“Sex after drinking alcohol” is NOT the same thing as “sex while intoxicated.” That’s why these stats are so flawed - the language used to express the results is VERY different from the language used to gather the data.
“Have you ever been forced to have sex?
Have you ever had sex when you didn’t want to?
Have you ever had sex without giving consent?
Have you ever had sex without being asked for consent?
Have you ever had sex and not been able to remember giving consent?
Have you ever had sex after drinking alcohol?
Have you ever had sex when you were drunk?
Have you ever had sex while taking drugs?
Have you ever had sex…” etcetera.
Some of these are very clearly rape, some are clearly stretching it, and some are clearly not rape. A woman could very honestly answer yes to some of these questions and be counted as raped in the statistics, and yet if merely asked “Have you ever been raped?” they’d answer “no.”
This ain’t “blame the victim,” it’s “blame the researcher.”
On the other hand, I’ve had been in intimate relationships with five women, and four of them had been raped, or abused as children (and maybe the fifth just never told me).
Excellent points. I heartily agree. However, you found the numbers contradictory. How can you do that without some hand-waving away of details in order to compare them (admittedly I did a lot of hand-waving away the details in my back-of-the-envelope calculations)? I mean, I certainly can’t show that the numbers truly agree. What I hoped to do was show that you can’t reject them, either - that they could live in the same world.
If you want to be skeptical of the numbers because they disagree with each other, though, and you’re not able to find a common denominator to compare them, because of some legitimate issues you raise, I don’t know how you’re going to accomplish it.
If you want to be skeptical because of the collection techniques, well, I’m sorry my links didn’t work. Maybe google the right stuff to get that pdf file listed, then choose the ‘view this in html’ option…
Anyway, these were the best stats I could find, and they were willing to post their sources, most of which were the department of justice.
I’ve heard the “I don’t know any one who has been raped” argument more than once, while thinking “We have the same mutual friends, we know the same people. Trust me you know women who have been raped.” The women hadn’t told them, and I certainly didn’t think it was my place to do so.
I also have never had someone relate to me that he or she was raped. However, I mentioned casually to my wife one day that I didn’t personally know anyone who had been raped. She replied “Yes you do. You know several.”
One question, though. How drunk would someone need to be to be unable to give consent. This isn’t exactly entering into a contract here. I could be to drunk to drive according to the laws of Illinois, but certainly competent to decide whether I wanted to have sex with somebody. Similarly, a certain number of drinks might lead me to do something that I wouldn’t have done if sober, but that does not mean that I didn’t have the capacity to intend to do that act.
In criminal law, it is next to impossible to claim voluntary intoxication as a defense to a crime. Unless you were truly passed out, you are able to form the intent necessary to eg. fire the gun at someone, even if you weren’t totally clear on the consequenses of that action. I’m not trying to cause trouble here, but I am genuinely trying to discover just how drunk a woman (usually) would need to be for sex to be considered rape.
First, rape is a legal term that is defined slightly differently in each state. Rape is not just a “sexual violation.” Sexual violations may be harassment or some other crime, but they aren’t rape. For simplicity, the DoJ calls it
As definitions go, I think that’s certainly good enough. The web site cited above states that 0.6 people per 1000 were raped. Given that statistic, I certainly think it is valid to have your bullshit meter go off when you hear “25% of woman will get raped in their lifetime.”
If I were to just ballpark guess at some numbers, lets say all of those 0.6 people were female and there was no false reporting. Lets say that it only represented 1/5th of the actual rapes due to people not comming forward. Lets say that a woman are equally susceptable of getting raped for a 5 year stretch, 1/2 as likely for 10 years, and then only 1/10 as likely for 50 years. Lets ignore the women who might get raped multiple times in their lifetime. Once again, I’m just ballparking this.
So, if my math is correct, you get you 75 rapes per 1000 lifetimes of 75 years, or 7.5% The number goes down dramatically (3%) if you say 1/2 of rapes are reported, instead of only 1/5.
So, if someone says 1 out of every 20 women will get raped in their lifetime, I’ll nod and say, “what a shame.” If someone says 1 out of every 4 women will get raped, then my bullshit meter will go off and I’ll say that just sounds wrong.
