Does rape increase the possibility of conception?

[Mayabird]

True, a man can be in a relationship AND rape - kind of covering both tactics at the same time.

However, the idea that there is some sort of imperative for WOMEN to be raped is bullshit. That's a MALE strategy for reproduction, not a female one. Certainly among mammals, females are either choosy (to one degree or another) or else they take all comers which is NOT rape but rather being in a promiscuous form of heat. In both cases, the female is not being fucked against her will.

Among ducks, rape actually does occur at a high frequency. Because of that, an arms race of sorts has evolved where female reproductive systems have become more and more elaborate to prevent the rapist males from fertilizing their eggs. The males have been evolving increasingly elaborate penises as well to try to get past the defenses.
First link I found on it.

So yeah, nature via evolution says Broomstick is right. Not a female imperative.

[Junghalli]

The only possible way I can see a Rape having an increased chance of conception is one a by the numbers basis <snip>

Curiously, if I read that article linked to at the beginning of the thread right, the correlation is seen even between rape victims and women who are trying to get pregnant, so assuming the study is correct there is apparently something more going on.

I'd be more likely to write it up to rapists going for females that look healthy and attractive (i.e. fertile) or being drawn to subconscious cues ovulating females put out than an actual biological imperatives of females to be raped. That simply makes no evolutionary sense as far as I can see. Rape is a male countermeasure to the female's sexual selectivity, which serves the biological function of maximizing the chances of her offspring having good genes (rather important with creatures like humans, where a child represents an investment of several years for the female). Rape occurs precisely because it is in the female's biological interest to be selective in her mates and reject some, otherwise there would be no need for the male to do it.

Err, and if the female is choosy, rejects a male, but that male incapacitates her or injures her enough that she can't fight back, and proceeds to mate with her anyway, what exactly do you call that? Just because it's not an evolutionary strategy that the female does deliberately, doesn't mean that it can't get propagated.

As I said, that's a male countermeasure to a female selective reproductive strategy. From the female's perspective it's against her reproductive interests because she'd rather have that genetic material of that better mate over there.

[Broomstick]

True, a man can be in a relationship AND rape - kind of covering both tactics at the same time.

However, the idea that there is some sort of imperative for WOMEN to be raped is bullshit. That's a MALE strategy for reproduction, not a female one. Certainly among mammals, females are either choosy (to one degree or another) or else they take all comers which is NOT rape but rather being in a promiscuous form of heat. In both cases, the female is not being fucked against her will.

Err, and if the female is choosy, rejects a male, but that male incapacitates her or injures her enough that she can't fight back, and proceeds to mate with her anyway, what exactly do you call that? Just because it's not an evolutionary strategy that the female does deliberately, doesn't mean that it can't get propagated.

I'm not saying this hypothesis is right, I'm just saying that it's not outside the realm of possibility.

No one is saying it's outside the realm of possibility, but while the rape happens to the female it is instigated by the male. It is a male strategy and will be propagated when male interests win out over female interests. However, evolution will NOT favor females developing a strategy where such happenings are favored by the females. When female interests win out rape does not occur or is very rare, discouraged, and so forth.

[Junghalli]

I get the feeling the people who made that "female biological imperative" argument were working from the nineteenth century concept that females need agressive males to force them to reach their reproductive potential by pressuring them for sex and and left to their own devices they'd have fewer or no offspring and hence be less successful. It makes a certain degree of sense if you have a rather shallow understanding of how evolution works, so you think in nature huge brood = automatic win and don't realize that sexual selectivity represents a perfectly viable alternate success strategy - one based on making your descendants more likely to survive and have descendants themselves, vs. the spam-and-pray strategy that males are more optimized to follow.

[Terralthra]

Err, and if the female is choosy, rejects a male, but that male incapacitates her or injures her enough that she can't fight back, and proceeds to mate with her anyway, what exactly do you call that? Just because it's not an evolutionary strategy that the female does deliberately, doesn't mean that it can't get propagated.

As I said, that's a male countermeasure to a female selective reproductive strategy. From the female's perspective it's against her reproductive interests because she'd rather have that genetic material of that better mate over there.

Yes, it is a male countermeasure. And if it's relatively successful for the males and becomes widespread, which females are going to pass their genes on to more offspring, the ones who are fertile when raped, or the ones who aren't?

[Broomstick]

For most mammals, rape only occurs during the breeding season, when all females are fertile, so that is irrelevant. There is no sorting between fertile and non-fertile females under those circumstances.

With humans, although we're sexually active all the time there's only 2-3 days, at most, out of 28-30 when females are fertile, and those days aren't obvious. The odds of a rapist hitting those days is pretty low. While there MIGHT be some subtle cue that a woman is fertile, it's so damn subtle we still haven't found it yet - unless you're proposing rapists are going around with thermometers to check women's body temperature and carefully evaluating their vaginal mucus prior to penetration.

