BadMormon

New Scholarly Thing on Sexual Coercion in Primates

Despicable, Yes, but Not Inexplicable » American Scientist .

“The science that allows us to understand sexual coercion by males is drawn directly from Darwin’s own work on sexual selection. There is, however, another layer here, because of course one cannot talk about the evolution of sexual aggression in male primates without pondering the social consequences of the same behavior in our own species. Are domestic violence and sexual assault simply human homologues of the same conduct seen in chimpanzees and baboons? Many social scientists bristle at this suggestion, with its invocation of biological determinism. This volume’s authors, many of them female researchers, do an excellent job of sensitively exploring the boundary between phenotype and environment that is the stuff of which human behavior is made.”
The small amount I’ve skimmed on the article about it has me drooling to read it.  I’m not scientist enough to judge the factual or inferred ramifications of this paper but I do think that the only way to stop rape and abuse is to understand the basis for it in our human nature.

…
And as I kept reading I got this quote from further down –
“The most compelling contribution in this section is a paper by Melissa Emery Thompson, who argues persuasively that most rapes are not committed by lonely, socially maladjusted men, as Thornhill and Palmer imagined. Instead, rape is a crime most often carried out by men who are sexually experienced and connected to the victim in some way. This changing view of rape is no doubt a reflection of better reporting of crime statistics. That in turn is a result of society having begun to take a more expansive view of such criminal acts, which women of earlier generations might not have been willing to report due to fear of social stigmatization. It should not surprise us that acquaintance rapists far outnumber stranger rapists, nor that the modus operandi of sexual assaults differs in the two different contexts. Acquaintance rapists are not necessarily pathological in other social contexts; they rarely resort to the levels of physical force or violence that stranger rapists employ. All this, Thompson argues, should contribute to a view that acquaintance rape accords with evolutionary perspectives about the rationales for male dominance over and control of female sexuality. And as Thompson puts it, even if an evolutionary perspective does not help us understand how to prevent sexually coercive behavior, “it may give us a clearer picture of the enormity of the problem we are dealing with.”

Exactly

My New Science Guy Crush

“Omar and his co-authors have provided a lovely empirical demonstration of the walk-away process for sexual conflict in water striders. Male striders differ greatly in the aggressiveness of their mating tactics. Some would qualify as psychopathic sexual predators by human standards, while others are perfect gentlemen. In previous research, Omar and his colleagues created groups in which the composition of males varied from all gentlemen to all psychopaths. Females are far more productive in the company of gentlemen, as one might expect, but the psychopaths have the highest mating success within any group containing both types. Thus, the gentlemen count as altruistic and the psychopaths count as selfish in a classic group selection scenario–what I call “the original problem” in the T&R series.”

via New Evidence for Group Selection Published in Science Magazine : Evolution for Everyone.

From the comments on the article: The advantage of being ‘nice’ isn’t huge, really nice males are not particularly successful in either treatment. In treatment 2, females are given some choice in who they mate with, disadvantaging hyper aggressive males that reduce the females own fitness. In treatment 2 males in the middle of the bell curve of aggressiveness are the most successful (females chose intermediately aggressive males, not nice males), with males on both ends having reduced success… The existence of groups and movement between groups is vital in giving females this choice, but given that hyper aggressive males disadvantage female fitness apparently, giving them a chance to escape them allows them to optimize their own fitness by choosing…. Individual selection is undoubtedly important in creating the pattern we see (females optimizing their own fitness)… There is a multi level element, I’m just not sure how important it is in the evolution of the pattern we see in this particular example…
p.s i don’t have access to the science article at the moment, so may be misinterpreting things.
p.p.s enjoying the series…
Posted by: Stuart | November 6, 2009 7:15 PM

As long as you’ve got a working uterus you have a place in Italy!

Pharyngula: She is “in the condition to have babies” – one of my other favorite blogs on the internet I don’t read often enough.

So this braindead woman in Italy was just about to have the plug pulled:

“He claims to be “rescuing” Englaro — not true, since she was effectively dead 17 years ago — and in what has to be the most tasteless and disgusting excuse made yet for the actions of these villains of the right, has further justified it by saying that physically she is “in the condition to have babies”. So, what is Berlusconi going to do next in his bizarro Prince Charming act? Fertilize her eggs?

It’s nice to know that the Catholic Church’s criteria for the value of a woman’s life focus on the functionality of her ovaries rather than the existence of her mind.”

Pharyngula: She is “in the condition to have babies”

Is anyone else thinking of the axlotl tanks in the Dune series?

Ah, clean, easy points about how fucked Evo Psychology, as presented by people with penises, is. Thanks!

If we lived like chimps, there would be a male dominance hierarchy in every neighborhood and men would never leave the neighborhood they were born in, while women could go wherever they wanted.  Women would have sex with any male they wanted, unless a stronger, more dominant female interfered.  Sometimes people would have gay sex when they felt like it and no one would really remark on it. When women had babies other women would help her take care of the baby and would sometimes have to protect the baby from vicious, hungry men who decided to eat the baby because they couldn’t find a steak.  Older women, not young girls, would be the preferred mates for men.

