CDC: MRA claims that “40% of rapists are women” are based on bad math and misuse of our data
Feminists often complain, with considerable justification, that Men’s Rights Activists try to turn every conversation about women’s issues into a game of “what about the men?” You’re talking about female rape victims — well, what about the male rape victims?
The trouble with this strategy, from the point of view of the Men’s Rights Activists anyway, is that this little “gotcha” is much less of a “gotcha” then they’d like it to be.
In the case of rape, for example, feminists are well aware that men are raped as well: the “Don’t Be That Guy” ad campaign, which sent so many MRAs into hysterics, focused on male victims as well as female ones. The emergency room rape advocate organization that a friend of mine volunteers for provides advocacy for victims regardless of gender.
So many MRAs have started playing another game: trying to twist the conversation around in order to cast women as the villains. Rape is a bit tough for them here, since the overwhelming majority of rapists are male. So MRAs talk about the alleged epidemic of female false accusers instead. Or they change the topic entirely and make dead baby jokes (see my post yesterday).
Recently, MRAs have tried a new strategy, seizing on data from The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, a massive study conducted in 2010 under the aegis of the Centers for Disease Control, to claim that “40% of rapists are women.”
This is a claim repeated by numerous MRAs on numerous websites; see, for example, this post by A Voice for Men’s Typhonblue on the blog GendErratic. Here’s the same claim made into an “infographic” for the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Trouble is, this claim is flat-out false, based on an incorrect understanding of the NISVS data. But you don’t have to take my word for it: the NISVS researchers themselves say the MRA “interpretation” of their data is based on bad math. It’s not just a question of different definitions of rape: the MRA claims are untenable even if you include men who were “made to penetrate” women as victims of rape (as the MRAs do) rather than as victims of “sexual violence other than rape” (as the NISVS does).
I wrote to the NISVS for clarification of this matter recently, and got back a detailed analysis, straight from the horse’s mouth, of where the MRA arguments went wrong. This is long, and a bit technical, but it’s also pretty definitive, so it’s worth quoting in detail. (I’ve bolded some of the text below for emphasis, and broken some of the larger walls of text into shorter paragraphs.)
It appears that the math used to derive an estimated percentage of female rapists … is flawed. First, we will summarize the assertion and what we perceive to be the basis for the assertion.
According to the web links, the “40% of rapists were women” was derived from these two steps:
1) Combining the estimated number of female rape victims with the estimated number of being-made-to-penetrate male victims in the 12 months prior to the survey to conclude that about 50% of the rape or being-made-to-penetrate victims were males;
2) Multiplying the estimated percentage (79%) of male being-made-to-penetrate victims who reported having had female perpetrators in these victims’ lifetime with the 50% obtained in step 1 to claim that 40% of perpetrators of rape or being-made-to-penetrate were women.
None of these calculations should be used nor can these conclusions be correctly drawn from these calculations.
First the researchers clarify the issue of definition:
To explain, in NISVS we define rape as “any completed or attempted unwanted vaginal (for women), oral, or anal penetration through the use of physical force (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threats to physically harm and includes times when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent.”
We defined sexual violence other than rape to include being made to penetrate someone else, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences. Made to penetrate is defined as including “times when the victim was made to, or there was an attempt to make them, sexually penetrate someone without the victim’s consent because the victim was physically forced (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threatened with physical harm, or when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent.”
The difference between “rape” and “being made to penetrate” is that in the definition of rape the victim is penetrated; “made to penetrate” by definition refers to cases where the victim penetrated someone else.
While there are multiple definitions of rape and sexual violence used in the field, CDC, with the help of experts in the field, has developed these specific definitions of rape and other forms of sexual violence (such as made to penetrate, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences). We use these definitions to help guide our analytical decisions.
