95.

The problem with taking a class on human sexuality isn't that it's awkward. It's that sometimes, you will read things that, for whatever reason, seem intrinsically wrong.

For example, in the introduction to my textbook, the author cites a study that concludes, "By committing rape, men could have extra offspring at little cost, thus perpetuating more copies of their genes. Women, on the other hand, were limited in the total number of offspring they could have and could easily reach that number without engaging in rape. Therefore, the thinking goes, genes conferring the capacity for rape on men (and men only) spread throughout the human species."

How can someone apologize for rape on the basis of biology? But more importantly, how can they be so wrong? I feel that sometimes people refer to their "animal instincts" when they mean "my worse self." But in most species, females are the sexual decision-makers. I'm thinking about all those Animal Planet videos where a male lion tries to get it on with a female lion, and she doesn't dig it, so she claws him in the face and he skulks off. Something like that. The point is, rape does not exist in the animal kingdom.

This isn't a matter of opinion. It's a fact. And if rape were an evolutionary advantage, why wouldn't it be the norm? After all, many species are better at reproducing than humans (humans, in fact, reproduce poorly. What we do well is eliminate predators.) Why is this? Lots of theories might exist, but the most obvious is that it's not always advantageous for a female to be pregnant. The other might be that rape - overall, a violent act - is both physically and mentally damaging. Not only is it less likely to produce offspring, it's more likely to leave damages that will complicate pregnancy, etc, etc, etc.

And it's not as if most rapes progress like normal sex, anyway. In general, in fact, rape prevents pregnancy by damaging the woman. And I'm not just talking about the Congo, either. At the risk of being really indelicate, it seems that in most species males are conditioned to respond to signs of a female being "in heat" (not a charming expression) but, anyway, she'll enjoy it.

Why am I even bothering with all this, since the majority of people aren't rapists and the few who are can't be reasoned out of it? And why does any of it matter? I guess because rape is already such a loaded term on most college campuses, and I wonder sometimes if it doesn't do more harm than good to expose people to science based on faulty assumptions (women can have all the offspring they want without resorting to rape? Maybe some women can, just like some men, but how can someone make such a sensitive conclusion based on such a broad generalization?)

But, in the grander scheme of things, what is becoming far too clear is that most studies about human sexuality are "quack science" - hopelessly lopsided, poorly executed, and inconsistently robust in their conclusions. Not once have we come across results that, examined in the light of statistics, come up significant time after time.

What a raft of bullshit this class is turning out to be.