Sexual Violence and Sexual Poverty

The recent murder of Anne Le is tragic beyond belief, especially in view of her beauty, intelligence, youth, and charm. In every picture of her I've seen, she looks absolutely gorgeous. Whoever killed her deserves to die.

Forgive me if this is the wrong time to raise the issue, but the question must be asked –To what extent is violence, particularly sexual violence, due to sexual poverty?

Despite its economic wealth, America is sexually poor. And despite the constant saturation of the media with sex, sex, sex, creating the impression that living in the US is one big non-stop orgy, America is the sexual equivalent of Calcutta.

Sexual poverty leads to violence. If a man steals food, it's reasonable to conclude that he's hungry. If a man steals drugs, he may very well be trying to feed an addiction. And if a man rapes a woman, it is probably due to a lack of sex (i.e., sexual poverty).

Feminists have been very successful in propagating the myth that rape is not a sexual crime. I have had college professors repeat this nonsense to me. Yet there are studies that show this isn't the case (1). For instance, it must be asked, if rape is not intended to satisfy sexual urges, then why are the vast majority of victims sexually attractive?

It stands to reason that some men who are sexually frustrated will resort to rape. Even if we concede that power and control are the principal motivators of sexual crimes, what man feels more powerless than the man who can't get a date, and is constantly rejected by women?

In the Philippines I heard a heart-breaking case of several pedicab drivers who kidnapped, raped and murdered a young girl. These sorts of stories are depressingly all too common. A pedicab driver is one of the poorest of men in an already very poor country. His chances of having a fulfilling sex life are almost nil. Although sexual violence is never justified, it should not shock us when it occurs in conditions of sexual poverty.

Marriage creates sexual poverty. If a woman marries and becomes the exclusive partner of one man, then other men lose. If Donald Trump marries her and has her exclusively during her most fertile and attractive years, and then dumps her once she is past her prime and marries another woman, thus denying other men sexual access, then Donald makes the situation even worse. Multiply this by all of the wealthy men who marry multiple women in succession, and it exacerbates the problem of sexual poverty.

Like the time I saw a very attractive soccer mom at the pizza parlor. She was attractive to me, but she was the exclusive partner of another man. Perhaps this man might have found my wife attractive, but she was off the market. We were both sexually bored with our wives (who probably felt the same way), yet we were all trapped in a stalemate, an exclusive, yet unfulfilling relationship. I would have been excited beyond belief to have slept with that guy's wife, but we were all stuck in the same dead status quo. And the status quo is sexual anorexia.

Marriage not only creates sexual poverty, but violence as well. There was speculation by a TV commentator that the murder of Anne Le occurred so close to her marriage because her killer knew that he would lose any chance of having her once she got married. Perhaps the thinking was, “If I can't have her, no one can.”

Think about it: If you find your girlfriend in bed with another man, you leave. If you find your wife in bed with another man, you kill him, and possibly her, too.

Human beings once lived in paradise (2). Paradise was not Adam and Eve in the garden, but humans in a cave, in which everyone mated freely. Why does a man produce millions of sperm, when only a few are necessary for conception? If you sleep with Eve, and then I sleep with Eve, whichever one of us has the largest number of sperm wins in the struggle to procreate. Sperm competition, in which penis size, ejaculate volume, and numbers of sperm increase, soon follows.

Every night in the cave is an orgy. Children are raised by the tribe, and resources are shared.

At some point an evil idea occurs to someone. “I can have a woman all to myself.” It is about this same time that humans transition from being gatherers and diggers into being hunters –and killers. The Bible allegory of Cain and Abel is a profound insight into human nature –we are fratricidal killers descended from a man who killed his brother. Only it is more likely that one brother murdered the other not over religious practices, but over exclusive sexual access to a woman.

We must recognize that no matter how sexually wealthy any society is, there will always be evil in the form of murder and sexual violence, but we must not kid ourselves and pretend that sexual poverty does not lead to desperate --and violent--attempts to gain sexual satisfaction and a feeling of power.

1. Thornhill, R. & Palmer, C. T. (2000). Why men rape. Sciences, 40(1), 30-36.

2. The early human paradise/orgy scenario is from the writings of Desmond Morris.