On Unearned Privilege and Being Male... a little help here?

hmasing · 2011-09-15T01:29:22+00:00

A followup in the debate:

I would LOVE to see the "evidence"[hmasing] claims to have. It's interesting, because this is a country where approximately 1 in 4 women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime, where women make 73% of what men do (and make, on average, less money for the same class of job), where less than 20% of the members of Congress are female and where women are disproportionately vulnerable to homelessness and violence, that he wants to make that claim.

I'm over here, not holding my breath.

Ugh, the same old arguments. My response:

I would LOVE to see the "evidence" [hmasing] claims to have.

Here you go. :-)

It's interesting, because this is a country where approximately 1 in 4 women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime

Let me clarify one thing - rape is a horrible, unforgivable crime. But we need to be realistic about the nature of rape and what it is - and more importantly not sensationalize this to fill any specific agenda.

So, for your 1-in-4 claim, I can only say...

[CITATION NEEDED]

This statistic is thrown around without any thought about the veracity of the numbers, but unfortunately they don't hold up under scrutiny.

Here are the facts.

The one-in-four statistic was derived from a survey of 3,000 college women in 1982. Researchers used three questions to determine if respondents had been raped:

Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?
Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man threatened or used some degree of physical force... to make you?
Have you had sexual acts...when you didn't want to because a man threatened to use some degree of physical force... to make you?

Based upon the survey results, the researchers concluded that 15% of the women had been raped, and 12% had experienced an attempted rape - 27% - a shocking number. Closer to 1 in 3, not 1 in 4.

However, the survey wasn't particularly sound scientifically. First of all, there was no correlating question to determine if the alcohol or drugs were consumed unwillingly. The nature of the question invited the 'rape' label to anyone woman who has ever drank too much and consented to sex, and then regretted it later (not the same as being raped while passed out - totally different). By that definition, I have been raped since I had intercourse in college while drunk, and regretted it later because the person wasn't someone I wanted to have a relationship with.

However, that's the other issue with the questions themselves - only 25% of the women who the researchers identified as being 'raped' identified themselves as such. That's down to 1 in 12. Additionally - and this is telling - the survey found that four in ten of the survey's rape victims, and one in three victims of attempted rape, chose to have intercourse with their so-called attacker again.

Correcting for the biases in the original survey yields a radically different picture than '1 IN 4'. Subtract the women identified by the alcohol and drug question and those who didn't identify themselves as having been raped, and total victims fall to between about 4% percent of the women surveyed. This remains an alarmingly high number, but significantly less alarming than the the statistic you glibly quoted without understanding the underlying data.

Compare that to the numbers presented by the National Center for Victims of Crime:

http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32361

About 3% of American men ˆ a total of 2.78 million men ˆ have experienced a rape at some point in their lifetime (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2006).
In 2003, one in every ten rape victims was male. While there are no reliable annual surveys of sexual assaults on children, the Justice Department has estimated that one of six victims are under age 12 (National Crime Victimization Study, 2003).
71% of male victims were first raped before their 18th birthday; 16.6% were 18-24 years old, and 12.3% were 25 or older (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2006).
Males are the least likely to report a sexual assault, though it is estimated that they make up 10% of all victims (RAINN, 2006).
22% of male inmates have been raped at least once during their incarceration; roughly 420,000 prisoners each year (Human Rights Watch, 2001).

According to the research, 4% of women, and 3% of men are raped in their lifetime. That's quite a different picture of an unearned privilege, isn't it?

, where women make 73% of what men do (and make, on average, less money for the same class of job),

[CITATION NEEDED]

Did you read the email I sent? I addressed this specifically in a report from a few years back prepared for the US Department of Labor:

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf

"In 2007, women accounted for 51 percent of all workers in the high-paying management, professional, and related occupations. They outnumbered men in such occupations as financial managers, human resource managers, education administrators, medical and health services managers, and accountants and auditors."

also:

"Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers."

Let's look at the inequity of workplace fatalities.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics keeps track of this stuff, it turns out.

http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshcfoi1.htm

In 2010, an estimated 256 Billion labor hours were worked in the United States. Of that, 56% were worked by men, 44% by women. Of the 4,547 fatal work injuries, 92% were men, 8% were women. A direct quote from the report:

"A disproportionate share of fatal work injuries involved men relative to their hours worked in 2010."

More dangerous jobs demand a higher salary. This plays in to the 'wage inequity' argument that is so blithely thrown about.

where less than 20% of the members of Congress are female

I had a bumper sticker in the 80's that read:

A WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE. OR, POSSIBLY THE SENATE.

No arguments from me on this one. Even fewer are blacks and hispanics, proportionate to the population. I'd like this to change.

Here's the citation, btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_States_Congress

535 voting members of the house and senate. 17 women in the Senate, 75 women in the House. That's only 17% female.

Note that only 7% is african american. That should be closer to 13%, based upon the 2010 survey.

and where women are disproportionately vulnerable to homelessness and violence, that he wants to make that claim.

[CITATION NEEDED]

76% of homeless are men.

From the National Coalition for the Homeless:

"Most studies show that single homeless adults are more likely to be male than female. In 2007, a survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that of the population surveyed 35% of the homeless people who are members of households with children are male while 65% of these people are females. However, 67.5% of the single homeless population is male, and it is this single population that makes up 76% of the homeless populations surveyed (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2007)."

(http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/who.html)

So, you are partially correct. In homeless families, as a single population, more homeless persons are women than men. However, in the overall population men are disproportionately homeless.

Once again, your claims don't hold up.

I'm over here, not holding my breath.

Good. I wouldn't want you to pass out. :-)

Title	On Unearned Privilege and Being Male... a little help here?
Author	hmasing
Upvotes	3
Comments	1
Date	September 14, 2011 9:50 PM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/kft9i/on_unearned_privilege_and_being_male_a_little/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/on-unearned-privilege-and-being-male-a-little-help.1034630 https://theredarchive.com/post/1034630

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