For those assholes out there who don’t believe the high rape statistics, I’ve put together this little poll for the women of the board.
This poll is 100% anonymous. Neither myself nor anyone else has any way of tracing who picked what.
This isn’t scientific, and the SDMB isn’t really an accurate sampling of “the population at large” but it should serve to give some rough numbers.
I think that maybe some eyes will be opened.
[poll will be linked in my first reply to this post]
(I needed the thread ID number to finish making the poll–that’s why this wasn’t linked in the OP)
Mmm…Opal? Not working. The link just goes back to this thread.
That’s because I was testing you.
cough
http://opalcat.freepolls.com/cgi-bin/polls/003/poll_center.htm
Remember, it’s just as important that you vote if you’re a ‘no’ as well as a ‘yes.’
FTR, I was not one of those assholes Opal was talking about. I don’t think.
My eyes where well and truely opened when over the years I found out that A LOT of the females that I knew well personally had been raped/abused at some stage during their life.
My own experience tells me that it’s quite a high %age and I see no reason why my upperworking/middle class westernised city experience would be different to most people :mad:
Just a quick musing…not only is sample size an issue, but I wonder if maybe there isn’t some sample bias. For instance, an internet poll on the CNN website about a political issue is likely to draw response only from CNN viewers who are more likely to have strong political ideas and a general awareness of the intricacies of the issues at hand. Likewise, there may be a disproportionate number of people following this series of threads who have themselves been raped or know someone who has been, and that was why they took an active interest in this topic.
I realize you added a similiar caveat to your OP, I just wanted to reiterate and expand upon it. I see some value in taking such a poll, but only in the limited context of discovering roughly how often sexual assault has been part of the lives of the women on this board. That could of itself be useful, but not necessarily be even close to the figure in the general population.
BTW, I thought we had cleared up the fact that not all the people doubting the high rape statistics were being assholes, just some of them in light of other extrinsic insensitive behaviours they were exhibiting in the context of personal attacks. The skepticism of statistics was not the jerkish behaviour, it was the way said skepticism was presented and the subsequent act of giving irishgirl the 3rd degree.
Oh yeah - one other thing. The thing that’s being polled, to be blunt, is whether you’ve been raped yet. Sorry if that sounded creepy, but the original stat in question was one that claimed 25% would be raped in their whole lifetime. So it still won’t be an apples to apples comparison.
I know it sounds weird, but I’d like to hear what rapists (convicted or not, serial or not) have to say about rape and rape statistics. Presumably, if rape statistics are so high, there must be a lot of rapists out there. If for every rape victim, there must have been a rapist, so if 1 out of 4 women have been raped shouldn’t there be at least one or two rapists posting on this very board (with hundreds of active posters), just by chance? Of course SD is anything but a statistical sample of the population, most rapists are serial offenders, so maybe not.
Well, Apos, I assume that any rapists on the board would probably choose not to brodcast the fact. a) They’re not going to make any friends real fast and b) Theoretically they could get themselves in legal trouble.
Secondly, depending on someone’s point of view, what law-enforcment, rape-counselors or any other parties involved may consider rape, some people may view as “A good time.” in which case they would not self-identify as a rapist.
First of all, it’s not a one-to-one ratio of rapists to victims (which i know you didn’t imply). Most sexual predators have multiple victims, so there would naturally be a smaller percentage of rapists than victims (how much smaller, I have no idea. It’s probably larger than we would want to believe).
Secondly, the odds are that there probably are some people on the board who have committed sexual offenses, but as alice_in_wonderland pointed out, they’re not going to announce it, and some of them may not even perceive themselves as offenders.
This is an important point to remember. While some rapists who violently assault strangers may realize that what they are doing is a crime, someone who assaults someone who is passed-out drunk at a party may consider it harmless fun or at worst a bit naughty. Rapists who assault their romantic partners may feel that they are entitled to sex by virtue of their relationship and view consent as irrelevant. Heck, many people (even some SDMB posters, judging from past rape threads) believe that rape isn’t really rape unless the victim physically resists – just saying “no” isn’t good enough.
Human nature being what it is, I suspect that most rapists manage to convince themselves that what they did wasn’t really wrong for some reason or another, no matter what the law might say.
Eyes will be opened? By what? This is a completely self selected survey conducted in a particular thread of one message board on the internet. What ever your results are they will be less than rough, they will be useless. Waste. of. time.
Your silly little poll isn’t going to make one whit of difference to anybody. I don’t see how such an inaccurate study would convince anyone on either side of the arguement to change their mind.
Marc
I don’t think that’s entirely true. I believe the high rape statistics (they might even be on the low side), but I can see how some others might be a little doubtful. Even if it isn’t an entirely accurate 100% scientific study, if I were “on the fence” so to speak, and I saw some high numbers, I’d probably at least go “Hmm…”.
But like pretty much any point over which two groups disagree, you’re really never going to sway the people who aren’t on the fence.
Thumbs up, Opal.
I don’t even care about the statistics, MGibson. I think that maybe if people see how many people --out of only the women on the SDMB who happen to see this thread-- have actually been raped, it may serve to illustrate a point that a LOT OF WOMEN GET RAPED. MORE THAN YOU THINK.
Just to make the point… this has been up for about 2 hours now, and the only people who have taken it are the females who have seen this thread and chosen to participate. In that time, the poll stands thus:
17 rapes
26 sexual assaults
30 no rape & no sexual assault
Now I’ll give you that people who have been raped are way more likely to take the poll, however… in 2 hours we have had 43 sex crime victims respond.
The real problem is defining “a lot” and “rape.” IANAL, but I don’t think that sexual assault necessarily equals rape, but a lot of the differences in statistics comes from people saying rape/sexual assault vs. just rape.
I answered the poll because I was curious to see the results. I second the thought that a “no” vote is just as important as a “yes” vote, and I hope that any woman who wanders in here will vote, regardless of her sexual history.
I have a rather small circle of friends and more than half of them have been sexually assaulted or raped. These are women of various ages from all walks of life. Only one reported her rape to authorities- the rest did not, for several reasons. One was a heavy drinker and thought maybe she deserved it. One had incredibly low self-esteem and was too scared to report it. Another was threatened by her rapist.
I still think it’s a thought-provoking poll, even if it is statistically meaningless. 43 in 2 hours? Eek.
How can someone have been around here as long as you have and still be this stupid? Your numbers show NOTHING! Got it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! This isn’t “close to scientific” it is utter bull shit. 43 women victim of sexual assault huh? How the fuck do you know that? You have 43 pieces of data from anonymous internet surfers with absolutely no way to verify any of it. I am sure I could develop a less reliable way to generate statistical information, but I really can’t think of one right now. Anyone who is on the fence and is swayed by your pathetic pseudopoll is an idiot of the second highest order. The only higher order would be the person who conceived the poll in the first place.