Now the researchers get into the details of the math:
Regarding the specific assertion in question, several aspects of mistreatments of the data and the published estimates occurred in the above derivation:
A. While the percentage of female rape victims and the percentage of male being-made-to-penetrate victims were inferred from the past 12-month estimates by combining two forms of violence, the percentage of perpetrator by sex was taken from reported estimates for males for lifetime (a misuse of the percentage of male victims who reported only female perpetrators in their lifetime being made to penetrate victimization). This mismatch of timeframes is incorrect because the past 12-month victimization cannot be stretched to equate with lifetime victimization. In fact, Table 2.1 and 2.2 of the NISVS 2010 Summary Report clearly report that lifetime rape victimization of females (estimated at 21,840,000) is about 4 times the number of lifetime being made-to-penetrate of males (estimated at 5,451,000).
B. An arithmetic confusion appears when multiplying the two percentages together to conclude that the product is a percentage of all the “rapists”, an undefined perpetrator population. Multiplying the percentage of male victims (as derived in step 1) above) to the percentage of male victims who had female perpetrators cannot give a percentage of perpetrators mathematically because to get a percentage of female rape perpetrators, one must have the total rape perpetrators (the denominator), and the number of female perpetrators of this specific violence (the numerator). Here, neither the numerator nor the denominator was available.
C. Data collected and analyzed for the NISVS 2010 have a “one-to-multiple” structure (where the “one” refers to one victim and the “multiple” refers to multiple perpetrators). While not collected, it is conceivable that any perpetrator could have multiple victims. These multiplicities hinder any attempt to get a percentage of perpetrators such as the one described in steps 1) and 2), and nullify the reverse calculation for obtaining a percent of perpetrators.
For example, consider an example in which a girl has eight red apples while a boy has two green apples. Here, 50% of the children are boys and another 50% are girls. It is not valid to multiply 50% (boy) with 100% (boy’s green apples) to conclude that “50% of all the apples combined are green”. It is clear that only 20% of all the apples are green (two out of 10 apples) when one combines the red and green apples together. Part of the mistake in the deriving of the “50%” stems from a negligence to take into account the inherent multiplicity: a child can have multiple apples (just as a victim can have multiple perpetrators).
D. As the study population is U.S. adults in non-institutional settings, the sample was designed to be representative of the study population, not the perpetrator population (therefore no sampling or weighting is done for the undefined universe of perpetrators). Hence, while the data can be analyzed to make statistical inferences about the victimization of U.S. adults residing in non-institutional settings, the NISVS data are incapable of lending support to any national estimates of the perpetrator population, let alone estimates of perpetrators of a specific form of violence (say, rape or being-made-to-penetrate).
E. Combining the estimated past 12-month female rape victims with the estimated past 12-month being-made-to-penetrate male victims cannot give an accurate number of all victims who were either raped or being-made-to-penetrate, even if this combination is consistent with CDC’s definition.
Besides a disagreement with the definitions of the various forms of violence given in the NISVS 2010 Summary Report, this approach of combining the 12-month estimated number of female rape victims with the 12-month estimated number of male victims misses victims in the cells where reliable estimates were not reported due to small cell counts failing to meet statistical reliability criteria. For any combined form of violence, the correct analytical approach for obtaining a national estimate is to start at the raw data level of analysis, if such a creation of a combined construct is established.
So you’re going to need to go back to the drawing board, MRAs.
What is especially distressing here is that the NISVS data could have been the starting point for a serious discussion of male victims of sexual assault by women, which is a real and often overlooked issue. Unfortunately, MRAs have once again poisoned the well by misusing data in an attempt to exaggerate the purported villainy of women and score cheap rhetorical points.
NOTE: A regular in the AgainstMensRights subreddit approached the NISVS researchers with this same question some months back. Unfortunately, the statement they got back from the NISVS contained an incorrect number. The statement I’m quoting here corrects this number and adds more context.
I can provide contact info for the NISVS representative who got back to me on this to any serious (non-troll) person who requests it.
Posted on October 29, 2013, in all about the menz, antifeminism, evil women, misogyny, MRA, playing the victim, rape, rape culture, reddit, sexual assault, TyphonBlue and tagged anti-feminism, antifeminism, cdc, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, NISVS, rape, rape culture. Bookmark the permalink. 990 Comments.
