A while ago, I was on some anti-feminist website debating rape prevalence statistics, and of course the “1 in 4” figure came up. If you’re a feminist, you may not be familiar with the figure; but among anti-feminists, the “1 in 4” figure is considered the ultimate proof of feminist mendacity or something like that.
Here’s the short version: In the 1980s, an academic named Mary Koss created a groundbreaking study of unreported rape, which surveyed college women about their lifetime experiences with coerced sex. Koss found that roughly 1 in 4 women in college had experienced rape or attempted rape at some point in their lives. Many people (both feminist and otherwise) have misstated this statistic as “1 in 4 women are raped.” In fact, if you exclude attempted rapes, the number is closer to 1 in 8. (I consider this a distinction without much difference; in either case, rape is terrifyingly common.)
Much controversy ensued, which I’ve written about elsewhere.
Anyhow, on that anti-feminist discussion board, one of the resident anti’s asked me:
Here’s my reply:
Did I ever claim that most campus feminists are relying directly on the Koss study? I don’t think they are.
Where did it come from? Let me answer that with a question: did you ever play “telephone” when you were a kid?
Other sources have frequently reported the figure as “1 in 4 women surveyed on campus has been a victim of rape or attempted rape.” There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s a correct way of reporting the stat. However, it quickly evolves into “1 in 4 women are raped!” when it gets spread from person to person along informal, non-peer-reviewed lines. The shorter, punchier (albeit false) version of the statistic is easier for people to remember, easier to paint on a signboard for a “Take Back the Night” march, and easier for anti-feminists to remember when they want to make feminist scholars like Dr. Koss sound like extremists.
It is, in fact, the exact same system that has led to the widespread belief among anti-feminists on internet boards like this one that Koss’ study said that “1 in 4 women have been raped.” Some people on these boards have read about Koss’ study in Sommers or Roiphe (etc, etc); those books typically state the correct “1 in 4 experience rape or attempted rape” Koss citation once or twice (and then go on to misstate it over and over). But when the people who have read these books are in online discussions, they end up playing a virtual game of “telephone,” and only the shorter, punchier, inaccurate form of the statistic gets discussed and passed on to the community as a whole.
Similarly, on campus, some 19-year-old feminist sees the Koss statistic cited correctly somewhere, but writes it down or reports it in conversation incorrectly. And she told two friends, and she told two friends, and so on, and so on…
Of course, in both cases it’s not a completely innocent distorting of the statistic, is it? Campus feminists find it easy to accidentally distort the statistic in a way that exaggerates the statistics about rape. Similarly, antifeminists find it easy to accidentally distort the statistic in a way that paints Dr. Koss as a hysterical, inaccurate extremist. In both cases, the distortion happens not because the people distorting the statistic are purposely dishonest; it’s just that most people find it easier not to question statistics that serve their political agenda.
One more thing: When I was in college a few years ago, I was aware of this controversy, and consequently paid a lot of attention to fliers handed out at the women’s center and the like. Some of them screwed things up (sometimes in the way anti-feminists criticizes, sometimes in just random ways), but some actually reported statistics accurately and with correct citations. Needless to say, those latter fliers well never be discussed in any book published with the help of an Olin grant. There’s another distortion going on here – people who only read (or only take seriously) anti-feminist sources for a guide to what’s happening on campus, are getting an only-the-bad-things-are-reported view of campus feminism.
Barry, I’m sure you’ve already read F.A.I.R.’s assessment of Koss’s figures, but some here might not have. She addressed Katie Roiphe’s misinformed opinion of Koss in this article. It’s a good reference point addressing Koss and Roiphe’s misinformation by F.A.I.R.
Let me answer that with a question: did you ever place “telephone” when you were a kid?
i think you mean “play “telephone” not “place telephone”
feel free to delete this upon correction…
Makes sense. Glad you’re keeping the record straight- it sounds like everyone involved needs it.
I think the problem a lot of people on my side of the aisle have with the campus feminist community is that there is a perceived casualness about logic, causation, history, etc. This is not unique to feminism, of course; lots of activists (whether conservative or liberal) don’t have a stellar track record when it comes to living life in a scientific manner, accumulating cites in their research database as they go.
Why does feminism get slammed so much for it (sometimes fairly, sometimes not), then? Because feminism is going directly to issues that are very emotionally contentious. Not too many people get worked up if an anti-nuclear activist spews some inaccurate drivel about background levels; lots of people get worked up if a feminist misstates the number of people just like them who commit horrible crimes.
Just my .02.
Oh, one other thing. You were in college “a few years ago”? Dude. Lessee, 2004 minus 1988…hmm…face it, we’re OLD!
Unless you re-attended a few years ago, in which case never mind.
“Why does feminism get slammed so much for it (sometimes fairly, sometimes not), then? ”
Conversely, our social history is long and rich in believing that women are incapable of objective thought, rationalization, or complex (or simple) logic. Instead of men listening to the underlying messages about rape, they would rather bicker about statistics, as if reporting statistics in error will make or break the fact that men rape women. Socially, men are not raised to take women’s words at face value and use the demand for accurate statistics (everytime/all the time!) to intimidate women. Women’s experiences are treated as anecdotal and therefore subject to gross error; men’s experiences are treated as the gold standard/status quo and neither need nor require statistics for proof, veracity, or substance.
Double standard.
It’s also important to note that this study was done with college-age women — so 1 in 4 women experience some kind of sexual abuse/ assault *by their early 20’s.*
Another reason this statistic may become distorted is the experience of women themselves, in conversation with other women, discovering the huge proportion of women-I-know who have experienced such assaults.
Ugh. I just remembered an AA meeting I was in where out of 32 women, I was the *only* one not to have been raped or molested (in this instance all rapes/molestation had occurred with direct relatives). These women were all in their late 20’s to early 40’s.
So, 1-4 doesn’t cut it. Neither does 1-8. Because neither statistic, no matter how accurate can capture my above experience. So why do men want statistical accuracy? — that’s a more important question for me. Are they saying that *if only* we get the statistics right, *then* they’ll believe us and do something???
QGrrl, you had that experience at an AA meeting because women who have been sexually assaulted have a high risk of turning to alcohol or drugs. If you’d been attending a meeting of happily well-adjusted women with successful lives, nobody would say they’d been raped, and you’d think the 1 in 4 figure was ridiculously high.
I don’t know why *men* want statistical accuracy. *Thinking humans* want statistical accuracy because statistical accuracy is one component in determining whether an argument is true or not. People want statistical accuracy because anecdotal reports – such as, “I was at this meeting and everyone had been raped, and so that must be all of reality” – have great narrative power and make it very easy to reach false conclusions.
“I don’t know how Ronald Reagan could have become President. Nobody I know voted for him.” – Pauline Kael, 1988
Statistics like Dr. Koss’ aren’t intended to capture anyone’s individual experience; they’re intended to capture a broad aggregate of experiences, I guess.