I think that’s pretty accurate. To my knowledge I have never raped anyone, nor do I personally know of any male who has done so. I do know women who have been raped and what happened, but the perpetrators of their assaults are not men that I knew.
Hence, I can’t imagine what the world is like if 1 out of 4 or even 1 out of 6 women are getting raped. I’m not blaming the victim, it’s just so different from my perception of the world that it’s hard to imagine. I have no insight on the mind of the rapist – acting as a rapist or being raped are in the realm of fantasy because I have no real life experience. If I am skeptical, it is because of my naive ignorance, not malice.
When it comes to sexual assault, broadly defined, I can honestly say that I have been sexually assaulted a number of times, including being groped by drunk women, bullied to get naked at a party, propositioned by a man for sex while he was “deciding” whether to approve a grant to a charity I worked for, and touched in unwelcome ways. These were not fun frolics, they were invasive and humiliating. I had to go through these things to know what people are capable of, and how to deal with it. It’s hard to imagine getting through life without someone, sometime doing something that I didn’t want. That’s the best I can do to subjectively relate to the statistics on rape.
So naturally, I very much want to know if the statistics are accurate, and what they are measuring.
I have read this entire thread, and the quote above stands as proof of why this board exists. Perhaps as the posts are read, this poster may or may not change their mind on their statement.
I know a few fairly serious, dedicated feminists. Their sexual orientation is irrelevant, some are straight, some are gay. They are mature enough to realize that Consensual Sex between two adults of any gender combination is not sex.
Your statement is sad, and bespeaks great ignorance. Please cite, which feminist “camps” state that all heterosexual sex is rape?
This is a difficult enough topic to deal with without this kind of napalm being shovelled onto the coals.
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But it’s not up to me. I’m not the one making the claim. I’m simply observing that there seem to be serious problems with the dramatic statistic that is being waived around. I’m not going to go through it line-by-line, but even your back-of-the-envelope calculation is rife with error, even apart from the one I discussed previously.
For example,
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You can’t add percentages that way. I’m not certain where you got this statistic as it implies that 15 percent of children have suffered severe child abuse but, assuming it is correct for the moment. . .
Since those under twelve also account for about 15% of the total population, adding them in would not affect the total percentage of rapes committed – it would be a wash.
The point here is that if you use sloppy enough definitions and sloppy enough math, you can probably prove that 14.8% of U.N. delgates have had erotic encounters with goats – but that doesn’t make your statistic useful, nor can you validate it by compiling a list of “U.N. goat felchers I have known.”
Look, perhaps there’s another way confirm all this. If 17.6% of women have been raped, then 17.6% of men must be rapists! Since this thread has about 700 views, and half of those views are by men, there are at least 60 rapists reading this thread right now! Could one of you guys go over to MPSIMS and open a thread?
Quite true…allow me to shed a little light on some of this highly contentious debate. The whole shebang “1 in 4 women have been raped” began with the study by Mary Koss et al, that was published in 1987 in Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. As noted by the above poster, her methodology has been critiqued quite a bit…she misconstrues a state definition of rape and uses vaguely worded questions in order to elicit positive responses. In effect…if ever you had sex and later regretted it, or felt you had been tricked (i.e. someone told you they loved you but were lying)…that counted as rape. Borrowing the same exact methodology, other studies have found similar rates…including work by Diane Russel, who further estimates that upwards of 50% of women have been either raped or molested as children. Now both Russel and Koss describe themselves as “radical feminists”…which I point out not to bash feminism, but rather to acknowledge that they have an “axe to grind”. If anyone has a chance to read any of Russell’s work in particular, you will see that she regularly uses ad hominem attacks against anyone who questions her research.
The statistics on the prevalence rate of rape (which should not be mixed up with the incidence rate…how many rapes happen in a given year)…varies widely across studies depending upon the methodology used. Those rates typically vary between 2% (which is probably too low) to 27% (Koss’ figure). One of the more recent studies done on a college campus (The “Ivory Tower” study) suggested the prevalence rate of rape was probably around 8% lifetime for women. In essence no one really knows what the prevalence of rape is…but 1 in 4 is probably too high. Why do you keep hearing this…well because it is the most shocking figure…ever notice that almost anything reported in the media seems to affect 1 in 4 people? It also fits with the “politically correct” atmosphere that has permeated sexual assault literature, at least during the 80’s and 90’s…it should be noted that many sexual assault researchers were themselves former victims, and may not have totally unbiased perspectives on the matter.
