Sperm Wars

by Robin Baker

  She wasn’t on the pill. All week, since they first met, he had used a condom. Tonight, he had only pretended to put one on. As if that hadn’t been cruel enough, no sooner had he withdrawn than he had gloated that she was the second that night – that an hour earlier he had been in the same spot with another of the girls from their group. He always liked to have more than one girl each holiday, he boasted, and if she really wanted to know, he much preferred the other girl, anyway. But he didn’t mind carrying on having sex with her for the rest of the holiday, if she wanted.

  After insulting him to the limits of her vocabulary, she had made her way drunkenly back to the bar to seek the sympathy of her friends. Now, after the anger and the tears, she had the sudden urge to speak to her boyfriend at home and to seek the reassurance that at least he still cared for her. Clumsily, she stood up, her chair falling over on to the pavement. She told her friends she was going to the phone. Her best friend offered to come with her, but she said she wanted to be on her own.

  The man had been leaning against the wall in the shadows for about fifteen minutes and was smoking his second cigarette when he saw the girl appear at the end of the road. In all that time, only one couple had come to the phone and the church square was now empty. He waited, fully expecting someone to be with the girl. But no, she was on her own. His luck was in, yet again. For a few moments, she was back-lit by the lights from the main square and he could see the silhouette of hips and legs through her thin dress. Then she was in shadow and he heard, rather than saw, her coming towards him. He took one last drag on his cigarette and threw it away. His penis sensed action – beginning to stiffen into the rod of iron that hadn’t once let him down. This girl would be his fifth this summer. He reached into the back pocket of his trousers for the knife.

  The girl had noticed the glow of a cigarette in the shadows but was too drunk and too angry to sense danger. She barely noticed the man as she passed him in the blackness, but a second later she was grabbed from behind, a strong arm around her throat. The knife in front of her face was silhouetted against the light of the distant telephone kiosk. As he held her, she glimpsed a group of people walking past the end of one of the other roads leading away from the church. She wanted to scream, but fear of the knife, the man’s arm around her throat, and blind panic left her totally mute.

  From that first moment, everything seemed to happen at the speed of light. Still standing behind her, the man pressed the cold metal against her cheek and ear. Speaking softly, in a language she didn’t understand, he moved his arm from her throat to her waist and made her bend forward, as if to touch her toes. He lifted her dress forward over her head, placed his knife in her knickers and, with two quick, practised cuts, removed them. Within seconds of making her spread her legs, he was inside her. Fifty thrusts later, he ejaculated. For a few seconds, he paused before withdrawing and for one panic-stricken moment she thought he was going to kill her. But he pushed her to the ground and ran off into the darkness. Within a minute he was back in his car, driving to his hotel, two towns away.

  The girl lay sprawled on the ground in shock for several minutes. Then came the tears. Eventually, she got up and moved off, a sad, dishevelled figure. She saw no one. Back in her hot, humid hotel room, she took off her clothes, stepped into the shower, and stayed there for nearly an hour, washing and washing herself. She fell on to the bed and spent the night half in shock, half in sleep.

  Inside her body, a sperm war raged between the armies from her holiday lover and the rapist, while her right ovary made preparations for ovulation. Two days later, while she was still agonising over whether to tell her friends or the police, she conceived. The war was over.

  Daunted by the prospect of explaining what had happened to police who did not speak her language, and worried by how her boyfriend might react if he ever found out, she told no one about the rape. A week later, back in her own country with her boyfriend, she contrived on their first night together to have unprotected sex.

  On discovering her pregnancy, she first considered an abortion, but with her boyfriend’s reassurances that he would help raise what he thought was their child, she decided to keep it. By the time her baby was born, she had managed to convince herself that it was probably his anyway. But it wasn’t. Her son’s father was in fact a predatory rapist from a distant country.

  Biologists are rarely less popular than when they offer an objective analysis of rape. If they say that rape yields reproductive benefits, they are accused of encouraging the act. If they conclude that rape has a biological basis, they are accused of condoning it. If they dare to suggest that female behaviour may sometimes invite rape, they are accused of violating womankind just as surely as if they had committed the act themselves. Yet to report proper conclusions is not automatically to encourage, condone or violate. Are historians accused of encouraging warfare if they conclude that a country benefited from a war? Are they accused of condoning warfare if they conclude the behaviour has a biological basis? Are they accused of violation if they conclude that a country invited invasion? Or are they, on the other hand, congratulated for incisive historical analysis and for aiding the prevention of future conflicts?

  Prevention of socially unacceptable behaviour, be it rape or warfare, demands a proper understanding of the circumstances that trigger such behaviour. If the objective conclusion is that under certain circumstances all men will rape or all countries will go to war, there is no value in wishing or pretending that men or nation states are somehow different. The value will lie instead in identifying the circumstances that facilitate rape or war. Then, some attempt can be made to ensure that those circumstances rarely, if ever, occur. The only reliable pathway to understanding the situation is via objective analysis, even if en route some conclusions may be unpleasant, unpalatable or socially ‘incorrect’.