Let’s see if this works.
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nope. take 2.
Clever beagle! :D
@kittehs
I like the new avatar. Who is that with Sir? Katie?
Thank ‘ee! Yes, that’s Katiekins the Monster. :)
“Katiekins the Monster”
Just in time for Halloween!
LOL and she don’t need no costume! Minions of Basement Cat never do, even when they are pretty tabbies. Teh ebil is there for those who can see.
Okay, we’re off to watch telly – niters!
Back in the days when I was an office drone, I had a picture of my wife on my desk, dressed as a nun (it was from a trip to the legendary Sing-a-long-a-Sound of Music, which remains one of the funniest evenings of my life to this day).
Many months later, I found out that a colleague had got the impression from this that I was an extremely hardcore Catholic, and had consequently been very careful what she said in my presence, lest she cause any offence. Which was really sweet of her, but quite unnecessary.
David Futrelle:
David, a woman decided to put my penis inside her vagina without prior consent while I was asleep. I call and refer to what happened to me as rape. Are you telling me I am mistaken? That I should stop calling that rape?
James Landrith who has courageously publicly spoke about being a male rape survivor on CNN, HuffongtonPost and other places (at great personal cost and attacks from people like this/a> who also don’t think that “rape-by-envelopment” is rape.). Is he mistaken in his self-identification? Should he stop referring to himself as a rape survivor?
“Ash, how on earth are you interpreting my saying that made-to-penetrate is “sexual violence and needs to be taken seriously” as the equivalent of “well it isn’t really that bad.”
Obviously I am saying it IS bad. That’s what saying it’s “”sexual violence and needs to be taken seriously” means.
There are a number of other forms of sexual assault that don’t involve the victim being penetrated. They should all be taken seriously as well. But they shouldn’t be classified as rape either.
If you want to disagree with me on this, that’s fine. Indeed, most of the commenters here do disagree with me on this point. But don’t pretend that I said or implied something I didn’t.”
(excuse me just copy pasting with Quotations. I don’t know how to blockquote)
Here’s the problem with comparing MTP as being like those other non penetrative forms of sexual assault. It’s sexual intercourse without consent. To me, and I”m sure to the victims of that crime, it’s as significant as having been raped. When the legal definition treats manual, oral, and anal intercourse as all equally bad, but only if it was by penetration. That’s a major hole to leave out being forced to penetrate as rape as well. Only because it’s someone being forced to insert rather than forced to receive.
You may not have overtly intended to say it’s “less than” but by defending the definition as it stands you’re inadvertently doing so. The legal penalties and the societal perception between the words “rape” and the words “sexual assault” are different. No one brushes them off, but they are a hierarchy both legally and culturally. If you’re going to advocate that they’re both treated seriously then why not just advocate for a definition of rape that is inclusive of all intercourse, whether that’s being forced to penetrate or being forced to be penetrated?
So, I’m asking again, what is your justification and reasoning behind classifying it as a lesser offense?
I just went through the whole thread to see what Ash is on about and I still don’t get it. Argue all you want that being made to penetrate should be lumped in with rape, but it’s pretty fucking dishonest to pretend that he’s classified MTP as a “lesser offense.” The leading question with which you end your latest comment is the cherry on top.
When did you stop beating your wife, Ash?
“I just went through the whole thread to see what Ash is on about and I still don’t get it. Argue all you want that being made to penetrate should be lumped in with rape, but it’s pretty fucking dishonest to pretend that he’s classified MTP as a “lesser offense.” The leading question with which you end your latest comment is the cherry on top.
When did you stop beating your wife, Ash?”
Actually, I point out my logic in the comment just above yours. The fact is that in many states sexual assault carries a lesser penalty than rape itself. The cultural view of the crime of rape versus sexual assault differs as well. They’re both serious, but they are treated differently.
I’m merely curious at to Mr. Futrelle’s reasoning for defending the definition at this point.
