A Natural History of Rape

A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion is a 2000 book by the biologist Randy Thornhill and the anthropologist Craig T. Palmer, in which the authors argue that evolutionary psychology can account for rape among human beings, maintain that rape is either a behavioral adaptation or a byproduct of adaptive traits such as sexual desire and aggressiveness, and make proposals for preventing rape. They also criticize the assumption that there is a connection between what is naturally selected and what is morally right or wrong, which they refer to as the "naturalistic fallacy", and the idea, popularized by the feminist author Susan Brownmiller in Against Our Will (1975), that rape is an expression of male domination and is not sexually motivated.

The book received extensive media coverage following the publication of an extract in The Sciences. It became controversial, received many negative reviews, and was denounced by feminists. Thornhill and Palmer were criticized for suggesting that rape is a reproductive adaptation, misrepresenting Brownmiller, making questionable comparisons between humans and non-human animals such as insects, their treatment of the naturalistic fallacy, and their proposals for preventing rape. In response to their suggestion that rape is a reproductive adaptation, critics observed that many rapes, such as those involving young children, the elderly, or persons of the same sex, cannot lead to reproduction. Critics also characterized A Natural History of Rape as poorly written, and suggested it was part of a trend to blame social problems on biological causes and had received unwarranted attention due to its controversial subject matter.

However, some reviewers commended the book's discussion of evolutionary theory, offered a mitigated defense of the view that rape has an evolutionary basis, or argued that the view that rape is sexually motivated is partially correct, while suggesting that rape might also involve a desire for violence and domination. Defenders of the book, including its authors, argued that much of the criticism it had received was misinformed and misrepresented what it actually argued. Commentators compared the controversy surrounding A Natural History of Rape to that provoked by the psychologist Richard Herrnstein and the political scientist Charles Murray's The Bell Curve (1994), and suggested that it was partly a result of larger controversies surrounding evolutionary psychology.

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