From: Elizabeth Childs (echilds@linex.com)
Date: Thu Dec 23 1999 - 21:13:41 MST
From: Robert J. Bradbury <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com>
> If aggressiveness gets expressed both sexually and in tribal
> situations, women could become "turned off" towards such males
> and deny them reproductive access. On the other hand, if you
> look at say access to food during ice ages, aggressiveness might
> be a very sought after trait. (I don't think the timid men are
> going to take on the saber toothed tigers or wooly mammoths).
You seem to be assuming that the type of aggressiveness that makes a man a
good hunter also makes him more prone to rape. I'd like to see some
evidence that there is a correlation in the real world. For example, do the
most successful soldiers commit the largest number of rapes? Do pro
athletes really commit more rape per capita, or does it just seem that way?
In my personal experience, I've known quite a few hyperaggressive, "hey guys
let's wrestle/get in a barfight/drink beer/climb that mountain" kind of
guys who would never have harmed a woman or a child. The few people I've
known who were prone to violence towards women were either mentally ill or
complete social outcasts. I can't imagine any of them successfully taking
down a large, snarly animal, especially since hunting large game is a social
enterprise.
But at times, such as during war, rape can become a social enterprise as
well. This strongly implies that tendency to rape is largely social, not
genetic.
Evolutionary theory can be very helpful in understanding modern humans, but
it's grounded in deductive reasoning. It doesn't mean anything unless you
can put it in a context with known facts. I would say that assuming that
there's just one kind of aggressiveness is overly speculative, unless
there's some evidence of it.
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