  The first step is to be clear about the phenomenon that we are about to discuss. The rape in this scene was a sexual event which had a reproductive outcome. The girl was violated, but not physically damaged, and was left able to conceive and give birth. The rapist’s weapon – in this case a flick-knife – was used as a means of coercion, not to inflict physical damage. This is the commonest scenario. As testament to the reproductive nature of their behaviour, such rapists usually select victims who are at their peak of fertility, aged between twenty and thirty-five.

  On such occasions, the bodies of the men concerned are clearly using rape as a reproductive strategy. On a minority of occasions, however – albeit those which receive the widest publicity – a woman is not only raped but is also physically harmed, mutilated or killed. On these occasions the men concerned are bent on violence and murder, not reproduction. As testament to the non-reproductive nature of their behaviour, such rapists are more likely to select older women, from their late thirties onwards – women who are past their peak of fertility.

  These latter, more violent events are not part of our discussion. Here we are concerned solely with sexual events in which the woman is not physically harmed by the rapist, at least not so much that she is unable to conceive from the intercourse or later give birth (though she may suffer psychological consequences). On these, the majority of occasions, the reproductive success of both the rapist and the victim is influenced by their interaction. Moreover, such rape often involves sperm warfare. This relationship between rape, sperm warfare and reproductive success is an essential and proper topic for consideration in this book.

  We have to ask whether rape can be a successful alternative strategy in the male pursuit of reproductive success. And, unpalatable as the question may be, we also have to ask whether conceiving via a rapist attack can be an alternative strategy for the female body, as well. Anthropologically, rape of the type described in Scene 33 is common in nearly 50 per cent of societies and is reportedly rare in only 20 per cent. It is estimated that in some of the world’s major industrial cities nearly half of women experience an attempted rape in their lifetime, and a quarter are actually
raped. Such estimates are, of course, very approximate and confounded not least by the fact that, as in our scene, very few rapes are actually reported. The current estimate is that only about one rape in ten is made known to the authorities. So widespread is rape and so often do children result from rape that all of us could probably find a rapist among the past five generations of our ancestors.

  Humans are by no means the only animal in which rape is part of the male sexual repertoire. The males of species as diverse as insects, ducks and monkeys are all known to force copulation under certain circumstances.

  At least one insect, the male scorpion fly, has a special hook on its wing which it uses to grip the female while it forces copulation. Without that hook – for instance, if it is removed by an experimental biologist – the female always escapes a male’s attempt at force. All males in this species have a hook, but not all males need to use it. Females are attracted to the bigger males and allow them to mate without being forced. Rapists in this species are the smallest males, unattractive to females, who cannot obtain a mate in any other way. Even so, they are relatively unsuccessful and are lucky to force a mating more than once in their whole lives. In contrast, the largest males have females queuing up for their unforced favours. In this insect, therefore, rapists are males making the best of a bad job, having been born small and relatively unattractive to females. This is not the case for most animals.

  More often than not, rape is an extra option for males who are in all other respects reproductively normal and attractive. Among white-throated bee-eaters (a species of bird), for example, the rapists are individuals who, having managed to breed early in the season and having raised young with a monogamous partner, later embark on raping forays. They chase any female who is still fertile and who has been left unguarded by her mate, and attempt to force insemination. Sometimes such females offer resistance. At other times, like the girl in Scene 33, they may simply allow the male to mate. However the female birds behave, the outcome is the same. Not only do rapists produce young with their partner, they also produce a few through forcing copulation on other females. The result is that, on average, rapists of this species have a greater reproductive success than non-rapists.

  As we shall soon see, it is crucial for our understanding of human rape, particularly the response of the female, to know whether rapists have an above- or below-average reproductive success. Are human rapists more like the scorpion fly, or the white-throated bee-eater? Are they reproductively below average - making the best of a bad job after a lack of success via more conventional strategies? Or are they above average – adding their success via rape to an average success achieved more conventionally?

  Unfortunately, the evidence is a little ambiguous. There have been a few, albeit rather weak, claims that rapists are, in fact, like the scorpion fly, making the best of a bad job. Such studies describe the average rapist as young, poor, and physically unattractive to women. Other much more thorough studies have shown that age for age, social status for social status, and physical attractiveness for physical attractiveness, rapists are no less likely than non-rapists to have a partner and children. If we believe these latter studies, it would seem that on balance human rapists, like white-throated bee-eater rapists, have the potential for an above-average reproductive success. Whether they realise that potential, however, depends on whether they succeed in making the potential reproductive advantages outweigh the potential costs. Like the other minority strategies discussed in this section (bisexuality, prostitution), rape is a risky business. Not only is there the ever-present possibility of infection, there is also a real danger that rape will trigger strong and often violent retribution.

