"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off." -Gloria Steinem
Whilst the goals of second wave feminism regarding equality have arguably been a huge success in western society, the problems faced by women searching for justice after experiencing sexual assault remain chronic. The global magnitude of the problem demands serious engagement from moral, ethical, humanitarian, religious, socio-political and scientific perspectives. The new paradigm of evolutionary feminism does this by looking at the problem via the prism of evolutionary theory. In doing this, it sets aside much ‘orthodox’ feminist ideology in the process. Evolutionary feminism replaces the subjective perspectives that define orthodox feminist discourse with objectivity and an adherence to the principles of the scientific method. Evolutionary feminism takes as a baseline the well-documented evidence for psychosexual difference (that is, the evidence that men and women have evolved complementary yet distinct sexualities). From this, emerges the hypothesis of ‘male perspective bias’. The existence of such a bias could go some way to explaining the tendency for uniquely male insecurities to become manifest in social policy, including rape prosecution policy. This article is a brief examination of the implications of such a study, as well as an overview of contemporary evolutionary feminism and its challenge to orthodox feminism today.
The Problem
In the UK, the figure for successful rape prosecutions lingers around the 5-7% mark. This, along with other statistics from the last British Crime Survey, inform us that only 15% of rape victims report the crime to the police and that of those that do, 70% fall out of the process before it reaches court. Add to this a false allegation rate of 2-3% and we get the picture that, even with a conservative bias, over 90% of rapists are getting away with it. Yet this year in the UK, rape crisis funding was cut and centres began to close. Concurrently, funding for women’s studies at universities ended. All the while, the rape prosecution conundrum continues to stare at us, sphinx like, its riddle seemingly unbreakable.
One possible explanation – and perhaps even solution - to the crisis may lie within an area many feminists are ideologically opposed to; evolutionary theory and specifically, evolutionary, or Darwinian feminism. Away from the furore that usually surrounds skirmishes between evolutionists and feminists, evolutionary theory very often objectively supports what feminists have instinctively suspected for centuries. These include the tendency for patriarchal oppression when it comes to men coveting a woman's fertility; male anxiety over paternity surety; the existence of pervasive myths of female duplicity linked with the phenomenon of concealed ovulation and, most crucially of all, the tendency of these uniquely male insecurities to become manifest in social policy, including rape prosecution policy.
The issue of psychosexual difference is central to this investigation. Today, the evidence in favour of psychosexual difference is well documented and, in spite of feminist fears - and, it has to be said, fear mongering - evolved sex differences do not equate to inferiority. In evolution, we in fact see true equality expressed in discrete and fascinating ways.
We know this via the pioneering work of female evolutionists such as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Helena Cronin, Anne Campbell and Barbara Smuts. Their work succeeded in illuminating the role the female of our species (and in fact females of all species) play as vital agents of evolution via the phenomenon of ‘female choice’. These women have affected an unsung revolution (unsung by feminism, not evolutionists) within a previously male dominated science, not with declarations of war and angry rhetoric, but with dedicated objective thought. Just as evolutionary feminist consciousness has identified and recalibrated ‘male perspective bias’ within evolutionary science, it can also just as successfully identify and correct such bias within rape prosecution policy, and by the same means.
That women do not want to be raped has been a constant throughout our ever-changing sociocultural environments. Even apparently paradoxical issues, such as women indulging in so-called rape fantasies - so-called because most women who have actually experienced rape do not have happy fantasies about it thereafter - are autonomous acts that a woman is in complete control of, something that rape, by its very essence, is not. Add to this the fact that no woman was ever impregnated, ostracised, abandoned, or her children disowned because of a private fantasy, and it begins to become clear that there is no paradox, even here.
It is only via the certainty of psychosexual difference, sustained by the logic of evolution that helps us see this.
