Gee’s Reviews > A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion > Status Update

The "holdover view" of rape is that men rape because males of their primate ancestors raped, the earlier primates raped because their even earlier male mammal ancestors raped, and so on. This is not a complete ultimate framework, because phylogeny (i.e., the coming into being of a species in the course of evolutionary descent from ancestral species

sexual coercion is best conceptualized as a third type of sexual selection (in addition to mate choice and intrasex competition) rather than as merely a form of intrasex selection.

female copulatory orgasm is positively correlated with the body symmetry of the mate—a pattern predicted by the hypothesis that women selectively bond with, and preferentially retain the sperm of, men of high genetic quality. Thus, degree of female sexual arousal, ranging from absence of arousal to copulatory orgasm, may be strategically related to female choice

Women's preference for the scent of symmetric men may be an adaptation to obtain high-viability genes for their offspring. Men's scent preferences, however, are not significantly related to female symmetry. The sex difference in preference for the scent of symmetry implies that women possess adaptations that place greater importance on genetic quality of a mate

In humans, asymmetry is known to be associated with certain infectious diseases, with retarded development, and with reduced emotional, psychological, and physical health