We all know by now that the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, has beheaded two American journalists, and that, routinely, its soldiers execute village men and put their severed heads on sticks. What fewer of us have paid attention to is how women are faring in ISIS territory.
The Wall Street Journal covered the women’s side of the story earlier this month. Their reporting began with mention of women tied to trees and offered as sexual rewards to fighters. The report also spoke of a line of women shrouded in black being led by rope to a slave market. Girls still young enough to play with dolls are being forcibly married to jihadists. And the Islamic State has asked jihadists in other countries to kidnap virgins and send them to Syria.
Meanwhile, Islamic State propaganda proclaims the importance of women’s modesty. Why, then, would its soldiers engage in sexual crimes against women?
Work by psychologists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and at China’s Hebei University suggests an answer. We tend to think of raped women and girls as the unfortunate collateral damage of war. But these scientists suggest that, from an evolutionary perspective, what’s happening to women may be war’s whole point.
The fundamental question the researchers set out to address was “Why has war proven to be absolutely ineradicable?” The data they collected from experiments with young men suggest that it has much to do with a Darwinian compulsion among young men to spread their seed.
For example: Citing the work of other researchers, the Chinese team noted that men play a meaner hand of blackjack after seeing a picture of a pretty woman. With a real-life pretty woman watching, a man is more likely to cross traffic against a red light. From evidence like that, the Chinese researchers came to suspect that men’s everyday exhibitions of agility and daring-do are the behavioral equivalent of plumage on a rooster or big antlers on a stag —or of the ornamentation of military uniforms. Wearing a uniform or carrying a weapon, according to these researchers, can have the same effect on females as shouting, "My seed makes hearty progeny, and I can protect my family. Mate with me!"
To test the idea of a connection between being willing to go to war and an evolutionary imperative to procreate, the researchers showed young heterosexual men pictures of women. Some of those women were conventionally attractive. Some were not. After showing a picture, the researchers asked men to rate their agreement with some war-supporting statements. Seeing pictures of attractive women prompted significantly more agreement than seeing pictures of unattractive women. And in a separate experiment, men shown pictures of attractive women responded more quickly to warlike imagery. Even pictures of a national flag failed to turn men into the hair triggers that a picture of a pretty face did.
Which is all to say that attractive women real or imagined have the potential to make men more belligerent and more rash.
By the way, the researchers also tested women. Their attitudes towards war and their quickness to act were unaffected by pictures of attractive men.
Now, if you ask a modern soldier what he's fighting for, he's unlikely to salute and shout, "To make babies, SIR!" It's not surprising, then, that according to the researchers, any role in war-making of the biological imperative to spread seed is probably hidden from soldiers' awareness. But that doesn’t necessarily mean much. Ignorance was apparently blissful enough for one infamous warrior. DNA survey data show that about 8% of the adult men in the region of the former Mongol empire descend directly from Genghis Kahn.