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.<\/p>\n
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.)<\/p>\n
Much controversy ensued, which I’ve written about elsewhere<\/a>.<\/p>\n Anyhow, on that anti-feminist discussion board, one of the resident anti’s asked me:<\/p>\n Here’s my reply:<\/p>\n Did I ever claim that most campus feminists are relying directly <\/i>on the Koss study? I don’t think they are.<\/p>\n Where did it come from? Let me answer that with a question: did you ever play “telephone” when you were a kid?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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…<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading