Rape is not about sex  

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"Rape is not about sex", also known as the Brownmiller theory, is a theory first put forward by Susan Brownmiller in her book Against Our Will (1975). The theory is considered a rape myth by by sociobiologists.

Although Brownmiller did not literally write the words "rape is not about sex" (Burgess and Holmstrom (1974) did), the passage most frequently cited from Against Our Will (1975) to state her claim is:

“Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe. From prehistoric times to the present, I believe that rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.”

Steven Pinker in his The Blank Slate (2002) has been a vocal opponent of the Brownmiller theory.

"This grew into the modern catechism: rape is not about sex, our culture socializes men to rape, it glorifies violence against women. The analysis comes right out of the gender-feminist theory of human nature: people are blank slates (who must be trained or socialized to want things); the only significant human motive is power (so sexual desire is irrelevant); and all motives and interests must be located in groups (such as the male sex and the female sex) rather than in individual people."

Pinker also explains why the theory is attractive:

"The Brownmiller theory is appealing even to people who are not gender feminists because of the doctrine of the Noble Savage. Since the 1960s most educated people have come to believe that sex should be thought of as natural, not shameful or dirty. Sex is good because sex is natural and natural things are good. But rape is bad; therefore, rape is not about sex. The motive to rape must come from social institutions, not from anything in human nature." --The Blank Slate

Nathaniel Givens writes:

In a sane world, Brownmiller’s theory would have been very short lived. This is because an actual scientist stepped in with a direct rebuttal just four years later, in 1979. The book was called The Evolution of Human Sexuality and it was written by the anthropologist Donald Symons. It is no coincidence that Symons wrote from a scientific rather than a political perspective, and his book was widely heralded by some of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century, including Richard Posner, Paul R. Ehrlich and Steven Pinker. Symons’ thesis was very simple and aligned with common sense: he saw rape as being primarily about the satisfaction of sexual lust. In particular, he used evidence to document that:

Victims, as a class, were most likely to be young physically attractive women (as opposed to older, more successful career women). On the other hand, convicted rapists were disproportionately young disadvantaged men whose low social status made them undesirable as dating partners, or husbands. (Summary from Psychology Today)[1]

Further clarifying Symons's position:

In his discussion of "the desire for sexual variety", Symons reviews literature on the "Coolidge effect", the "phenomenon of male rearousal by a new female". Discussing rape, Symons suggests that because males can "potentially sire offspring at almost no cost ... selection favors male attempts to copulate with fertile females whenever this potential can be realized." He criticizes the feminist Susan Brownmiller's argument in Against Our Will (1975) that rape is not sexually motivated, writing that she inadequately documents her thesis and that all of the reasons that she and other authors have given for concluding that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire are open to criticism. Symons writes that Brownmiller's claim that the function of rape is to keep all women in a state of fear has been "vigorously contested", and that it is also an example of a naïve form of functionalism, which is unacceptable since no process that might generate such "functions" has been shown to exist. Symons argues that socialization towards a "more humane sexuality" requires the inhibition of impulses that are part of human nature because they have proved adaptive over millions of years, and concluded that while under the right rearing conditions, "males could be produced who would want only the kinds of sexual interactions that women want" this "might well entail a cure worse than the disease." He considers the major contribution of feminist investigations of rape to be to document the perspective of its victims, showing, for example, that they do not want to be raped.

References

• "The central insight of the feminist theory of rape identifies the act as a crime of violence committed against women as a demonstration of male domination and power."). --Susan Brownmiller & Barbara Mehrhof, A Feminist Response to Rape as an Adaptation in Men, 15 BEHAV. & BRAIN ScI. 381, 382 (1992)

See also

• Rape is a crime of violence but not of sex
• Wartime sexual violence