CAN RAPISTS REALLY BLAME THEIR GENES?; BASIC INSTINCT: SCIENTISTS CLAIM SEX BEASTS CAN'T HELP IT.

RAPE has been described as the fate worse than death.

But, according to a new book by two American scientists, rapists are only doing what comes naturally.

Craig Palmer and Randy Thornhill believe men who rape are merely responding to an inbuilt, ingrained biological and evolutionary urge to reproduce.

And the authors say it is only the curse of political correctness, coupled with the rise of feminism, which has prevented this theory from being more widely accepted.

In other words, the old research - notably by female academics and organisations such as Rape Crisis - which suggests that rape is at least as much about power, degradation and domination of women, as it is about sex, is totally wrong.

To the biologist Thornhill and the anthropologist Palmer, rape is no more or less than an inevitable, if possibly extreme, example of the survival of our species.

They argue in their book - based apparently on their study of the scorpion fly - that men will force women to have sex if their urgent need to reproduce is thwarted.

"Just as the leopard's spots and the giraffe's elongated neck are the result of aeons of past Darwinian selection, so also is rape," they say.

"Men may be tempted to demand sex, even if he knows his date doesn't truly want it, and may mistake a friendly comment or a tight blouse as an invitation to sex."

In other words, the boys can't help it and, besides, the bitches are asking for it - especially those women who dare to talk to men or dress in anything more provocative than the veil and the chador.

This theory insults not only women, but the vast majority of good, decent men, because it lends spurious academic credence to the fiction that every man is a potential rapist and only the constraints of society prevent more "mistakes" being made.

But far more worrying is the fact that Palmer and Thornhill's dangerous theory will be seized upon by every pervert as their very own licence to rape.

After all, why should they restrain themselves when they have two allegedly eminent scientists telling them that by raping they are only fulfilling their evolutionary destiny?

Inevitably, too, the book will be used by lawyers defending rapists as yet another excuse for even fewer rape convictions. Current figures indicate that as many as nine out of 10 rapists are already evading the law because many sex crimes go unreported.

And those which are reported are notoriously difficult to prove.

Lawyers are adept at convincing juries that women only have themselves to blame for being attacked.

Now Thornhill and Palmer have handed out more ammunition with this half-baked, ill-informed research.

"M'Lud," the lawyers will say, "the woman was not only wearing a skirt above her ankles, but it was that time in the day when my client felt an overwhelming need to reproduce..."

Of course, it is all nonsense.

Few would say that rape has nothing at all to do with sex. By its very nature, it is a sexual act. But it is not one born out of love or mutual desire, but of hate and anger.

By pandering to, and confirming this rapists' charter, the scientists are only perpetuating the old, discredited myth that women really enjoy it.

Whether in short skirts or long, women should be able to walk the streets, day and night, safe in the knowledge that they will not be molested, far less expect to be molested as this treatise would have it.

Rape is an invasion in its most horrendous form and to airily dismiss it as a "natural" consequence of the male urge to procreate is not only irresponsible, but untrue.

I would recommend that Messrs Thornhill and Palmer forget the scorpion fly and take time to examine the rape statistics.

They might just notice that children as young as two and women over 90 are included in the list of victims.

If, as they assert, rape is solely about reproduction, then it should follow that only women of child-bearing age should be at risk from the natural-born rapists.

Furthermore, men also rape other men - how can that be squared with the need to reproduce?

With their book, Palmer and Thornhill will get the headlines they seek and the notoriety they crave.

But the book will do no one, either male or female, any favour with this perverse manipulation of Darwin and his theories - even if it is written in part by a man called Randy.

*A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion.