The New York Times reports:
It’s good news that the Defense Department is finally beginning to take this issue seriously. I can’t say I’m surprised by the results – any time groups of young men are brought together and taught to be “masculine” (whether it’s in the army, a frat house, or a football team), chances are that some of the men will rape. Unfortunately, the DOD survey is very badly designed and so almost certainly underestimates the problem.
Why? Well, there are two basic approaches to surveying people about rape: either you just ask if a respondent has been raped, or you ask a whole bunch of very graphic “behaviorally specific questions,” such as “has anyone ever made you have sexual intercourse by using force or threatening to harm you… by intercourse I mean putting a penis in your vagina…,” with similar-but-not-identical questions asked to elicit reports of other kinds of rape (anal rape or oral rape, for example). Years of experience has taught social scientists that many rape victims will only report their experience in a survey when the latter approach is used.
As far as I can tell, the Air Force survey – described in unfortunately sparse detail in this pdf file – uses the earlier, outdated method of designing their rape survey. Instead of using behaviorally specific questions, they instead just asked respondents if they had been raped (the survey defined rape as “an act of sexual intercourse with a female, by force and/or without her consent [conscious or unconscious]”).
How big a difference could this make? A recent US department of Justice study directly compared the two methods, and found that 11 times as many rape victims reported their experiences when surveyors used behaviorally specific questions.
The Department of Defense says it intends to do further, more thorough surveys. Let’s hope they update their survey methodology to the present tense – the survey method they’re using now has been obsolete for at least a decade. Until their methodology catches up, however, the DOD’s 12% figure – shocking as it is – should be taken as an extremely low estimate of the problem.
Links via TalkLeft and Conclusive Evidence..
Thank you for opening my eyes about rape surveys. Of course, 11 times here would make over 100% of female cadets victims, so the numbers must vary. I’d just assumed that a lot of people would say no out of privacy.
One quibble: “any time groups of young men are brought together and taught to be “masculine” (whether it’s in the army, a frat house, or a football team), chances are that some of the men will rape.” I know what you mean, but I played high-level sport for ten years, with various teams, and I’m pretty sure none of us ever raped anybody, nowhere around the other players anyway. Yes there was sex and a fair bit of pot. I guess I should note the sport was Ultimate Frisbee.
“[A]ny time groups of young men are brought together and taught to be ‘masculine’ (whether it’s in the army, a frat house, or a football team), chances are that some of the men will rape.”
Woah.
Unlike John Isbell, I don’t know what you mean. I have a guess but I’m not sure. This is the sort of (I hope) poorly formulated aside that calls attention to itself and thus detracts from the post’s important point on rape statistics.
Imagine reading “Anytime groups of children are brought together and taught to be ‘tolerant’ (whether it’s in a public school, summer camp, or church), chances are that some of the children will become homosexual.” Obvious bullshit isn’t it? People are a little bit more complicated than monkey see, monkey do.
It is a shame that in today’s society women are still frowned upon in the Military. So people tell me to expect getting raped when i go to the Naval academy in two years. I DON’T and will NEVER expect that! Why can’t anyone do something about this. These men should be disciplined for their actions because it will never stop if they aren’t.
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I’ve been in the airforce academy for three years, and I’ve know many lose girlfriends who like to hve sex with lots of guys, and a few actually tossed the idea around if they are busted, they’ll just claim rape. I know a girl who was on a warning for drug use, and in order to avoid another drug test, she seduced a guy and went awol (with the idea to give time for the drugs to get out of her system), when found she told she ran away because of rape. The poor guy was thrown in jail for several months before she admitted that she made up the whole story to avoid being thrown out. btw, she was not able to stay off of drugs while she was on AWOL. THe poor guy faced decades in prison and lost over 40 pounds, and all what happened to her was being discharged.
In the Airforce, we’re not suppose to have sex with the guys, but it happens. I was busted and claimed rape because I was scared. The guy said she won’t report it if I actually consented, but if I claimed rape, the guy will be prosecuted and he’ll stay in prison for 10 years and have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. It sort of put things in prospective. Making him my scapegoat for something I consented to do is wrong. I know nothing would be done to me even if I was caught with this false accusation, but I still felt “funny” sending him to jail. All I wanted to do was have sex! That’s all. The Air force shouldn’t be able to enforce my civil liberties. I came clean and the officer lets us go. We didn’t even get in trouble for having sex. I wonder how many other women are having sex and using the unsuspecting guy as a scapegoat?