I do appreciate the insinuation I’m committing domestic abuse on an imaginary wife though.
I’ll have to tell my genderqueer partner that they’ve been F.a.a.b. this whole time and apparently I’m beating them and we both didn’t know.
Ash, protip: unknown commenters need to make themselves very clear when coming into threads (a whole blog, for that matter) where everyone is all too used to MRA trolls coming in saying “But women aren’t raped! False accusations! What about men who are raped? GOTCHA!” Because that is how your questions have been coming across.
Second – I don’t know if you’re familiar with it or not, but “have you stopped beating your wife?” is a familiar example of the loaded question. That’s the significance of it, not that you are married to a woman, or beat her, or not. Check the reference I’ve linked.
Kitteh, thank you for that. However, I admit I posted my original question in haste. It was a rough and stupid editing job.
I posted “So, I’m asking again, what is your justification and reasoning behind classifying it as a lesser offense?”
What I was meaning was this.
“So, I’m asking again, what is your reasoning/justification behind supporting the definition that classifies it as a lesser offense?”
I hope the distinction is clear now.
Thanks for clarifying, Ash. I think David explained his thinking on it upthread, didn’t he?
Argh. I think I’ve used up the last of the evening’s brain energy. Niters, all!
Unfortunately, he does not. He only said that he supports them being separated. He didn’t go into his reasoning for it.
Ash — idk about in David’s home state, but in mine there is no crime of “rape” — it’s all degrees of “sexual assault”. Under those definitions it really is a matter of semantics. But given the cultural use of the word rape, I agree that it should be called rape.
And, if it isn’t rude to ask, as a user of gender neutral pronouns (ze / zir), I’m curious what pronouns your partner uses? And yourself, since those would be useful in discussing your comments here (I just got up, please excuse any awkward wording)
——
T -30 ’till my appt with my psych to discuss my complaints with how they filled out my fucking form for the lawyer for my SSI hearing. Someone invent IV caffeine and put some in me.
Tamen, you were sexually assaulted. What happened to you was a violation of your bodily autonomy. I take that seriously. No, I would not classify that as rape, but I’m not going to tell you what you should call it, because it’s your experience.
Calling something a sexual assault, or “sexual violence other than rape” does not diminish it or erase the experience of the person who suffered it. Sexual assaults other than rapes deserve to be taken seriously just as rapes do.
Ash, I’m a writer, not a lawyer. My argument is a semantic one, not a legal one.
Yep, let’s be clear about this. Sexual assault should never be thought of as a lesser offense. It may be classified as a different offense but noone should ever be telling anyone that their violation was lesser.
Just to clarify:
For the purposes of a scientifically conducted survey on sexual crime, it may work best (either because of the size of the data cells or because of outside constraints eg how different crimes are treated by the law or regarded by the victims themselves) to sort the crimes into certain groupings. As I read it, CDC have separated “made to penetrate” into a separate category to their “rape” category for reasons connected to the mechanics/science of the survey. This does not mean that CDC regard “made to penetrate” as in any way less of a crime that those under their “rape” category. It doesn’t even mean that they don’t regard it as a rape.
Titianblue, I understand entirely, and I agree. I meant that culturally people give different weights to those terms. Both are fairly seriously regarded and many people consider them the same level of violation regardless of the dynamics of who’s involved.
My key part of my argument was a point being made about there being a difference in punishment that varies from state to state depending on the classification being a general sexual assault or listed as a rape.
Some places, like Canada, don’t have a separate classification for rape. It’s all considered sexual assault. But here in the US Rape is often treated as an especially heinous sub-category of sexual assault.
As for the CDC… I think that stuck with the current federal definitions to the letter. Their job is collecting and interpreting data, not making political statements.
I would’ve appreciated the CDC treating it as rape. At times the survey seems to juxtaposition information as if to implicitly treat MTP that way. However, I think the desire to avoid treading into what may get them in unnecessary political hot water. Essentially, they didn’t want to start an argument if they didn’t have to (no matter how unlikely that argument might be).