Okay I could go on with this but unless you are being a deliberate ignoramus in total denial you can see my point.  There is no animal model that supports the “naturalness” of the patriarchy.  The animal kingdom is largely without rape, as sex is something that happens largely based on the female’s inclination and natural cycle.  The animal kingdom has hierarchy, sure, but male over male hierarchy, not male over female – its a male vs male situation in which they fight over who gets to be good enough to be worthy of the females.  Lower ranking males often don’t get to have sex at all, so all you boys who whine about women being “gold diggers” or “shallow” for overlooking your pasty, flabby, lazy ass poorly shaven self with the crappy dirty apartment you share with five other guys with tattoos and BO?  If you were animals you wouldn’t be getting laid either.  You are at the bottom of the pack.

Enough with the Evolutionary Psychology Bullshit Already « Screaming into the Void.

God Wins! Kills more people than Satan!!!! Go GOD!

In Defence Of Reason: God vs Satan

BLDGBLOG: Stonehenge Beneath the Waters of Lake Michigan

BLDGBLOG: Stonehenge Beneath the Waters of Lake Michigan

Science does work

This time, it’s a mainstream medical news site that has been infiltrated by this nonsense, printing already-disproven claims attacking Gardasil, the vaccine that can prevent cervical cancer in millions of women.

If you think this is a harmless group of cranks, think again. Cervical cancer kills thousands of women every year, and with vaccination it is almost entirely preventable the vaccine protects against Human Papilloma Virus, or HPV, which is responsible for the cancer.

Antivaxxers claim they care about people, especially, children — and I am very sure they do. But by being blinded by antiscience their effect is exactly the opposite. Antiscience kills. Educate yourself.

Antivaxxers and the media | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine.

Body Image is more Powerful than you Think.

However, a study published recently in the journal Current Biology shows that a simple manipulation of the visual image of one’s body can significantly alter the perception of pain. These findings have important implications for how clinicians manage the treatment of pain.

Binoculars as Pain Killers

For the study, Lorimer Moseley of Oxford University and his colleagues recruited 10 participants, all of whom suffer from chronic pain in their right arm. The participants were asked to perform a set of movements with their right arm, under different conditions. In one condition, they observed their limb through a pair of binoculars, which magnified their hand to twice its normal size; in another, the binoculars were inverted so that their hands appeared smaller than they actually were.

As they performed the arm movements, the participants were asked to rate the amount of pain they experienced. Each one reported that the pain they felt became markedly worse when they moved their limb. Surprisingly though, every participant also reported that the extent to which their pain increased depended on how their vision had been manipulated. They reported the greatest increase in pain when they saw a magnified view of their hand, and the smallest increase when their hands were minified.

The researchers used an objective measure to verify the participants’ reports of the pain they experienced—they measured the swelling of the fingers induced by the movements, and compared it with the unaffected hand. Sure enough, there was more inflammation following the movements when the participants saw a magnified view of their hands. By contrast, the researchers measured less swelling of the fingers following the movements performed with a minified view, in line with the participants’ subjective reports of experiencing less pain under that condition.

Furthermore, the visual manipulations also affected the time taken for the participants’ pain to return to the level it was at before the movements were performed: recovery to the pre-movement level of pain was quickest in the “minified” condition and slowest in the “magnified” condition.

Distorted Body Images: A Quick and Easy Way to Reduce Pain: Scientific American

Doesn’t really matter what they said.

Brain-imaging studies reveal that voting decisions are more associated with the brain’s response to negative aspects of a politician’s appearance than to positive ones, according to research published online in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

The researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Scripps College, Princeton University, and the University of Iowa, say that this appears to be particularly true when voters have little or no information about a politician aside from their physical appearance.

Deciding whom to trust, whom to fear, and indeed for whom to vote in an election depends, in part, on quick, implicit judgments about people’s faces. Although this general finding has been scientifically documented, the detailed mechanisms have remained obscure. To probe how a politician’s appearance might influence voting decisions, Michael Spezio, an assistant professor of psychology at Scripps College and visiting associate at Caltech, and Antonio Rangel, an associate professor of economics at Caltech, examined brain activation in subjects looking at the faces of real politicians.

Voters Make Decisions According To The Brain’s Response To Negative Aspects Of A Politician’s Appearance Rather Than To Positive Ones

Dinosaur Bird, oh but there are no fossils showing evolutionary things…huh.

The Mesozoic was inhabited by some strange-looking critters, and here’s another example: a Jurassic dinosaur called Epidexipteryx, which has spiky teeth, big claws, fluffy feathers all over its body, and four long decorative feathers coming off a stumpy tail. It resembles a particularly ugly bird with a nasty bite, but it couldn’t fly — none of the feathers covering its forelimbs are pennaceous, but are more like an insulating fur. Or, alternatively, its feathers were all about display, a possibility suggested by the odd long feathers of the tail. Here are the bones; as you can see, the integument is remarkably well preserved, with a scruffy ruff of short, non-shafted feathers over the body and limbs, and a surprising spray of just four very long feathers coming off the tail.

Pharyngula: Epidexipteryx