousands of people; but we generally don't say that these things are "good" because they are "natural." With the evolution of our species, the naturalistic fallacy is especially prominent because we like to think that we are "highly evolved," and that our ability to post on Facebook somehow elevates us above other animals in terms of behavior. If you are mentally capable of not succumbing to the naturalistic fallacy, and want some insight into human nature which is backed up by actual science, then this book might be for you. As a feminist who would like to see rape rates go down, I wish people would stop attacking this research, and at least attempt to understand it.