Humans are not a species where intercourse triggers ovulation.

Therefore, considering he above, I fail to see how a circumstance could arise where women who are either easily raped, or willing to be raped, would be favored by evolution.

[The Vortex Empire]

True, a man can be in a relationship AND rape - kind of covering both tactics at the same time.

However, the idea that there is some sort of imperative for WOMEN to be raped is bullshit. That's a MALE strategy for reproduction, not a female one. Certainly among mammals, females are either choosy (to one degree or another) or else they take all comers which is NOT rape but rather being in a promiscuous form of heat. In both cases, the female is not being fucked against her will.

Among ducks, rape actually does occur at a high frequency. Because of that, an arms race of sorts has evolved where female reproductive systems have become more and more elaborate to prevent the rapist males from fertilizing their eggs. The males have been evolving increasingly elaborate penises as well to try to get past the defenses.
First link I found on it.

So yeah, nature via evolution says Broomstick is right. Not a female imperative.

That sounds potentially bad for the species.

[Junghalli]

Arguably the ones who are less likely to get pregnant by rape should be the winners. Remember, the whole idea of selectivity is you want good genes. If you're female once you're pregnant you're invested in that offspring for a long time, so you want to make sure it has the highest possible chance for survival and reproduction of itself. If you get pregnant by an inferior male your chances of successfully reproducing are decreased over your chances if you mate with and get pregnant by the superior male over there. So if anything one should expect a push toward conception being more likely to happen if the sex is consentual.

You actually do see this with species where "genital arms races" have started between males and females, like ducks (as Mayabird mentioned). The females evolve weird reproductive anatomy to make it harder for males to successfully impregnate them without their cooperation.

[Vain]

Rape as a reproductive strategy is not uncommon in primates in particular. In orangutans, for example, large effective males who can hold territory wait for females to come to them. Smaller males who aren't as good at holding territory instead adhere to a sort of 'ambush and rape' strategy for reproduction. It is my understanding that the two strategies are about equally effective.

This is a touchy subject, of course, and I am speaking only from a biological perspective.

[Stark]

Yeah, and we're designed to violently defeat challengers to mating partners as well. That has exactly zero cultural relevance now, like all kinds of baggage we have from our ancestry.

[Adrian Laguna]

That sounds potentially bad for the species.

Because you didn't read the article. If the female duck is relaxed, ie willing, then they have no problem having their eggs fertilized.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

This also goes to Duchess's post, who bases her entire post on the idea that this would've been evolved out because of modern monogamous relationships. Guess what, monogamous relationships have been the norm for humans for a very very short time, evolutionarily speaking.

Monogamy was not mandated, but is a fairly inevitable result of the gender ratio, of course, so monogamy was fairly common even a long time ago, since competition for mates tended to shake its way down to one on one relationships inevitably due to simple statistics. Serial monogamy, certainly, in a time before marriage customs--but that still encourages males to at least spend the time to seduce a woman and continue to have regular sex with her until she is pregnant, and only then move on.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Yeah, and we're designed to violently defeat challengers to mating partners as well. That has exactly zero cultural relevance now, like all kinds of baggage we have from our ancestry.

It shouldn't, at least not to anyone with a conscience, but there are entire subsets of the population whose unifying culture is more crude and rustic. It might not be to the point where rape is common and expected, but it does mean that an alarming chunk of the population are little more than hairless apes with access to a lot of gadgets they didn't commit one iota of work to achieve.

[Broomstick]

This also goes to Duchess's post, who bases her entire post on the idea that this would've been evolved out because of modern monogamous relationships. Guess what, monogamous relationships have been the norm for humans for a very very short time, evolutionarily speaking.

A debatable point. In the societies that are believed to most closely resemble those of our remote ancestors - the low-tech stone-age gatherer-hunters - while monogamy is not mandated and certain extremely successful men do have more than one mate at a time, the vast majority of people are in monogamous relationships simply because very few men are capable of providing resources to more than one woman and her offspring at a time. In fact, the offspring are typically supported not only by their direct parents but also by grandparents in a supplemental role, and often with contributions by other relatives on an occasional basis.

Raising human children has always been expensive, in effort and time if not cash. The fact that men will occasionally rape or have one-night stands or affairs or mistresses does not erase the fact that the children whose fathers contribute most to their upbringing tend to fair best. Spreading the sperm around little costs a man almost nothing, but throughout history men have almost always favored the children of their primary mate.

