Strange comparison. A couple of other points:

- a better comparison might be comparing the forceful *robbery* of food to rape. Still not the same, but now at least the physical violence and threat of injury to the victim are more in line.
- even if you view the failure to have sex as an existential threat to the genes (comparable to starvation), the time horizon is much different. Someone can starve in a month or two; genetic death by failure to have kids takes a lifetime. It's hard to view the situations as similarly desperate.

Also, in terms of the value of what has been stolen, it would be hard (in a primitive society) to steal enough food to inflict damage comparable to rape. I'm guessing you'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of calories (i.e, more than someone can easily carry). And I'm thinking that if you did have a situation where the victim(s) of such a large theft of food were also in some danger of starvation, retribution would probably have been similar in scale to what a rapist would have suffered, which is to say violent death, at least for an outsider.

Another thing about the different time horizons: if someone fails to find a sex partner over a lifetime, it's quite likely because they're undeserving genetically, but if they fail to find enough food over a few months, it could just be variance. This is especially true in a hunter-gatherer society.

Since when has anybody ever made moral judgments based on the possibility of "genetic oblivion"? That may very well be an underlying source of our moral instincts, but it has nothing to do with the way people actually think.

The first man was going to die if he didn't steal some food. People understand and sympathize.

The second man was going to suffer horniness if he didn't commit a rape. Well to hell with him!!!

i think bbartlog hit it precisely. food is more important proximately than sex. a drought in terms of sex does not preclude sex later. a drought in terms of food does preclude sex later (cuz you die).

And then there's the concept that a person is not a slice of bread, but has needs and agency of their own. Theft is far less injurious than assault, and the redress is different. You can't give someone back "not having been raped" the way you can give them back the food you took from them.

In time of rich resouce, food can be spared to hungry guy. A pregnant woman by rape is condemn to life long sentence of burden, resouce, single mother parental care; and also lost a potenial better quality male partner who is more eligible for her. A productive and resouceful male also lost a potential reproduction oppotunity.

So the consequence of rape is far more severe for society in general.

well, i for one like this thought experiment. perhaps i'm ill-tempered or whatever...but those of you who say "the rapist just suffers horniness" i disagree. there's lots of research out there showing the health benefits of an active sex life. i've heard something along the lines of "a male who has sex 3 times a week is 40% less likely to have a heart attack before age X".

i've heard something along the lines of "a male who has sex 3 times a week is 40% less likely to have a heart attack before age X".

heart attacks probably weren't a major selective pressure ;-) as alluded to above, rape is a crime against a person, and involves major costs for the woman in terms of a gestation. not only does the woman have genes (which will get passed on, so the resist-the-rapist might be a better strategy than forgive-and-forget), but she might have relatives who are not too excited about her rape. steal-the-food-to-survive is a no-brainer strategy, if you don't pursue it you won't reproduce. the nature of the environment means that this always needs to be around, and so humans might have an expectation that this is how others will behave. on the other hand a free-rider "rape" strategy isn't necessarily going to exist because it might be really detrimental to get a rep as a rapist for your lifetime fitness. and who knows if your offspring won't be killed by the woman and/or her family?

p.s. i'm sure most of you know this, but orangutans seem to have a "raper" morph. these are small fast males which "catch" females and force them to copulate. the females prefer the big heavy males who are slow as mates, so this is the only way the small males can pass on their genes. this might be a bistable mix of strategies characterized by freq. dependence. the more rapers in the population the warier the females get and so the less successful they are. on the other hand if there are few rapers female orangs are pretty easy to "catch" because they aren't cautious.

There would seem to be some basic psychological differences here that force the two to be looked at in different ways.

For example, food sharing is a basic group building mechanism, while sex is normally private behavior.

What seems more difficult to understand is the following:

If a man forcibly has sex with a woman, he is regarded as a criminal, however, if he tricks her into having sex, and gets her pregnant and then abandons, he is simply regarded as a cad, yet the result is pretty much the same in each case: The woman's value in the meat market is highly devalued.

The big difference is in the victim. If someone steals food from me, that's bad, but if they rape me, that is much worse.

If a man who is hungry goes into the jungle and picks fruit or kills a wild animal for food, so be it. If a man who wants sex masturbates, so be it. No victim, no problem.

However, there is always exception. Raping women or bride snatching are admired in Mongolian culture or some central asian culture, at least in Gangeskhan day. It is tribal warfare things.

