"Yes, your friend may be a rapist!" - really?

[Canarr]

Yes and no. No is mostly my answer due to the use of the word "may" which is correct in this case. I think the numbers of men who actually rape is higher than 1% and less than 6% so the idea that zero rapes occur with a student body of more than 1000 just turns into a math problem. But if a school has 500 or 200 students? It's not really unreasonable because it's believable even if it's unlikely. You start getting into factors and you start straining credulity. Yes in the sense her first statement negates a school with a small class size or one that in the future may quantify the predictors of sexual violence and minimized their exposure (this is futurist, not something I think actually happens now.)

I concede your point; a school/college of a certain size would by statistics alone HAVE to have incidents of rape or sexual assault. If you have several thousand students but no reports at all of such incidents, it does strain credulity.

About your percentage figures, I'm not quite sure, though. Germany had, in 2013, around 7.500 charges of rape or aggravated sexual assault filed. We have a population of 80 million people, half of them women, and 42,3% between the ages of 18 and 49 = 16,9 million women in that age category.
If you assume that only one victim of rape or aggravated sexual assualt out of ten reports the crime, that would mean 75.000 women were raped or sexually assaulted in Germany last year. 75.000 out of 16,9 million, that's about 0,44%. Less than half of a percentage point.

That would mean 1 in every 225 women is raped/sexually assaulted per year. Even assuming that the rate is higher in a college environment, that is still very, very far away from one in five. Is the situation in the US really that much worse? Or is this maybe a gross misuse of a statistic that is - according to its own authors - not universally applicable?

Now, I'm not trying to downplay each individual tragedy. But it seems to me that the suggestion of widespread danger, as it is presented, is simply wrong. And that, coupled with the kind of rhetoric slung around (even in this thread), cannot really be productive in any direction, can it?

[Gravekeeper]

That would mean 1 in every 225 women is raped/sexually assaulted per year. Even assuming that the rate is higher in a college environment, that is still very, very far away from one in five. Is the situation in the US really that much worse? Or is this maybe a gross misuse of a statistic that is - according to its own authors - not universally applicable?

The 1 in 6 statistic is a lifetime statistic, not an annual one. But it is US specific and it includes both attempted and successful sexual assault. The US does seem to have a specific problem with sexual assault and rape. Although the average is skewed by certain regions ( Alaska. Which is horrific. ) and towards specific minorities, immigrants and socio-economic circles.

When you focus on specifics and decouple rape from sexual assault and statutory rape it gets messier and more complicated. But doesn't make for as powerful of a sound bite.

Its somewhat doubtful a white middle class suburbanite falls into the 1 in 6 range for example. While a poor rural Native American women in Alaska actually has closer to a 1 in 2.5 lifetime chance. But like many stats with the US, getting a 100% accurate picture can be difficult due to different laws and record keeping procedures from state to state.

Canada has much lower rates of sexual assault than the US but the high ends of the spectrum follow a similar pattern. The rate of sexual assault increases the more rural an area is and amongst Aboriginal and immigrant women. IE women who are more vulnerable and have less social or economic freedoms due to location or culture.

The trend is also universal that most female victims know their attacker. This trend actually applies to all violent crime. The majority of female victims of violent crime know their attacker. While for men its the complete reverse. Men are much much more likely to be victims of violent crime at the hands of strangers.

[Canarr]

Interesting article on the subject:

http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.ed...in-many-cases/

[Canarr]

Another article on the subject, that wrestles with the same problems we did:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/17...-of-%e2%88%9e/

I liked their conclusion:

3% of men are falsely accused of rape. 15% of women are raped. If someone you know gets accused of rape, your prior still is very very high that they did it.

I was extraordinarily lucky to find very strong evidence that my friend was innocent. I was extraordinarily lucky that both my co-workers had video feeds that could confirm their stories. If I hadn’t, I don’t know what I would have done. My two choices would have been to either accept the possibility that I’m staying friends with a rapist, or to accept the possibility I’m ostracizing someone for something he didn’t do.

And someone is going to expect me to conclude by recommending what the correct thing to do in these cases is, but I have no idea. Probably there is no solution that isn’t horrible. If there is, it’s way above my pay grade. Ask Ozy. Ze’s the one with the Gender Studies degree.

All I can suggest is that you not flee from the magnitude of the decision with comfortable lies.

One of those comfortable lies is to tell yourself that all women are lying sluts so the accusation can be safely ignored.

But another comfortable lie is that false rape accusations are eleven times rarer than getting hit by comets.

This is why a terrible article on Buzzfeed is getting more publicity and support than anything you or I will ever write.

Because people want to live in his world, where the comfortable lies are all true and no one suffers without deserving it.

[Seshat]

Anecdotal here:

Of the women I know well enough that they may have confided in me whether or not they'd ever been raped/assaulted:

Two have been raped.

Two (one of whom is me) have had men - adult men - put hands on them sexually, in public, when we were teens. No, not the same incident, these were two separate occasions. And for both of us, it was the crotch, and we were too much the confused and naive teenager to poke them in the eyes and rip their balls off.
Ahem.
Both of us have also had other molestations and/or harassments.

