Critically evaluate Susan Brownmillers (1975) assertion that ' war Essay

Critically evaluate Susan Brownmillers (1975) assertion that ' war provides men with a tacit license to rape - Essay Example Brownmiller feels that rape perseveres as a way for men to perpetuate their historic societal dominance over women on the whole. Assault laws have evolved over recent decades with respect to different classes of rape; harsher sentencing for wartime rapists has also been achieved where once it was nearly impossible to convict a man. Wartime continues to be the most difficult scenario for the control and subsequent punishment of rape. Brownmiller and her colleagues agree that because of the relaxed morality of a battlefield or a war-torn country, men feel free to not only take advantage of their baser instincts to fight and kill, but also to rape. Brownmiller explains rape as a purely human issue; she notes how zoologists will not address rape since it is believed to be nonexistent in the animal kingdom. To Brownmiller and many other researchers, â€Å"human beings are different† (1975, 1) in that their males are capable of rape and their females are capable of succumbing to violent sexual acts. In nature, the sexual act of animals is governed by the female’s fertility cycle: in essence, animals will not have sex unless the female is fertile and the male senses this. With humans, however, the female fertility cycle does not govern sexual acts nor does it have any effect on the sex drive of males; this is the fundamental difference between people and animals on which Brownmiller bases her distinctions of rape. Instead of being based on the fertility cycle, people copulate based on their individual urges. As Brownmiller says, â€Å"our call to sex occurs in our head† (ibid.). With animals, the male of the species will not attempt to copulate with a female unless she is clearly fertile; therefore the fertility cycle governs not only sexual urge but the act itself. Since humans do not behave based on this fundamental principle, women are always able to be viewed in a sexual way, men are always able to become aroused