I know that several people, including myself, have sent casual inquiries as to why they didn’t classify it as rape. The responses generally came back as “Because it’s not defined as such.” With no real further qualifier.
Where did Brian’s comment go?
Oh wait, I’m dumb. It got moved to the previous page, and also it was Blair, not Brian.
When you do a survey like this, how would you classify, for example, somebody who was both penetrated and made to penetrate?
Not a hypothetical; I’m thinking now of somebody who I have spoken with on this topic.
(and that story is fully as horrible as it sounds, but that’s not my story to tell, so we’ll just leave it at that, okay?)
Even if we do broadly refer to it as rape, for a victimization survey like this to break it out and treat it as separate is different, I think, from treating it as separate in discourse and in law. Does that make sense?
…all of which doesn’t actually answer Ash’s underlying question and concern, except to say ‘but even if that you were correct and we all agreed with you, I think we would want to keep it separate on this survey.’
My, I’m mealy-mouthed today. Lots of disclaimers, very little added to the discourse. *sigh* Too many meetings, too much management-speak.
Ash, I do get what you’re saying. It’s akin to the reverse situation when @everydaysexism on Twitter clarified that being groped was sexual assault, under UK law. a lot of young people have been astounded because something that had become normalised for them, particularly in clubs or on public transport, perfectly met the legal definition of what they would regard as a serious crime. By labelling something, we can give it a greater or lesser importance in society’s eyes.
For me, it makes it all the more heinous that the AVfM’s of this world ignore male rape and sexual assault victims in favour of putting the hate-rage on women.
@Blair
How deliciously ironic. You accuse the CDC of attacking a straw man, and then you assume that you have addressed its only argument.
Even if the CDC is incorrect about the specifics of the calculation, its other criticisms of the ~40% figure are valid. First, the number of rapes perpetrated by women is not the same as the total number of female rapists, for the reasons outlined by the NISVS representative. Second, as the email says, “the sample was designed to be representative of the study population, not the perpetrator population.” Third, and most importantly, the percentages of the sex of the perpetrators is only for lifetime rates, not 12-month rates. The sample for lifetime incidence and the sample for 12-month incidence can’t be assumed to be equally representative, so applying a statistic found in a lifetime figure to a 12-month figure makes no sense.
David,
thank you for replying. For your information I have copied the full reply in this post on my blog.
You wrote:
See, this I disagree with. Lydia Cuomo and Aravella Simotas disagrees with this. I bet many of the good people who’ve fought to have “spousal rape” being called rape, many of the people who fought to expand the definition of rape beyond the violent forceful rape by strangers would disagree.
How many mainstream media articles on the NISVS 2010 Report did you see report:
versus
The first one effectively erases the existence of the 4.8% of men who were victims of this.
The “sexual violence other than rape” also included the act “Non-contact unwanted sexual experiences” – a category most would agree is less serious than being forced to have intercourse. Would you say that is a natural grouping?
Being forced to have intercourse without consent and for instance catcalling?
Fun fact, the CDC did not use their own definition of rape (authored in 2002 and published online in 2009 by some of the same authors as the NISVS 2010 Report) when they wrote the NISVS 2010 Report.
CDC definition of rape – which is linked to from the homepage of the NISVS; http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/definitions.html
That definition does not exclude victims who had penetrative intercourse where they weren’t the one being penetrated.
Yet, despite the stressing that “consistent definitions” are important they deviated from this when they wrote the NISVS 2010 Report.
“When you do a survey like this, how would you classify, for example, somebody who was both penetrated and made to penetrate?”
Afaik, they’d be counted once in each category.
Tamen, are you saying that catcalling = groping someone on public transit? There are levels of sexual assault. Before you accuse me, read the rest of my comments where I disagree with MTP not being called rape, but ffs you’re not doing yourself any favours by using what is clearly a false equivalency to call out false non equivalency. And *no one* here, especially Dave, has ever thought that MTP is on par with catcalling. Debate honestly, or don’t bother.