The idea that someone who steals food is to be pitied is a modern notion, and clearly a product of an affluent society. It wasn't that long ago that one could be hanged for stealing bread in western nations.

Raping women or bride snatching are admired in Mongolian culture or some central asian culture, at least in Gangeskhan day.

raping the women of other tribes. i doubt most americans would favor the prosecution of men who had raped vietnamese women 40 years ago while they were soldiers.

i doubt most americans would favor the prosecution of men who had raped vietnamese women 40 years ago while they were soldiers.

I think that's a bit of leftist heavy breathing sneaking in there.

Americans would indeed have been -- were -- sympathetic to soldiers KILLING vietnamese men or women in confused or "not sure" or "suspect" circumstances, because killing is a legitimate activity in war. And there will be times where you will make a mistake an kill innocents. Folks will cut you slack because YOU are in a situation where if you assume innocence and are wrong YOU could be dead. Since your ass is on the line, not theirs, they'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Rape however is rape -- outside the necessary purpose of defeating the enemy.

And i find precious little evidence that Americans were tolerant of it -- forget Vietnam --Korea? Germany? Japan? We for instance did not have the "seize the German women as your booty" sort of propaganda that Russians had. (Though i'm sure private rapes occurred -- and some prosecuted.) Nor in Japan was there a "the women of Japan are now yours" theme that i know of.

The US invasion of Iraq comes about as close to an atrocity free, rape free war as there has been in human history. (On the US side, not the al Queda side.)

