OK, apparently Dilbert creator Scott Adams has written a blog implying that rape is pretty much a natural male instinct. Part of this total pile of....I mean blog reads in part (thanks to Change.Org for these quotes):
"If you have a round peg that doesn’t fit in a square hole, do you blame the peg or the hole? You probably blame neither. We don’t assign blame to inanimate objects. But you might have some questions about the person who provided you with these mismatched items and set you up to fail.
If a lion and a zebra show up at the same watering hole, and the lion kills the zebra, whose fault is that? Maybe you say the lion is at fault for doing the killing. Maybe you say the zebra should have chosen a safer watering hole. But in the end, you probably conclude that both animals acted according to their natures, so no one is to blame. However, if this is your local zoo, you might have some questions about who put the lions with the zebras in the same habitat.
Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior. That seems right. Obviously we shouldn’t blame the victims. I think we all agree on that point. Blame and shame are society’s tools for keeping things under control.
The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?
The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I’m saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness. No one planned it that way. Things just drifted in that direction.
To be fair, if a man meets and marries the right woman, and she fulfills his needs, he might have no desire to tweet his meat to strangers. Everyone is different. But in general, society is organized as a virtual prison for men’s natural desires. I don’t have a solution in mind. It’s a zero sum game. If men get everything they want, women lose, and vice versa. And there’s no real middle ground because that would look like tweeting a picture of your junk with your underpants still on. Some things just don’t have a compromise solution.
Long term, I think science will come up with a drug that keeps men chemically castrated for as long as they are on it. It sounds bad, but I suspect that if a man loses his urge for sex, he also doesn’t miss it. Men and women would also need a second drug that increases oxytocin levels in couples who want to bond. Copulation will become extinct. Men who want to reproduce will stop taking the castration drug for a week, fill a few jars with sperm for artificial insemination, and go back on the castration pill.
That might sound to you like a horrible world. But the oxytocin would make us a society of huggers, and no one would be treated as a sex object. You’d have no rape, fewer divorces, stronger friendships, and a lot of other advantages. I think that’s where we’re headed in a few generations."
In my mind, Adams' first mistake is, well, acting like an irredeemable asshole in writing this column. His second mistake is classifying rape with sexual behaviors, when it is a crime of violence that has a lot more to do with hate than it does with sexual desire. Thirdly, it bitterly insults men by implying that they are all capable of rape, that the desire to rape is just part of the male sex drive. It also implies that women don't have a strong sex drive (oh my, I sorta disagree:)), and with the zebra at the watering hole analogy he hints majorly at victim blaming ("She should have picked a safer watering hole").
Change.Org has posted a petition on this matter at http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-scott-adams-that-raping-a-woman-is-..., saying Adams "is a man who has tremendous influence in pop culture and the very fact that he would post something so outrageously degrading about women in truly frightening. How many men, or worse yet, boys will read this and agree, absorbing the belief that it is in their nature to rape and therefore it should be acceptable. We need to show Scott Adams just how wrong he is and demand a public apology not only the women he has insulted and put into danger with his words, but also to the men and boys he may have convinced that the ultimate abuse of a woman is perfectly normal and acceptable."
I'll happily sign this petition; I also wonder if Adams considers it a natural male instinct to produce cartoons that a 3 year old could draw, telling jokes about office politics that were much funnier in Office Space and 9 to 5. Oh, and speaking of 9 to 5; I'd love to set Lily Tomlin loose on this guy:
OK, apparently Dilbert creator Scott Adams has written a blog implying that rape is pretty much a natural male instinct.
This is a really delicate thing and I need to step carefully around this landmine - that said, I think on some deep, primeval sort of level, rape actually *is* instinctual for men. That's why it's taken civilization to breed it out of us; and even with the presence of civilization, it still occurs with startling regularity.
I don't mean that it is justified by any means. On a similar deep, primeval sort of level, I also think that murder is instinctual is instinctual by men. Understand that, just because something is 'instinctual' doesn't make it 'right'.
I also want to stress that I'm not suggesting that thoughts of rape riddle the brains of men. I'm just saying that, deep in the primordial recesses of our noggins, there's a monster in all of us.
I have to wade in as well, Tristan, and hope I don't set off any landmines. I think the idea of rape is more an issue of control and domination. Or, as Faith so apply put it, it's the idea of "See, want, take."
