Morality and duck rape

It’s no wonder that feminists aren’t so keen on evolutionary biology:

Female ducks seem to be equipped to block the sperm of unwanted males. Their lower oviduct is spiraled like the male phallus, for example, but it turns in the opposite direction. Dr. Brennan suspects that the female ducks can force sperm into one of the pockets and then expel it. “It only makes sense as a barrier,” she said.

To support her argument, Dr. Brennan notes studies on some species that have found that forced matings make up about a third of all matings. Yet only 3 percent of the offspring are the result of forced matings. “To me, it means these females are successful with this strategy,” she said.

Dr. Brennan suspects that when the females of a species evolved better defenses, they drove the evolution of male phalluses. “The males have to step up to produce a longer or more flexible phallus,” she said.

This is scientific evidence which clearly suggests the vast majority of men are not inclined to commit rape, given most men’s lack of longer, more flexible phalluses and the apparent absence of corkscrew vaginas among women. It does raise some interesting questions about two old stereotypes, of course, given the historical supposition that gentlemen of African descent possessed larger phalluses as well as lower inhibitions against forced matings.

Having spent no time in intimate relations with any gentlemen of African descent, forced or voluntary, I cannot testify to the truth or fiction of the old stereotype, but it would be interesting to know if there is less rape in Japan, home to the famous “rice-penis”, than in a nation wherein the men are demonstrably more well-endowed.

Or, of course, where the women are shaped like corkscrews.

Given this new avian research, I suppose we must conclude that the only evolutionarily accurate explanation for the singular attribute of the White Buffalo is that his ancestors made a regular habit of forced matings every weekday and twice on Sundays.

Anyhow, the thought of the operation of Natural Selection entertwined with morality-related actions such as involuntary intercourse got me thinking about the common claim that human morals evolved over time. If this is true, there should be some sort of moral fossile record which can be tracked over the centuries, even as civilization has itself evolved. But what little I’ve seen of this fossile record of morality tends to demonstrate precisely the opposite… especially when taking into account how fast our current socially dictated mores have changed over the last fifty years.

Take the notion of sexual chastity being a moral virtue. According to some, this is no longer true. Nor was it true in most pagan cultures, so at what point did it evolve and and what point did it become an evolutionary dead-end?

These are questions that must be answered, and answered in some degree of detail, if we are to accept the model of evolving morals. But not only has the model not yet been proven in any way, I’m not aware of it even having been articulated to any significant degree.