Male sexuality and aggression

[Temple]

Disclaimer: Before I begin, I would just like to point out that I do not condone rape. Forcing ones sexuality upon another is abominable, and a crime. Sexual criminals are the worst criminals. End of disclaimer.


I've just had something of an epiphany.. Could aggression and violence be so closely linked to male sexuality that they are inseperable? I mean, we are basically just animals, right? And in nature, aggression and sexuality are two sides of the same coin. Many animals become highly aggressive when sexually aroused, and mating season can be one of the most violent and dangerous times for animals. Are we so different?

The fact that practically all sex-offenders are male speak for themselves, though female sex-offenders are often wrongfully overlooked in favour of their more visible male counterparts.
But is it irrepperable? Are we slaves to our animal urges, or is there some higher self, the eidolon if you will, that makes us more than beasts?

Is rape unavoidable?

[Garbarsardar]

Well let me think, I have not killed an animal with my bare hands, in a long time although agression is a part of survival, and my turf wars are mostly limited in these forums, although defining territory is part of my survival.
Of course the answer is not that simple but I fail to establish a link between agression and sexuality. I can see a link between agression and the need for procreation, as in kidnaping women of the other tribes, but I cannot see a link between sexuality and punishment (because that what rape is mostly about) which does not cut through pathology.
And I do not thing that procreation is the ultimate goal of rape.
Now you could argue that malr agression, as an inherited biological charachteristic, manifests itself in some circumstances pertinent to sexual violence. But why since we can control our other male agressive urges this should be singled out?
I think that taking into account the objectification of the female body (as in the Japanese porn bondage culture, or the whole S&M scene) you will find some answers. Look also in the direction of rapes commited by combattants of various countries.
Rape as mean of ethnic cleansing holds more species-related water than the civilian rape, although I have to say that then rape is just a pretext for genocide.Or the inverse?

[Temple]

But sexuality and aggression go hand in hand! A man deprived of sexual stimuly will become very aggressive, and rape is more about repressed sexuality than punishment. Not all rapists wish to punish women with their sexuality, because that would imply that their sexuality is somehow negative. I think a lot of sex offenders are simply unable to control their violent/animal impulses..

[Bovril]

It is certainly the case that the major male sex hormone, testosterone, is also linked to agression. What is more, feminist writers for decades have been pointing to the link between the dynamics of penatrative sex and the way in which the two major biological sexes are gendered (by which I mean attributed social characteristics according to , but distinct from, biological sex).

I think its rather simplistic to say that sex and aggresion are two sides of the same coin, especially in humans. Leaving humans aside, sex and aggresioninteract in two major ways. First, females will chose to mate with males who are strong and agressive, since these males have the best chance of surviving and passing on their genes. Second, agression can secure females for a male to mate with by beating of competition which females might chose on other grounds.

Now, to what extent these principles are applicable in modern humans is really a finction of the extent to which human sexuality can be said to be hardwired. Since our modern social conventions make physical aggresion a less useful feature in men in terms of survival etc. than it was previously, any attraction towards agressive men females might feel would be chiefly the result of hard wiring, and any displays of aggresion on the part of the males would also be a hard wired feature of the courting process.

Rape is rather different. Many have argued that the urge to rape is infact not sexual at all, but is instead an act of domination. I find it hard to countenance the idea that rape can be entirely divested of any sexual aspect, but since hetrosexual men raping other men or men raping women they would never engage in consensual sex with are a well testified occurences, surely the factor of domination must be primary in at least a percentage (and I would argue a very high percentage) of rapes. It might be useful then to think of rape in terms of hate crime. It is an act of violent domination based around gender or gender roles (in the case of male on male rape, which primarily occurs in sinlge sex environmnets, where men have the urge to feminise other men in order to create a gender hierachy), where gender has the same defining quality for the act as race, ethnicity, religion or sexual preference might in other hate crimes. Consequently, the erradication of sexism (by which I mean a hierachical and/or non value-nuetral assosiation of social roles with biological gender) will result in the erradication of of almost all rape.

On the issue of female sex offenders. These are pretty much exclusively child abusers. The same analysis as I applied to the gender based domination function of rape can again be aplied here, with gender being replaced by age as the social category along the lines of which the domination takes place.


Sorry if that was all really garbled, I haven't slept all night, and its now mid moring :erm

[Garbarsardar]

But sexuality and aggression go hand in hand! A man deprived of sexual stimuly will become very aggressive, and rape is more about repressed sexuality than punishment. Not all rapists wish to punish women with their sexuality, because that would imply that their sexuality is somehow negative. I think a lot of sex offenders are simply unable to control their violent/animal impulses..