If rape is such a great strategy for men, ask yourself why they bother to have consensual affairs or seek willing partners for short-term relationships. The extra effort is, I believe, for two reasons - first, to avoid possible injury arising from a rape situation, and second, so that the woman is more likely to care for any resulting offspring even if he isn't planning to be around.

[Lord of the Abyss]

In my opinion it would'nt make much sense from an evolutionary point of view, after all, the womans ability to select a fitting partner is what drives a lot of things forward.

The arguments I've heard are that :

1 : From a purely Darwinian point of view, her genes are just as happy if they get spread by a son who's an effective rapist, as by one that's a good husband. Always remember that to your genes, you are an expendable tool.

2 : No, according to this theory women don't "want to be raped"; if they did, they wouldn't be evolutionarily selecting for effective rapists. In fact, they are supposed to absolutely hate it, which they do of course. They are supposed to fight back, but not lethally.

3 : And, according to this theory, women's subconscious instincts will manipulate them into misjudgements that increase the likelihood of being raped.

4 : And you would expect rape victims to be more fertile, since their bodies are trying to get pregnant even if that's the last thing they personally want.

So, whether it's true or not, it's plausible enough in Darwinian terms. The reason people freak out is because so many insist on pretending natural and good are the same.

The problem with all of these arguments is that, as a general rule, rapists don't make good fathers. They tend to rape and move on, if they are from outside the tribal group there's a good chance the other adults of the community will kill the resulting child, even if the child is not killed "halfbreeds" historically do not do as well in society as "fullbloods", and the strategy of "fuck as many females as possible" leaves any paternal efforts towards the children spread rather thin. There is also the possibility that the raped woman will be rejected and/or killed by her community (we see that even today in "honor killings" and wartime rape) either before the child is born or shortly thereafter, leaving an orphan who is at an even greater disadvantage that a child being raised by at least one parent. Since, throughout most of history, fatherless children were far more likely to die young and at far greater disadvantage than children who's father gave greater support to offspring I'm not sure that this "rape to reproduce" strategy is at all advantageous. After all, it's not how many infants the man manages to sire, it's how many of those infants grow up and have children of their own that counts in Darwinian terms.

Thing is, historically a lot of men simply had little access to women at all, much less the opportunity to be a good father. Evolutionarily, if the only chance to breed a male got was grabbing some unprotected woman, then doing so made sense. And a lot of the negative consequences are, evolutionarily speaking, pretty recent, as Terralthra pointed out. For example, pre-language, you probably didn't need to worry much about the vengeance of relatives unless they were right there.

However, the idea that there is some sort of imperative for WOMEN to be raped is bullshit. That's a MALE strategy for reproduction, not a female one

You forget that her sons will have half her genes; therefore, a successful male strategy is also to her Darwinian advantage. The female-oriented strategies will have a stronger influence of course, but the success or failure of particular male strategies will have an effect too.

If rape is such a great strategy for men, ask yourself why they bother to have consensual affairs or seek willing partners for short-term relationships. The extra effort is, I believe, for two reasons - first, to avoid possible injury arising from a rape situation, and second, so that the woman is more likely to care for any resulting offspring even if he isn't planning to be around.

Because there is no one perfect strategy. Seduction only works if you have time (which you won't have in a raid on another village, say ), or are good at it - an argument that I forgot to add is that rape makes sense as a tactic of ( genetic ) desperation. If a male's chance of attracting a mate or seducing someone else's are near zero, then rape is the only likely method of leaving offspring.

[Broomstick]

True, rape as a desparate tactic makes sense, but it's one the female will NOT want because that means inferior genes in her offspring.

Females are NOT doomed to put up with whatever males deposit in their wombs - infanticide and abandonment occur in pretty much all species. Historically, woman have elected to abort, abandon, or kill unwanted offspring, and one of the most common exceptions to anti-abortion sentiments is in the case of incest or rape - it makes more sense for a female to abandon or kill a child with inferior genetics than to invest a great of time and energy into it, particularly if she has access to males with better genetics. Which they usually do.

Therefore, while I can understand this as a male reproductive strategy (particularly among males with little to lose and much to gain) I still can not see how, in any way, females would be under Darwinian pressure to do anything other than develop ways to either avoid rape, or to prevent unwanted conception from it so as to allow conception by males they do prefer.

[Terralthra]

This also goes to Duchess's post, who bases her entire post on the idea that this would've been evolved out because of modern monogamous relationships. Guess what, monogamous relationships have been the norm for humans for a very very short time, evolutionarily speaking.

A debatable point. In the societies that are believed to most closely resemble those of our remote ancestors - the low-tech stone-age gatherer-hunters - while monogamy is not mandated and certain extremely successful men do have more than one mate at a time, the vast majority of people are in monogamous relationships simply because very few men are capable of providing resources to more than one woman and her offspring at a time. In fact, the offspring are typically supported not only by their direct parents but also by grandparents in a supplemental role, and often with contributions by other relatives on an occasional basis.

