So my good friend had posted something to her FB recently. I have known her for quite some time and love her dearly, but the article made some broad strokes and I decided to look further into it.

The article in question: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/05/16/this-female-student-was-murdered-on-campus-and-mens-rights-activists-are-celebrating/

First off, my initial reaction was "These people are not MRA's." Second reaction was "Man, I want to look into these numbers."

First thing I did was I looked into actual crime rates. I wanted to get a basis and know what data is out there for me to look into. I found the FBI's UCR which is polled yearly and tracks any and all data about crimes that it can.

First thing I looked into were the homicide rates from 2013, just for kicks; to start me off, you know?

That showed that of the over 12K murders reported in 2013, over 3/4 of them were male victims. This got me thinking though, sure, there are more males right? So that I guess makes a little sense, but lets look into the data anyways.

I looked at the 2010 Census and surprised myself to learn that females actually held the majority in population in the US.

Fueling the fire at this point I decided I had to dig deeper, see what other trends and things I could find.

Because the Census data was from 2010, I felt it only fitting to look at homicide data from...2010. Comparing the numbers between population and total homicides it just didn't fully add up to me though, just shy of 13K homicides out of a population of over 300 Million. I honestly still do not have a complete answer to my question there but I did learn, by using this chart here, that Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter are classified differently and also that Violent Crimes are much, much higher than homicide rates.

But the article made a statement that over a third of women murdered were done so by their male partner. So lets look there. According to this chart there were 603 victims that were the wife of the offender and 492 victims were the girlfriend. That means a rate of over 33% of the murdered women, suggesting that the articles broad statement actually had validity to it, though it is using the statistics to it's advantage to make a shocking statement.

This got my mind thinking about rape and the definition of it and the rates of it. I mean, I did have a bunch of data and charts before me, why not look. Using this chart again I learned that the rates of rape were at their lowest point in nearly 20 years. I think we can all agree that any number above 0 is a bad number of rape victims so that for sure needs to drop lower. But it got me thinking, what is the actual definition of rape according to the FBI and this data before me.

This press release? I'm not sure what it is, taught me that it wasn't until 2013 that men could be considered as "raped". Before then, the definition had been “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” As a society grows forward, so too does it's cataloging and I'm glad the change came eventually. I am of the stance better late than never. Back to this chart I see that it is using the legacy definition and so it does not truly reflect the actual rape rates.

So what is the point of my post? No real point I guess other than a little facts behind the statements made. Fact of the matter is there are still things that piss me off about this article but writing this post certainly has helped calm me a little and maybe will provide some facts to use? I don't know. I'm not a statistician. I'm not a lawyer or really any good at true research. So please, if I am misinformed, let me know. Give me some critical thinking that I did not think of.