I'm awware of animal impulses. And the species has devised a series of external or than internalized controls. A man deprived of many kinds of stimuli will turn to agressive behaviour and most certainly a man deprived of say food. A rapist is not deprived by sexual stimuli, as his imagination or pornography or voyeurism are always a possible source. What you imply is that a rapist is often deprived of sexual gratification. I will agree with Bovril that not all the cases of rape can be traced to the will of domination, but I sense there are very few where sexuality is not confounded with a will of punishement and hatred for the denied object of gratification. So circling back to my earlier post I can see no reason for this being a case of exclusive aggression. Why would this instinct survive the transformations the rest underwent ?

[Portuguese Rebel]

We have an area in our brain that is considered to be quite primitive. This "primitive brain" controls agression and sexual desire. We as all mammals can expect a level of more or less agressive behaviour during sex. Behaviours like pulling hair, little love bites, slaps (hehehe...), are common in human intercourse and very natural.

Rape is rather different. Many have argued that the urge to rape is infact not sexual at all, but is instead an act of domination.

That is a load of feminist bull... Apparently rapists only like to "dominate" attractive females. :whistle

[Bovril]

Its a complete myth that rapists only attack attractive females. Men rape children, other men, ugly women, even pensioners http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/m...er/4582109.stm
Rapists attack the vulnerable, not the beautiful. This leads me to believe that rape is more about power than attraction.

[Garbarsardar]

We have an area in our brain that is considered to be quite primitive. This "primitive brain" controls agression and sexual desire. We as all mammals can expect a level of more or less agressive behaviour during sex. Behaviours like pulling hair, little love bites, slaps (hehehe...), are common in human intercourse and very natural.

Nobody ever could disagree (hehehe) with this. But rape is not agression during sex. It is agression with the purpose of achieving gratification, and the degree of violence varies (albeit not always) proportionately to the resistance of the victin.
Whar PR proposes through the brain mechanism argument is the ultimate cause for rape-in the sense of the deep underlying mechanism. Even if we ignore evidence such as Bovril offers in an earlier post, maily pertaining to the proximate cause of rape (bad day at the office, hormonal imbalance, psychopathology,fear of copulation) the ultimate cause alone does not offer an adequate explanation. If basic instincts evolve for environmental reason, how came and this evolved as a response " to rape" and not as a response "not to rape".
Is it the case that the cultural mediators of behaviour are here too powerfull to be ignored?

[Hellenic Hoplite]

First of all, someone said that rape is somehow connected with males. Of course it is, can you imagine a woman trying to rape a man? If the man has no desire, it shrinks! :lol If the woman has no desire, there is little her body part can do to avoid it.

Now, I believe that we humans had some instincts, that were reeeeally really useful when we still hadn't evolved as to have strong logic. So in those dark (prehistoric times-although we're not rid of them yet) they were very useful. We would fear the fire, and that was our salvation from getting burned, while now we can simply think that the fire is going to burn us and turn our hand into ash if we touch it. Note how logic is connected to imagination of what might happen.

Such instincts, as the instinct of violence, were also useful back then. Yes, it is true that what is bad today could have been good then, that's why all but the stupid understand that times change. At a time when those humans couldn't communicate so much, violence often resulted, so violence was a reaction that determined who would win in a fight (still no great mental ability to win easier or to win without fighting at all).

Also, you might notice that there are women that like men who are sexually violent. There are women that obtain a kind of obsession for men who have treated them like rubbish, or were very brutal and aggressive with them in everyday life and in sex. That also derives from a bestial instict of the far past, which had the purpose of guiding the women end up to mate (love) with the 'stronger', which was at that time (since there was not much logic again), the most violent. It increased the women's chance of survival (a tough guy was expected to get more game and survive the process easier) and of defence (they were safer with him than with a more peaceful individual).

Of course now things have changed. Now a smart person can beat a stupid person in a billion ways, often not even having to fight. And that's the point, since we are logical today we don't *need* to fight, that's why war might be a useful thing once but now is utterly stupid. A behaviour of somebody violent, or someone who wants to rape or anything like that, only shows evolutional weakness.

After all, you should have noticed that small dogs bark the most. And weaklings declare wars and have others fight for them. Some people just didn't catch up with evolution...

[Carsomyr]

Originally posted by Portuguese Rebel@May 26 2005, 05:08 AM
We have an area in our brain that is considered to be quite primitive. This "primitive brain" controls agression and sexual desire. We as all mammals can expect a level of more or less agressive behaviour during sex. Behaviours like pulling hair, little love bites, slaps (hehehe...), are common in human intercourse and very natural.