Raising human children has always been expensive, in effort and time if not cash. The fact that men will occasionally rape or have one-night stands or affairs or mistresses does not erase the fact that the children whose fathers contribute most to their upbringing tend to fair best. Spreading the sperm around little costs a man almost nothing, but throughout history men have almost always favored the children of their primary mate.

If rape is such a great strategy for men, ask yourself why they bother to have consensual affairs or seek willing partners for short-term relationships. The extra effort is, I believe, for two reasons - first, to avoid possible injury arising from a rape situation, and second, so that the woman is more likely to care for any resulting offspring even if he isn't planning to be around.

Hunter-gatherer societies such as homo habilis et al. are still only 2 million years old or so. That's less than 1/50th of the time mammals have been around on the planet, let alone the creatures mammals evolved from. You're still approaching this as a modern development, when I've been saying from the beginning that this, if true, is very old, evolutionarily, and just hasn't been bred out.

The relative frequency of sexual activity for males who rape vs. males who have serious and long-term relations is only relevant in a situation in which some males have serious long-term relationships within a social structure. If all males attempt to force sexual reproduction on any female they come across at any time as their strategy for maximizing gene spread, then females whose genes influence fertility to be increased in a rape situation will pass those genes on.

The idea that this would be bad for natural selection because the female 'wouldn't get to pick her preferred mate' is sophistic nonsense. This isn't bad for natural selection, this is a different set of selection criteria, one which favors males who are strong, fast, cunning, horny all the time, and tend towards ruthlessness, and females who either do not resist, or those who are resilient to physical damage.

[Broomstick]

This also goes to Duchess's post, who bases her entire post on the idea that this would've been evolved out because of modern monogamous relationships. Guess what, monogamous relationships have been the norm for humans for a very very short time, evolutionarily speaking.

A debatable point. In the societies that are believed to most closely resemble those of our remote ancestors - the low-tech stone-age gatherer-hunters - while monogamy is not mandated and certain extremely successful men do have more than one mate at a time, the vast majority of people are in monogamous relationships simply because very few men are capable of providing resources to more than one woman and her offspring at a time. In fact, the offspring are typically supported not only by their direct parents but also by grandparents in a supplemental role, and often with contributions by other relatives on an occasional basis.

Raising human children has always been expensive, in effort and time if not cash. The fact that men will occasionally rape or have one-night stands or affairs or mistresses does not erase the fact that the children whose fathers contribute most to their upbringing tend to fair best. Spreading the sperm around little costs a man almost nothing, but throughout history men have almost always favored the children of their primary mate.

If rape is such a great strategy for men, ask yourself why they bother to have consensual affairs or seek willing partners for short-term relationships. The extra effort is, I believe, for two reasons - first, to avoid possible injury arising from a rape situation, and second, so that the woman is more likely to care for any resulting offspring even if he isn't planning to be around.

Hunter-gatherer societies such as homo habilis et al. are still only 2 million years old or so.

Excuse me? Are we discussing human beings or primates in general? Or mammals? Or eukaryotes?

You're still approaching this as a modern development, when I've been saying from the beginning that this, if true, is very old, evolutionarily, and just hasn't been bred out.

Please back up that claim.

How long would it take to either breed in or breed out such a trait? Doesn't the amount of parental care involved in raising the young factor into it?

The relative frequency of sexual activity for males who rape vs. males who have serious and long-term relations is only relevant in a situation in which some males have serious long-term relationships within a social structure.

You mean, in a species like, say, homo sapiens where the breeding population is composed of social adults that tend to form long-term bonds during those reproductive years? You mean in a species like H. sapiens where commonly BOTH parents provide food and protection to the young?

If all males attempt to force sexual reproduction on any female they come across at any time as their strategy for maximizing gene spread, then females whose genes influence fertility to be increased in a rape situation will pass those genes on.

But that is not, and never has been, the case with OUR species.

The idea that this would be bad for natural selection because the female 'wouldn't get to pick her preferred mate' is sophistic nonsense. This isn't bad for natural selection, this is a different set of selection criteria, one which favors males who are strong, fast, cunning, horny all the time, and tend towards ruthlessness, and females who either do not resist, or those who are resilient to physical damage.

And yet, adult male H. sapiens are weaker and slower than the other "great ape" adult males - hell, they're weaker than the other great ape females!. And no human society is as promiscuous as chimps, much less bonoboes.

We ARE smarter - but it seems to me that just makes it more likely the mother will be able to reason out whether or not the father is acceptable in her eyes and, if not, come up with a way of disposing of the undesirable result of such a rape.