In this case, the conversation was set off by a woman (Dr. Koss) seeking statistically accurate figures about rape prevalence, and a woman (Wendy McElroy) criticizing Koss’ work for not being statistically accurate. So I don’t think that your statement that it’s only men who are interested in statistical measures is true.
However, you could argue that Koss is just responding to what the people who control funding – who are, of course, largely male – want. So in that sense, yes, the point of the statistics is to get powerful men to acknowlege the problem. From an interview with Dr. Koss: “I feel that the numbers are sufficient currently to inform anyone that we have a problem with male violence. However, as we can see with the problems reauthorizing VAWA, not everyone is convinced it is a high priority issue. In battles over resources, evidence of broad scope of the problem is still the best weapon.”
I know, I know…
Yup. I graduated from Portland State U three years ago.
Robert: I don’t understand what you are trying to say in your first paragraph. If the statistic were 1:100 I would think it was ridiculously high.
as for this: “People want statistical accuracy because anecdotal reports – such as, “I was at this meeting and everyone had been raped, and so that must be all of reality” – have great narrative power and make it very easy to reach false conclusions.”
What “false conclusions” would people arrive at???? That rape happens? That rape happens frequently? And for the record, I never said “this must be all of reality”. What I’m saying is that whether the statistics are 1-8 or 1-4 is irrelevant.
“So I don’t think that your statement that it’s only men who are interested in statistical measures is true.”
To play devils advocate here Amp, I would say that if it weren’t for men (as a class) being unwilling to accept that this is a rape culture, we would have no use for statistics. Women know they are getting raped. Girls know this is what is in store from them and are taught by older females that this is what to expect from certain situations, etc. Koss may have had an original interest in proving just how much rape is occurring, but I think that today’s popular use of the statistics is to “prove” to men that rape isn’t all in women’s heads.
… but this is *my* opinion. :p
If you’d been attending a meeting of happily well-adjusted women with successful lives, nobody would say they’d been raped
Because if you’re raped, you’re doomed to be fucked up and have a ruined life? There is likely a correlation between being abused or assaulted and having problems, but it’s not perfect (in either direction).
/drift
or the assumption that women in AA meetings aren’t happy, well-adjusted, or successful…
\drift
zero happy well adjusted women are raped?
Well geez, I can’t imagine why you never hear women talking honestly about their negative experiences…
I have had the same feeling, of learning one after another after another of my friends has been sexually assaulted. One in four sounds right, if not too low. It’s more like one in four women hasn’t been assaulted.
“Girls know this [rape] is what is in store from (sic) them . . . ”
I wonder if that has any correlation with abstinence only education.
Argh. That borders on offensive jstevenson. Really offensive.
Just a side note on the AA experience… don’t know if this is a coincidence or what, but the social dysfunction of children of alcoholics and the social dysfunction of children who are victims of incest are actually REALLY similar in presentation. This is only what I’ve gathered from reading a lot on survivors of incest and children of alcoholics.
I don’t think we can jump to any conclusions on the basis of one group of 32 women. If you started shaking out random samplings of women in groups that small, I don’t think it would take long for you to shake out one where everyone had been raped, regardless of alcohol or drug abuse situations.
“I don’t think we can jump to any conclusions on the basis of one group of 32 women. ”
Just to be clear, I didn’t want any conclusion jumped to (about anything!). My point was, where is the value and substance behind statistics? Who are they serving, and why? If someone is quibbling about the statistics being 1:8 or 1:4, then my feeling is that they are more interested in statistical manipulation/accuracy than they are in rape. I suppose my secondary point would be the overwhelming feeling I encountered in that room of women that cannot at all be translated through statistics.
… I might be having problems with clarity today.
Oh, I agree with you. At this point, it’s almost like we’ve been tricked into saying that 1:8 is a fine ratio that we can all live with.
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding
Amanda says what Q couldn’t seem to pull outta her ass!!!!
[can I say ass on this blog?]
The difference between 1:4 and 1:8 matters if one is trying to estimate resources for provision of services (evidence kits, counselling, etc) or for distribution of police and prosecution resources. However, to the women, the difference between 1:4 and 1:8 is negligible. The point is, she knows a friend or relative who was raped. And that it can happen to her kind, even if the woman victim is a middle class middle aged married college professor that goes to church every Sunday (description of a friend’s mother who was raped and murdered).
Men don’t have the feeling AS A CLASS that they are AS A CLASS targeted victims. Sure, an inner city boy might be afraid of getting caught in drug-related crossfire because that has happened to people in his neighborhood. But the same age heterosexual white boy in a tony suburb has no fears whatsoever. All women know AS A CLASS that they are targets, and that no personal characteristics or habits will protect them.
I might add (disclaimer – white person speaking), it seems a little like “driving while black”. Nothing you do will prevent some jerk from pulling you over, and a few will rough you up for fun.
When this all started, in the mid-eighties, the original anti-fem argument was that the “correct” number was along the lines of one in 1,000 women – i.e., they were arguing that rape was a very rare crime and that feminist concerns about rape were vastly overstated and creating needless panic.
Many activists have trouble with statistics, and in my experience this is every bit as true on the right as on the left or about feminists and anti-feminists. People tend to focus on the studies that support their own views most clearly, but there is also a lot of real ignorance about statistics, and that’s partly the fault of us who should have taught it better (I used to teach college statistics at one point).
This is a different problem from the conscious use of false or misused statistics to make a political point, and in this the anti-feminists are certainly every bit as good as the feminists. Actually, they’re better at this. For example, it’s common on the right to interpret economic studies of the gender wage gap in a way which ignores the discriminatory findings (these do exist and are real), and to sort of airily suggest that maybe all the difference is based on choices. This is dishonest as the data is there to disprove that argument. Of course, feminists tend to push the discriminatory findings more than the other findings, but I have not found the same level of dishonesty here.
I may have just failed my statistics final about an hour ago, but damnit, I still know a little bit about the binomial distributions!
Q Grrl, Given that the probability that a woman is sexually assualted in a rape or attempted-rape is 0.25, the probability that out of a group of 32 women, 31 or 32 (I say 31 or 32 because that’s the probability that that many or more will have been raped, since even the most likely distribution — 8/32 women sexually assaulted — would be pretty rare, since there’s an average of only 3% in each possible distribution) is:
(32!/31!*1!)*(0.25^31)*(0.75^1) + (32!/32!*0!)*(0.25^32)*(0.75^0) = 5.42 * 10^-20.
That’s pretty improbable: about as improbable as tossing a fair coin 64 times and getting all heads.
So… 1) it’s a really wild fluke, 2) AA groups have a higher incidence of abused women than the population at large, or 3) Koss’s statistics are wrong, and more women than 1/4 are being raped or attempted-raped.
I lean toward 2), but I don’t have any facts to back that up.
