Is rape behavior an evolutionary adaptation to help men reproduce, or is it simply a byproduct of sex drive? Adaptationists view rape as a result of evolution, while anti-adaptationists view it as a byproduct of sexual desire. They argue that we need to scientifically analyze the causes of this behavior and take preventive measures.
In the book Darwin’s Table by Korean professor Dae-Ik Jang, Cosmidis and Pinker are in the adaptationist camp, arguing that male rape behavior has been directly naturalized over a long evolutionary history. In other words, rape is an adaptive behavior that helps men be more successful in reproduction. The anti-adaptationist camp, on the other hand, argues that rape behavior is a byproduct of sexual desire rather than an adaptation.
I agree with the adaptationist camp that rape is an adaptation. Rape behavior is one of the strategies that gives men many reproductive advantages. It’s not a question of right or wrong, but of increasing the odds of reproductive success. Because of this reproductive advantage, I believe that rape behavior has been passed down through the ages to living humans, and as a result, rape crimes still occur today.
Adaptation means that the form or function of an organism is well suited to its environmental conditions and helps to maintain the individual and the species, or that such characteristics have been established by the evolutionary process. Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest and natural selection is the foundation of modern evolutionary biology. In modern evolutionary biology, adaptation does not mean that an organism adapts to help its species thrive, but rather that certain traits that favor survival and reproduction can be passed on to future generations in greater numbers through genes. Individuals with a trait that favors survival and reproduction are more likely to reproduce than other individuals because of this trait, and are able to pass this trait on to more offspring. After a few generations, the advantage accumulates from generation to generation, until eventually the majority of the population possesses the trait. This is the mechanism of adaptation as described by modern evolutionary biology. This theory of modern evolutionary biology was popularized by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. In his book, Dawkins explains that genes are selfish. He explains that adaptations arise because every gene acts in a selfish way, trying to replicate itself. Even if there is an “altruistic gene” that cares about the replication of other genes rather than its own, it will eventually die out in the next generation if it is unable to replicate itself.
What’s unusual about this adaptation is that it affects males more than females. This is because evolution is also driven by sexual selection. In most hermaphroditic animals, including humans, males produce haploid gametes. Females produce eggs, which are expensive and precious, and males produce sperm, which is a near-infinite resource that can be released by the hundreds of millions at a time. Therefore, in most cases, males compete for females, and females are more selective about their mates. This makes evolution by sexual selection a major influence on the evolution of males. This is illustrated by A.J. Bateman’s work on fruit flies, published in 1948. Fruit fly males seek to mate with as many females as possible, and females only mate with select males. As a result, the variation in male reproductive success is much greater than the variation in female reproductive success. The most successful males left three times as many offspring as the most successful females, while the percentage of individuals that left no offspring was 4% for females and 21% for males. Failure to leave offspring means that the individual’s genes are now extinct. 21% of the males’ genes have evaporated.
If a male who has been pushed out of the mating competition in this way succeeds in mating, say through rape, he can escape the 21% sample. Individuals with the trait that causes rape have a much greater mating advantage over other individuals, even if they have traits that are equally disadvantageous to sexual selection. Therefore, the gene that causes rape has persisted in modern humans. In other words, a mechanism of adaptation has acted on rape behavior.
Anti-adaptationists might argue that A.J. Bateman’s fruit fly study is just as inapplicable to humans as it was to the genitalia of the male underdog. However, unlike the case of the mole, the fruit fly study is not lacking in evidence because the characteristics of the germ cells and the processes of sexual selection that were studied are similarly applicable to humans. In fact, fruit fly studies are often used in evolutionary biology because of their ability to observe multiple generations of traits in a short period of time.
Another counter-argument is that most human legal systems impose strong penalties, such as the death penalty, for rape, and thus hinder the transmission of genes. However, humans haven’t had organized legal systems for very long. Even if you include the Code of Hammurabi from 5,000 BC, it’s less than 5,000 years old. That’s hardly enough time to influence evolution, which happens on a scale of at least tens of thousands of years. Furthermore, of those 5,000 years, there have been far more periods of disorder, such as wars and state collapse, than there have been times when societies were organized under a legal system, so it’s hard to see how these laws could have influenced human evolution.
Anti-adaptationists who argue against the idea that rape behavior is an adaptation cite male-on-male rape, rape of in-laws, and rape of children as examples, arguing that male rape behavior is just violence and learned cultural behavior. The argument is that rape behavior is a byproduct of sexuality, not an adaptation due to natural selection. However, I believe that rape behavior is adaptive, and that the forms of rape cited by anti-adaptationists – male-on-male rape, incest, and child rape – are byproducts of this adaptation. These specialized forms of rape are only a few, and far more often the targets of rape crimes are women of childbearing age. These are very specific cases where the traits of rape behavior have been distorted by various psychological descriptors, such as homosexuality and the Lolita complex. The human consciousness is much more complex than that of animals, which is why it is capable of such specialized behaviors.
Calling rape behavior an adaptation is not an endorsement of rape. No one would commit rape just because it provides a reproductive advantage. As mentioned earlier, organisms don’t do things just because it’s beneficial to their reproduction. Furthermore, conscious human beings do not live their lives to reproduce. In a society where paying women to have babies doesn’t increase the birth rate, no man would commit rape to pass on his genes. However, it is a crime that is happening all around us and should be prevented, so let’s analyze its causes scientifically and try to prevent it. Rape behavior is an adaptation that has been naturally selected for because of its advantages in the reproductive system, and because of these advantages, the gene for rape behavior has been passed down to the present-day human population. However, the gene for rape behavior is also just a substrate, and it can be suppressed by human reason. To do this, we will need to create a complex set of preventive measures in education, social safety nets, and justice to ensure that rape behavior is not a crime in our society.
