{"id":6311,"date":"2012-05-26T18:02:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-26T23:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=6311"},"modified":"2012-12-18T16:21:08","modified_gmt":"2012-12-18T21:21:08","slug":"that-shy-elusive-rape-particle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=6311","title":{"rendered":"That Shy, Elusive Rape Particle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Re-posted modified EvoPsycho Bingo Card — click on image for bigger version]<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the unlovely things that has been happening in Anglophone SF\/F (in line with resurgent religious fundamentalism and erosion of democratic structures in the First World, as well as economic insecurity that always prompts \u201cback to the kitchen\u201d social politics) is the resurrection of unapologetic \u2013 nay, triumphant \u2013 misogyny beyond the already low bar in the genre. The churners of both grittygrotty \u201cepic\u201d fantasy<\/a> and post\/cyberpunk dystopias<\/a> are trying to pass rape-rife pornkitsch as daring works that swim against the tide of rampant feminism and its shrill demands.<\/p>\n

When people explain why such works are problematic, their authors first employ the standard \u201cMe Tarzan You Ape\u201d<\/a> dodges: mothers\/wives get trotted out to vouch for their progressiveness, hysteria and censorship get mentioned. Then they get really serious: as artists of vision and integrity, they cannot but depict women solely as toilet receptacles because 1) that has been the \u201chistorical reality\u201d across cultures and eras and 2) men have rape genes and\/or rape brain modules that arose from natural selection to ensure that dominant males spread their mighty seed as widely as possible. Are we cognitively impaired functionally illiterate feminazis daring to deny (ominous pause) SCIENCE?!<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s one thing to like cocoa puffs. It\u2019s another to insist they are either nutritional powerhouses or haute cuisine. If the hacks who write this stuff were to say \u201cYeah, I write wet fantasies for guys who live in their parents\u2019 basement. I get off doing it, it pays the bills and it has given me a fan base that can drool along with me,\u201d I\u2019d have nothing to say against it, except to advise people above the emotional age of seven not to buy the bilge. However, when they try to argue that their stained wads are deeply philosophical, subversive literature validated by scientific \u201cevidence\u201d, it\u2019s time to point out that they\u2019re talking through their lower digestive opening. Others have done the cleaning service for the argument-from-history. Here I will deal with the argument-from-science.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny how often \u201cscience\u201d gets brandished as a goad or magic wand to maintain the status quo \u2013 or bolster sloppy thinking and confirmation biases. When women were barred from higher education, \u201cscience\u201d was invoked to declare that their small brains would overheat and intellectual stress would shrivel their truly useful organs, their wombs. In our times, pop evopsychos (many of them failed SF authors turned \u201cfuturists\u201d) intone that \u201crecent studies prove\u201d that the natural and\/or ideal human social configuration is a hybrid of a baboon troop and fifties US suburbia. However, if we followed \u201cnatural\u201d paradigms we would not recognize paternity, have multiple sex partners, practice extensive abortion and infanticide and have powerful female alliances that determine the status of our offspring.<\/p>\n

I must acquaint Tarzanists with the no-longer-news that there are no rape genes, rape hormones or rape brain modules. Anyone who says this has been \u201cscientifically proved\u201d has obviously got his science from FOX News or knuckledraggers like Kanazawa (who is an economist, by the way, and would not recognize real biological evidence if it bit him on the gonads). Here\u2019s a variation of the 1986 Seville Statement<\/a> that sums up what I will briefly outline further on. It goes without saying that most of what follows is shorthand and also not GenSci 101.<\/p>\n

It is scientifically (not politically) incorrect to say that:
\n1. we have inherited a tendency to rape from our animal ancestors;
\n2. rape is genetically programmed into our nature;
\n3. in the course of our evolution there has been a positive selection for rape;
\n4. humans brains are wired for rape;
\n5. rape is caused by instinct.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get rid of the tired gene chestnut first. As I\u2019ve discussed elsewhere at length<\/a>, genes do not determine brain wiring or complex behavior (as always in biology, there are a few exceptions: most are major decisions in embryo\/neurogenesis with very large outcomes like Down syndrome, aka trisomy 21). Experiments that purported to find direct links between genes and higher behavior were invariably done in mice (animals that differ decisively from humans)<\/a> and the sweeping conclusions of such studies have always had to be ratcheted down or discarded altogether, although in lower-ranking journals than the original effusions.<\/p>\n

Then we have hormones and the \u201cmale\/female brain dichotomy\u201d pushed by neo-Freudians like Baron-Cohen. They even posit a neat-o split whereby too much \u201cmasculinizing\u201d during brain genesis leads to autism, too much \u201cfeminizing\u201d to schizophrenia. Following eons-old dichotomies, people who theorize thusly shoehorn the two into the left and right brain compartments respectively, assigning a gender to each: females \u201cempathize\u201d, males \u201csystematize\u201d \u2013 until it comes to those intuitive leaps that make for paradigm-changing scientists or other geniuses, whereby these oh-so-radical theorists neatly reverse the tables and both creativity and schizophrenia get shifted to the masculine side of the equation.<\/p>\n