By an amazing coincidence, Sandy J and Wendy Sue both posted from the same IP address. Usually that means it’s one poster pretending to be two different people.
Such cynicism ill becomes you, Amp. Surely Sandy and Wendy are roommates at the Air Force Academy, sharing a PC. All cadets refer to their school as the “airforce academy”, think that “perspective” is spelled “prospective”, and that the past tense of “let” is “lets”.
The big question is if they’re male or female. So nice to see people’s fantasies first thing in the morning.
I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. We just think that it’s unfair. I didn’t proof my email. Sorry for the typos and grammatical errors. I guess I didn’t take this seriously enough. I just did it because I agreed with Wendy and she was upset with one of our friends being hurt by a false accusation. Please take my comment off this site. I don’t want any trouble or hate.
So a friend of yours gets hurt—supposedly—and you seek to defame all rape victims? Yeah, I’d guess that wasn’t taking this seriously. And you’re sure it’s a false accusation? After all, a person who’s lied already is eminently trustworthy.
And they don’t seem to have a very good idea of how the AF JAG works, either.
Hee. I love that Amptoons has legal counsel.
You don’t need to be a lawyer for the bullshit detector to pop a wire on the “Air Force” girls, there.
Nope. My favorite part was how there were no repercussions for the false accusation. Riiiiight.
Hell, I’m IN the army myself, and—-Jesus, there are repercussions for real accusations, if the guy is popular and what not.
y’know, i don’t see how it matters whether Sandy J & Wendy Sue are for real or not. a few anecdotes does not a structural analysis make (hell, it doesn’t even make a deeply flawed attempt at structural analysis, like the DoD study).
Well, it might matter because it’s interesting that they’d step up and lie about something like this.
…It’s interesting because it makes you wonder what actual woman this poster knows, and how, and what contact s/he has had with them. Whether or not this person is actually in the Air Force, I worry about them. S/he’s almost certainly lying about being two people and about being in the Air Force–and I suspect s/he’s lying about being female. And s/he’s telling these almost-certainly lies in order to promulgate misconceptions about rape in general and about an epidemic of rape in particular. Doesn’t sound like a safe person to know.
That’s the thing. That was a parody of sexist stereotypes of women, and how conveniant that they just stepped up and confirmed all those sexist myths! Just a coincidence, I’m sure. Nope, if all those stereotypes are true, then fears about rape in the academy are groundless, too.
No, there’s no agenda there at all.
Simple solution:
Ban booze at the Academy, period full stop.
Bring back real discipline (not hazing, discipline) and enforce the honor code.
Require all prospective officers to serve as enlisted troops for at least two years before attending the Academy. I’d certainly appreciate serving under the more clueful officers this would produce. The average 2Lt is almost useless for its first couple of years anyway, and starting out as an AB would give it a chance to grow under adult supervision before it is empowered to do damage.
Women who aren’t officers complain of the same treatment at the hands of male soldiers who aren’t officers. Alcohol cannot be blamed for the epidemic of sexual assault and harassment in the armed forces, any more than in society at large–in many of the reported incidents, cold-blooded humiliation was clearly a motive.
And as far as bringing back “discipline,” well. The root causes of this problem are not new; women in the armed forces are. Discipline is worthless without a crackdown on misogyny _as misogyny_. It is possible to be extremely disciplined–and to behave honorably towards those you believe to be your fellow soldiers–while at the same time being a misogynist who believes that no woman can really be a fellow soldier. See the operant dynamic? Women _suffer_ from these kinds of ideals–they are most frequently seen as interlopers who must be stopped.
Your solution posits that this is a problem of immaturity, a general, ungendered disrespect. That’s incorrect. Rape is a form violence practiced mostly against women, and rooted in a deep hatred for women. Sobriety and training won’t solve it.
Tsu Doh Nym, MSgt, USAF, I’m in the Army myself, and I have to say that until the military starts discussing EO issues and using the word sexism to do so, nothing will change. booze is a crutch.