Rather blunt, I know, but civilization has neutered that instinct in many men, and for the best. However, I have to agree with Adams when he says that most male behavior has been "criminalize." Men are visual and when we see an appealing woman, we WILL look, no matter how hard we try to resist.
I'm not talking about leering, nor am I condoning crude remarks (a la the stereotypical "construction worker hoot"). But we men are drawn to what visually attracts us, and one hopes we have the decency to be discreet about it. Sure, you'll catch us at times, and we might try to fake that we weren't looking at you. But most of us don't have rape on our minds (at least I hope not), we are just reacting on a primitive urge that we constantly fight against.
So, is rape natural? Perhaps, in a VERY primordial sense. Have most men overcome it? I'd like to think so. Do we still tend to look at women? Yes, and I think it will be a long time before that urge goes away, if ever. As long as we're not email pictures of our erect members (which is really tacky) or acting out in other horrid ways, you ladies should just remind us of what we are, and let us both have a good laugh. Like this lady (and notice what the guy is drinking, it's obvious he wants to look his best as well).
God, I can't believe I'm using an old commercial to make a point.
*hangs head in shame*
Oh, and for Adams using the round peg/square hole argument, shame on him. It's like asking, "Do you blame the cat, or do you blame the meat?" Damn it all, you blame the cat!
Three things that concern me about Adams' article:
1. He is throwing rape and sex crimes in with other forms of sexual activity. Yes, it is perfectly natural to admire attractive people of the opposite gender, to have sexual fantasies, and to have sex. But rape is motivated by power and dominance, which is why it is a tool of war, which is why even very elderly women are raped, children are molested, etc. His phrase "cheating, raping, sexting" is off base, because while cheating is indeed terrible and unacceptable, it is not on par with the hideous cruelty of rape.
Chris is right that there's nothing wrong with looking and admiring; one day at Wal-Mart, a little boy came up to me and declared that I "was the most beautiful woman at Wal-Mart today." Far from being insulted, I smiled and told him he was very sweet. His compliment made my day. But speaking as someone who was stalked by an obsessed 'fan' for a number of years, I felt enraged and yes (and this is a big thing for me to admit) terrified. Of course fine men like Tristan and Chris know the difference; but I refuse to believe that the actions of my stalker were in any way a natural instinct, but a very methodical attempt to dominate my life--and, along the same lines, I have a male friend who was stalked and harassed by a female 'admirer.'
And it's interesting; a documentary made several years ago about the topic of lesbian rape has been suppressed and declared non-credible; of course no one can ever say that women rape as often as men do, far from it--but it may be time to admit that rape is an act of hate that has nothing to do with biological impulse.
2. I've never liked gender-based assumptions, because I've been punished with them all my life. I've been told that my efforts to promote and ultimately create women's visual erotica will fail because "well, we all know men like to look at pretty girls, but women are different--they're more likely to look at the size of a man's wallet." I have an entire Playgirl Posse full of women who disagree, and it's obvious by the popularity of hunky romance novel covers, soap opera hunks, male exotic dance troupes, Hollywood heart throbs, etc., that women are visual and innately sexual as well. And don't get me started on the 'maternal instinct' thing; as a supposedly attractive and definitely straight woman, I have been treated like a freak because I choose not to marry and have kids.
3. I've discussed this issue before with a gentleman who works as a counselor and advocate at a local domestic violence shelter. He has said, "I personally find it very insulting that anyone would imply that it is natural for men to rape. And I would hope that my brothers in this movement would express their outrage at this idea."
I express outrage at Mr. Adams on behalf of good men and women everywhere.
He has said, "I personally find it very insulting that anyone would imply that it is natural for men to rape."
I think I'm just stumbling on the usage of the term "natural". The term long ago went the same path as "organic" and has become something other than what it originally defined. "Natural" is often used to imply something that is good, healthy, normal, and overall positive (especially when used to sell food!). Under this context, an act could nearly become justifiable simply because it is "natural", and I think that is what what people are reacting to here.
In a critical and instinctual sense, though, this isn't always the case; I believe that there are really dark and awful urges that are part of our nature (and therefore 'natural'), and that these dark and awful things are (mostly) stifled by culture. As I mentioned in my first post, I believe murder could even be described as a 'natural' act; it is civilization and culture that has conditioned us to see this as an undesirable trait and so attempts to suppress the act.