But i see little evidence of previous societal approval of rape by US soldiers in our history, from the revolution on.

~~~~

I certainly agree with the general point that rape and bride snatching of OTHER tribes is what was the historical norm in these nomadic tribes that practiced it.

Among humans, food and fertile women (not sex!) are both commodities to be traded. But these commodities differ in abundance. Consider a male with only one sister. The sister has a 0.5 degree of relatedness to him (actually, greater than 0.5 for a typical in-breeding society). In other words, his sister's offspring are equivalent to his own fractional offspring. So of course he wants to decide who gets to fuck and impregnate his own sister! And if he is clever, he can trade his sister's fertility for favors to even further boost his reproductive success.

If the man's sister is raped without his permission, then he loses his entire lifetime allotment of virgin-female-sisters! This seriously sucks for him. Food is a renewable resource, so loss of food does not have such an irreversible effect on his fitness.

raping the women of other tribes. i doubt most americans would favor the prosecution of men who had raped vietnamese women 40 years ago while they were soldiers.

Yeah, maybe not, but it's likely our media (fashionable elites) would so favor, unlike almost everywhere else in the non Anglosphere world.

Jim Bob and ChairmanK, I think you're both largely right.

In other words, his sister's offspring are equivalent to his own fractional offspring. So of course he wants to decide who gets to fuck and impregnate his own sister!

This is an interesting line of reasoning. I've always been baffled at how much certain guys want to keep other men away from their sisters. This could provide an evolutionary explanation. My inability to get this on an intuitive level may have to do with the fact that I don't have any siblings.

The US invasion of Iraq comes about as close to an atrocity free, rape free war as there has been in human history.

Aside from all those pesky atrocities and rapes, of course.

A rapist doesn't just steal sex. He steals a reproductive slot from other men. Reproductive slots are much more valuable than food.

I don't think that the consequences of rape to the victim matter much in patriarchical societies. In past times female adultery was considered as serious a crime as rape.

chairmank sums it up.

On a related note the Swiss seem to be developing a ickle solution to the whole messy problem, well, in the context of the disabled at least, but one could see it being applied to the ugly, short or low of status on some unspecified future date.

A welfare group offering sexual relief for the disabled plans to take the service a step further by training professional "assistants" to provide full intercourse.

A rapist doesn't just steal sex. He steals a reproductive slot from other men. Reproductive slots are much more valuable than food.


Well, this is true, but how do these other men understand that? Indeed, apart from her direct relatives (and the woman herself), which males would be concerned and why?

That is to say, what is the mechanism by which these putative other men would be inspired to take action against the theft of potential reproductive slots from them? There are other fish in the sea after all.

George Weinberg certainly makes a good point about the punishments for the crimes, but that doesn't address the moral intuitions people felt about the crimes. Punishments and the people's feelings about the crimes often do not match up completely, so for example how we think of child molesters and compare that to their punishment.

Pter, I am so mad that despite the years we women spent on feminism, the years we worked our butt out to get 75 cents for every dollar a male monkey gets, you had the spunk to equate rape of our bodies to the equivalence of food bartering.

I hate you!!!

:)

There are other fish in the sea after all.

Given the male female ratio one male somewhere will lose out. It is for a similar reason that East Asian males can get pissed when they see an Asian girl with a white guy. It's a net loss for them, likewise a raped girl is a net loss from the male perspective. On a certain, perhaps subconscious level, they see that their pool of potential mates has just shrunk, however slightly. Given that sex is the ultimate purpose of education, wealth, work, and most things in the world, men are right to get pissed (about rape that is, not interracial dating, which I'm all for!)

Given the male female ratio one male somewhere will lose out. It is for a similar reason that East Asian males can get pissed when they see an Asian girl with a white guy. It's a net loss for them, likewise a raped girl is a net loss from the male perspective. On a certain, perhaps subconscious level, they see that their pool of potential mates has just shrunk, however slightly. Given that sex is the ultimate purpose of education, wealth, work, and most things in the world, men are right to get pissed (about rape that is, not interracial dating, which I'm all for!)

I think you are mistaken here. You have simply pointed to an outgroup/ingroup issue. It is easily understandable that males would be angry about 'their' females being taken by other males.

Indeed, I don't believe that generally males are concerned about rape unless it is women who are close to them who are raped.

Also, you have not proposed a mechanism for how males would even be aware that they are the sex in surplus. I suspect that they are far more sensitive to their desirability vis-a-vis other males, which is easily monitored: by noting how females react to them.

The Real Richard Sharpe: Indeed, I don't believe that generally males are concerned about rape unless it is women who are close to them who are raped.

Why would they not be? The guy who rapes the girl is taking the shortcut to courting. We spend tons of money and spend time trying to get access to sex and they don't. It seems like we ought to be pissed at them (especially since most rapists aren't exactly of the best stock).

Why would they not be? The guy who rapes the girl is taking the shortcut to courting. We spend tons of money and spend time trying to get access to sex and they don't. It seems like we ought to be pissed at them (especially since most rapists aren't exactly of the best stock).

Show me some reliable statistics. Don't show me surveys, as people are very good at giving the politically correct answer. The sorts of surveys I would be interested in are those where pulse rate is analyzed while the questions are being posed, or gaze is being analyzed while the questions are posed.

jim bob, you're such a tard i can't even respond to you in full. americans (like jimmy carter) were active in making sure that their boys didn't get in trouble for mylai when everyone knew that civilians were killed. you think they'd believe that rape was a greater crime than slaughtering whole families?

re: patriarchal societies, look at the ancient sumerian law codes. the punishment for rape was often to recompense the family of the victim. or, something bizarre like "your sister can now be raped by the brothers/father" of the woman you raped. rape was a property crime.

the punishment for rape was often to recompense the family of the victim. or, something bizarre like "your sister can now be raped by the brothers/father" of the woman you raped. rape was a property crime.

Was? I remember some similarly bizarre cases reported ewcwntly from India.

Was? I remember some similarly bizarre cases reported ewcwntly from India.

yes, it i still like that throughout much of the world. i assume that the previous allusions made that clear.

jim bob, you're such a tard i can't even respond to you in full. americans (like jimmy carter) were active in making sure that their boys didn't get in trouble for mylai when everyone knew that civilians were killed. you think they'd believe that rape was a greater crime than slaughtering whole families?

I doubt that reason they (initially) tried to put the lid on My Lai was to make sure "their boys didn't get in trouble" for it, but rather that they - correctly - anticipated that public knowledge of the massacre would significantly reduce national support for the American war effort in Vietnam, and diminish international support for it even more.

That is to say, what is the mechanism by which these putative other men would be inspired to take action against the theft of potential reproductive slots from them? There are other fish in the sea after all.

Perhaps they feel that if the crime was left unpunished then more men would commit it. And if more men committed rape, there would be less fish in the sea as well as a higher probability for a particular woman they might have a romantic interest for, to be the next victim.

It is my impression that men generally do care if a woman that is not close to them gets raped, unless she is a very promiscuous woman, for example a prostitute. And they care even more if the victim is young and beautiful.