April 13, 2015
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They dare not blink for a moment to ponder that there may be biological explanations compelling certain men to commit sexual assault. They have no problem conceding that men rather than women commit nearly all such acts, but again, they”ll blame this on guy culture rather than guy genes or guy hormones.
There’s a reason they scamper away like scared bunnies from biological explanations for the distasteful natural phenomena that haunt their dreams. Like so many of their ilk, they are frightened to admit certain obvious facts due to the “naturalistic fallacy””i.e., the idea that since something is natural, this implies it is automatically good. They can”t distinguish between an explanation and a justification. The former is rational; the latter is emotional. But at any given moment, it appears that 95% of the world’s simpletons can”t make that basic distinction.
If one claims that men are able to rape women due to natural advantages in physical strength, that doesn”t imply it’s a good thing. It only implies that if you”re a woman who wants to avoid being raped, you”d waste less time studying martial arts or buying a gun than you would reading Andrea Dworkin and blaming it all on the patriarchy.
About two decades ago I read a study suggesting that many sex offenders legitimately and honestly misinterpret signs of resistance as sexual playfulness and teasing. This opened the possibility that rapists and child molesters may be neurologically delusional rather than the default pseudo-explanation, which is that they are “evil.” In short, it suggested that the source of their behavior may be at least partially biological rather than entirely metaphysical.
“Sociobiological theories of rape“ postulate that rape is impelled mainly by biological drives rather than social pressures. In this framework, rape is understood as a last-ditch mating strategy for losers and stragglers in the bloody and deadly competition to find mates. This may or may not be true, but it at least sounds more plausible than blaming it on pornography, video games, or men’s rights forums. Then again, activists and fanatics rarely concern themselves with plausibility. But you can”t fight what you don’t understand. It’s grimly ironic that in a purely tactical way, rape makes far more sense than those who poke around in the dark seeking to eliminate it.
