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Some subset of men will, but not the men you're thinking of:
Your hypothesis that the jock beats up the nerd because the nerd is eyeballing his woman, the jock feels threatened by him, and therefore engages in "mate guarding" behaviour - all of this rests on the assumption that the jock sees the nerd as a credible threat, a plausible sexual rival. Even you don't seem to believe the nerd represents this, so I suggest a more parsimonious representation: the jock bullies the nerd as it's a cheap way to demonstrate where the jock sits on the totem pole, particularly relative to the nerd.
It's possible that the original point still stands even if nerds are a small minority of all rapists, if being raped by a nerd is percieved as much worse than being raped by a non-nerd.
I don't know how much this corresponds with reality, but there is definitely at least some extra 'yuck' factor associated with sexual violence when perpetrated by very-low value males.
Alternately, if 'tolerating male proximity' is a tradeoff between various social goods & risk of sexual violence, tolerating males who are low-risk but have low (or zero) social capital to trade can easily become a worse tradeoff than chumming around with high-risk high-reward men.
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Many partners =/= high quality. The lowest quality men don't have many partners but many of them are too weak to rape women. The man who has met many fat women on tinder or traded weed for favours from trashy women isn't higher quality than the man who is married and faithful.
Animals either have a fast life history strategy or a slow one. Slow life history strategy is to build long relationships, invest in the long term, invest greatly in your offspring and prioritize quality. Slow life history strategy works in a stable but harsher ecosystem. Fast life history strategy is about reproducing as much and as fast as possible. Quick high risk sex is valued. Fast life history strategy is better in a dangerous ecology with plenty of food. Species whose population is primarily limited by predators tend to have faster life history strategy.
Rape is the ultimate fast life history strategy. Extremely high risk, negative bonding, zero paternal investment and high time preference. The people attracted to that lifestyle will also be more into other forms of fast low quality sex.
A better measurement than number of partners would be attractiveness.
I don't think you're really responding to the point I made. I was arguing that the evidence suggests sexless men are less likely to rape than men who have many sexual partners, and you're making an unrelated point about men who pursue a fast or slow life strategy.
Jocks may pursue a fast life strategy (the stereotypical frat boy rapist who waits for sorority girls to pass out before taking advantage of them) or slow (the high-status MBA who's extremely selective in his choice of wife). Nerds, in this framing, are the low-T noodle-armed dudes who lack the nerve to either talk to girls or rape them. Like, if you hear "nerd" and think of a guy who fucks tons of unattractive girls and is callous about the whole "consent" thing, that's about as far removed from my understanding of the term as it's possible to be.
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It is a genetic thing, but I don’t think it’s about women. Humans, especially at the ages where bullying happens are keenly aware of, and eager to enforce, their place in the dominance hierarchy. The nerd is a nerd less for hobbies and interests than for being weak and pathetic and socially awkward than anything he’s specifically doing. The other kids find the presence of said weak and pathetic creature offensive and frankly a potential hit to their own place in the hierarchy. A person who eats with sinners is a sinner, and a boy who tolerates the presence of nerds is a nerd.
The only thing worse (which is forbidden by the schools) is to be beaten up by the nerd. This is why so many bullies stop when the nerd fights back. They see that they could lose a lot of standing among their peers if word gets around that they lost a fight to a nerd. That puts their place in severe jeopardy as it means they themselves are weak and pathetic.
I'd say (based on my own experiences, as both a bullying victim and a bully) that this contempt is not even a necessary element. It's perfectly possible for a kid to gladly participate in tormenting the class's punching bag - not because the kid feels any malice towards them, but simply because it's one of the many fun things to do with your in-group, akin to sharing an inside joke. The notion that the punching bag is actually suffering doesn't really... cross the kid's mind; the kid might not even realize he's being a bully.
In fact: Bizarre as it sounds, it is possible for a bully to torment the nerd mercilessly... and, simultaneously, want to be friends with him, wondering why the nerd remains withdrawn.
Let me share a personal anecdote: For some years, I attended a school in which I was mercilessly bullied, by pretty much every boy in my class. We're talking things like tossing my clothes into the trash - things that might not warrant calling the police, but definitely cross the line of casually teasing your friends. Shortly after graduating, I found a social media site where my former classmates were commingling and chatting with each other. Out of morbid curiosity, I looked at what they were saying about me, and what I saw was this:
"A" and "B" were two of the people who had bullied me the hardest. Apparently, what I regarded as merciless torment, they regarded as harmless roughhousing! It was hard for me to believe, actually; it seemed remarkably clueless of them. However... upon reflection, I had to admit: at other times in my life, I had been involved in bullying other people, and somehow hadn't realized what I was doing until much later. I guess the bottom line is: kids can be really, really oblivious sometimes.
By the way, although ImpassionaTwo's argument is largely weak and hardly worth debating, there is one valid point they make:
The nerd's limited social awareness renders him more susceptible to bullying, not just because his awkward behavior makes him a prime target for becoming the class punching bag, but also because he's unable to truly understand what is going on. The things I said above - that bullies aren't necessarily sociopathic sadists; that otherwise friendly and well-adjusted people may still bully others, and may even feel amicable towards the very same people they're tormenting - are unfathomable to a nerd who operates under a simplistic, strictly rational model of human behavior. And so, the nerd suffers under what he sees as inexplicable malice - unaware that his tormentors may be simply clueless, socially awkward in their own way, and not merely implacably evil.
This smacks of post-hoc rationization.
That may be!
However, that one social media posting isn't the only evidence I have. Let me provide some additional context.
During my time in school, when I confided in my homeroom teacher about the bullying, she offered the same perspective that I am presenting now: "Perhaps they just want to be your friends."
At that time, as a socially clueless kid, I couldn't comprehend what I was hearing. My model for human relations was simple: All human relations can be neatly separated into "friends" and "enemies". If someone wants to be your friend, they are kind to you and do fun things with you. If someone is picking on you, they are your enemy who wants you to suffer. Viewed within this framework, my teacher's words were blatantly absurd. I had no idea how to understand that, so I concluded that she was my enemy as well, trying to gaslight me into silence to avoid having to deal with me; this was the only explanation that fit into my model.
She wasn't the only one who told me that, though. My father had an anecdote to share: "there was this one guy who always picked on me, but when one day someone else tried to hurt me, he was my fiercest defender, and in the end he became my friend." This too didn't fit into my model, so... well, I couldn't exactly accuse my father of gaslighting me, so I just kinda... ignored it.
In retrospect, though, I think it's likely that both my teacher and my father were right.
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