friedman@h-sc1.UUCP (dawn friedman) (08/13/85)
> In article <1698@mnetor.UUCP> sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) writes: > >than that). If rape was as simplistic an issue as that, we'd see more > >occurence of it among the so-called "lower" animals, whose actions are > >supposedly dictated even more by their hormones and the visual cues they > >receive from the females of their species. Yet non-human animals do not > >rape (which might suggest that it might be insulting to animals to call > >rapists animals <-:). > > > But, Sophie, animals do rape. At least, some ducks do. (In fact, > gross as it may seem, the male mate of a raped duck is likely to > repeat the offense immediately.) In general the practice of rape > is sufficiently common in the "wild kingdom" that there is a rather > neutral term for it: mixed reproductive strategy. Civilization and > humanitarian ideals (as well as simple empathy) are supposed to > assist us humans in providing a more kindly environment for our > (male and female) fellows. Sorry it works so poorly. > I knew this one was coming when I saw the first letter. Sigh. *Both* of you: if ducks commit rape, do insects? How about sea cucumbers? Paramecia illegally conjugating? Bacteria forcefully exchanging RNA? I think our species can do without arguments about complex human social behaviors which draw analogies with the behavior of species that are not even mammalian. Human beings rape because of some set of psychological problems, having to do with beliefs, learned social norms, values, and cultural biases, and the purpose of a rapist is, to the best of current knowledge, to experience a self-affirming power over his victim. Mallard ducks do not have a society even to the extent that Canadian geese do; they do not have social norms which are laboriously learned through a long childhood; they don't tell each other what to do or what not to do; they are mostly hard-wired machines with insufficient flexibility to handle anything not already in the package when they are born; and a male mallard who mates with a female, even if it could be shown that that female was "unwilling" (I don't agree that it can, in fact) is not on a power trip; he IS following a "mixed reproductive strategy". I might be willing to "credit" some higher primates with rape, though. Perhaps we could ask Koko or Lana! This light-hearted anthropomorphizing of behaviors we understand hardly at all so that we can compare them to human behaviors we understand almost less is really bad science. I am aware that the author of the paper on mallards used the term "rape" himself. Maybe it made watching 500 ducks for months on end more exciting. Or maybe he wanted to scare Proxmire off selecting his paper for pointlessness awards. (Proxmire's idea that he is a better judge of significance in research than someone who's read something about the area is another ire of mine, but I'll leave off.) I expect it's a side effect of too much publicity. People want to be able to apply information before it is more than an uninterpreted datum on the board, and they figure *everyone* knows about people, so they draw these airy analogies. And the papers pick them up instantly, and they become popular mythology, the process ending with the conversion of much of society to a belief about the world whose foundation may already have been undone by last month's J. Chem. Soc. Um, was that a (blush) flame? How can I break it to Mom? dsf (dina ansieri)