That is a load of feminist bull... Apparently rapists only like to "dominate" attractive females.* :whistle

Since I'm no expert on rape and its nature, I looked it up on Wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape. I wasn't expecting Wiki to have so much info regarding rape.....

A segment of Wiki's page:

Rapist profiles
Dr. A. Nicholas Groth, author of Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender, described four types of deliberate rapists, based on their motivations and behavior patterns. Forensic scientists, criminologists, and law enforcement agencies often use these profiles to analyze rapists and prevent future rapes.

Since rapes are predominantly perpetrated by men, a male perpetrator is assumed in these profiles.

The power-assertive rapist: This is argued to be the most common type of rapist, accounting for about 40 percent of all reported rapes. An alpha male, he tends to value machismo and physical aggression. Often, he will commit date rape against victims he meets in places like bars, but he may pose as or be an authority figure. Power-assertive rapists do not intend to kill their victims, but to traumatize and humiliate them. They rarely target specific people for rape, and often have average to above-average intelligence.

The power-reassurance rapist: This type of individual is usually socially deficient and unable to develop interpersonal or romantic relationships. Usually not physically aggressive, he will select and stalk a victim before committing the crime, and this victim is usually a neighbor or work acquaintance. Power-reassurance rapists often force the victim to emulate foreplay and take "trophies" of the rape, and may record the event in a personal journal. Power-reassurance rapists usually have average intelligence, insecurities about their masculinity, and tend to be the least violent type of rapist. They also often fantasize about consensual sexual relationships with women, rather than violent conquest. Law enforcers describe this type of rapist, responsible for about 27.5% of reported rapes, as the "gentleman rapist".

Anger-retaliatory rapist: Responsible for about 28% of rapes, this type of individual is often a substance abuser with impulsive behavior and anger-related pathologies. This type of rapist does not target specific victims, and often feels animosity toward women in general. The anger-retaliatory rapist's attacks are usually spontaneous and brutal, and, while he does not intend to kill the victim, may beat her to death if she resists. This rapist usually has below-average intelligence and is likely to leave more evidence than other types of rapists.

The anger-excitation rapist: This type of rapist, considered the most dangerous and elusive, accounts for about 4.5 percent of rapes. The anger-excitation rapist exhibits behavior characteristic of antisocial personality disorder, and is therefore often perceived as charming and intelligent. This makes such rapists difficult to catch. The anger-excitation rapist may or may not choose victims selectively. Often sadistic, he will often torture or murder his victim to prevent her from identifying him, or for his own sexual gratification. Ted Bundy was an example of this type of rapist.

[Hellenic Hoplite]

Originally posted by Carsomyr@May 26 2005, 08:47 AM
Since I'm no expert on rape and its nature, I looked it up on Wiki.

Glad to hear that you aren't. :p

Regarding the text, keep in mind that academics always try to impress by making lists like that. The truth is that this list is totally worthless. It is like saying that each one of these rapists meditates in one thought for the duration of his rapes. Even a master of Yoga cannot do that, and I'm sure that any rapist passes from all the mentioned states of mind rapidly in even one rape.

I'm no expert in the nature of rape too!!! :lol I just understand some general things about human behaviour.

[Garbarsardar]

I have to agree with HO on this one, I wonder where exactly he got this percentages. Is it one study, a county or a country data etc...
Furthermore this clear cut categories of rapists strike me as very neat, and I really do not understand how this classification is made. Any way I have to state that I too am noexpert in rape :grin but I wonder if any on this forum is...

[Bovril]

The catorfgories and percentages of that list might not be spot on, but its worth bearing in mind that all for f them present rape as an act of violent domination in the mind of the attacker. Only one also admits of an element of 'normal' sexuality.

[SonofSparta]

I think the reason for such characterisations from wiki's page is more to do with the process of law than anything else..this study was almost entirely done by people in the lwa enforcement community..so i'm not sure they accurately represent the mind set of all rapists per say...but such characterisations are useful as i said before in the prcoess of law...having character profiles help's in the prosocution of offenders

[Iaius Statius Laurentius]

The thread author makes a critical assumption and error in logic when suggesting that just because something appears to be natural means that it is the way that it ought to be.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The entire idea of civilization is to go beyond the feral and the primitive. Rape is no more appropriate to a male as howling incoherently is.

By the by: mammals tend to exhibit elaborate courtship rituals in the wild. Rape is unnatural even for animals.