Myths of Gender by Anne Fausto-Sterling

Author:Anne Fausto-Sterling [ANNE FAUSTO-STERLING]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Since these males compete heavily with each other for food, many end up with none. An empty-handed male cannot convince a female he’s worth the time of day. His unfitness is plain to see. Thornhill suggests that in species in which males normally make no nuptial offerings it is harder for a female to tell how fit he is, so that males may get to mate just by doing a good job of courtship. In this case a less fit male can trick a female into mating with him because she can’t be sure how fit he really is. “Thus,” Thornhill argues, “selection for heterosexual rape should be stronger on males of species with male resource control than on males of other species.”22

Thornhill does not shrink from the task of applying his work on rape in insects to the human condition. In an extensive discourse on human rape he and a co-author define rape as forced copulation which reduces the ability of the female to make her own reproductive choices. In explicating this definition they write:

Copulation by a man with women who depend on him (e.g., a male employer copulating with his female secretary or a male slaveowner with his female slave) is not necessarily rape ... by our definition because the female need not be denied the option of gaining benefits that exceed the costs to reproduction (job security or salary [secretary]; resources or higher status [slave]).

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