I witnessed an attempted “date rape” at the age of sixteen, and that was plenty traumatizing, Thanks. :( While I understand the desire to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the powerful by bringing out statistics, in the end it shouldn’t matter whether 1 in 4 were raped or whether 1 in 400 or 1 in 4 million were raped. It’s always too many. And there will always be opportunistic woman-hating naysayers to wave away the severity of the crime and what a mockery it makes of the concept of “free society.” :(
Alsis, substitute “murdered” for “raped” in your statement, and perhaps the absurdity of what you’re saying will come into focus. Of course it matters whether the incidence is 1 in 4 million or 1 in 4. If it’s 1 in 4 million you’re looking at some kind of aberrant behavior on the part of men; if it’s 1 in 4 you’re looking at something systemic or cultural.
To rationally assign society’s limited resources to our various problems, it is first necessary to know the true magnitude of those problems. If rape is 1 in 4 million, then it is a relatively small problem, and money or time spent fighting it probably could be better aimed at some more prevalent problem. If it’s 1 in 4 then it’s a big problem and probably needs us to redirect resources from other problems.
Sure, regardless of the magnitude, it’s always too many. “Too many” is of no utility as a measurement in trying to solve problems when there are other problems needing the same resources.
If rape is 1 in 4 million, then it is a relatively small problem, and money or time spent fighting it probably could be better aimed at some more prevalent problem. If it’s 1 in 4 then it’s a big problem and probably needs us to redirect resources from other problems.
Sure, regardless of the magnitude, it’s always too many. “Too many” is of no utility as a measurement in trying to solve problems when there are other problems needing the same resources.
Until you’re the person it’s happened to, of course. You missed my point, but then again, you probably intended to. I think Qgrrl was on the mark with this one, as she so often is.
agreed Alsis. I am a happy well-adjusted middle class woman. And I have been raped. So what does that mean about anything?
It means that it’s still one too many case of rape.
A lot of rape victims, myself included, could point out that their experience was scarier in that it was indicative of larger cultural trends, in a way that much murder isn’t. A mugger who shoots a victim who struggles isn’t trying to punish or hurt that victim for who he *is*. But in most rape, the rapist makes it clear to the victim that her that he is punishing her for just being female.
In that sense, Robert, it *is* different.
Robert Wrote: To rationally assign society’s limited resources to our various problems, it is first necessary to know the true magnitude of those problems. If rape is 1 in 4 million, then it is a relatively small problem, and money or time spent fighting it probably could be better aimed at some more prevalent problem. If it’s 1 in 4 then it’s a big problem and probably needs us to redirect resources from other problems.
Sure, regardless of the magnitude, it’s always too many. “Too many” is of no utility as a measurement in trying to solve problems when there are other problems needing the same resources.
But, Robert, even though you conveniently chose to illustrate the hyperbole in the 1 in 4 million faux statistic, I fail to see how 1 in 8 differs dramatically, in terms of resources, than 1 in 4. The resources that are needed to address issues of rape have less to do with police walking the beat and more to do with people taking responsibility for educating themselves and their peer groups about rape culture and how it effects women. This is exactly the OPPOSITE of what you do when you nitpick about statistics when the fact that, if you belong to a family that has 8 female members 1 (or 2) of them have most likely been raped.
You might want to think about that the next time you have a big family gathering.
sorry…I got distracted and closed the italics tag on Robert’s quote too early. My response began with “But, Robert.”
drublood, it’s okay. I did the same thing. :o
[Waves at morri.]
Upon reflection, there’s another thing about the attitude of those who want to wag fingers over how the horror of rape is clearly of lesser magnitude if only every 8th woman is raped as opposed to every 4th. Dare I say that this attitude smacks of “moral relativism,” or whatever term conservatives and/or woman haters like to use when their own favorite issues are placed in a light that seemingly distorts their importance through an unfair comparison ? No self-respecting conservative would do anything but (at best) snort derisively if I tried to minimize the importance of the War On Terrorism[tm] by pointing out that in the same year as the 911 attacks, some 8,400 people were killed in the U.S. by SUVs rolling over. The comparison would be seen as ludicrous. You don’t remove the need to prevent terrorist attacks by pointing out that there are other things in the U.S. far more likely to kill its citizenry than terrorist attacks.
You don’t remove the need to stamp out rape by claiming that not as many women have been raped as we might have been lead to believe by accidental or deliberate misuse of a single study. Not by a long shot. :(
Robert:>>Alsis, substitute “murdered” for “raped” in your statement, and perhaps the absurdity of what you’re saying will come into focus. Of course it matters whether the incidence is 1 in 4 million or 1 in 4. If it’s 1 in 4 million you’re looking at some kind of aberrant behavior on the part of men; if it’s 1 in 4 you’re looking at something systemic or cultural.>>
What drublood said. Your analogy makes no sense because the numbers you use have no relation to the numbers we’re discussing in the context of rape.
No study has found a rate small enough to be considered “aberrant.” The “rape hysteria” crowd is using the one in eight statistic as an argument _against_ the prevalence of rape. The implication is that one in eight is not really much to complain about, ladies, so shut it.
Most of my friends are well-adjusted, successful, middle-class women, and more than half of them were sexually attacked. If you add to that attempted attacks, it’s almost everyone I know well enough to share that kind of information. That’s pretty scary.
Also, if the purpose of the anti-feminist crowd is to protect men from being blamed for rape, what’s the excuse of ignoring attempted rapes? I doubt what they want to prove is that men want to rape, but just can’t manage to get it right.
I think the purpose is no more than to show that women are hysterical, unreasonable creatures who can’t even get a simple fact straight and therefore don’t deserve equal rights. ’cause they’re hysterical and all.
The anti-fem crowd likes to say that ‘attempted rape’ is just one of those things paranoid feminists dream up–you know, they MUST be claiming that if a guy looks at you funny it’s attempted rape, blah blah blah.
SB, you might want to take into consideration that the bias goes the other way, too. Women also share their experiences and have them minimized, not supported.
That said, I think the practice of judging any social movement or belief as a whole by one’s experiences with its adherents in college is pretty farfetched.
All women know AS A CLASS that they are targets, and that no personal characteristics or habits will protect them.
Wrong on the last phrase. There’s a reason prosecutors don’t favor women on juries on rape trials.
This comment: So… 1) it’s a really wild fluke,
and this comment: Alsis, substitute “murdered” for “raped” in your statement, and perhaps the absurdity of what you’re saying will come into focus.
are offensive. Men don’t get to define the relative importance of rape, no matter its frequency or infrequency. Calling a lived experience a “wild fluke” is far, far different that calling it an abnormality. Calling it a “wild fluke” implies that the storyteller is/was exaggerating and that the story itself is irrlevant based on its “wildness”.
For another man to suggest that the impact of rape or witnessed rape on a woman is “absurd” shows the utter lack of comprehension by men of 1) HOW THEY FREAKIN’ BENEFIT FROM RAPE 2) how women are socially controlled by rape and 3) that statistics be damned, rape (in all its forms and frequency) is traumatic.