I did not make a value judgment about rape as a reproductive strategy - I just stated that I couldn't see how it could become a significant enough or common enough successful strategy to affect conception rates through Darwinian means. In many species, including ours, females do not have to passively accept everything done to them by males, they can act as their own agents with their own agendas.

Just because most or all other mammals species do something doesn't mean WE do - as just one example, we're the only mammals species that uses bipedal locomotion by default, and you certainly can't argue that there hasn't been time to "breed out" quadrapedalism during our short existence because obviously we have done it. Primates exhibit a variety of reproductive strategies (mating through childrearing) and thus I can't see where you can argue that any of them are particularly hardwired into our genes to the point that they can't be changed in a million years or so.

[Alyrium Denryle]

This also goes to Duchess's post, who bases her entire post on the idea that this would've been evolved out because of modern monogamous relationships. Guess what, monogamous relationships have been the norm for humans for a very very short time, evolutionarily speaking.

Monogamy was not mandated, but is a fairly inevitable result of the gender ratio, of course, so monogamy was fairly common even a long time ago, since competition for mates tended to shake its way down to one on one relationships inevitably due to simple statistics. Serial monogamy, certainly, in a time before marriage customs--but that still encourages males to at least spend the time to seduce a woman and continue to have regular sex with her until she is pregnant, and only then move on.

Actually the mating system used has as much to do with resource distribution, division of labor, and power differences as it does the sex ratio.

Therefore, while I can understand this as a male reproductive strategy (particularly among males with little to lose and much to gain) I still can not see how, in any way, females would be under Darwinian pressure to do anything other than develop ways to either avoid rape, or to prevent unwanted conception from it so as to allow conception by males they do prefer.

This is true. However there is a lot of cultural evolution and evolutionary inertia going on here. An individual female does not have the ability to really fight off a rapist (lets assume both are unarmed here, as weapons complicate things) As a result she must rely on the group for protection from or to punish the rapist. However, there is a problem. Several actually depending on what level of selection we look at.

Within-Group Selection
She has to rely on males for protection. Males who are incentivized to rape her. A lot of people are making the mistake in this thread of assuming that rape is obligate. An individual is either normal or a rapist. However what we see in The Nature is that in humans rape is facultative and opportunistic. A male who is still mating and reproducing plenty on the side at a high investment, will still cheat,. and rape, in order to maximize his fitness and increase his reproductive output. There is a silver lining, and that is that the males might be sufficiently pissed off that HE was not the one mating with her(with or without consent) that he will "socially police" the rapist, or if he was mating with her, now has to deal with paternal uncertainty. The drawback here is that if they do this they end up punishing themselves with their own social norms against rape. So the males, who tend to have most of the power, influence norms such that they minimize the victim of rape, and can excuse doing nothing, or punishing her. This is the probable evolution of rape myths.

What happens is that there becomes an optimum level of socially permissible rape in a society... Provided it is not violent rape, it gets excused, at least in western cultures. By way of example, it is still largely acceptable to have sex with someone when they are passed out drunk or otherwise incapacitated.

Now, females are fighting back to optimize their in-group reproductive success via proper mate selection and have made strides to change rape-permissive social norms.

All of that is strictly within a group. I have not yet addressed Battle-Rape, which falls under between-group competition which provides a lot of the selective pressures that help keep the optimal level of rape within groups down.

As for whether rape increases the per-mating likelihood of pregnancy... the peer reviewed literature ends up saying Yes.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I just stated that I couldn't see how it could become a significant enough or common enough successful strategy to affect conception rates through Darwinian means.

It does not have to be very successful to be maintained if the cost is sufficiently low.

[Terralthra]

Excuse me? Are we discussing human beings or primates in general? Or mammals? Or eukaryotes?

Human beings are primates, and mammals, and eukaryotes. You can't just pretend that once we became homo sapiens, we just lost all the evolutionary history leading up to that point. However, since that seems to be what you're absolutely bent on doing, I can understand why my continuing to bring it up might annoy you.

You're still approaching this as a modern development, when I've been saying from the beginning that this, if true, is very old, evolutionarily, and just hasn't been bred out.

Please back up that claim.

How long would it take to either breed in or breed out such a trait? Doesn't the amount of parental care involved in raising the young factor into it?

Breeding traits out requires they be detrimental. Potential increased fertility under a situation of forced mating does not qualify. Breeding it out might take as little as a generation, if it were to exist and be actively selected against.

The relative frequency of sexual activity for males who rape vs. males who have serious and long-term relations is only relevant in a situation in which some males have serious long-term relationships within a social structure.

You mean, in a species like, say, homo sapiens where the breeding population is composed of social adults that tend to form long-term bonds during those reproductive years? You mean in a species like H. sapiens where commonly BOTH parents provide food and protection to the young?

