I thought you might find this interesting....
Saturday, January 22, 2000
Rape a Biological Act, UNM Professor Writes
By Scott Sandlin
Journal Staff Writer
University of New Mexico professor Randy Thornhill is an old hand at controversy, and he knew that his thesis on rape -- that it is natural and biological, not an act of power -- would invite more of it.
Still, Thornhill, an evolutionary biologist, and co-author Craig Palmer, a physical anthropologist at the University of Colorado, have been nonplussed at the reaction to their forthcoming book, "A Natural History of Rape," published by MIT Press.
The media maelstrom has prompted the publisher to double the press run and move up the publication date by more than three months. It also has guaranteed the authors a lot more than 15 minutes of fame.
In the book, subtitled "Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion," the authors contend that rape is a sexual act that gave men an evolutionary edge. They politely thumb their noses at what they see as a wrong-headed social science view of rape.
"What's been said before on the topic of rape is the feminist ideological perspective -- that rape is only violent, not sexual," Thornhill said during a brief interview after his Friday class on human sexuality. "Feminism is a component of the social science view. We're saying rape ... of course (is) biological. They (critics) think if you're saying that it's natural, you're saying it's correct morally."
And that isn't what the authors are saying.
Rather, Thornhill said, only by understanding the causes of rape can you prevent it.
By understanding gravity, science was able to devise gravity-free environments, he notes, so the authors' treatment of rape from an evolutionary biological standpoint is in the same scholarly vein.
"Basically what we're after here is for the public discussion of rape to incorporate the science of rape," he said. "That would raise the plane of debate."
Some of the more heated debate has turned on the authors' suggestions that education in sexuality should include telling young women that dressing a certain way can put them at risk and telling young men they are biologically programmed to see some behavior as an invitation to sex, even when it isn't.
Speaking in the soft drawl of his native north Alabama as he launched class Friday, Thornhill was clearly dissatisfied by the level of debate that has characterized the discussion on television.
"(What) my colleague and I are up against with the TV stations is science vs. ideology. That's not fair," he said.
Earlier this week, Thornhill was up at 3 a.m. for an interview with Bryant Gumbel on CBS' national morning show; he did interviews for a "Today" show segment to air Monday morning.
News program "60 Minutes" has signed them up for a February show, meaning "Dateline" won't talk to them at all. "Extra," a television entertainment magazine, is taping on Monday for a piece expected to air that night.
Britain's Guardian/Observer reported Sunday that the two U.S. academics had started "a bitter dispute between feminists, social scientists and evolutionary biologists."
German television and the BBC are waiting in the wings.
The 55-year-old Thornhill, whose earlier research linking facial symmetry and beauty drew attention in 1996, said he and Palmer have been surprised by the volume and extent of the news coverage of the work.
The book was to have been published April 1. Thornhill said the date was moved up to March 1 on the basis of early interest after a scientific journal published an article summarizing their work.
The date was moved up again, and MIT Press began releasing copies of the book this week. It decided to double the initial press run of 10,000.
"We knew we had a controversial book on our hands -- it was controversial here (at the publisher)," Gita Manakthala of MIT Press in Cambridge, Mass., said late Friday. "It's just started snowballing."
MIT Press publishes scholarly books as well as books for nonspecialists on art, architecture, brain and neurosciences, cognitive sciences, economics, linguistics and biology.
While the press has published a number of books in the field of evolutionary biology, "A Natural History of Rape" is unusual because of the controversy it's generating, Manakthala said.
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