Why do you men feel you have a right, or even a need, to tell women how they should interpret rape? This behavior alone tells me that men have a vested interest in *not* allowing women to define or delimit rape, much less be proactive in preventing it. They might not be rapists themselves, but they certainly piggyback on the power differentials that rape in society creates.
This morning I was thinking about how I would feel if the rape statistics were 1:100 instead of 1:4. I think I would be *more* horrified if the frequency were 1:100. A frequency of 1:8 or 1:4 makes rape the status quo, not an abnormality. Because it is a given, women’s lives are inalterably shaped by rape. Because it is a given, all men benefit from it. If there wasn’t such a great societal kickback, the frequency would be lower.
Mythago, I meant that phrase “All women know AS A CLASS that they are targets, and that no personal characteristics or habits will protect them.” to indicate that in the course of normal daily activities, they cannot be assured of not being raped. Yes, if you live on a remote holding in Alaska by yourself, shoot and fish for a living, make do as the pioneers did, and don’t go into town, you may have an extremely low chance of getting raped. But if you are a respectable middle-class teacher or nurse who may have to work in a less than desirable neighborhood, or if you happen to be a child with a stepfather – you have some real chance of being raped.
Most women know this deep down. They may also DENY the knowledge, but they know it because they are afraid. Afraid of being called a slut if they are raped, since just being a nurse on her way to the hospital parking lot isn’t proof of good-girl-ness. I think that in the jury situation they may opt for the public presentation of good-girl-ness, “it could NEVER happen to me because I am not a slut”, and deny the creeping fear walking to their car in the dark, waiting at a bus stop in the night, wondering what that noise was – “is someone in the house?”.
Mythago, since you are a lawyer, you know that rape was originally a property crime against the father or husband of the woman raped. Now it is a property crime against a specific raped woman. When will it be seen (by domestic peacetime legal apparatus) as a terrorist act, a hate crime designed to send a message to other women? The shoe has finally dropped with regards to rape in war (Bosnia, the Sudan, etc) – but “curiously”, or not so surprisingly after all, as a genocidal crime against the MENFOLK of the raped women as much as against the women themselves.
They may also DENY the knowledge
They may also be so clueless that they, effectively, don’t know.
Rape can be a hate crime. I don’t think it *always* is because, frankly, rapists may think so little of women that they don’t care if they’re sending a message or not. When you eat a steak you’re not sending a message to the other cows.
Q Grrl, I’m sorry you took my “wild fluke” comment to be an implication that you were dishonest about your experiences. I did not mean that at all. What I meant was, simply, that IF Koss’s statistics were correct and IF AA groups are no more likely to include rape victims than the population at large, then it was amazing that 31/32 women in it were raped. The fact that your group’s composition was improbable, however, does NOT mean that it did not happen. It’s possible than I could throw 25 dice and that they’d all come up sixes. That would be a wild fluke, but it would not be at all impossible.
Also, I’m interested in how all men benefit from rape. It doesn’t seem obvious to me how this is so, but I would appreciate an explanation, or possibly some links to an explanation by another.
Well-put, myth.
The thing about splitting hairs about rape and attempted rape to me is that says very little about the social context that rape happens in. In the legal sense, attempting and succeeding are different things, but that isn’t really illuminating for social reasons. Rape is a difficult crime to achieve–many rape victims are rescued or able to fight off their attacker. I don’t spare a man from being a rapist if he attempted to rape but was pulled off his victim (that’s what happened to me).
I guess the hair-splitting is interesting to me because of that. I don’t consider myself a “rape” victim because he didn’t manage to accomplish his task. But the police considered him a rapist by the nit-picking nature of the law. (Penetration by anything, not just a penis, is rape in Texas.) But part of the reason that I felt less victimized was also because I was able to reach out for help and I got that help.
By splitting the difference between attempted rape and actual rape, we are missing an entire gulf of gray out there, in terms of actual attitudes and emotions that people have. It’s very complex.
Julian, the statement that all men benefit from rape makes more sense if you look at benefits in the sense of having that which others don’t. Rape means that men have freedom of movement that women don’t have.
Think of every time you’ve felt like you had to stick close to a female friend for her protection and the benefit is clear. It’s not a benefit you asked for, but that doesn’t change the meaning. People marry without necessarily intending to benefit from tax laws, but there it is all the same.
Thanks, Amanda, though I must say that strikes me as a rather perverse interpretation of benefit. (It strikes me as counterintuitive that, if a tornado strikes my neighborhood, and all other houses are leveled, but my house only has a few broken windows, then I’ve benefitted from the tornado) If by benefit you simply mean establish/enforce a hierarchy of power, rather than making people on top of the hierarchy better off, then it makes sense though.
There’s an old essay by Katha Pollitt where she was talking about one of those rape deniers (I think Rene Denfeld) who’d said “Oh, 1 in 4 is rubbish – I would know if 1 in 4 of my college friends had been raped, and they hadn’t, so there”. She pointed out that any accquaintance of Denfeld was unlikely to have confided in her, (presumably) knowing her dismissive attitude so of course Denfeld would think the numbers were lower. Pollitt also said she’d done a count of how many of her own acquaintances had experienced rape or other forms of sexual violence. When she asked a male friend if he knew any women who’d been raped, his count was much lower – despite knowing many of the same women on her list.
On reflection, I think it was probably Kate Roiphe not Rene Denfeld.
That was indeed Roiphe.
But that is a benefit, Julien, in the sense that men benefit from having women dependent on them for protection.
Julian: A tornado is a random act of nature, so I don’t think the analogy of benefit (or risk) is adequate. Rape is both an act and a social control. [i.e, think of rape used in the context of war]. Men benefit from rape when they have the social ability (class ability) to deny on all counts that women are socially (as a class) shaped and controlled by rape. When men deny that women live in a rape society (and that men benefit from rape), they have an ideal of a social and legislative status quo that in fact does not exist. Men assume a level playing field because of their denial and women know that assuming anything is more likely to put them in harm’s way. It is apparent that men benefit from their naive (or blatent) insistance on a status quo when women try to make social changes, be it legislative, economic, or social. Women’s access to and use of public space is shaped and controlled by rape. Women’s access to equal employment (in a social sense) is shaped and controlled by rape [think: women in the military]. Women’s attempts to curtail pornography fail because pornography is not seen as part of the rape continuum and thus part of the social definition of women and women’s “accessibility”; pornography interestingly enough is considered “free speech”, predicated and supported by the male defined status quo, which in fact is anything but equal or equivalent. Men benefit when 52% of the population is controlled by threat alone. Men especially benefit when the majority of that 52% is not only rapable, but has been socially conditioned NOT TO FIGHT. The implications are mind boggling, and I’m often speechless when men claim they don’t understand how they benefit, as a class or individually (!), from rape. It’s like the Jim Crow south where whites felt free to tell black children to do this or do that and that black child had no choice (even though he or she was a free citizen). That child knew any tall enough object was adequate for a lynching and that lynchings knew no rhyme nor reason. Of course you’re going to do what a white person tells you. It’s terrorism. Women make economic, legislative, and social decisions based on the fact that other women have been raped as a form of punishment for bucking men’s power systems. How could you not see the benefit of: old boy’s networks, business meetings taking place in male-only country clubs, cutting edge fields in medicine, engineering, technology primarily fielded by men (because during college 1:8 women was raped!!! and you cannot tell me the implications for women aren’t recognizable).