I agree that forced envelopment should be called what it is: rape. I understand the NISVS’s reasons for calling it something else, but at the very least, outside the context of sexual victimization surveys, it really shouldn’t be called anything else than rape. Not only does calling it rape make sense given that penetration still occurs in forced envelopment, but it also empowers victims; rape, of course, is trivialized in society, but at the same time, rape is still recognized as worse than non-penetrative forms of sexual assault. In fact, sometimes rape is seen as the only “real” kind of sexual violence. (Think about how many victims of non-consensual groping are told “Well, it’s not like you were raped or anything.”) Therefore, calling forced envelopment rape helps to not only bring attention to more rapists, but also validate the feelings of many victims. So I’m not comfortable at all with not calling it rape.
Catcalling = sexual harassment, not assault. Now you’re trivializing sexual assault.
@tamen, see Bee’s comment on the previous page of comments and mine above. The CDC may define MTP as rape but the researchers will have been restricted by how their source data is collected.
Wouldn’t that count the one person double? And in a survey of one year reports and lifetime reports, I feel like this survey couldn’t be very accurate when determining sexual assaults per capita like that. Because of the rate of recidivism, and the rates of multiple encounters, it’s only possible to use lifetime stats, otherwise the numbers are incorrect…
Plus, while I agree that I include penetration in any way (made-to and being) as rape, I think that separating them is a distinction that was required to avoid precisely the issue we’re all discussing – that penetration is something that’s culturally defined as being penetrated and that is going to necessarily erase male victims who have been forced to penetrate. I think they should have been included in the rape category though, just like coercion, facilitated, ect are all rape as well.
I should mention, my top paragraph is both a response to Argenti, and a dig at the conflation of lifetime/one year stats that the MRAs use. It’s not a dig at Argenti, they’re definitely the most math-impressive person I know.
Tamen is the most dishonest & passive aggressive arguer I have ever encountered. Seriously, when I find myself in agreement with him (as in believing being MTP = rape), it makes me question my conclusions. Another example of how the MRM shoots itself in the foot at every opportunity, I guess.
Tamen is a disingenuous creep. All we need now is for TS to show up, and the circle of dishonesty will be complete.
For Tamen. In case you run out of dishonest false equivalencies and need to make more posts. There are some great lines in here that I can fully imagine you have frequently used already. Small TW for others.
@argenti hi. im sorry if these are stupid questions, was it more effective to combine the stats from the two categories then, since they were practically the same thing? did the nisvs do the same?
i don’t know if anyone here frequents tumblr but i first accessed this post from an egalitarian that often discusses men’s issues; http://hannasoumaki.tumblr.com/post/65504154859/cdc-mra-claims-that-40-of-rapists-are-women-are and they said this;
“there’s the sheer ludicrousness of using the claims of the authority being accused of presenting biased data to defend said allegedly biased data. <- what?
"Notice how Futrelle doesn’t mention that the famous Genderratic post also provides evidence that the lifetime numbers are unreliable. Nor does he acknowledge that even assuming the lifetime numbers are correct, you’ve still got a lot more female rapists and male victims than conventionally acknowledged, and certainly more than claimed by most feminists."
Not sure if this is true? and how does anyone mistake a lifetime figure w/ a 12-mo. figure? wouldn't the lifetime be noticeably larger?
@ally s, hi. can you elaborate further on what reason you think the nisvs may have to separate mtp and rape? i could just ask the researcher themselves but i think im missing something that everyone's getting, feels like it's going over my head
I know that wasn’t aimed at me, and I don’t know that my view on the matter and his are the same but, personally, I think it’s important to keep things tightly classified in the law.
I mean, look at this part of the UK Sexual Offences Act – it’s relatively clear… I have issues with some of it (I don’t see how you can reasonably believe that someone consents when they don’t) but it’s clear. And look at this part – it’s already getting confusing and it only addresses a little more than the first part. So I think we do need to keep it very clear.
