They also criticize the assumption that there is a connection between what is naturally selected and what is morally right or wrong, which they refer to as the "naturalistic fallacy", and the idea, popularized by the feminist author Susan Brownmiller in Against Our Will (1975), that rape is an expression of male domination and is not sexually motivated.

Critics also characterized A Natural History of Rape as poorly written, and suggested it was part of a trend to blame social problems on biological causes and had received unwarranted attention due to its controversial subject matter.

They also criticize Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, arguing that his influence led to "the widespread adoption of the myth that women subconsciously desire to be raped.

[14] The book was also discussed by the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich in Time,[15] Judy Quinn in Publishers Weekly,[16] Marianne Meed Ward in Report / Newsmagazine (Alberta Edition),[17] Erica Goode in The New York Times,[18] Lyn Cockburn in Herizons,[19] the feminist author Jennifer Pozner in Extra!,[20] the science writer Kendrick Frazier in Skeptical Inquirer,[21] and the philosopher Nancy Pearcey in Human Events.

However, he believed that they were mistaken to reject entirely the idea that rape is motivated by a desire for "violence and domination", arguing that it was more likely that it and sexual urges played an important role.

He also argued that Thornhill and Palmer ignored the fact that selection was not the only evolutionary force that could potentially influence culture and provided insufficient discussion of rape among non-human animals.

He criticized its authors for providing few "real-life descriptions of rape", dismissing women as ideological while presenting scientists as objective, and making insufficient use of psychology and evidence from primate behavior.

He criticized its authors' proposals for rape prevention, writing that they wrongly saw the United States as a typical country rather than one especially rape-prone, and ignored "cross-cultural information".

He concluded that A Natural History of Rape was "advocacy" rather than science, and compared evolutionary psychology to psychoanalysis, arguing that both used manipulation to fit "every possible explanation of human behavior" into their framework.

[10] Angier described the book as "polemical" and accused its authors of failing to provide "real scientific data" and of misrepresenting both Brownmiller and feminist views on rape more generally.

[15] According to Quinn, A Natural History of Rape was discussed prior to its publication in prominent stories in The New York Times and USA Today, and the controversy surrounding the book encouraged MIT Press to publish it early.

She accused them of promoting "speculative and untestable science" and criticized reporters for failing to "compare Thornhill and Palmer's claims against the exhaustive research conducted on rape victims and rapists over the past 30 years."

[22] Begley wrote that the book was denounced by feminists, sex-crime prosecutors and social scientists and that the biologist Joan Roughgarden described it as "the latest 'evolution made me do it' excuse for criminal behavior from evolutionary psychologists.

[28] Patai credited the book's authors with challenging the feminist idea that rape is about "violence and power" with "impressive documentation", and argued that accusations that they were "blaming the victim" were "hysterical" and ignored what they actually wrote.

She concluded that while they "err in judging rape to be primarily an evolutionary adaptation and not an expression of rage or power, feminists have erred in the opposite direction."

They described the book as an "inflammatory" manifesto "outlining evolutionary biology's future conquest of the social sciences", and wrote that in the controversy that followed it scientific evidence had been largely ignored.

She argued that it was doubtful that rape could be based on a specific set of psychological mechanisms or understood through comparisons to the behavior of non-human animals, which involved the risk of anthropomorphism.

She dismissed the work, writing that its authors wrongly considered it free from ideological bias, and made many claims, such as that "contemporary Western civilization is more rape-prone than earlier societies and that in the past women married younger, when they were most fertile", without evidence.

She accused them of misunderstanding the views of Brownmiller and Griffin, and criticized them for denying that "violence plays any role in motivating rapists", for their "idiosyncratic" definition of rape, for making simplistic assumptions such as that "men and women are heterosexual and constructed as binary opposites" and that men are more aggressive and eager to copulate than women, for overstating the role of competition as a driving force, and for failing to consider how changes in modern society, such as the feminist movement, might affect the "dynamics of rape."

She criticized them for maintaining that "rape behavior constitutes a single, genuine trait", failing to provide evidence for the "relative reproductive success of rapists and nonrapists", dismissing the view that rape results from psychopathology, failed to consider data drawn from comparisons between humans and chimpanzees and bonobos or to provide a detailed description of "circumstances in our evolutionary past", caricatured the views of social scientists, and misrepresented Brownmiller.

She criticized Thornhill and Palmer for maintaining that infertile women suffer "less psychological pain" from rape, writing that it ignored what was known about the destructive effects of child sexual abuse.

They considered the primary scientific weaknesses of the work its authors' "lack of explicit models or fitness measures" and "appeal to hypothetical domain-specific evolved psychological mechanisms."

They added that effective evaluation of Thornhill and Palmer's hypothesis requires "specification of an evolutionary model, and estimates of the fitness costs and benefits of rape."

He credited its authors with demonstrating that the evidence is at least consistent with their hypothesis that rape is an evolutionary adaptation, and considered them correct to reject the charge that they are genetic determinists.

"[48] Vandermassen noted that the book brought attention to evolutionary theories of rape, but also provoked controversy and, like other attempts to explain human behavior in biological terms, was greeted with hostility by many feminists and social scientists.

"[52] Thornhill and Palmer, writing in the Journal of Sex Research, argued that much of the criticism their work had received consisted of straw man arguments that were "inherently contradictory and illogical" or which misunderstood or misrepresented their views.

According to them, these false claims included the suggestion that their work was "an example of facile enthusiasm for adaptationist explanations of evolutionary phenomena" and that they forced their data to support their conclusions.

The Roses also accused them of insulting rape victims by suggesting that they might have invited sex by wearing revealing clothing, and criticized them for preferring ultimate to proximate explanations, considering the latter to be more explanatory.

"[55] Richard Morris stated that A Natural History of Rape caused "a great deal of controversy" and that some critics objected "quite violently" to its authors' ideas in The Evolutionists (2001).

He credited its authors with bringing attention to scientific research on rape and its connection with human nature, but observed that they also "brought down more condemnation on evolutionary psychology than any issue had in years".