Rape Culture: 3 Reasons Most Men Are to Blame For Misogyny

[ismnotwasm]

30. And an opposite POV

Critiquing the book that started this mess.

Men and the History of Rape

by Adriene Sere

Most men don't rape. This is what the studies tell us.

Why, then, does male culture romanticize rape? Why are images of violence against women in the media intriguing to so many men? Why are woman-bashing radio hosts, such as Tom Leykis and Howard Stern, so extraordinarily popular among young to middle-aged men? Why do men enjoy seeing the romanticization of force and domination of women in the movies? Why do men support and participate in rape culture if they don't themselves rape?

Such questions came to mind when a new book called A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion hit the media circuit, receiving so much fanfare that its publishers, MIT Press, moved up the date of publication by several months. The Sciences, an academic journal put out by The New York Academy of Sciences, featured an excerpt of the book. The authors, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, were given the spotlight on Dateline, The Today Show, CNN, as well as National Public Radio. The book received major, often uncritical, coverage in newspapers around the world and, of course, was extensively promoted by hate-radio personalities like Tom Leykis.

The media's excitement is based on the book's argument that "rape is, in its very essence, a sexual act" that developed through evolution. Evolution created men's desire to rape, the argument goes, by favoring unattractive men who raped over unattractive ones who didn't. The unattractive men who raped passed on their sexuality through their genes, and therefore all modern men are biologically wired to rape women.

Because the authors and their publishers cannot admit to having a pro-rape agenda, they claim to be motivated by the desire to prevent men's sexual attacks on women. Rape is best prevented, the authors argue, by requiring "educational" classes for those trying to obtain a driver's license. At these classes, the instructors would explain to young men how natural rape is, and then tell them that they shouldn't rape. Instructors would advise young women to cover their bodies so they don't provoke sexual attacks. In their scholarly concern for women's safety, The Sciences illustrated Thornhill and Palmer's argument with pictures of naked women and women's body parts.


http://www.saidit.org/archives/mar00/mar_article2.html