There may be an argument for classifying it all as rape, and subclassifying in the law which would avoid complicating legal language, but I think it’s more important that the punishments for like crimes be equal than that the label is equal. That said, I wouldn’t argue against changing the legal language, so long as it didn’t complicate it or lead to like crimes having unlike punishments (not that I think such a change would have that effect).
But that’s all about legal language anyway, and we don’t really use legal language in common conversation. The commonly understood definition of rape is non-consensual sexual interaction, so I think it should be called rape in non-legal conversation. Just not in the law, unless it’s fully overhauled to be a main classification, with the current legal definition, being forced to penetrate, and other like crimes as sub-classifications.
Btw, if I’m horribly wrong here (and I know I don’t need to say this, because you will) feel entirely free to correct me, because I realise that I’m wrong often enough to know that my opinion is not Truth.
Athywren, we already have subcatagories of rape. To add one more does not seem inappropriate or difficult, it *does* seem inappropriate to refuse to legitimise all rape. Although in Canada we don’t have “rape” we have different catagories of “sexual assault”. Which I hate. Call it rape. Hopefully if we do so vehemently enough, people (I’m looking at you, the msm) will stop calling rape “sex”.
Oh look, siryouarebeingmocked has replied to this article: http://siryouarebeingmocked.tumblr.com/post/65484464973/cdc-mra-claims-that-40-of-rapists-are-women-are
The entire post is shit, but this stuck out to me:
“** 2x Orwell Reference Combo!”
He really does fit the stereotype of MRAs.
@hannasoumaki
Hi and welcome :D
I join you in the being bad a math stuff, but I haven’t really been interested in learning more so…um, at least you have company? Though hopefully someone else can help you, I just can’t.
@shaun darthbatman day
Man, they sound like jerks :( Hugs for you and your friend.
Re Shaun DarthBatman Day’s video.
Hey look, satire that’s actually satire! It’s so rare to see nowadays.
P.S. I love that video, it’s hilarious.
Ash, to clarify again, I’m not talking about the legal issues. Laws about sexual assault are complicated and vary state by state, country by country. I wouldn’t classify made-to-penetrate as rape because I think it makes sense to use the term rape to refer only to sexual assault in which the victim is penetrated. (Except in the case of statutory rape in which it would apply more broadly; ie, if an older woman has sex with a boy under the age of consent that is rape.) That is my reasoning. Not sure what more you want here. I’m not saying it’s a lesser crime.
Maybe I’m wrong here. Obviously most people here disagree with me.
Howard, SittieKitty — I checked how they handled people who’d experienced multiple forms of violence and here’s the relevant bit (page 22 of he PDF)
Also, bottom of page 3 in the comments here, Blair does bad math, which I will address once I manage to stop noptopusing over it.
Hannasoumaki — no I meant a four way table as in two columns — male and female — by two rows — rape and made to penetrate. For just the 12 month data, because those four data points are the only ones relevant to the question at hand.
Clearly I failed at making it less confusing!
Awesome Argenti! Thanks for clarifying that for me!
Blair, your math itself is fine, we could argue over the unknown variable, but it’ smooth because your conclusion is the problem.
“So, over the past 12 months (in 2010), 37% of rapes were perpetrated by women.”
No, you calculated the number of rape victims with at least one rapist who was female. Your math still misses both victims with more than one rapist/rape, and rapists with more than one victim. Please see the CDC’s response and find the example about apples. You know how many victims there were, not how many rapes there were.
To make this simple, let’s say we have two rape victims, one male, one female, now…
If both are raped once by a woman and a man, respectively, then 50% of rapes would be committed by women.
If the man is raped twice by different women, and the woman raped once by a man, then you have three rapes, but 66% of rapes would have been committed by women.
If the man is raped once by a woman, and the woman raped twice by two different men, then 66% of rapes would have been committed by men.
Seeing the problem here?
They’re saying the CDC is a suspect source of any data and any math.
For realz.