Where Adams really seems to go astray is in statements such as...
Adams wrote:
Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world.
...
The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable.
Where he's screwed himself is he seems to be lamenting that "rape" is perceived as a shameful and criminal act. If he'd just left that one word out of his little laundry list of bad behavior, he'd have a better leg to stand on.
It's such a bizarre thing to suggest that I almost have to think he's more guilty of very clumsy writing than anything else. Would the author of Dilbert really lament that rape is seen as "shameful and criminal"? I know how it reads - but did he really mean that?
You know I have heard this discussion many times and it really does bother me and pisses me off. A lot of men talk about rape being "natural" because in the caveman days and other time periods they just picked up women and did whatever they wanted to them. Plus the argument of reproduction and continuing the human race. So why is it such a big deal now? I am like well I'm sure women were bothered by that, but didn't have the power fight against injustices. Also did you like having to fight for food and shit in the ground? You think those times were great too? Plus in Rome rape against men was quite prolific. Plus rape can't always guarantee a pregnancy in just one occurrence. Plus people were starting to see what it was doing to people and how it was destroying them. Even Shakespeare wrote about the evils of rape with his poem The Rape of Lucrece. I mean people say "Well its the natural of order of things because we use to do it all the time rape and murder." Yeah, but we don't do that now we are a civilized society or we try to be one. Its kind of funny how people don't want to acknowledged that I mean I understand we are fighting genes or I don't know traits that we are born with that makes us think we need that, but we don't. I mean there is a big difference from saying "Oh look at that lady I sure like to fuck her" than actually acting on it and doing it against her will.
I mean that's what separates us from the animals.
I just run into many men like who really, really try to justify this and joke that if an apocalypse comes around would revert to this type of mindset to keep the human race alive. That to me is very alarming and disturbing that civility isn't even an option anymore.
__________________
"I hurt" - Karen Cooper "Night Of The Living Dead"
I think that humans in general have the ability and capacity to do really fucked up things to each other as history has shown. A lot of horrible things can go into the category of "fucked up things".
But, in the arena of gender politics, I think it's a bad idea to state that all men have it in them to rape women. A better statement is we all as humans have it in us to do horrible things to other humans.
With that said, there is a huge difference between what a person thinks versus what their actions are. I think actions are more important than thoughts. I think the brain can go to a lot of weird places. But, I, personally, don't like to entertain my darker thoughts in general.
Side bar:
Here's a link to a dude who's working towards eliminating date rape:
You know I have heard this discussion many times and it really does bother me and pisses me off. A lot of men talk about rape being "natural" because in the caveman days and other time periods they just picked up women and did whatever they wanted to them. Plus the argument of reproduction and continuing the human race. So why is it such a big deal now? I am like well I'm sure women were bothered by that, but didn't have the power fight against injustices. Also did you like having to fight for food and shit in the ground? You think those times were great too? Plus in Rome rape against men was quite prolific. Plus rape can't always guarantee a pregnancy in just one occurrence. Plus people were starting to see what it was doing to people and how it was destroying them. Even Shakespeare wrote about the evils of rape with his poem The Rape of Lucrece. I mean people say "Well its the natural of order of things because we use to do it all the time rape and murder." Yeah, but we don't do that now we are a civilized society or we try to be one. Its kind of funny how people don't want to acknowledged that I mean I understand we are fighting genes or I don't know traits that we are born with that makes us think we need that, but we don't. I mean there is a big difference from saying "Oh look at that lady I sure like to fuck her" than actually acting on it and doing it against her will.
I mean that's what separates us from the animals.
I just run into many men like who really, really try to justify this and joke that if an apocalypse comes around would revert to this type of mindset to keep the human race alive. That to me is very alarming and disturbing that civility isn't even an option anymore.
I think I kind of paraphrased what you said here before reading your entire post. But, I totally agree with what your saying.
But, in the arena of gender politics, I think it's a bad idea to state that all men have it in them to rape women. A better statement is we all as humans have it in us to do horrible things to other humans.
"The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable."
Yikes. This is troubling. Natural instincts? And what are these alleged "natural instincts" that are acceptable in women?
Also, "To be fair, if a man meets and marries the right woman, and she fulfills his needs, he might have no desire to tweet his meat to strangers." Am I the only one that cringes at this statement? Yikes.
