Differing degrees of rape?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think there's a biological function at play here. A woman might ovulate 450 times in her life (12 times a year times 37 years, perhaps long but trying to be fair). A man produces tens of millions of sperm per day.

Further, a woman has to carry the results of a rape pregnancy at least a short time, and in the days before modern health care, she either carried to term, or had an unsupervised abortion. Both options carried serious risks for the woman, and even surviving childbirth, the woman then had a massive drain on her resources without the concomitant of a mate helping to procure food, clothing, and shelter.

I think men write off being sexually used, or violated, because biologically, the penalty is not nearly so heavy for us.

That may well be. But the evolutionary response is visceral whether there is a realistic fear of pregnancy or not.

Indeed, and sorry I was unclear on that point. The actual possibility of pregnancy is not the driving force behind the violational feelings women have about the matter; simply that such feelings perhaps have genetic roots which can be very hard to escape.

Also, I should point out that I have zero evidence for this train of thought, and suggest it only as a discussion point, not a fact.

I used to denigrate EP, thinking it a pseudoscience of just-so stories, but there are certain instances where it seems reasonable to consider the possibility of natural selection occurring in a psychological context as well. I mean, we're fairly sure sexual selection (a la peacocks or other strongly dimorphic species) exists, and it seems to me that sexual selection has a psychological aspect to it as well.

So I'm not so dead-set against evolutionary psychology as I was, say, fifteen years ago.