Originally Posted by tore

What? I don't really understand what you mean. There doesn't have to be one reproductive strategy in a population or species. I can use an example I've used previously with fish. There are some fish species where male and female look very different. In some of these, the males keep harems and then they protect and have sex with the females in that harem. However, some males don't do this .. instead they too look like females and infiltrate the harems. Then they "sneaky fuck" the females in the harem.

The sneaky fuckers employ a reproductive strategy that exploits the normal strategy so it wouldn't exist on it's own. Also, if there are too many sneaky fuckers, the protective males probably get more vigilant and better at sniffing out the cheaters and sneaky fuckers might be competing too much with eachother etc. for it to be efficient. Thus, there should be some kind of ratio between regular harem keepers and sneaky fuckers. At any one point in time, a male would on average do better being either a sneaky fucker or a harem keeping male depending on how the ratio is. The result is that the sneaky fuckers are kept as a minority because that's when the strategy gives a fitness benefit.

If you hypothesize that rape is a biological strategy, it doesn't mean that it's the only strategy or something everyone would do. It could be a response from a minority of the population when they are put in a specific situation, such as not being able to get partners any other way.