There is an awful lot of conflation of different urges/compulsions/desires/pathologies going on in this article that remind me of a class I taught on I Spit On Your Grave. A male student said he empathized with the rapists because of "biological urges and stuff." That was a really difficult teaching moment because of the aforementioned conflations.
For those who think that "rape" is a "natural" urge, one that is routinely seen in the animal kingdom, would do well to read Anne Fausto-Sterling's chapter on the subject, "Putting Woman in Her (Evolutionary) Place" in her groundbreaking book, Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men.
I think that all humans have the capacity to be horrible to each other - look at war, murder, RAPE, theft, interpersonal abuse, etc. All of those things happen, and they usually happen because of dysfunction, anger, mental illness, addiction, sociopathy, and greed. They are not positive things. They may happen when you place human beings in certain conditions. But they are never positive. They are never the result of "normal" human relationships.
If Rape was such a natural and evolutionary instinct for men, why don't more men use it, all the time? When I say "no" because I have a headache, why doesn't my partner hold me down and force me? because it isn't positive - it is destructive. In the cases of normal, healthy human relationships and behavior, rape is NOT a reasonable reproductive strategy.
I also see absolutely ZERO relationship between rape and flirting online, sexting, being unfaithful to your spouse, or watching pornography. I don't know why the author would lump those bhaviors together. It's like saying that playing a game of chess and committing murder are in the same category: they're both about conflict. A man who is unfaithful is not ALSO likely to rape anyone.
All of this said, I think there is a cultural trend to put rape and other sexual behaviors in the same category for men. I think that by culturally explaining rape as reproductive, it creates an excuse and justification for an act that is essentially about domination and control. When men rape women, they are not engaging in normal sex, they are controlling that woman's reproductive abilities. Controlling women through rape, controlling their sexuality, etc. is just like controlling when and how cows get pregnant for human use. It's slavery and control. And it works because men are physically stronger. That's the ONLY reason it works.
People often seek biological reasons to justify inhumane treatment of others. Just like how "black people aren't as good as white people" or that they're only 3/5ths of a human being justifies enslaving an entire group of people based on the color of their skin. People didn't just believe that black people weren't as good as white people "because," They REALLY BELIEVED that they were mentally inferior in every way, going so far as to say they weren't really human. They believed that. So, when they made them slaves, they didn't feel as bad.
Saying rape is normal for men is the same thing. It is a way to not feel ashamed of all the fellow men who rape. I'm sure that many men in HERE are ashamed of the men who do rape. I'm sure the author is too. I think he's seeking a way to not feel bad about that., and the way he uses is to say it is normal for men, i.e. "We can't HELP it. It's biological."
Remember when it was biologically true that women's brains were dumber than men's brains so women didn't need to be burdened with voting? Same thing.
For those who think that "rape" is a "natural" urge,
It is natural. It just isn't justified, or "good", or beneficial for society as a whole. It is a profoundly awful act. Let me explain.
Everything mankind is and does is within the scope of nature and is completely natural. Skyscraper buildings are natural; murder is natural; bowling is natural; genocide is natural; nuclear weapons are natural; Michael Bay movies are natural; homosexuality is natural; and so on and so on to infinity. We, as physical beings, are not outside of the scope of nature in any sense, but instead are firmly within it and are in fact completely bounded by it, and so everything we do is natural. Everything.
Accepting that, we just need to acknowledge and realize that the "naturalness" of something is not related in any way to it being acceptable. There is no correlation. I believe the reluctance of many to see this is related to the fear that some knucklehead will use the argument that "rape is OK because it is natural!". This conclusion of said knucklehead is obviously misguided and is using an unfortunate colloquial definition of the term that has been propagated by mass marketing. How many advertisements have you seen that use the term "natural" as a justification for its overall wholesomeness, ignoring the fact that high powered poisons such as cyanide are also completely "natural"?
The problem I have with this usage is that the term "unnatural" is so damned subjective; it has often been used by extremely prejudiced groups as justification for perpetuating their hate. Homosexuality is unnatural. Mixed race couples are unnatural. Women having jobs is unnatural. It's not as God intended! So often has this term been horribly abused to manipulate the emotions of the masses. I feel we need to acknowledge that there is no such thing as unnatural behavior - being that we are all bounded by nature - and instead concentrate on what is wrong behavior.
