Then you read them incorrectly. While the content of these posts is not factual, it is not misogynistic simply by questioning the factual basis of the [as yet unproven] assertion in the OP in that thread.
Stating “Just a WAG, but my experience/instinct does not bear this out as fact” does not a hatelful statement make. No matter what the emotional content of the original topic is. While I have nothing but respect for irishgirl, I still do not see any misogynistic content in that thread.
NinetyWt, I said we need a definition of rape because people disagreed about it. I would define rape as forcing someone to have sex, by violence or threat of violence; or having sex with someone who is unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, when it is not reasonable to assume that she would consent if awake. I would not include such things as psychological pressure, or sex while intoxicated. Some others would, and you can’t say how many women are raped if you don’t know what it is.
Irishgirl, I’m sorry evil men have hurt you. If someone shoots them, I’ll buy that person a beer. NinetyWt, I didn’t have to ask for a definition, but would you rather I ask, or that I insist that I’m right, and everyone else is a silly chick on the rag?
Point taken, DrPepper. The way that one interprets those posts which I quoted is subjective, it seems, and depends largely on the perceived attitude ascribed to the poster. Taken individually, I can see how one might read each post and give it the benefit of the doubt, thinking, “well, he’s questioning the factual basis of the OP, rather than the truth of women’s testimony.” But reading them one after the other, with no other posts intervening, prompts my concern and suggests a worrisome trend of people reflexively responding to criticize the truth of women’s claims of rape rather than looking into possible problems in the statistical methodology. At least, that’s the way it seems to me. We’ll have to agree to disagree.
The problem is that the effective content of most of these posts was “Well, it doesn’t sound right to me, so it musn’t be true.” And your parsing of Skateboarder’s post is generous, to say the least. S/he was nowhere near as moderate in tone.
Sure, there’s room to argue about the way such statistics are gathered and the way in which figures are interpreted, but as far as i could see the only person questioning the OP who even bothered to find any sort of citation was astro. Others, including the first three responses cited by me and by Pablito, above, were nothing more than drive-by assertions with barely even a hint of rational analysis or argumentation. Not exactly the sort of thing one expects in GD, or even in GQ. These knee-jerk reactions, piled on top of one another, constituted a pretty aggressive and antogonistic response to the OP.
And on preview, i see Pablito’s post, which makes the point i was going to conclude with. So i’ll leave it there.
catsix, I think the problem that irishgirl and I and others have with that thread is not those that are questioning the accuracy of the statistic but those men in the thread, specifically skateboarder and blue john(?) who are basically saying flat out that women are lying about rape to get attention bluejohn’s CHALLENGE to irishgirl about why she didn’t report her rape.
I also saw the comment ‘women who don’t report a rape deserve no sympathy’ and women who quote rape statistics as being guilty of “FemiNAZIism”, which made me particularly sick.
I have no doubt that 1 in 4 is a dramatic, overblown stat, but to tear down every rape victim in that thread (which is what it felt like to ME) in order to try desperately to prove it is completely unnecessary.
By the way bluejohn, here’s a hint. Women don’t report a rape sometimes because they are SCARED SHITLESS. Get back to me once you’ve been frightened or forced physically into fucking another human being and we’ll see how easy reporting it is.
Couple things:
One, we have to be able to question the validity about statistics such as the one being discussed. Yes, some people were being assholes, and I’m glad that that is being addressed. And yes, people need to be tactful. But at the same time, it has to be possible to explore statistics such as this rationally, because we have to understand what it really means before we can address any of the very real problems it uncovers. Discussing the meaning of the data is not the same as dismissing the very real trama of rape. There were some people in that thread who were very carefully treading that line, and they ought not be lumped in with people who were being insensitive, knee-jerkish assholes.
When they push for definitions (usually with tactlessness born of defensiveness), they are told that “It’s simple” and that if they even have to wonder, than, yes, it is rape. This is compounded by the fact that human sexual relationships are not simple however much we might want them to be. They are never simple. When you say “It’s simple. Just always make sure you have a woman’s consent before you have sex with her”, you ignore the reality of sexual relationships: the hurried fumble between two sixteen year olds who are both avoiding talking about it becaue they are worried good sense will prevail; the college student who has an incredible experience with a girl while they are both drunk and then never talks to her again; the man who wakes his beloved up with cunnilingus; the man whose sexual advances are unexpectadly accepted, only to realize after that the woman’s motives had more to do with her own self esteem issues than with his charm and that he unwittingly benefited by taking advantage of her insecurities; the husband who asks for a bj after he has just cleaned the whole house and done the laundry and knows his wife can’t say no.
