Help me understand the difference in rape statistics.

L0gic1o1 · 2015-04-24T19:22:55+00:00

Because of feminism, the definition of 'sexual assault' has been lowered in many people's eyes. In France, staring is considered sexual harassment.

KrisK_lvin · 2015-04-24T21:55:41+00:00

Could anyone explain why these rates are so different?

Are you actually saying these words? Did you not even read the article you linked to?

The competing, less alarming statistic — that about 1 in 40 women are raped in college, based on the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey — has even more problems.

The crime victimization survey doesn't ask about sexual assault that occurred when the victim could not give consent due to alcohol and drug abuse, although alcohol is a factor in as many as half of college sexual assaults. Many victims of campus sexual assault don't define what happened to them as a crime, and might not report it to a crime-focused survey. The context matters: a study in 1997 compared two surveys, one that was similar to the crime victimization survey. The other, without that context, asked a long list of explicit questions about sexual behavior, such as whether respondents were penetrated without their consent. The latter survey led to 10 times as many reports of rape. A panel from the National Academy of Sciences has recommended that the crime victimization survey's estimates be disregarded.

You could drive a fucking bus through the holes in those two paragraphs:

1 It claims there are "even more problems" with the crime victimisation figures, but read it carefully and it actually cites none at all that are inherent to the actual study itself - it criticises it for not including alcohol and drug related incidents, but these are notoriously controversial (see my point 2 below). That's it. The next 'problem' is not a problem of the survey itself but only one "one that was similar to the crime victimisation survey" - similar to is a vague hedging word that means precisely fuck all in terms of what the Vox article is attempting to prove - and failing badly.

2 "could not give consent due to alcohol and drug abuse" notice the word abuse there because it's not an accidental choice. One of the biggest issues surrounding any case of alleged rape is the 'he said/she said'. Those who have a vested interest in inflating the figures for rape have seized on the use of alcohol and drugs to claim that any consent given was not freely given and that the alleged rapist should have understood that.

The problems with this are legion:

(a) if both parties are drunk, why is the alleged (male) rapist assumed to be able to retain faculties of judgment needed to assess just how drunk the alleged (female) victim is, yet the (female) victim is not considered capable of giving 'real' consent? It's either bullshit or discrimination or quite possibly both;
(b) you would imagine that if the alleged victim reported being completely passed out, then the case would be cut and dried as quite clearly no consent can be given by someone unconscious. However, even this is boils down to a case of 'he said/she said' unless a witness is on hand because it's entirely possible to have a memory black out but not be passed out. Anyone who has ever had much experience of alcohol always knows of at least one time when a friend has said 'Don't you remember saying / doing X ?' or even seeing video of themselves dancing, laughing and chatting with people while having no personal recollection of the event at all. Therefore a woman claiming that she was passed out and therefore did not consent does not necessarily mean she was actually passed out as she could well have simply a memory black out now about a time when she was enthusiastic.
(c) In cases where an alleged (female) victim claims to have been unconscious but the alleged (male) victim claims the opposite - that she was willing and actively engaged - you can sometimes call in a toxicology report to try and assess just how drunk she might have been and how likely it would have been that she could be unconscious. But this is notoriously unreliable as alcohol affects people differently and even the same person in different ways on different occasions. With young healthy fit people who have relatively little experience of alcohol consumption - i.e. most students - the effects of alcohol on them are completely unpredictable. And again, as pointed out in (a) why is it assumed that it is only the judgment of the victim that could be impaired and not the alleged perpetrator? The same logic that suggests she didn't and couldn't have consented should be the same logic that clears the man as how could he have possibly known that she wasn't 'really' consenting?

3 You or anyone else reading this can win a prize if they can correctly identify just what context the writer is referring to when they say "The context matters" and "The other, without that context …" This is seriously shitty writing - what exactly is the context that "that context" is pointing back to?

4 "The latter survey" is a paper from the Journal of Violence against Women and just in case there was any doubt about how untrustworthy the research published in such a journal is likely to be, the 'o' in women in the title is the female gender symbol. Not only that but the journal's own home page states that it "assumes a broad definition of violence" - so given these details, is it all that surprising that "The latter survey" resulted in "10 times as many reports of rape"? If it is, it shouldn't be.

5 Note that having linked to both this paper and this one, the strongest 'evidence' the writer attempts to offer against the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey is that "A panel from the National Academy of Sciences has recommended" that it "be disregarded". So why all of a sudden no link? Why link to the others but not this? Why was the panel investigating the survey in the first place? Who was on the panel? Was this a consensus reached by the panel or a comment from a single member?

It's just possible this line is true, but the way it's written just reeks of fucking bullshit.

MRSPArchiver · 2015-04-24T17:43:45+00:00

Post text automatically copied here. (Why?) (Report a problem.)

v8beetle · 2015-04-24T18:21:50+00:00

The 1 in 5 stat came from a 2 college sample. It was then erroneously extrapolated to the thousands of colleges nationwide though it was in no way nationally representative.

I've not personally tracked down the measure, but have tracked down the 2010 NISVS info, and the predominant operational of rape/sexual assault relies on the feminist historically framed definition of "penetration" which precludes women from perpetrating as that's not how they're anatomically designed.

Most studies using that definition are sexist and inherently flawed. However, Koss also pushed a 1 in 4 based not on actually asking if the survey takers were raped, but by interpreting their responses which is a big no no as it reeks of confirmation bias.

iainmf · 2015-04-25T00:17:45+00:00

When you included a wide range of behaviors for sexual assault you get figures like 1 in 5 for men as well

Abstract and link at mensrightslinks

Title	Help me understand the difference in rape statistics.
Author	Lucifers_Logic
Upvotes	7
Comments	11
Date	April 24, 2015 5:43 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/33qg85/help_me_understand_the_difference_in_rape/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/help-me-understand-the-difference-in-rape.981921 https://theredarchive.com/post/981921

Comments