I’m a little unclear why it matters if men benefit from rape. The fact that women live with the constant threat of assault seems like a good reason to act, reason sufficient to convince anyone who you can actually convince.
I think the tornado analogy is a useful one a beginning understanding of rape, if only because it removes men’s mental block against viewing themselves as “bad people”. And, for the sake of mercy, I think this is an understandable human reaction. No one likes guilt, and people are prone to finding excuses to explain why it’s been unjustifiably foisted upon them.
But here’s my version of the analogy: Tornados keep coming through year after year and each time they destroy only houses in a certain section of town. After a few years the people who don’t live in that section are going to be significantly priviledged over those that do. The people who live in the “unsafe” section, even if they weren’t “hit”, will still have to pay higher rates of insurance, etc. So overall, the “safe” section people will be much better off financially.
There is more to it than that, of course, since rape is not a “natural disaster”. Instead, it’s “man-made” (gender-specific language intentional). And unlike the case of a natural disaster, the frequency of rape is exacerbated by a culturally approved sense of male entitlement and superiority which many “typical” men hold.
It would be as if the people in this theoretical town engaged in some kind of behavior that caused more tornados to happen. (Let’s say “weather modification” using silver iodide. In the analogy, “weather modification” is a general attitude of valuing men and their concerns over women, and that anyone of any gender can have this tendency.)
By this analogy, we live in a world where:
1) lots and lots “safe section” people spend their weekends flying airplanes engaging in weather modification (They often tell themselves it does not cause tornados, while ignoring any scientific studies that show otherwise, let alone erring on the side of caution)
2) some “safe section” people don’t really engage in weather modification themselves but keep quiet around those who do. They often feel that “unsafe” people should especially appreciate their efforts, and are pissed when this does not occur.
3) some “unsafe section” people engage in weather modification themselves
4) some “unsafe section” people don’t engage in weather modification, but don’t condemn those who do
5) lots of people, both from safe and unsafe sections, blame any tornado damage on the affected people themselves, and casually dismiss arguments that they are targets simply because of where they live
6) some people (mostly from the unsafe area, but a few from the safe area) are mad as hell about the weather modification shit and are doing everything they can to stop it (these would be feminists)
Thanks for the responses. To clarify, I was not using the tornado as an anology for understanding rape per se. I was using the tornado to try to understand what Amanda meant by “benefit.” As it turns out, the tornado analogy is a rather bad one for these purposes, because while the tornado (almost entirely) hits the houses in one section of town (in Barbara’s analogy), while it makes the people in the unsafe section worse off, except in relative terms, it doesn’t make people in the safe section better off (i.e., if the tornados stopped, the people in the safe section wouldn’t have worse houses or pay higher insurance, at least as far as I can tell). Q Grrl and Amanda point out, however, that I misunderstood what they are trying to say: that men do not merely benefit relative to women from rape. They benefit absolutely from rape.
I found Q Grrl’s case persuasive. It’s not as direct as what I assumed she had in mind by “all men benefit from rape,” but it makes sense: basically, “rape enforces patriarchy (intimidation of women, etc), and patriarchy benefits all men (since CEOs 97% men, there are 94% more opening for men than with equality, i.e. 50% of both).”
In light of Q Grrl’s clarification, I think I’ll do another, analogy of the concept of “benefit” that makes sense here: there are two countries, call them Ankh and Morpork, both of which are dependent on onverseas imports for stuff like grain, home appliances, construction equipment, etc. The thing is, there are a bunch of pirates who operate on Morpork who raid Ankh’s shipping, and sell the stolen commodities to the inhabitants of Morpork. As a result, commodities are cheaper on Morpork, and more expensive on Ankh. Not all inhabitants of Ankh are merchants whose ships are attacked by pirates, but all inhabitants of Ankh pay a penalty for the fact that their merchants are attacked by pirates. Similarly, not all inabitants of Morpork are pirates, but all inhabitants of Morpork benefit from piracy. This is a better analogy than the tornado, I think, because in the tornado, the victim class is made worse off while the perpetrator class is untouched, which isn’t the case with rape in Q Grrl’s formulation. In the piracy analogy, the victim class is made worse off while the perpetrator class is made better off, but not by as much as the loss of the victim class.
Sadly, I still cannot say the same of Amanda’s case that having women depend on men for protection is a boon for men It strikes me as a mild cost, though nowhere near as bad as the cost born by the person actually needing protection. Say a friend and I go out to dinner, and I decide, on the way back, to pick up groceries, and she doesn’t need any groceries. She wants to go straight back home. There are two solutions, here: I can get the groceries while she has to wait. Bad for her since she has to stick around a grocery store bored while I restock on onions, very mildly worse for me, because I feel kinda rushed and pressured to get my groceries quickly. Alternatively, she can go home and I can come along with her. Bad for me since I didn’t get to go grocery shopping, very mildly worse for her since she probably feels very mild guilt at “imposing” on my ability to shop. Overall, both of us would be better off — me mildly so, her a lot so — if rape were not a threat. (query: is the threat of rape really reduced by having a male accompiany you? True, perhaps a random (and exceedingly improbable) rapist-on-the-street might be deterred by me being along, but then again, as a statistical, generic “male friend,” I’m also more likely to rape her than some statistical, generic “random guy on the street.”)
Julian, your last paragraph seems flawed — someone pointed out that ‘people you know’ can include “random” people you’ve seen on the street before. And probability changes with knowledge, meaning that your friend may know you well enough to rule out any chance that you’ll rape her. (Or, at least, to assign it a lesser probability.)
Again, does it really matter if men benefit from rape? The harm it does to women seems to call for more action regardless.
Perhaps you’re right about the risk of rape from walking unaccompianied vs. risk of rape from walking accompianied by a man. I wonder if we could find data on the rate of rape from lone-woman walks vs. male-accompianied walks.
Actually, Omar, I think that if men don’t benefit from rape, then it’s an even stronger call for action than if they do. After all, if men are made better off by rape, and women are made worse off, that is wrong from a moral perspective, but it’s ambiguous from a social welfare perspective. If women are made worse off and men are unchanged, then rape is harmful to society with no benefits, and so is more clearly wrong than if all men benefit.
My eccentric cost-benefit view aside, I don’t think that it’s a matter of pressing importance whether men benefit from rape or not. Q Grrl mentioned it, I was curious and asked about it, she, Amanda, and Barbara helped explain it to me, and lo! There was an interesting discussion. No, it’s not a pressing priority for social science to know whether rape beneftis all men, but internet discussions needn’t be about pressing priorities.