One has reported no rape, assault or molestation attempts, other than street harassment and the odd unwanted groping when she was adult enough to respond appropriately.


So in a very small statistical universe, which is very much not randomly chosen: 2 in five raped, 2 in five molested - albiet comparitively mildly - when underage, 1 okay.

Not very nice, is it?

[s_stabeler]

small point- just because 3% of men have been falsely accused of rape & 15% for women have been raped, it doesn't follow that there is a 4-to-1 chance that any individual accusation is a lie. One man can rape more than one woman- and it's how many men are legitimately accused of rape that tell you the accuracy of the rape accusations, not the percentage of women who are raped.

[Canarr]

So in a very small statistical universe, which is very much not randomly chosen: 2 in five raped, 2 in five molested - albiet comparitively mildly - when underage, 1 okay.

Not very nice, is it?

No, it is not. And, even though that *should* go without saying, I'll still say it, because I've learned that it doesn't go without saying: in no way do I condone, support or excuse rape or any other kind of sexual assault. Everybody, no matter their gender, has the right to not be touched if they don't want to.

But I also don't condone the misuse or falsification of statistics in order to push an agenda of any kind, nor the idea that the end justifies the means. And the attempt to find an easy solution - "She's accused him of rape, so he musta done it, 'cause false accusations almost never happen!" - is not only unlikely to do good, it's likely to do harm.

[Andara Bledin]

One thing to consider is that a lot of men are also sexually assaulted, but either don't know that's what it was, or refuse to report it because it's "unmanly" or "something that happens to women" or they fear they won't be believed.

It's unlikely the number is as high for as women, and those who do the assaulting are many more times likely to be men. Mostly because we still haven't gotten out of the mindset that men who aren't in control aren't "real men" and rape is often about control, with sex as the weapon.

It would be nice if, say, early social studies classes would have a modern interactions section, it need only be a few weeks, where they gave kids who are old enough to understand, but young enough to still be impressionable, information on how not to be victims or victimizers.

[Seshat]

But I also don't condone the misuse or falsification of statistics in order to push an agenda of any kind, nor the idea that the end justifies the means. And the attempt to find an easy solution - "She's accused him of rape, so he musta done it, 'cause false accusations almost never happen!" - is not only unlikely to do good, it's likely to do harm.

Nor do I, which is why I VERY clearly stated that the situation was anecdotal, not statistically valid, and defined the conditions of my 'statistical universe' (so to speak) so clearly.

Also, I've been in the situation where one relative of mine who is/was very close to me accused another close relative of not just rape, but child rape. Pedophilia. It split my family apart, and the wounds have never healed. The accuser withdrew the accusation after about a year, but that doesn't actually help as much as it sounds like it should.
I will probably never know the truth of the matter. This is extremely difficult.
The accused and the accuser are also in horrible positions: if it happened, the maybe-victim of course needs all the support she can get and the maybe-rapist deserves ostracism. If it didn't, the other way around. And neither is getting the full support (or ostracism) they deserve.

I am totally, utterly, completely against both rape and false accusation.

I would like to say that I've seen the results of both. But thanks to the maybe-victim above ... I'll never, ever, be enturely sure whether or not I have. And that is a large part of the damage false accusation does. Because I'm certain it happens - and how many friendships and family bonds are damaged or broken by false accusation every year?


So yeah. Rapists suck. False accusers suck. No arguments against either, from me.



Do I have a solution? Maybe. Maybe if we as a society made it brutally clear what constitutes consent, and what doesn't. Yes, to the point of teaching it in school.

Other than that, I dunno. Consent forms for sex? Sex contracts? Verbal consent recorded on smartphones?

[Nyoibo]

Other than that, I dunno. Consent forms for sex? Sex contracts? Verbal consent recorded on smartphones?

Just made me think of a Something Positive strip where Jason has a contract for random hookups, which held a clause for the woman to reciever a minimum 2 contractually obligated orgasms

:edit

Found the strip


It might be cynical, but honestly, I kind of think it's a good idea.

[Shangri-laschild]

i want to note first that it sucks you were dealing with an asshole, and i'm not disparaging your circumstances. i just want to note one thing to this part. why didn't you call the police?
campus security are really like mall guards (YMMV). they can detain people, but they can't go about pressing charges. the real cops need to be called for that.
security probably couldn't do anything because of their limitations, but the real police could have slapped him with a harassment charge, and restraining order.

Not sure what the setup is at that college but I'm a dispatcher for a community college police department. The officers I dispatch are as much officers as the city police are (hell we have further jurisdiction than city police) and actually if anything criminal happened on campus and the city police were notified, they would hand it off to us to do a report on. The only thing relevant to this type of situation I can think of is that we don't do is restraining orders but anyone who asks for them gets the run down of who to talk to, how it works, what to expect, etc. The laws on that kind of thing can be a bit tricky as far as what the officers can do. In the case of harassment, we talk to the suspect and make sure they know to stop. We also offer the victim escorts to and from their car when on campus. Depending on the situation the Dean of Students is talked to. This is all assuming that there was no physical contact. It also gets tricky if (unlike in the mentioned situation) the suspect is never told to stop by the victim. If they've never been told to stop then it makes it harder to stay that they knew they were doing something wrong. We actually had a guy who was accused of harassing a student recently. He had no clue he was bothering her because she was being nice and not saying she had any problem with the attention. I understand the fear of confrontation but he had no clue and was very startled to be suddenly talking to a police officer about him harassing some female. The police can't always arrest the suspect on the first report of harassment with no physical contact though so that isn't necessarily the officers not caring. Sometimes their hands are tied.