We have a situation where a rapist cannot ever redeem himself and where if a man questions anything about the nature of rape–in order to ensure that he is not one and will never be one-- he is assumed to be a mysogynist at best. I can see how that must be frustrating beyond belief.
I’m not trying to justify the assholes in that thread: there were some people who were clearly crossing the line into asshole territory. At the same time, though, I do think that many women understand why it is that women have such an emotional reaction to the topic but find the strong emotional reaction of men to be inexplicable and therefore suspicious. I hope that I have shown that, as horrible as it is to be a potiental victim of rape, it is also horrible to be a potential rapist, and not surprising that that possibility would raise hackles. Our reaction to men like that should not be a dismissive “you can’t understand, you’ve never been in my shoes”, because all that says is "you may or may not be a rapist yourself, and you’ll never know because you can’t even begin to understand, oyu just have to take my word for it.
A lot of people, men and women alike, don’t report missing property, muggings, or assults, for reasons as varied as why women don’t report rapes. And yet no one doubts that burglaries or attacks exist plentifully.
An interesting discussion of statistics and psychology was disrupted by trolls. What the fuck is it about the topic of rape that brings out the nastiest in people on message boards?
Look, sisters, let’s all climb down off our ankhs, shall we?
First, if you want “sensitivity” stay out of GQ, where the thread in question was originally posted. GQ is a place for facts.
The facts are this: [ul]
[li]The 1-out-of-4-college-women-will-be-raped-while-in-college statistic is utterly bogus.[/li][li]The 17.6%-of-women-will-be-raped-in-their-lifetimes statistic comes from a study that everyone, even the people pushing the statistic recognize is essentially worthless.[/li][li]Many women do not report rape to the authorities. [/li][li]Some women do make false rape reports.[/li][/ul]
Now, I’ll agree that some people didn’t express themselves in that thread with much tact, but that goes for people on both sides. One participant even suggested that DNA evidence was such solid “proof” that a rape occured that convicted rapist should be either castrated or killed. How that relates to the factual question posed by the OP escapes me.
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It might actually be true? Let me get this straight – you are actually suggesting that one out of six men are rapists? All I can say is, cite? Perhaps you ought to pepper-spray every sixth man you meet, you know, just to be safe.
As for ignoring the possibility that many rapists are repeat offenders, what about ignoring the someone who’s a victim of multiple rapes? The study that generated the 17.6% statistic (which purports to be for both completed and attempted rapes) interviewed 8000 women and found 28 that had been raped (by the expansive definition used in the study) during the past year. Of those 28, 23 gave information indicating they had been raped only once. One women, however said she had been raped 24 times. Of course, the study used this abberant data point to calculate all sorts of statistics without batting an eye.
Look, I appreciate that rape is a very sensitive subject, especially for those who have suffered it. Indeed, one of my points in that thread was that lumping in two drunken college students having sex after a party with violent rape trivializes the whole exercise. Yet that’s exactly what the more dramatic studies did. But the fact that some people are understandably traumatized by the topic absolutely does not mean it should not be openly and rigorously discussed.
Such a discussion will inevitably involves tough, sceptical questions. If you are too emotionally invested and these questions are painful, then stay out of the thread. No one will think less of you for it. But people have a right to call a spade a spade on this board and they shouldn’t be criticised for doing so, even if some people find the vigorous pursuit of the unvarnished truth to be distressing.
Well, all I meant that a few bytes of text on an Internet forum doesn’t really compare to those who can face their assaulter in a courtroom or as Irishgirl said to a policeman.
You’re right though, it probably took more courage to post than anything I’ve posted on the Internet. So, in that regard, I’d like to apologize to Irishgirl. What is or is not courageous isn’t important and I should not have said anything as it isn’t relevant and far too subjective.
Interesting the way you assume, with your condescending “sisters” reference, that everyone who doesn’t agree with you on this issue is a woman. Is that actually the case? Or is it just that any man who might take that side of the argument is somehow less-than-manly?
Regarding the figures you cite, i really don’t know what proportion of men are rapists. I hadn’t looked at the statistics when i commented on your argument. Nor did i need to, because i was commenting simply on the internal logic of the argument itself. You said: “If 17.6% of women have been raped, then 17.6% of men must be rapists.” This is not a logically constructed argument, for a bunch of possible reasons, including the ones i posited. I take your point about women being a victim on multiple occasions, but this only further serves to undermine the logic of your statement.