“After all, if men are made better off by rape, and women are made worse off, that is wrong from a moral perspective, but it’s ambiguous from a social welfare perspective.”
It’s only ambiguous if you are male and defining both “social welfare” and status quo. Or if you consider women’s specific needs as secondary to social welfare. That’s exactly the kind of attitude the springs from men’s benefits in a rape society. Argh.
And it is an extremely pressing social [science] issue. If all men are benefitting, the impetus to change is slim. You know that if you and your buddies stood a 1:8 or 1:4 chance of being raped you would certainly find it pressing to know not only the causes, but the larger social motivation behind such cruel and unusuall social behavior.
It strikes me as a mild cost
Only because you are assuming the cost is only short and temporary, i.e. needing a man around for trips to the grocery story. Needing protection is ongoing. A woman’s status as married or “taken” is, socially, seen as making her to some degree off-limits from sexual harassment as well.
You know that if you and your buddies stood a 1:8 or 1:4 chance of being raped you would certainly find it pressing to know not only the causes, but the larger social motivation behind such cruel and unusuall social behavior.
It seems fairly clear. Amp posted some likely causes of rape. So why don’t men do more to fight it? Well first, as Amp pointed out, pretty much all men have these 3 neuroses to some degree. The myth of fragile masculinity combines with a low regard for women to discourage attention to “womens’ issues”. And second, humans are lazy. Since we have laws against rape, and can easily find condemnations of the crime, people who haven’t thought much about the issue (which probably means most men) will tend to assume that we’ve done enough (or other people have done enough) and therefore they don’t have to get off their asses and help. “Never attribute to evil…”
Whether or not men benefit from rape is a discussion that is important because it helps further understanding of how to reduce rape. For instance, if men are reluctant to help women address the problem of rape, is it out of collective guilt? An unwillingness to let go of certain benefits? A mix? I think it’s a mix, with men falling all over the scale in what they feel their obligations are to reducing rape. Most men take measure to reduce rape of their immediate loved ones–that’s it.
The benefits of protection, like many things, are complicated. There is a cost to protecting women, but it’s a lot of power. Many men abuse that power to restrict the freedom of movement of daughters, wives, etc.
But I think that many men who are willing to offer that sort of protection without exacting some sort of power trip or payment are a good audience for discussions on furthering the cause of preventing rape outside of their own family lives.
Amanda, that does seem like an interesting line of inquiry. To get from there to “all men benefit from rape,” one must define “benefit” in such a way that power always counts as benefit, regardless of side-effects, and regardless of whether the people involved want this power. (It may require further assumptions, but this seems like the most important.) The quote therefore suggests, to the hasty reader, that “all men” define benefit in this way and therefore want rape to continue. You can see how this might annoy people.
Omar, your comment reminds me of that joke Chris Rock makes to the white members of his audience, “Not one of you would change places with me. And I’m rich!”
Denying that you have power because you didn’t ask for it just makes the situation worse. It reminds me of how Americans claim that they didn’t want to be the cops of the world and that’s why they justify the ugly amount of violence we dish out in order to gain more power and resources for ourselves.
Chris Rock’s joke wasn’t there to make the white members of his audience feel good about internalized racism. And my comments weren’t intended to butter men up by lying to them.
*we–Americans are we. Sorry–I don’t agree with Americans who make variations of this argument to me and I forget that doesn’t change the fact that the violence in Iraq is being done in my name as well as theirs.
See, I just said that power does not mean benefit.
Power is in itself a benefit. I wrote a huge, long thing explaining that, but I didn’t want to bore you or insult your intelligence.
Priveliged people are often unaware of their privelige. It’s the nature of things. I’m sitting here typing away at my computer and snacking on an expensive piece of cheese and I’m not really thinking about how these things are “benefits” that are mine by virtue of being a middle class American. But just because I’m not currently thinking of that doesn’t make it true.
A small example that’s common to my life of a thoughtless benefit from the power is this: Say it’s Saturday night and my boyfriend and I (both huge rock fans) are trying to decide what show to go see. I want to see band X, and he wants to see band Y at a different club. All other things being equal (meaning that neither of us is more compelled than the other to give in for personal reasons), we go see band Y. Why? Because he can go to see Y alone, but I cannot go see X alone because I’m in danger when I go out alone. From his perspective, assuming he doesn’t see himself as “benefiting from rape”, it seems merely like I prefer to be with him than go to see the show I like better by myself.
Now assume that this man is open to understanding that he has this power to tell me where I get to go lest I go without protection of having a man around. (As he is.) Now when I say, “I really want to see band X, but I don’t want to go alone,” he is aware that I am functioning under the possibility that I might be raped if I’m alone and that by pulling rank he is taking advantage of the fact that I’m afraid. To rectify the imbalance he has to actively reject the benefits that come with power, meaning that he gives more weight to my arguments to see band X because he loves me and he knows that unlike him, I don’t have the freedom to go out and see bands by myself.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that we go see band X. Other arguments come into play, of course. But if he refused to see that he has power over my freedom of movement because I can’t go do certain things without him or some other male friend around for protection, then he’d thoughtlessly take the BENEFIT of always getting his way when it comes to where we go due to the POWER that his function as my “protector” gives him.
Do you see from this small example how freedom and power create multitudes of benefits that you might just take for granted?
This interests me. It seems like a great reason to talk about how the prevalence of rape gives men power. Let me see if I can explain my reaction to the original quote.
The definition of benefit seems personal and subjective. In this example, I’d call ‘going to see band Y’ a benefit when we look at it in isolation. But if we look at the other consequences of the prevalence of rape, or even the other consequences of exerting power over you, the total effect might not seem beneficial. (“‘Love’ is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” -Jubal Harshaw) I also have religious beliefs about what true benefit means, though happily my religion forbids preaching.
So, how did this affect my response to the line, “all men benefit from rape”? Well, I don’t like to see the word “all” near a word with such personal meaning. My non-religious obsession deliberately fosters a dislike of the word “all” in general. And of course I have a negative reaction to new and strange statements, though my obsession works strongly against this. I reacted (privately) as though Q Grrl said that ALL men see rape as beneficial. Because presumably, people get to define for themselves what benefits them. This gave my brain the perfect excuse to dismiss the new and strange claim.* Until my obsession gave a metaphorical cough, and pointed out that A) the claim must make sense from within her map of reality, and B) I have reason to think that my own map leaves a bit out.
*Honestly, sometimes I don’t know what my brain is thinking.
Your sarcasm changes nothing. I didn’t ask for the benefits that come from being white in a racist country. Does that mean I don’t have those benefits?
Or should I moan and groan about the white man’s burden?
Which part did you see as sarcasm, and why?
It is not so much an additional benefit that men have over women, it is instead a loss of freedom that women suffer.