I should note of course that ANY prevalence of rapes is too many, and deserves serious attentions. But some researchers feel that no one will pay attention to the issue unless the prevalence rates appear to be shocking.
As for the prevalence of “false rapes”…women who falsely accuse, of course they do happen, and probably a bit more often than many people imagine…and you’ll have to remember that it is not psychologically healthy high SES women who are typically involved in this…but certainly the majority of rape reports have merit, and probably more women (and men) decide not to report an actual rape than choose to falsely report one.
By the way…in Koss’ original study only about 6-7% of the women respondents actually considered themselves to be rape victims. Koss makes a big point that many women don’t even realize that they’ve been raped. Apparently it is up to Koss to decide what rape is, not the women who are actually involved in the situation.
I am very wary of any stats when an organization with an agenda is presenting them. I don’t think it was this particular study, but some womens group published some similar stats not too long ago. The odd part is that the group claimed that something like one in five college women are victims of sexual assault, though if you read their actual stats you get a different picture. the 20 percent is based on what the GROUP perceives as assault, but if you just count what the women themselves report the number dropped by way more than half.
How on earth does a person consent to having sex? I mean it is not a contractorial issue. No-one signs on it. And the mere thought of legal consent boggles my mind, for that reason. Legal consent involves a paper trail that can be verified by a judge. A person cannot give legal consent for such a thing.
I just noticed this question. Just in case the original poster of the quote “All sex between a man and a women is rape” doesn’t see it, the quote is attributed to Andrea Dworkin, as self-proclaimed radical feminist. Her argument is that women live in a paternalistic society in which they are continually coerced to use their bodies to gain favors of various sorts. Thus as the relationship between men and women is inherintly coercive, all sex is rape. This perspective is also stated, though somewhat less bluntly in work by Susan Brownmiller and Diane Russell, both of whom assert that “Rape is merely on a continuum with normal male sexual behavior” (Russell) or that “Rape is a crime perpetrated by all men against all women” (Brownmiller). I am sure I can come up with a ton more quotes…be happy to include references if you want. Perhaps you are not as aquainted with the more “radical” elements of radical feminism.
I would like to note not all feminists agree with these positions. Others, such as Christina Hoff Sommers appropriate critique these polemic generalizations.
This being said, I have to say that having had a very large number of close female friends in my life in addition to a large number of lovers, I am extremely suprised and disappointed to have learned how many of them have been victims of rape in their younger years. I somehow doubt that with the change in the outlook towards sex in general that has happened in the past twenty years that it is nearly as prevalant as it once was, but I’m probably wrong.
Our differing citations illustrate part of the problem. Who can you believe?
Every seemingly authoritative source in the discussion of rape appears to have some sort of agenda to cast the information one way or the other. Your “5%” cite BTW, appears to simply be a line item in a list that is intended to be taken at face value. It cites no study or support for the “5% false” note other than itself. It may well be correct, but it does not appear to be buttressed with any facts or references.
The 8% quote I reference is from an article on false accusations of rape here but this paper takes a highly critical view of the overall veracity of (criminal) claims of rape and is biased in its own way.
Yes, because there are so many people out there that are PRO RAPE that we ‘professional victims’ need to just make stuff up. I even wear a t-shirt that says I WAS A RAPE VICTIM so people can get their stats right. :rolleyes:
Just for the record, not counting my anonymous posts on this board (since y’all don’t really KNOW ME), about five people in my day to day life (and that includes the rapist) know that I"ve been raped. Two of those five DON’T BELIEVE ME. And the idea that some men on this board have that women should just run around actively telling people their past sexual histories as easily as their shoe size, just so they can feel better about their statistical data is sad, at best.
I said it at the beginning. Some of the responses to this thread are SAD.
I don’t have anything to answer the OP other than gut feeling, which isn’t really apprpriate for GQ. However, snopes can debunk the “all sex is rape” quote.