Now although hormones play critical roles in all our functions, it so happens that the cholesterol-based ones that become estrogen, testosterone, etc are two among several hundred that affect us. What is most important is not the absolute amount of a hormone, but its ratios to others and to body weight, as well as the sensitivity of receptors to it. People generally do not behave aberrantly if they don\u2019t have the \u201cright\u201d amount of a sex hormone (which varies significantly from person to person), but if there is a sudden large change to their homeostasis \u2013 whether this is crash menopause from ovariectomy, post-partum depression or heavy doses of anabolic steroids for body building.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, as is the case with gene-behavior correlation, much work on hormones has been done in mice. When similar work is done with primates (such as testosterone or estrogen injections at various points during fetal or postnatal development), the hormones have essentially no effect on behavior. Conversely, very young human babies lack gender-specific responses before their parents start to socialize them. As well, primates show widely different \u201ccultures\u201d within each species in terms of gender behavior, including care of infants by high-status males. It looks increasingly like \u201csex\u201d hormones do not wire rigid femininity or masculinity, and they most certainly don\u2019t wire propensity to rape; instead, they seem to prime individuals to adopt the habits of their surrounding culture \u2013 a far more adaptive configuration than the popsci model of \u201cwomen from Venus, men from Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n

So on to brain modularity, today\u2019s phrenology. While it is true that there are some localized brain functions (the processing of language being a prominent example), most brain functions are diffuse, the higher executive ones particularly so \u2013 and each brain is wired slightly differently, dependent on the myriad details of its context across time and place. Last but not least, our brains are plastic (otherwise we would not form new memories, nor be able to acquire new functions), though the windows of flexibility differ across scales and in space and time.<\/p>\n

The concept of brain modularity comes partly from the enormously overused and almost entirely incorrect equivalence of the human brain to a computer<\/a>. Another problem lies in the definition of a module, which varies widely and as a result is prone to abuse by people who get their knowledge of science from new-age libertarian tracts. There is essentially zero evidence of the \u201cstrong\u201d version of brain modules, and modular organization at the level of genes, cells or organ compartments does not guarantee a modular behavioral outcome. But even if we take it at face value, it is clear that rape does not adhere to the criteria of either the \u201cweak\u201d (Fodor) or \u201cstrong (Carruthers) version for such an entity: it does not fulfill the requirements of domain specificity, fast processing, fixed neural architecture, mandatoriness or central inaccessibility.<\/p>\n

In the behavioral domain, rape is not an adaptive feature: most of it is non-reproductive, visited upon pre-pubescent girls, post-menopausal women and other men. Moreover, rape does not belong to the instinctive \u201ccan\u2019t help myself\u201d reflexes grouped under the Four Fs. Rape does not occur spontaneously: it is usually planned with meticulous preparation and it requires concentration and focus to initiate and complete. So rape has nothing to do with reproductive maxima for \u201calpha males\u201d (who don\u2019t exist biologically in humans) \u2013 but it may have to do with the revenge of aggrieved men who consider access to women an automatic right.<\/p>\n

What is undeniable is that humans are extremely social and bend themselves to fit context norms. This ties to Arendt\u2019s banality of evil and Niem\u00f6ller\u2019s trenchant observations about solidarity \u2013 and to the outcomes of Milgram and Zimbardo\u2019s notorious experiments which have been multiply mirrored in real history, with the events in the Abu Ghraib prison prominent among them. So if rape is tolerated or used as a method for compliance, it is no surprise that it is a prominent weapon in the arsenal of keeping women \u201cin their place\u201d and also no surprise that its apologists aspire to give it the status of indisputably hardwired instinct.<\/p>\n

Given the steep power asymmetry between the genders ever since the dominance of agriculture led to women losing mobility, gathering skills and control over pregnancies, it is not hard to see rape as the cultural artifact that it is. It\u2019s not a sexual response; it\u2019s a blunt assertion of rank in contexts where dominance is a major metric: traditional patriarchal families, whether monogamous or polygynous; religions and cults (most of which are extended patriarchal families); armies and prisons; tribal vendettas and initiations.<\/p>\n

So if gratuitous depictions of graphic rape excite a writer, that is their prerogative. If they get paid for it, bully for them. But it doesn\u2019t make their work \u201cedgy\u201d literature; it remains cheap titillation that attempts to cloak arrant failures of talent, imagination and just plain scholarship. Insofar as such work has combined sex and violence porn as its foundation, it should be classified accordingly. Mythologies, including core religious texts, show rape in all its variations: there is nothing novel or subversive about contemporary exudations. In my opinion, nobody needs to write yet another hack work that \u201cinterrogates\u201d misogyny by positing rape and inherent, immutable female inferiority as natural givens \u2013 particularly not white Anglo men who lead comfortable lives that lack any knowledge to justify such a narrative. The fact that people with such views are over-represented in SF\/F is toxic for the genre.<\/p>\n

Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n

A brief overview of the modularity of the brain\/mind<\/a>
\nAthena Andreadis (2010). The Tempting Illusion of Genetic Virtue. Politics Life Sci. 29:76-80
\nSarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding<\/em>
\nAnne Fausto-Sterling, Sex\/Gender: Biology in a Social World<\/em>
\nCordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender<\/em>
\nAlison Jolly, Lucy’s Legacy: Sex and Intelligence in Human Evolution<\/em>
\nRebecca Jordan-Young, Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences<\/em>
\nKevin Laland and Gillian Brown, Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour<\/em>
\nEdouard Machery and Kara Cohen (2012). An Evidence-Based Study of the Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. Brit J Philos Sci 263: 177-226<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Re-posted modified EvoPsycho Bingo Card — click on image for bigger version] One of the unlovely things that has been happening in Anglophone SF\/F (in line with resurgent religious fundamentalism and erosion of democratic structures in the First World, as well as economic insecurity that always prompts \u201cback to the kitchen\u201d social politics) is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology-and-culture","category-science","category-science-fiction","category-writing-and-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}