If I chopped your legs off, your mobility would be limited but people around you with both legs would not suffer the same lack of mobility, from your point of view they gain an advantage of mobility over you, though they do not see it like that.
So too does a woman who fears walking alone at night lose something that men do not even give a second thought to.
Funky syntax, there, Omar, but I assume you caught yourself at the point where you thought “Because presumably, people get to define for themselves what benefits them”–well, no. People can still have benefits whether or not they want them, or are even aware of them.
I think a more accurate rendition is “Men as a group benefit from rape.”
Phil, the person who gets to decide if the legless person gets to leave the house or not would have that power, no?
It’s clearly a complex issue, and just because you’re in a privileged group doesn’t mean that you can’t reject the notion that the privilege is a bad thing, etc. But anyone who doesn’t face how they benefit from being in a privileged group is limited in how much he/she can do to help.
It seems I didn’t phrase myself well. At this point, we disagree mainly on language and tactics.
Possibly. I think it’s a subtle form of sexism to say that feminists need to use feminine wiles of flattery and flirting to encourage men to see our side. I don’t go out of my way to insult men for being men, as I think that’s stupid. But I’m not up for flattering them, either.
I just had a mental picture of general-semantics flirting. :)
I would say “The fact of rape gives men power.”
Mythago, would it make my meaning clearer if I said that people define for themselves what makes them happy? Even this involves assumptions (see Brazil, The Matrix).
I mean, the definition of “benefit” as “happiness” involves assumptions.
Yes. And there are tangible benefits besides social plans. For example, if I can’t work late because I am more at risk of assault, that puts me at a financial and career disadvantage relative to my male colleagues.
…And if you can’t live in the worse parts of town because you don’t want to worry (even more) about making it from your car to your front door each night, you’re at an additional financial disadvantage.
And if you can’t take night classes–for, say, a paralegal certificate–you’re disadvantaged further. And your male coworkers benefit when you can’t compete with them.
I’m sure there are hundreds of other concrete examples, Omar.
Yo, it was just an example that popped into my head because something similiar had come up. But I do have to wonder, why are we allowing that if it were only my freedom to associate for social purposes that was constrained by the threat of rape that is somehow acceptable?
I was going more for the long-term issues than the social ones.
Oh, I know. But I picked that example specifically to demonstrate how such a thing is so ingrained in our lives that it affects *everything*, even small and silly decisions. It’s an effective tactic–think of how the civil rights movement made symbols out of water fountains and lunch counters. Small things that speak of larger issues.
Here’s a small thing: getting a drink. If you’re a man, unless you are in a real dive indeed, chances are you can leave your beer on the table in a mixed group, go pee, and come back and finish your beer. You likely don’t wonder whether you should just ditch the beer and get a fresh one–one you saw the bartender open and hand to you–because God knows whether somebody doped it while you were up.
Just wanted to add my “.02” here, addressing the point that only alcoholic, screwed-up women have been raped: most of the women I know don’t have any sort of substance abuse problem, and most of them have stories about being sexually abused/assualted, and a number of them (sorry, don’t have the exact stats worked out) have been raped.
Rape is horrifyingly common, whether we have “offical” stats to prove it or not, and it affects far, far, far more women than most men realise.
I’ve been really enjoying these discussions (and by “enjoying” I mean becoming obsessed with and having horrible nightmares) and I mentioned this discussion and the closely related “how does rape benefit men” discussion to a good friend of mine.
I am male, and I consider myself a feminist. My friend is male, a really superb human being, and a an actual sensitive guy (rather than a moping manipulative ass) and he considers himself a feminist.
In discussing the whole benefit issue, I was surprised that he was made so uncomfortable by the word, that he, as male, “benefited” from the rapes perpetrated by other men… he said, as has been done here by other posters, that the “advantage” he gained from the inequality in power wasn’t really an “advantage” but a “lack of disadvantage”.
The worst part is I know that I could have made this argument at other times in my life, and be just as befuddled at someone insisting, as I did with my friend, that a “net advantage” is an “advantage”, no semantic quibblery required.
I think what it comes down to, for men (I’ve never seen a woman make this argument), is that we feel that we really haven’t done anything wrong, and at some level we’re annoyed by being tarred by the same brush. I can’t speak directly for my friend, but the closest I’ve ever come to sexual assault (that I know of… careful, careful…) is having a woman, when I tried to kiss her, have to tell me “no” _twice_ before I listened. So for me, and I suspect others, there is a feeling we’re being punished for something we didn’t do.
Why does this bother us so much, especially when the person we’re arguing with usually takes care to assure us that she (or he) in _no_way_ personally blames us, personally, for sexual assault and the gender power imbalance? Could it _possibly_ be because as men (straight, white men, natch) we are almost entirely unexposed to unearned criticism soley on account of our sex (color or orientation)?
Oh, of course not. That couldn’t _possibly_ be it.
-t
LOL. You’re right that it takes practice, t. It took me a long time to understand that my lack of personal responsibility for racism didn’t change the fact that I benefit from it, and that’s hard to get over. But the main thing is not to take it personally, but just see it as a fact that just….is. Like being an American is the biggest benefit of all, and just a fact of where you were born.
Your post does make me think of another benefit that’s hard to nail, but is very real. In our rape culture, women are supposed to be gate-keepers and men pursuers. Rape therefore is a man not being able to take no for an answer. Men who don’t rape still benefit because they benefit from being defined as the lustful, the pursuers, and get lauded simply for being able to refrain from forcing.
Women are simply expected to refrain from sexual behavior, and pursuing is still seen as beyond the pale. Pouting because of sexual frustration is accepted from men because, hey, at least they aren’t raping. Similar pouting from women is pretty much unheard of, or redefined as a product of female vanity.
What about the women who lie about being raped?
A false accusation of rape can cause as much damage to a man as a real rape can cause to a woman. Yet this area of crime is largely ignored.
False accusations of rape range between about 8% to 40% or more of all accusations, depending on the source of the statistics. No doubt the number of false reports rises even more in anonymous surveys designed by feminists to maximise the perception that rape is prevalent.
All men are oppressed by a legal and social culture that allows a men’s lives to be destroyed by accusations from under cover of anonymity, by women who are unaccountable for their crime.
No doubt the number of false reports rises even more in anonymous surveys designed by feminists to maximise the perception that rape is prevalent.
Damn! They’re on to us, girls. Back to the Feminist Secret Hideout! Our plan for taking over the world and reducing men to helpless slaves is in peril!
Some serious venom flowing on this site. Almost makes me afraid to post a comment. But, this is an issue near and dear to my heart, so I shall make my voice heard.