Adams says some absolutely troubling things, and I realize my "defense of the word natural" is a bit off the track, and I apologize for that. I just don't like the idea that abhorrent acts are automatically deemed "unnatural" as this sets the continuing groundwork for people to accuse any behavior that they don't approve of as 'unnatural'. It's a dangerous term.
^ I think you misunderstand my point. Which is why I referred to Fausto-Sterling's chapter. The term "rape" carries a great weight of cultural and human meaning that cannot simply be attributed to biology or evolution. That's all I was saying. Of course it's "natural" just like anything that ever happens ever is natural. I find debates about what is "natural" or not to be a dead end because the debate always implodes on itself.
Tristan ALWAYS misunderstand my points when we're arguing! I feel your pain, GGG.
This is where I should say a quip like "It's only natural!" and then run away from the thread, never to return - but I'll avoid that and just put this smiley face right herrreeeeeeee
Ladies and gents I have done some research and a mutual friend who I showed this thread to is familiar with Scott Adams. He has said Scott is an ultimate troll and I mean this seriously. He gets on other sites with sock puppet accounts and defends himself against fans talks about what a genius he is he can't keep all that nerd rage inside lol.
Quote:
n March 2011, Adams wrote a blog post on the topic of men's rights after men's rights advocates responded in large numbers to his request for readers of his blog to choose his next topic.[14] In the post Adams says that men treat women differently for the same reason that men treat children or the mentally handicapped differently—because it is an effective strategy. The post generated a significant backlash from men's rights advocates as well as feminists and following his own advice from the post—for men to take the path of least resistance when dealing with women—Adams deleted the post from his blog.[15] Several weeks later the post continued to generate controversy.[16][17] Scott Adams responded to the continuing controversy by reposting the original text preceded by an explanation.[14] Adams pointed out that like virtually all other posts to his blog he had made extensive use of satire and sarcasm but that it seemed to have been lost on some readers.[14] He wrote that the furor that erupted on both sides of the issue only served to illustrate the point he was making: "You can't expect to have a rational discussion on any topic that has an emotional charge."[14]
In April 2011, Adams confessed that he had used a sockpuppet account to promote and defend himself on link-sharing sites Reddit and MetaFilter, pretending to be his own fan.[18][19][20][21][22]
Although we really could get mad at this dude, he is just a loser that people don't like.
__________________
"I hurt" - Karen Cooper "Night Of The Living Dead"
Ladies and gents I have done some research and a mutual friend who I showed this thread to is familiar with Scott Adams. He has said Scott is an ultimate troll and I mean this seriously.
Jesus, so maybe he wrote all this just to piss people off, pretending he's making some Camus-like point?
You know, I thought about this on the way home.
At first I thought he was guilty of clumsy writing; that was foolish. The man is a professional writer and he is not a dumb person. He's actually, obviously, quite bright.
I think the writing was intentionally goading and I do think it could be consistent with "trolling". As is typical with trolling, I doubt he even really believes what he's saying - I think he did it to get a rise out of people, because he does, on some level, think it's fun.
Trolling *can* be funny, but I think using the big mighty "rape" word as part of the ammunition for such a thing is pretty low.
Ladies and gents I have done some research and a mutual friend who I showed this thread to is familiar with Scott Adams. He has said Scott is an ultimate troll and I mean this seriously.
Jeez, if what Tristan and Private Vasquez are saying is true (and I have no reason to doubt them), this guy isn't a troll, but just a complete asshole.
Perhaps we best ignore him, and maybe he'll just go away.... *crossing fingers*
OK, apparently Dilbert creator Scott Adams has written a blog implying that rape is pretty much a natural male instinct.
This is a really delicate thing and I need to step carefully around this landmine - that said, I think on some deep, primeval sort of level, rape actually *is* instinctual for men. That's why it's taken civilization to breed it out of us; and even with the presence of civilization, it still occurs with startling regularity.
I don't mean that it is justified by any means. On a similar deep, primeval sort of level, I also think that murder is instinctual is instinctual by men. Understand that, just because something is 'instinctual' doesn't make it 'right'.
I also want to stress that I'm not suggesting that thoughts of rape riddle the brains of men. I'm just saying that, deep in the primordial recesses of our noggins, there's a monster in all of us.
/jumps off landmine
Did I blow up? :~
I made this website. I'm sorry.