Male Sexual Coercion in Response to Mate Infidelity

Abstract The power to restrain women’s sexuality has taken many forms. Historically, men have been entitled and even encouraged to reprimand their wives physically, and forced sex was not excluded as a means of rebuke and control. Marital rape, which many have been considered an oxymoron as one could not rape something owned, has been used to punish a woman judged to be unfaithful. The long list of restraints and coercive acts served the ultimate purpose of limiting women’s sexual access, or desirability, to competing males. To better understand these processes, this chapter explores the often brutal but evolutionarily old control strategies that have been deployed when males have feared or suspected infidelity. Intimate partner violence is often paired with sexual coercion when female infidelity is suspected. Sexual coercion is one of several methods of mate guarding, preventing or avenging cuckoldry. The variables that affect the decision to apply coercive methods and other tactics of mate guarding are discussed. Research is presented indicating sexual selection pressures (i.e., evolution) is the ultimate cause of forced in-pair copulation, notwithstanding the proximate causes of religion, culture, traditions, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of the men and women involved in the dynamic of sexual coercion in response to real or perceived female infidelity. Case studies of couples experiencing the dynamics of female infidelity and male sexual coercion are presented, along with an evolutionarily informed cognitive therapy that may provide a useful treatment mechanism.