[Seshat]

We have an advice thread about harassment over at the CS main board.

And yes, the first thing to do is to inform your harasser that you do not want the attention, in clear and unambiguous terms. Unless you're actually afraid for your safety, in which case the first thing to do is inform the police and get real, physical help.

Informing the harasser can be done with witnesses, and can be done quietly but with witnesses and potential help within easy reach.

.... meh. If you need (or want) the info, go read the thread. It's all better worded there anyway.

[veniteangeli]

At the risk of being inflammatory, I view this situation kind of like a bag of candy.

Say someone gives you a bag of a hundred candies. It's all for you, free to eat, have at it! Only... ten of those candies are poisoned. And there's no way to tell until the candy is in your mouth and you're already dying.

Under those circumstances, you'd be crazy to eat any of that candy, right?

So men. Okay, most of them - the vast majority of them - are fine. Lovely people, family people, great friends, upstanding members of society. The trouble is, there's no way to know which men aren't, until it's too late. And just like the poisoned candy isn't going to speak up and say "Hiyo, I'm poisoned! ", neither are the dangerous men going to put their hands up and admit same.

I don't advocate vilifying men purely for being men, but I do think it's right to take precautions - test the candy before you bite into it, so to speak. A huge problem that I have noticed in my travels is that when a person (usually a woman) is assaulted or raped, there come a lot of questions about what she was wearing, how much she had to drink, what she was doing - as if the rape/assault was the fault of anyone but the person who raped her. And that's not okay.

So... I guess my point is, men, please don't be angry with women for protecting themselves. Remember the poisoned candy. You know you're not poisoned, but we can't reasonably be expected to know that, and we're not about to take your word for it just because you said so, yeah? Just... give us a chance to trust you, instead of being hurt that that trust doesn't come at the snap of a finger.

Some of us have seen too much to trust at the snap of a finger. Some of us have eaten the poisoned candy. You can't blame us for not wanting to take that chance again.

[Shangri-laschild]

So... I guess my point is, men, please don't be angry with women for protecting themselves. Remember the poisoned candy. You know you're not poisoned, but we can't reasonably be expected to know that, and we're not about to take your word for it just because you said so, yeah? Just... give us a chance to trust you, instead of being hurt that that trust doesn't come at the snap of a finger.

I would agree that there is nothing wrong with taking some precautions and being careful about potentially high risk situations.

I do think that some of the disagreement in this thread is because there is a lot of lumping together. There is a difference between being mindful of safety and vilifying all men and assuming that they are evil. And there are a lot of lines in between those two things. I don't think there is anything wrong with supporting a friend you feel is falsely accused of rape or even waiting till you know the details before jumping on one side or the other. And it definitely doesn't mean that you support rape. And people should be free to associate with who they please even if that means avoiding male friendships. There is however a difference between politely but firmly standing by your preference and shouting from the rooftops that all men are evil and likely to be rapists. It's all in how you handle it. I don't hang out with many females. I tend to avoid female friendships just because I don't usually click with females in ways where the friendships don't end up causing more stress than fun. Yes it's for a complete different reason than this but the result is similar. I tend to avoid female friendships but I don't vilify them on a whole.

I also agree that this shouldn't be a gender specific topic. Men aren't the only gender that rape and they aren't the only gender that rape women. Making it about one gender only is harmful to both sides.

[Canarr]

So... I guess my point is, men, please don't be angry with women for protecting themselves. Remember the poisoned candy. You know you're not poisoned, but we can't reasonably be expected to know that, and we're not about to take your word for it just because you said so, yeah? Just... give us a chance to trust you, instead of being hurt that that trust doesn't come at the snap of a finger.

I can understand the point you're making, and I can see nothing wrong with it.

But...

There is however a difference between politely but firmly standing by your preference and shouting from the rooftops that all men are evil and likely to be rapists.

...this.

To continue your candy-analogy, it's of course perfectly acceptable to politely decline candy you're not sure about, until you feel reasonably certain you're not getting the poisonous kind. It is, however, not okay to immediately scream "MURDERER! MURDERER!" anytime someone offers you candy.

The articly I quoted in the OP, that started this whole thread, explicitly states that unless you immediately disassociate from anyone someone claims is a rapist, you've already chosen a side - you're siding with the rapist. No room for, "Innocent until proven guilty" or, "Let's see what evidence there is". Nope - ostracize 'em immediately, or you're a rape apologist. And the same claim was basically made again here in thread.

I get being careful. I get improving your situational awareness. I get having trust issues. But I don't get blind paranoia, and I can't support that kind of persecution.