More "we're humans, we aren't animals!" bullshit. Yes, we are humans. We haven't always been. This would scarcely be the only neurological holdover from an earlier epoch in our evolutionary history. Why does this particular one offend you more than, say, goosebumps?

If all males attempt to force sexual reproduction on any female they come across at any time as their strategy for maximizing gene spread, then females whose genes influence fertility to be increased in a rape situation will pass those genes on.

But that is not, and never has been, the case with OUR species.

Yes, I'm sure you've been around for the entire evolutionary history of our species. Coming up on your 500 millionth birthday soon? Once again, you can't pretend that once we became homo sapiens, all the things that were selected for or against in our precursors stopped existing.

The idea that this would be bad for natural selection because the female 'wouldn't get to pick her preferred mate' is sophistic nonsense. This isn't bad for natural selection, this is a different set of selection criteria, one which favors males who are strong, fast, cunning, horny all the time, and tend towards ruthlessness, and females who either do not resist, or those who are resilient to physical damage.

And yet, adult male H. sapiens are weaker and slower than the other "great ape" adult males - hell, they're weaker than the other great ape females!. And no human society is as promiscuous as chimps, much less bonoboes.

And yet, adult male h. sapiens are stronger and faster than adult female h. sapiens, which is what I actually said. We're not as strong or as fast as sharks, either, but that similarly does not actually address what I said.

Worth pointing out that in many bird species, for example, the female is the larger one.

We ARE smarter - but it seems to me that just makes it more likely the mother will be able to reason out whether or not the father is acceptable in her eyes and, if not, come up with a way of disposing of the undesirable result of such a rape.

And yet, many mothers even today do not 'dispose of the undesirable result of such a rape.' Interesting.

I did not make a value judgment about rape as a reproductive strategy - I just stated that I couldn't see how it could become a significant enough or common enough successful strategy to affect conception rates through Darwinian means. In many species, including ours, females do not have to passively accept everything done to them by males, they can act as their own agents with their own agendas.

It really doesn't matter if you can see how it would become significant. If there really is the correlation that the article in the OP proposes, then obviously it did become significant at some point in the past, regardless of your personal incredulity. And regardless of how much you'd really like us to not be descended from animals, we are, and unless a neurologoic characteristic becomes actively selected against, it's not going to just go away spontaneously, even if females possess agency (which I have never disputed).

Just because most or all other mammals species do something doesn't mean WE do - as just one example, we're the only mammals species that uses bipedal locomotion by default, and you certainly can't argue that there hasn't been time to "breed out" quadrapedalism during our short existence because obviously we have done it. Primates exhibit a variety of reproductive strategies (mating through childrearing) and thus I can't see where you can argue that any of them are particularly hardwired into our genes to the point that they can't be changed in a million years or so.

Ah, but we haven't successfully bred out quadrapedalism completely, because our bipedalism causes all sorts of problems for us. Our spines and hips and shoulders are still partially adapted for our quadrapedal past, resulting in any number of chronic ailments, as any chiropractor could tell you.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Human beings are primates, and mammals, and eukaryotes. You can't just pretend that once we became homo sapiens, we just lost all the evolutionary history leading up to that point. However, since that seems to be what you're absolutely bent on doing, I can understand why my continuing to bring it up might annoy you.

We diverged a long time ago. We may not have lost the evolutionary history, but we are under different pressures and sufficient time has passed that we need to take that into account.

Breeding traits out requires they be detrimental. Potential increased fertility under a situation of forced mating does not qualify. Breeding it out might take as little as a generation, if it were to exist and be actively selected against.

you neglect drift, mutation, and cultural evolution which works a lot faster than genetic evolution

More "we're humans, we aren't animals!" bullshit. Yes, we are humans. We haven't always been. This would scarcely be the only neurological holdover from an earlier epoch in our evolutionary history. Why does this particular one offend you more than, say, goosebumps?

Frankly all you need to do is apply game theory and you will find that rape is probably under some sort of either cultural or biological (or both) frequency Dependant selection

Yes, I'm sure you've been around for the entire evolutionary history of our species. Coming up on your 500 millionth birthday soon? Once again, you can't pretend that once we became homo sapiens, all the things that were selected for or against in our precursors stopped existing.

You are an idiot.

It is in the reproductive interest of females to SELECT their mates, this is the case with almost every species. Forced copulation is an alternative reproductive strategy, not the primary one for a reason

[Broomstick]

Excuse me? Are we discussing human beings or primates in general? Or mammals? Or eukaryotes?

Human beings are primates, and mammals, and eukaryotes. You can't just pretend that once we became homo sapiens, we just lost all the evolutionary history leading up to that point.