I do not consider rape statistics to be overblown, nor do I believe that feminsts manipulate rape statistics to gain some sort of power over men. But, I do feel those rape statistics should be broken down a bit more to suit certain situations. I also feel that rape laws should be modified to fit different situations as well. For an example of my point, I will use the recent case of Kobe Bryant, in which a woman who was apparently awed by a man’s celebrity agreed to go to a private place with him, and agreed to sleep with him, or at least fool around. But, he got rought about it, and ended up hurting her physically and mentally, for life. Did he commit a crime, most certainly. But, I’m not sure if you can call it rape when she more or less walked into the situation of her own accord. I feel rape statistics should be broken down into cases such as this. Which ones are indeed true rape, a man forcing himself onto a woman violently, and which ones are something else?
I have no fear of hatred for feminists. But I will admit I hold an intolerance for women who quite simply want to bash man, and call themselves feminists. They are no more feminists than Al Sharpton is a black activist.
My own views on feminism tend to be a bit controversial. I am personally all for equality between the sexes, and would happily work for advancing the feminist cause myself. However, I feel there is a side of it that tends to not be looked at, by the women themselves in particular. Greater equality of the sexes would indeed carry benefits, but it would also carry disadvantages. The number of female politicians and CEO’s would increase, yes, but so would the number of women in jail and on death row. Divorce, abortion, and spousal abuse laws would all be changed radically. Women would lose many advantages that historically they have held tightly to, just as men would. Quiet simply, its a two edged sword.
“I’m not sure if you can call it rape when she more or less walked into the situation of her own accord.”
So if I agree to have sex with a guy and he turns into a ravaging animal, it’s MY fault for agreeing to the sex in the first place?
You are operating on the principle that if a woman agrees to any sexual contact, she agrees to ALL sexual contact, in any way the man in question chooses to do it.
That is flat-out morally wrong. If I agree to a nice, warm little fuck and what I get is beaten and bruised, it is rape. No if, buts, or ors. It is.
“Which ones are indeed true rape, a man forcing himself onto a woman violently, and which ones are something else?”
There is no “something else” and the idea that there is one definition of “true” rape is a misogynist myth. Rape takes many forms, including the form of psychological coercion, which may not involved physical violence at all. As Q Grrl & Hearrt pointed out on another thread, sometimes all a man has to do is overtly or implicitly threaten dire consequences to the woman if she does refuse sex. The list is there if you care to go look at it, but common tactics include threatening to beat her, to abuse the children, to harm the pets, to humiliate her publicly, to cause her to lose her job, and on and on and on if she refuses sex.
Those are rape, whether you see it that way or not. Because it doesn’t matter what YOU think and feel, it matters what the WOMAN thinks and feels.
“But I will admit I hold an intolerance for women who quite simply want to bash man, and call themselves feminists. ”
And I don’t have a hell of a lot of tolerance for those men who, when confronted by facts, begin to whinge about how the Mean Old Feminists are “bashing” them. For many, many men, all a woman has to do is tell the truth about her life for her to become a ball-breaking bitch.
As for the “equality” thing, why on earth do you suppose many feminists haven’t thought about it themselves long before you? There are some feminists who do go on about “equality”, but there are also a hell of a lot of us who DON’T look to men’s lives as some sort of Gold Standard by which human lives should be judged. Men not only treat women and children like shit, they also treat any man they see as “weaker” like shit too. That’s not a system I care to endorse, which is why I’m calling for a new way of living altogether.
Word Crys. Word.
“If I agree to a nice, warm little fuck”
Hell, even if I agree to something a whole lot rougher, but he steps outside of the boundaries of what we’ve agreed, it’s flat-out rape.
I’m sick of all this justification of men’s brutal behaviour.
I also feel that rape laws should be modified to fit different situations as well. For an example of my point, I will use the recent case of Kobe Bryant, in which a woman who was apparently awed by a man’s celebrity agreed to go to a private place with him, and agreed to sleep with him, or at least fool around. But, he got rought about it, and ended up hurting her physically and mentally, for life. Did he commit a crime, most certainly. But, I’m not sure if you can call it rape when she more or less walked into the situation of her own accord.
Wait, what? I don’t know what the hell’s going on in that other thread, and I don’t know what happened with Kobe (in part because I ignore TV news). But if he used violence to force her into sexual acts, that seems pretty clear cut. If her ‘walking into the situation’ affects the punishment, do we also forbid her to have an abortion? Sure, random-rape-victim didn’t know random-rapist would force her to have unprotected sex, but she walked into the room with him.
Mind you, judges and juries may already have the ability to impose harsher punishments for more violent rapes. Which seems reasonable enough.
Another false statistic quoted by many is the notion that only 2% of rape allegations are false. This figure was made famous by feminist Susan Brownmiller in her 1975 book “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.” Brownmiller was relaying the alleged comments of a New York judge concerning the rate of false rape accusations in a New York City police precinct in 1974.
A 1997 “Columbia Journalism Review” analysis of rape statistics noted that the 2% statistic is often falsely attributed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and has no clear and credible study to support it. The FBI’s statistic for “unfounded” rape accusations is 9%, but this definition only includes cases where the accuser recants or the evidence contradicts her story. Instances where the case is dismissed for lack of evidence are not included in the “unfounded” category. Brownmiller’s credibility can be assessed by her assertion in “Against Our Will” that rape is “nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.”
Rape is a horrible crime. But false accusations of rape are every bit as horrible. They are a form of psychological rape that can emotionally, socially, and economically destroy a man even if there is no conviction. The stigma attaches to the falsely accused for life. Few believe them and few care. Prosecutors systematically refuse to prosecute the perpetrators. And victims’ advocates refuse to see falsely accused men as victims, and instead work to minimize and conceal the problem.
Oh, give me a fuckin’ break already. You overplayed your hand—cliched as it is–with your last sentence: VAs work to minimize and conceal the problem.
Fact is, most rapes aren’t reported at all. Where’s your sympathy for those victims? Their rapists go free to rape again. Then there’s the guys who rape retarded girls and who get the full sympathy of their community. Then there’s all the sports figures who rape and get away with it. Then there’s all the rape victims who aren’t even old enough to speak. There are victims whose rapist used a condom or didn’t ejaculate. There are victims who showered. I’m sure you think those are false complaints, too. Let’s not even discuss the enlightened attitude of LE. In any event, you don’t waste any sympathy on any of them. Oh noes! Woe betide the guy accused of rape. He serves as a patron saint to anti-feminist guys everywhere who can dismiss every rape case there is and perpetuate stereotypes of victims. We never hear from the victim in his case, just that he’s a swell guy and he ‘couldn’t have done it’ because he sure hasn’t tried to rape Bill or Ted or Joe, right?
Fact is, the classic false rape accusation doesn’t involve a ID at all and the person making it usually does so because of mental illness. In your eagerness to whine about about how the Secret Matriarchy Hurts Men TOO you’ve left facts behind. Bravo.
Even though Amp has already covered this statistical snafau in another thread, I’ll point out that in this article half of all carjackings are said to be false. In this article, half of the stolen car reports are shown to be false. People do get accused of doing these things (in the first article, a pregnant woman was falsely accused of carjacking). Oddly enough, I don’t see the level of concern for false reports of other crimes. That’s pretty telling.