An evolutionary
feminist perspective of humanity informs us that feminism is a vital movement in a world where we can objectively predict that women’s reproductive autonomy will always be under some form of tacit or explicit manipulation from the men around her, for better or worse. It also tells us that when under certain social, cultural and genetic pressures, some men will attempt to override that autonomy by rape, in order to bolster their own reproductive fitness. Recognising this is far from legitimising any male propensity to rape, just as placing locks on our windows does not sanction the theft of our goods. It is identifying real risk so that real counter measures can be taken. In this and more, the most important message evolutionary theory carries to feminism is that it must adapt if it is to survive and honour its duty of care to women
Concerns
There are concerns that giving women a strong reason to
resist rape will somehow legitimise any corresponding male propensity
to rape. The explanations, proximate and ultimate, for why some men rape are complex and cannot be addressed here with any brevity, but the worry about justifications can be. It is a legitimate concern, but one which has its own answer.
Since the dawn of 2nd wave feminism, when women began to demand equal status in law and ceased to be the literal property of their fathers or husbands, it has been a maxim within our culture that ‘no means no’. Women in liberal democracy now have the legal right to refuse any man’s sexual advances. In highly patriarchal or conservative cultures, where women’s rights are automatically lesser than those of the male - where for instance, spousal rape is not a crime and stranger rape is appreciated formally as a crime against family and honour rather than against the female individual at the centre of such trauma - the very real oppression of women occurs already and without any such ‘excuse’. The primacy of the male is all that is needed, and is usually decreed by a highly subjective divine authority.
Our liberal democracy (for all its putative flaws) has, with the help of elements such as feminism, technology and post-enlightenment philosophy, taken steps to free women from such tyranny. Here, the rights of the individual, with a moral claim to freedom of action, do not stretch to the right of oppressing another by something so trivial as stealing their pencil case never mind raping them.
Psychologists and feminists have long considered the possibility that something inherent in masculinity may want to override female sexual choice in certain circumstances. The extrapolation of this is that it casts all men as potential rapists. Not a nice cud for anyone to chew on. That all men are not rapists is quite obvious, but that many men are potential rapists is never more demonstrated than when instances of rape peak to obscene levels within troubled societies, when infrastructure breaks down, such as in war zones or areas suffering catastrophic natural disaster. For women unfortunate enough to abide in these areas, the assumption that all men are potential rapists becomes an essential survival skill. Unpalatable as it is, if we wish to understand rape and improve justice for victims, we must not avert our eyes to this.
What an evolutionary approach tells us is that the problems that confront us about rape - why it happens, how we can better stop and/or punish those who commit it and protect those at risk from it - are not novel. They are as old as our species itself. If we accept this, is it not then reasonable to explore our deep histories in an attempt to explain and contain this most pernicious aspect of human nature? The latent voices of our female ancestors, females who contributed to the shaping of our species via their barely imaginable strivings and sufferings, deserve our consideration in this matter. It is highly remiss of anyone, especially feminism, to attempt to cast their voices aside just as they are beginning to be heard and given the respect they are due within the realm of science.
Post-Script
Feminism faces many challenges today. One of those challenges is how to connect with a new generation of women who do not identify with the rhetoric of victimhood. This is not a feminist failure – it is one of its triumphs. Feminism needs to listen to what these women are saying and take note of the choices they are making. It is not enough to despair at these choices because they deviate from feminist script or dogma. Feminism is for all women, not just feminists.
A second challenge for feminism is to escape the ‘post-modern thicket’, which has choked it of academic and intellectual relevance. It has also made it impenetrable to many a lay feminist and as been devastating to grassroots feminism. This is manifest in the numbers of women forsaking the term ‘feminist’ even though their feminist consciousness is alive and well. For this author, this is where the battle has been situated, between an inert, conservative feminist ideology and an ever-evolving, progressive feminist consciousness, with the former attempting to oppress the latter.
Evolutionary feminism is of service in both these challenges. It allies feminism with a robust, unifying and (like it or not) inexorable academic methodology and it speaks to women with the empowering language of evolutionary agency – language utterly liberated from the doctrine of female weakness. Evolutionary feminism also helps identify pseudo-issues such as the ‘plight’ of women in top-flight jobs hitting the ‘glass ceiling’, and reorients itself to addressing chronic problems such as the rape prosecution conundrum. ‘Justice for rape victims’: This could be the concrete goal of the fourth wave of feminism – evolutionary feminism.
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