I am not stating that at all, but just because our remote ancestors swam in the oceans does not mean we have gills and breathe water. Clearly we have a great deal of evolutionary history and baggage, but despite that many species, including ours, have some unique or nearly unique features. The mere fact most of a certain category of species has certain characteristics or behaviors does not mean they all do, and such divergence can take place in a very short span of time, evolutionarily speaking.

However, since that seems to be what you're absolutely bent on doing, I can understand why my continuing to bring it up might annoy you.

I am sorry you can not understand that history is not destiny. If it was there would be no evolution.

You're still approaching this as a modern development, when I've been saying from the beginning that this, if true, is very old, evolutionarily, and just hasn't been bred out.

Please back up that claim.

How long would it take to either breed in or breed out such a trait? Doesn't the amount of parental care involved in raising the young factor into it?

Breeding traits out requires they be detrimental. Potential increased fertility under a situation of forced mating does not qualify. Breeding it out might take as little as a generation, if it were to exist and be actively selected against.

So, a detrimental trait breeds out in a generation, huh? Is that why we stil lhave Tay Sachs, cystic fibrosis, and hemophilia, all of which are FAR more detrimental to offspring than rape-reproduction is?

And if good traits spread rapidly because their advantageous why do we not all have perfect teeth, perfect eyesight, and so on?

In the real world selection is more complicated that you imply, as traits that are detrimental but not too immediately so may never be entirely eliminated from a population.

Rape reproduction is advantageous only in non-typical situations in the human species. It may be retained as a male tactic for those rare occasions, and not so detrimental as to be strongly selected against, but it is in the interest of the female half of the species to avoid or eliminate rape. To say that it would be preserved because it would be advantageous to her sons is not proof of utility to females - the male has no interest in his sons' reproductive success? Male interest alone could be sufficient to maintain this at a low level throughout the species. For that matter, arguing that increased fertility during rape is because of advantages to the female is also baseless - you could just as easily argue that it's to the advantage of the raping male to have fertile daughters since they, too, are part of his reproductive success or failure.

Males and females have both converging and diverging interests in the mating game. It's NOT a matter of winner take all - nobody "wins" in the sense of leaving descendants unless both parties get something. That does not eliminate conflict.

The relative frequency of sexual activity for males who rape vs. males who have serious and long-term relations is only relevant in a situation in which some males have serious long-term relationships within a social structure.

You mean, in a species like, say, homo sapiens where the breeding population is composed of social adults that tend to form long-term bonds during those reproductive years? You mean in a species like H. sapiens where commonly BOTH parents provide food and protection to the young?

More "we're humans, we aren't animals!" bullshit.

Nonsense. Humans are not the only species that favors other reproductive modes over rape. We are not the only species to invest a great deal of time and energy in child care. We are not the only species where females resist forced copulation by males. YOU came up with this distortion of my argument, not me.

Yes, we are humans. We haven't always been.

Speaking for myself, I've been H. Sapiens all my life - were you a Neatherthal last week or something?

This would scarcely be the only neurological holdover from an earlier epoch in our evolutionary history. Why does this particular one offend you more than, say, goosebumps?

It doesn't offend me - I just don't see any proof of rape being any less vestigial than goosebumps or armhair. Just because it's a successful or even common mating strategy among other species that may or may not be closely related to us has little bearing when studying our particular species.

If all males attempt to force sexual reproduction on any female they come across at any time as their strategy for maximizing gene spread, then females whose genes influence fertility to be increased in a rape situation will pass those genes on.

But that is not, and never has been, the case with OUR species.

Yes, I'm sure you've been around for the entire evolutionary history of our species. Coming up on your 500 millionth birthday soon?

You're taking this back to the Cambrian Era? You plan to discuss the mating habits of anomolocaris or wiwaxia? Why do you keep retreating further into the past? Is it because recent primate history does not support your claims?

Once again, you can't pretend that once we became homo sapiens, all the things that were selected for or against in our precursors stopped existing.

You are ignoring the fact that the degree of selection on a particular trait can change dramatically. Just because a prior primate species had an environment favoring rape (extremely hypothetical in any case, since fossils do not preserve such behavior anyway) doe not mean our current species has such an environment.

The idea that this would be bad for natural selection because the female 'wouldn't get to pick her preferred mate' is sophistic nonsense. This isn't bad for natural selection, this is a different set of selection criteria, one which favors males who are strong, fast, cunning, horny all the time, and tend towards ruthlessness, and females who either do not resist, or those who are resilient to physical damage.

And yet, adult male H. sapiens are weaker and slower than the other "great ape" adult males - hell, they're weaker than the other great ape females!. And no human society is as promiscuous as chimps, much less bonoboes.

