Seminar Two
Evolution of sexuality
Sexual violence against women

War seems to be open season for rape of women by men, often mass rape of thousands, even tens of thousands. This is not an exaggeration. Read about any war, any genocide, and you will gasp at the mass raping of women and children. It soon becomes obvious that rape is not really about sex, but about power, humiliation, and conquest, using sex as a weapon. Men seem to feel a kind of narcotic power in war, at a time when women have lost their providers.

In the ethnic conflict of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008, rape described as the norm by a refugee survivor. At night men held flashlights while other men took their turn, sometimes inserting broken bottles, even a gun, in the victim's vagina.

You may say this is just one more form of torture and murder. It is indeed that, but it is also a reflection of an asymmetry in the way the sexes treat each other. The difference in strength between a man and a woman cannot be the only answer. There must an underlying evolutionary thread that reflects a fundamental difference in gender identity and sexual strategy, encoded in behavioral predispositions.

A part of almost every culture, prostitution is another striking example of gender differences. The list below identifies some cross-cultural characteristics of prostitution:

• It almost always targets women.
• It is found in mythology, art, sculpture, drama, literature, and music.
• It is accepted as a norm in some cultures, but criminalized in others.
• Prostitutes often have distinct social strata.
• Girls may be conscripted as young as nine years old.

Female genital mutilation is another epidemic of violence against women, rooted in ancient folklore and superstition. In a poignant article in 2008, from the New York Times, Sara Corbett describes the horrific scope of this form of sexual abuse of women:

Female genital cutting affects up to 140 million women and girls in varying degrees of severity… The most common form of female genital cutting, representing about 80 percent of cases around the world, includes the excision of the clitoris and the labia minora. A more extreme version of the practice, known as Pharaonic circumcision or infibulation, accounts for 15 percent of cases globally and involves the removal of all external genitalia and a stitching up of the vaginal opening.

Tragically, infibulation will cause repeated infections for its young victim for the rest of her life, because of the small vaginal opening. This is just one of the medical and psychological issues that female circumcision causes. The cultural significance of female circumcision cannot be underestimated in understanding its persistence. A knife will be brought by a husband to the wedding night to enlarge this tiny orifice, to ensure the ritual of circumcision has been performed. A family may face public shame if their daughter is not circumcised.

In the image above, photographed in April 2006 by Stephanie Sinclair, we see the female circumcisers before the mass circumcision of more than 200 girls. This photograph is one of a series of powerful images that accompanied an article by Sara Corbett in The New York Times in 2008. Her account of this event is chilling:

Sponsored by the Assalaam Foundation, an Islamic educational and social-services organization, circumcisions take place in a prayer center or an emptied-out elementary-school classroom where desks are pushed together and covered with sheets and a pillow to serve as makeshift beds…

According to Lukman Hakim, the foundation's chairman of social services, there are three “benefits” to circumcising girls. “One, it will stabilize her libido,“ he said through an interpreter. “Two, it will make a woman look more beautiful in the eyes of her husband. And three, it will balance her psychology.”