Why don't they give up on attacking Koss already?

In the comments to an earlier thread, Mousehounde wrote:

As to the topic: I do not understand the fixation on trying to discredit Koss’ study. What difference does it make if the rate is not 1 in 4? So what if the numbers are different? Is there some magical cut off point in the numbers when it becomes something that doesn’t need fixing or attention? If the incidence of rape is 1 in 4, then there is a problem. But if the numbers are lower, 1 in 8, 1 in 20, then rape really isn’t a problem and women just need to stop whining about it I guess.

There’s a bit of a history there. The attack on Koss’ work was made popular among anti-feminists by Katie Roiphe and Christina Hoff Sommers. (Roiphe, in particular, was very convincing – I remember reading her 1993 New York Times Sunday Magazine attack on Koss and feeling livid at those lying feminists.)

Roiphe and Sommers, in turn, both cribbed their arguments from Neil Gilbert (not in a dishonest way; they both credit Gilbert in their books. By the way, Roiphe’s endnotes don’t cite a single piece of writing by Koss; her sources were all secondhand.) But Gilbert wasn’t arguing about the difference between “1 in 8” and “1 in 20” or whatever it is anti-feminists argue nowadays. From the conclusion to Gilbert’s seminal Koss-attacking essay (published in the magazine Public Interest in 1991):

The difference between a sexual-assault rate of 25 or 50 percent and one of 0.1 percent is more than a matter of degree. It is the difference between the view that male-female relations are normally enjoyable for most people and the view that they are inherently antagonistic and dangerous. To argue for the higher rate is to try to shift our understanding of the battle between the sexes; the model suggested by Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn is to be replaced by one in which Conan the Barbarian violently thrashes his cavemate.

There’s a lot to unpack there (Conan wasn’t a caveman!), but note the statistical point: He thought he was arguing between 1 in 2 (a number he got, I suspect, from Diana Russell’s studies), 1 in 4 (Koss’ number, if you include attempted rapes) and 1 in 1000. That’s a real difference. That’s a difference that matters. Arguing about that difference makes sense.

Where did Gilbert get 1 in 1000 from? From the Bureau of Justice Statistic’s (aka BJS) estimate of how many rapes occur annually. It’s appropriate, considering how much the anti-feminist movement has mangled statistics to attack Koss over the years, that the trend was begun by a scholar so careless with statistics that he’d directly compare a lifetime statistic to an annual statistic and think he was saying something meaningful. (Of course, he’s not the only anti-feminist to make that particular error.)

What’s happened since? Well, a lot of studies – including three major nationwide studies – have replicated three of Koss’ major findings (that something in the range of 10% to 15% of American women are raped at some point in their lifetime; that the typical rapist is not a stranger to the victim; and that the vast majority of rapes are never reported to the police). All three of the studies were influenced by Koss’ earlier work, in my opinion. The BJS admitted that the survey instrument they used to measure rape back in 1991 was badly designed, and have revised their methods somewhat, although some problems remain. Koss’ work continues to be frequently cited in the peer-reviewed literature.

In short, Koss’ findings are widely accepted within the mainstream research community. Yet you’d never guess that from reading right-wing and anti-feminist literature; most anti-feminists who follow the issue believe that Koss has been entirely discredited. Why haven’t they given up already?

Furthermore, it’s now been nearly two decades since Koss’ study was published. As groundbreaking as Koss’ study was, other, more recent research is probably more significant at this point. So why is Koss still the target, rather than (say) the Centers for Disease Control, which ran a major, recent study replicating many of Koss’ findings?

Well, because for most anti-feminists the critique of Koss’ work was never really about how common rape is. Instead, Koss’ work was exhibit A in the prosecutor’s case against feminism for Malicious Anti Male Lying. Criticizing the CDC, which is not a feminist organization, doesn’t suit that purpose. The target must be a feminist, like Koss. And to admit they were wrong about Koss would imply that they might be wrong about their caricature of feminists as a bunch of vicious man-hating evil Feminazis – and to most anti-feminists, that’s simply unthinkable.

And that, as well, is the reason I keep on posting about Koss. Not because I think there’s an important difference between 1 in 8 and 1 in 15 or whatever – there isn’t. Nor is it only because I think Mary Koss is, if anything, a hero, and the constant attacks on her character deserve rebuttal.

Rather, I continue arguing with the anti-feminists because their implied view that “all feminists are liars” needs to be opposed. The more they succeed in getting policy-makers or the general public to accept their view of feminists are manhating liars, the harder it will be for feminists to succeed in their policy goals. Trying to disprove the anti-feminists regarding their chosen Exhibit A is, I think, worthwhile.