The movie City of Blind Men discusses whether rape is part of human evolution or an adaptation to the environment. Violence and rape increase in lawless areas where there is no law and order, leading to the hypothesis that rape may be an instinct hardwired into our genes. However, it is not yet clear whether rape is an adaptation or not, and emphasizes that the presence of law is an important factor in deterring rape.
The plot of the movie Blindness goes like this. An ophthalmologist and his wife are peacefully starting their day when the ophthalmologist’s eyes suddenly go blind. It’s not known where it started or from whom, but the virus spreads rapidly, and the government decides to quarantine the blind. The ophthalmologist’s wife heads to the camp to help her husband, even though she is not blind herself. Over time, the camp begins to turn into a lawless zone, with filth and garbage littering the grounds due to the presence of only blind people. Government support gradually dwindles, and the camps become overcrowded. Shame disappears because no one can see, and people defecate anywhere, unable to wash. Then a group of men monopolizes the government’s rations, and a gun-toting man who calls himself the king becomes the leader of the group. He makes it a rule that women must pay a sexual price to receive the rations. At the end of the movie, the blind protagonist, an ophthalmologist’s wife, eventually kills the leader and escapes the camp with her husband and a group of good men.
I bring up this movie in the context of “Is rape an adaptation?” because it starkly illustrates the impact of environment on adaptation. Before discussing whether rape is an adaptation, we need to think about the concepts of adaptation and evolution and the concept of rape. Adaptation and evolution can be thought of as the process by which individuals that are adapted to their environment survive, become more numerous, and produce offspring with traits that are adapted to their environment, leading to the evolution of the species. As in the movie above, if the environment is favorable for survival and reproduction through rape, then the mechanisms in our genes that drive rape will be triggered and rape will occur.
Anti-adaptationists will criticize the claim that rape is an adaptation, citing the current decline in rape rates as an example. In fact, rape rates in the United States have been on a dramatic downward trend for 30 years since 1973. This might lead to the argument that if rape is an adaptation, then the number of individuals practicing it should be increasing, which would explain why it’s decreasing. However, this argument is flawed.
An important point to consider in criticizing the anti-adaptationist argument is that the human environment is not fixed. Humans can induce changes in their environment through reason. In the past, in primitive times, especially before the concept of law, physical force ruled everything. Just like in the world of lions and tigers, the strongest male was king, and he did whatever he wanted without consequences. This situation is not limited to primitive times. Even now, if governments collapse and law and order breaks down, the genes from the caveman past will kick in and violence and anarchy will reign. Robbers will walk into any store and steal, mobs will kill anyone who doesn’t meet their standards, and rape will be rampant. In other words, in a lawless world, the violent and strong have a better chance of survival, so they will adapt and evolve to be violent and strong.
This is where the difference between humans and animals comes in. Instead of relying solely on adaptation and evolution, humans use reason to create a system of law and order, which means that they have the ability to change their environment to change the direction of human adaptation. Laws were established to prohibit the strong from oppressing the weak through violence, and to let them know that they would suffer greater harm if they did so. Humans are adaptive creatures, so when laws were created and people learned that violence would cause them more harm, they adapted to not use violence. This is because humans have adapted and evolved to avoid doing an action if the harm from that action is greater than the benefit. Humans who continued to engage in the behavior even though the benefits outweighed the harms would eventually suffer great losses, making it difficult to increase their population.
An anti-adaptationist might criticize the above argument, saying that if rape is an adaptation without laws, and rape is not an adaptation with laws, then it cannot be concluded that rape is an adaptation. If rape is or isn’t an adaptation depending on the situation and environment, then we can’t say for sure that rape is an adaptation that is imprinted in our genes. To refute this, we can hypothesize the existence of a “rape control module”. The rape regulatory module is the idea that humans have a mechanism built into our genes that allows us to evaluate the surrounding conditions before committing rape in a given situation, and then, if we decide that rape is possible, we execute it. In other words, laws have reduced the rate of rape by raising the threshold of the rape regulatory module in our genes, not because the genes that drive rape are absent.
In fact, until the genetic map is complete and it is medically proven that there is a gene in our bodies that triggers rape in certain situations, the discussion of whether rape is an adaptation or not will remain a hypothesis based on assumptions and speculation. There is no denying that rape is a socially reprehensible behavior and a very serious felony. This discussion is not intended to defend rape, but rather to argue that rape is an adaptation, which leads to the conclusion that rape is an adaptation, and that rape prevention should be addressed through institutional improvements such as increased social punishment.