And yet, adult male h. sapiens are stronger and faster than adult female h. sapiens, which is what I actually said. We're not as strong or as fast as sharks, either, but that similarly does not actually address what I said.

OK, so a woman is weaker and can't stop a male from raping her - that does not mean she is going to raise any resulting offspring. Killing such an offspring does not require great physical strength or cunning, and it cuts off the "advantage" of rape reproduction, that is forcing the female to not only conceive and give birth but also raise that child to adulthood.

Worth pointing out that in many bird species, for example, the female is the larger one.

And that is relevant to HUMAN reproduction.... how?

We ARE smarter - but it seems to me that just makes it more likely the mother will be able to reason out whether or not the father is acceptable in her eyes and, if not, come up with a way of disposing of the undesirable result of such a rape.

And yet, many mothers even today do not 'dispose of the undesirable result of such a rape.' Interesting.

Not particularly. There's nothing to say that a mother - who has a 50% genetic stake in any of her children - can't make that choice. But, in fact, women DO kill their offspring. Women abort pregnancies. Women give birth and dump the baby in the trash. Women beat, starve, and neglect children. This is by no means a universal action, of course not, but you're trying to make this a black/white issue and it's NOT. There is more than one factor that goes into choosing to keep or not keep a conception or a child. I just fail to see where a woman would consider conception by rape an advantage. Women, after all, keep and raise children with obvious disabilities and defects because even a defective child could still grow up and have more children (aside from non-evolutionary impulses to do so) but deformed children are more likely to be aborted or abandoned that non-deformed. If such a child is kept and raised it is done despite the defect, not because of it. Likewise, conception by rape is, at best, a neutral and in many circumstances is a negative - a child conceived by rape and raised by the mother anyway is raised DESPITE the manner of gene selection (rape) not because of it.

I did not make a value judgment about rape as a reproductive strategy - I just stated that I couldn't see how it could become a significant enough or common enough successful strategy to affect conception rates through Darwinian means. In many species, including ours, females do not have to passively accept everything done to them by males, they can act as their own agents with their own agendas.

It really doesn't matter if you can see how it would become significant. If there really is the correlation that the article in the OP proposes,

IF there is such a correlation. ONE STUDY does not prove such a correlation. At most, it is food for thought. You have to have MULTIPLE such results by independent parties to confirm such a hypothesis.

Just because most or all other mammals species do something doesn't mean WE do - as just one example, we're the only mammals species that uses bipedal locomotion by default, and you certainly can't argue that there hasn't been time to "breed out" quadrapedalism during our short existence because obviously we have done it. Primates exhibit a variety of reproductive strategies (mating through childrearing) and thus I can't see where you can argue that any of them are particularly hardwired into our genes to the point that they can't be changed in a million years or so.

Ah, but we haven't successfully bred out quadrapedalism completely, because our bipedalism causes all sorts of problems for us. Our spines and hips and shoulders are still partially adapted for our quadrapedal past, resulting in any number of chronic ailments, as any chiropractor could tell you.

Yet we have evolved so far toward bipedalism that no normal human walks on all fours.

This is like bitching that the giant panda is really a carnivore due to their close affinity with such and that they retains features like a relatively short digestive tract. Nonetheless, pandas are herbivores, even if inefficient ones, even if their close relatives are not, and they even have wacky jury-rigged adaptations such as an elongated wrist bone that functions much as our thumbs do and used to pull leaves off bamboo. Likewise, were damn weird primates. Just because rape might be effective for chimps - a species where males contribute little or nothing towards their offspring other than their generalized protection of the troop, where pair bonds are non-existent, and sexual activity doesn't occur outside of estrus - does not mean that it works for humans - a species where males typically contribute food and education as well as protection, where pair bonds are common even if not universal, and sexual activity occurs pretty much whenever and wherever the critters involved can get away with it.

[Wyrm]

Why would that be?

Because you have a product which is visible where if you are not pregnant, you may want to try and forget it.

I am being a bit theoretical. I am concerned about getting numbers which are actually accurate on this though

I think you've identified the likely source of response bias. A mysterious, unexplained pregnancy in a rape victim is more likely to identify the rape victim, yes?

[Shrykull]

I wanted to add that I know of two women who started crying that they were raped as soon as they got pregnant. As far as I understand, both had consensual sex but changed their mind somewhere after the fact.

Is it true that rape for the rapist is about power and only power.?I've heard some people say that's the only motivation for it, and the rapists can't cum into them- they are impotent but women have gotten pregnant from their rapists before. And they argue if a guy wanted sex he would either hire a whore or masturbate, but I figure some rapists would figure if they can't get a specific woman to have consentual sex with them forced sex is better than nothing.