Why do men Rape?

 

Rape is a traumatic event that is likely to have been a recurrent problem for women over evolutionary history. Rape often leads to many negative consequences for women and, therefore, women may have evolved psychological mechanisms designed to motivate rape-avoidance behaviors. There are several reasons why rape is traumatic for women. These include disrupting a woman’s parental care, causing a woman’s partner to abandon her, and causing a woman serious physical injury or death.

 “Rape ... rape ... rape ...” Rape does seem to be in the air these days, Yeap! From Phulan Devi to Hathras Case, we have been talking about Rape and punishing the culprits. But Do we ever think of it that Why do Men Rape? Nope, never!                                                                                           In this article, I will discuss rape from an evolutionary psychological perspective. 

Am I the next?

Rape is likely more common, however, because rapes often go unreported. We don't know much about them or we are not still ready to talk about it?

A Ph.d. student named Samuel Smithyman published a rather unusual advertisement in the newspapers of Los Angeles. He was searching for Rapist, with a thought that no one would call, but around 200 people called. The callers were from various backgrounds.

By the end of the summer, Dr. Smithyman had completed 50 interviews, which became the foundation for his dissertation: “The Undetected Rapist.”

But more recent research suggests that there are some commonalities. In the decades since his paper, scientists have been gradually filling out a picture of men who commit sexual assaults.

They hypothesize that rape may represent a conditional mating strategy, present in all men, which may result from several qualitatively different ancestral contexts combined with individual difference factors among men.

 Specifically, They propose five types of rapists-

(1) Disadvantaged men who resort to rape-

The first hypothesized rapist type includes men who are motivated to rape if they have no other means of securing copulations. This may be referred to as the disadvantaged male hypothesis. This hypothesis also has been referred to as the mate deprivation hypothesis.

(2) “Specialized” rapists who are sexually aroused by violent sex-                                                                                                                                        Another type of rapist may be the specialized rapist. Men in this group are distinguished by being sexually aroused by violent sexual stimuli. These men may possess psychology that produces differences in sexual arousal in response to depictions of rapes versus depictions of consensual sex. Because rape carries high potential costs for the rapist, particularly if caught in the act, rapists with psychology that motivated quicker arousal and ejaculation during rape might have been more successful than men who did not possess such psychology.

(3) Men who rape opportunistically-                                                           Opportunistic Rapists = The third hypothesized rapist type is the opportunistic rapist. These men generally seek out receptive women but might shift to sexual coercion and rape if women are not receptive, or if the associated costs, such as injury or retaliation by the victim, the victim’s family, or society, are particularly low.

(4) High-mating-effort men who are dominant and often psychopathic-                                                                                                                                     A fourth hypothesized rapist type is the high-mating-effort rapist. High-mating-effort rapists, in contrast to other types, such as disadvantaged rapists, appear to be more sexually experienced. These rapists may be characterized as aggressive, dominant, and having high self-esteem. Such rapists often may be characterized as psychopathic.

5) Partner rapists motivated by assessments of increased risk of sperm competition-                                                                                                                 A final hypothesized rapist type includes men motivated to rape their partners under conditions of increased sperm competition risk. Sperm competition is the competition that can occur between the sperm of different males to a female’s eggs.

Smuts (1992) argued that women form alliances with groups of men and other women for protection against would-be rapists.

Davis and Gallup (2006) proposed the intriguing possibility that preeclampsia and spontaneous abortion may be adaptations that function to terminate pregnancies, not in the woman’s best reproductive interests, such as those resulting from rape survivors. 

                                                                                                                                               

 

Chavanne and Gallup(1998)  investigated the performance of risky behaviors by women in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycles.  A sample of women was asked where they were in their menstrual cycles, and to indicate whether they had performed a range of behaviors in the past 24 hrs

Sex offenders in India and what makes it such a dangerous place for women

A study conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2018 ranked India as the world’s most dangerous country for women.

Tara Kaushal was the one from India who interviewed numerous Rapists and She was also sexually assaulted by a gardener at the age of 5.

Kaushal’s book has been out since June but it was the gang-rape, and eventual death, of a 19-year-old Dalit girl by four upper-caste men in Uttar Pradesh that prompted me to call her at short notice. The men interviewed for the book belong to all sections of society: a doctor who raped his 12-year-old patient; a serial gang-rapist who doesn’t believe in the concept of rape; an unemployed youth who decided to kill his former lover.

Dealing with the aftermath of rape is the expected next step, but Kaushal admits that while she is strongly against the idea of capital punishment, she hasn’t dwelt much on how perpetrators are to be treated and on the role of the judiciary. “My interest is in preventing boys and men from committing rape in the first place," she says. “And understanding why men rape is the first step."

   I propose that a more nuanced view of rapists is needed, in which rapists may be thought of as belonging to one of several types distinguished by the contexts in which they are predicted to commit rape.