TB Tabby

Because it's much easier to copulate with a willing partner.

2/9/2007 5:16:01 AM

SaneChick

Perhaps because human babies had a higher survival rate when they had more than one parent looking after them, and women don't particularly like hanging out with their rapists.

Also, you have to get lucky to get a woman pregnant on the first try.

2/9/2007 5:38:51 AM

JP

His lawyer will never let him mount that defence.

2/9/2007 8:44:00 PM

Blue Lithium

Then how does one explain the origin of the complex courtship rituals of peacocks and men?

Sexual selection.

2/9/2007 10:29:48 PM

David D.G.

\"Certainly it is simpler and more efficient than chocolates and dinner-with-the-parents.\"

Not for the woman, it isn't.

I think this just may be the most blindly chauvinistic post I've ever seen here -- and that's saying a lot!


~David D.G.

2/9/2007 11:01:30 PM

Jordan666

Because it tends to hurt less if the other person WANTS it.

5/13/2008 1:39:57 PM

Shann

"If evolution favors simplicity, why isn’t rape our standard modus operandi?"

Because you're not the one in charge, Al.

5/13/2008 2:05:18 PM

El Guapo

Human babies have large heads with incompletely formed crania at birth. This of course is part and parcel of having a large brain, but makes labor difficult for the woman and renders the baby virtually incapable of doing anything on its own soon after birth. In this system, the "rapist" reproductive strategy will be less successful than the "caring husband and father" strategy for a few reasons.
1. Probability of successful insemination of a female with one mating is low. A raped female is less likely to be available for further matings than one who feels mutual attraction toward a "caring husband and father type"
2. The rapist does not stay around to help rear offspring, reducing the probability that the offspring survive to reproduce. This is especially pronounced for human babies who require much more care than babies of most other primates. Regardless of success in mating, rapist males would be selected against.
3. Ancient humans lived in small groups consisting mostly of individuals who were related in some way. The reproductive fitness of a raped female is less than that of one with a "caring husband and father". Therefore, by extension, the reproductive fitness of males related to her is also decreased. It would be adaptive for such groups to place taboos against uncommitted and unconsensual sex, and to enforce them with beatings.

Easily answered. Bring 'em on.

5/13/2008 2:21:02 PM

gargoyle1

"Then how does one explain the origin of the complex courtship rituals of peacocks and men?"

I don't know - I've never seen a peacock and a man court each other.

3/24/2009 10:20:50 AM

Amadaun

Social behavior in humans keeps us and our children alive. It's practically our whole schtick, along with tool use. Rape as standard mode only works when the social order encompasses it and it doesn't have a negative survival value.

This has sometimes happened. The 'marry one's rapist' rule might promote this rather, but generally even then there were social and economic sanctions that could be avoided with a normally bargained-for wife.

Currently, rape has a very negative survival value and an even lower reproductive one, despite laws certain nutjobs are trying to pass. Courtship behavior pays better.

3/29/2011 11:18:29 AM

Swede

I kinda feel sorry for this person. Kinda.
If he has never experienced how simple and pleasurable it is to have sex with someone who really wants to, then he has really missed something.
Not to mention how much simpler it will be to have sex again and again and again, with such a person.
If you rape, you have to look for a new victim when you want to have sex again.

Wild ducks do sometimes use gang-rape, but as the female sometimes drowns, I don't think it is that efficient, procreation-wise.

A female horse can kick out behind it and seriously hurt the male, if she's less than satisfied. Remember, he's balancing on his hind-legs, with his for-legs on her back. She might puncture his abdomen with her hoofs.

Rearing the offspring will be much simpler and more efficient with two co-operating parents than with just one disgruntled parent.

3/29/2011 12:03:30 PM

Justanotheratheist

So cut out the chocolates and dinner-with-the-parents thing and go screw a hooker. How much simpler can it be?

3/30/2011 2:31:53 AM

Canadiest

Because it takes a village.

Coupling is a human norm as far back in history as we have gone, long before your Bible or Evolutionary theory.

Do you understand the human dynamic? Rape as a common thing would disolve the family scenario, the extended family and the village. If you had half an understanding of humans you'd realize murder would follow rape, the society would depopulate and die out.

3/30/2011 7:23:02 AM