And, given your assertion that “GQ is a place for facts,” you still seem to save virtually all your venom for those who supported the OP in that other thread, and pay little attention to the drive-by idiots who simply offered uninformed opinions and dissappeared.
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But I don’t make any such assumption. Indeed, I know for a fact that there are some women supporting my position and some men opposed. 
It does seem, though, that lots of other people are making such assumptions. e.g.
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Anyway, I’m not the one who dragged out the tired old “sisters” schtick in this thread.
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You did get that it wasn’t supposed to be a logically constructed argument, right? It was meant to be an example of a bad statistic.
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Venom? What venom? Whom did I attack? As for not commenting on pointless drive-bys, why should I? I was addressing a particular line of argument. Since those comments were irrelevant, I ignored them. With apologies to Ted, ninety percent of that thread was crap. But, then, ninety percent of everything is crap. It’s not my day to clean out the GQean stable.
I’ve seen it happen.
And it wasn’t done. What has been questioned is whether some people’s definitions of rape, especially those who comission the studies that come up with such overblown statistics, are even accurate.
I’m sorry you constantly feel as if people are picking on you or calling you a liar, but it seems like it’s your personal issue. You take offense any time someone says it’s possible for a woman to lie about being raped and act as if they’ve personally called you a liar. As far as I can see, nobody there said you were not telling the truth, they’ve only said that women make false claims of rape twice as frequently as other felonies are falsely reported. That information comes from the FBI, and is not a personal attack on you, yet you seem to always take it as if it is.
It’s not their fault that you seem to want to feel persecuted so you can recite once again your ‘All those misogynists don’t believe victims like me’ mantra, but that isn’t what happened. In fact, more than one person in that thread has stated that it’s a shame there are false accusations, because it makes life harder for women who really were raped. Get over it and realize that ‘8% of reported rapes are false accusations’ does not translate into ‘You are lying, jarbabyj.’
So is GD, and I can’t imagine a reason for not expecting both facts and sensitivity at once. Perhaps some of us are just gifted.
But I too am interested in “cold, hard fact” and since one of those facts is that many rapes go unreported…and, like you said some are made up…I’m afraid that all we have to form an opinion are compilations of anecdotal evidence, and that will have to do for the moment. I appreciate irishgirl sharing her story, I know it’s not easy to do at all. It illustrates - beautifully, I think - the unreliable nature of reported rape statistics.
If only 8 percent of rapes reported turn out to be false, catsix, then I don’t think that’s a huge epidemic of false rape reports. Relatively speaking of course-women who make up phony claims of rape are assholes.
However, I don’t think it justifies the hostility of that thread and the phrase, “psycho hysterical chicks” or whatever the hell Fuel was talking about.
Really, what is the ratio of false rape reports as compared to unreported rapes? I’m guessing for every false report, there’s probably two hundred unreported assaults of one kind or another.
I’d say at least half of the women I’ve ever been close to have been the victim of some kind of sexual assault in their lives, if not a full-blown rape, (and I don’t mean drunken blow-jobs, I mean real assaults). I’d bet that close to a hundred percent of all women have had, or will have to deal with some sort of unwanted sexual aggression from a male at least once in their lives. It’s not always going to be rape, but there’s going to be something, whether it be some guy trying to cop a cheap feel, emotional coercion or blackmail from a boyfriend, molestation as a child, date rape, stranger rape, drug rape, gang rape, attempted rape, harrassment at work, peeping toms, internet pervs, you name it. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if one out of four women have been forcibly raped, but I’m positive that far more than that have been victimized in lesser ways.
Tell that to someone who spends years in prison after being falsely accused and falsely convicted, Guinastasia.
Ask that man if he thinks false accusations are a problem.
Everybody in prison says they were falsely accused. Some of them can be very convincing.
I quit reading that thread after about 10 posts because I was already getting pissed off.
I read this thread and now I’m pissed off.
I have no doubt that the 25% or 18% or whatever, is inflated, but the ascertations put forth by some of the posters in both threads are totally offensive.
Feh.
So those people who are freed years later by DNA evidence or because their accuser finally admits she lied are just ‘very convincing’?
Are you really trying to say there’s no such thing as a false conviction?
The vast majority of DNA exonerations are not examples of false accusation, but misidentification by the victim or by law enforcement. The victim was assaulted, just not by the guy who got convicted. In many of these cases the victim was actually murdered so it can hardly be argued that they were lying, the cops just got the wrong guy. Do you actually have a cite for a rape conviction being reversed after the victim “admitted she lied?”
I didn’t think so.