  First, there is some risk that rapists will be injured or even killed by the victim herself – though, as in the scene, females do not always resist. Secondly and more importantly, they are at risk to retribution both from their victim’s partner and from the society in general. Men do not stand idly by and watch their or other men’s partners being raped if they can prevent the attack. Vigilante groups against rapists are by no means uncommon, particularly in large cities. Nor are humans alone in showing such defensive behaviour. The male members of a lion pride, for example, will band together to repel attacks from marauding gangs of bachelor males intent on gaining sexual access to the females. Injuries, sometimes fatal, are commonplace.

  In most modern human cultures, however, most of the defence against rapists is institutionalised. Incarceration rather than violence, injury or early death is a rapist’s destiny if he is ever caught.

  Rape is clearly a dangerous reproductive strategy. It can be very successful but it can also be a complete failure. As a result, the successful rapists amongst our ancestors, those who left most children and thus whose genes we are now most likely to possess, were those who were the best judges of circumstances; those who most accurately assessed (subconsciously) whether the potential reproductive benefits of an opportunity to rape really outweighed the potential costs.

  So far, we have looked at rape as a reproductive strategy for men. When we consider women and their physiological response to being raped, we encounter an unpalatable conundrum. Theoretically, if being raped is reproductively disadvantageous to a woman, she should be less likely to conceive from it than from routine intercourse. On the other hand, if being raped is advantageous, she should be more likely to conceive from it than from routine intercourse. So what happens? Are women more likely, or less likely, to conceive via a rapist?

  All of the available evidence points in the same direction. It suggests that, like the girl in Scene 33, a woman is more likely to conceive from rape than from routine sex with her partner. It is just possible that this conclusion is false, the data reflecting instead a greater probability that a woman will report rape if she is likely to conceive. But this is unlikely for two reasons. First, a woman has to report a rape long before she knows whether she has conceived. Secondly, the difference in conception rate between rape and routine sex is greatest during the least fertile phases of the menstrual cycle – during menstruation and again three or more weeks after menstruation. These are precisely the times that a woman would least expect to conceive.

  However reluctantly, therefore, we should accept that a woman is more likely to conceive from rape than from routine sex. The most plausible explanation is that the trauma of rape actually stimulates ovulation, especially if her body happens to be ‘on hold’ (Scene 15). We have already seen that rather violent rough-and-tumble sex play can trigger ovulation in mink (Scene 28).

  However, trauma may not be the only factor. Although a woman is more likely to conceive from rape than she is from routine intercourse with her partner, there are other, less traumatic, situations in which she is equally likely to conceive. One is when she has sex with a partner whom she has not seen for a long time and whom she sees only briefly – as when a soldier comes home on a short leave (Scene 15). Another is during snatched moments of infidelity (Scenes 6, 17 and 19). What these two situations have in common with rape is not trauma but a limited opportunity to collect a particular man’s genes. The physiological mechanism for conception is also likely to be the same in all three situations – ovulation in response to intercourse (Scene 15).

  It is not difficult to see why a woman should want to make the most of a limited opportunity to collect the genes of a partner or a lover. But why should she want to make the most of a one-off opportunity to collect the genes of a rapist?

  It was to answer this question that we needed to consider earlier whether human rapists have an above- or below-average reproductive success. As we have seen on many occasions in this book, the genes of males who have an above-average reproductive success are desirable targets for a woman’s body. If she can collect such genes, she will increase her reproductive success via male descendants who inherit the same potential for success. Since we decided for rapists that, on balance, they do indeed have above-average potential, it should be no surprise to find tha
t when a woman’s body has a one-off opportunity to collect a rapist’s genes, it often does so.

  This conclusion does not mean, as people often assume, that a woman should therefore seek to be raped. On the contrary, it is reproductively important to the woman that her body collect genes from only the most successful of rapists. If she conceives to an inept rapist, doomed quickly to be caught and to suffer social retribution and incarceration, her male descendants would inherit unsuccessful characteristics. As we discussed earlier (Scene 28), a man needs to pass certain tests if his genes are to be acceptable to a woman. The only way a woman’s body can select out the most successful of rapists is to do everything possible to avoid being raped. She should avoid risky situations and take full advantage of the protection offered by her partner, by other individuals, and by the wider society. Whether she should also try to fend off the rapist physically will depend on her assessment of the danger of being physically damaged. Unlike the tests set by women during rough-and-tumble sex play (Scene 28), she may often be better advised to follow the example of the girl in Scene 33 and not resist. A woman who follows this overall strategy is unlikely to fall victim to any but the most cunning, determined and competent of rapists. The result is that only a minority of women are ever raped, but those who are may then respond by conceiving.

  Our discussion should not end here. If rape can be a successful alternative reproductive strategy for men, and if conceiving via the more competent of rapists can be a successful reproductive strategy for women, we need to ask why rape is not more common. In particular, we need to discuss whether rapists are a genetic minority, like bisexuals (Scenes 30 and 31), or whether all men are potential rapists. This question will be examined in Scene 34.