So my overall point here is that if we simply folded ‘made to penetrate’ into ‘rape’ that we’d lose information here.
SittieKitty — no problem :)
Is NWO back? Because my favorite Owly moment was when he was laughing at me for trusting CDC data.
Thanks, Marie. I woke up to, and this is a direct quote, “I’m sorry you feel that way” to my friend from her family when she was trying to explain her depression/mental illness/ assorted symptoms and how she felt they were treating her. Urge to kill rising.
“Maybe I’m wrong here. Obviously most people here disagree with me.” Yep. I adore you, but you are very wrong here. Not all men are rapists, not all rapists are men.
Oh and thanks, putting my math to use in this manner is far more important to me than running tapes for my mother’s inventory (oi did that suck)
Shaun DarthBatman Day:
No. And I don’t understand where you ot the “groping someone in public transit” from. Unless…here is what I wrote (Did you misread the word I bolded!):
Thank you for that stance and for voicing it. I see that you didn’t extent me the courtesy you asked from me with that little video and all. Have a nice day.
@Shaun DarthBatman Day
*eyetwitch* Her family sounds awful. At least you’re there for her :/ Idk, just rambly today. I’m depressed, but my family is mostly cool/ decent about it, and I can’t imagine how much worse I’d feel if they weren’t. Idk hopefully my ramblings make a little sense? Sorry, feeling weird today.
And, I’ve kinda been ignoring the main conversation going on here, but count me in the number of thinking made-to-penetrate is also rape, if we’re keeping track.
Um, maybe this comment made sense? ::crosses fingers::
You know, it’s interesting that this problem hasn’t been detected by MRAs:
Typhonblue argues that the lifetime figures are unreliable because men are less likely to disclose being sexually abused in their childhood. And then she goes on to use information from the lifetime sample of victims, which she has already deemed less reliable, to make a conclusion about a more accurate sample – the 12-month sample of victims. MRAs, please learn to logic.
Marie, it makes perfect sense. Sending all the hugs you want and/or need, and some extras for your family for being cool/decent. Unfortunately I am removed by distance so not as there as possible, but I know she has some supports. I just can’t believe how many of her family members are all “you don’t know anything” when I can see every snide, hurtful, and/or downright abusive comment they make to her on FB. So I quote them back to themselves with their abuse highlighted and tips on how not to be an ass to someone who is ill/hurting/in need. I’m expecting to quadruple my Christmas card intake this year! *sobs*
@Shaun
?
Even if we were to treat ‘being made to penetrate’ as different than ‘being penetrated’ that very much does not leave men in the position of not being able to be raped.
(which is not to deny the possibility of him being wrong here, because, um, I am scrupulously not touching that because I am currently unable to come up with a coherent thought on that. But what separates us from the trolls is the ability to really pick apart the nuances of each other’s positions and deal honestly and fairly with each other!)
titianblue:
No. The data was collected through a survey. The survey was designed by CDC. That includes the questionaire used. The questions used can be seen in appendix C (page 106) in the NISVS 2010 Report (pdf).
Here is one of the question pertaining rape and being made to penetrate:
If a woman answered 1 or more on this question she would have been categorized as a rape victim. If a man answered 1 or more on this question he would have been categorized as a victim of being made to penetrate.
Explain to me what restrictions you believe could restrict the CDC from categorizing that male respondents as having been raped. Even if they kept the “being made to penetrate” category there is no techinical restrictions which would keep them from categorizing “made to penetrate” as rape.
Another one:
If a woman answered 1 or more on this question she would have been categorized as a rape victim.
If a man answered 1 or more on this question he would have been cateogorized as a victim of being made to penetrate.
There is nothing in the way the data was collected (I also recommed reading appendix B – techinical notes which describe the sampling strategy used) which prohibited the authors of NISVS 2010 from categorizing male victims of being made to penetrate as rape.
Statistics text books: Well, it isn’t exactly beginner-level, but one of the faculty where I work makes his Probability & statistics textbook freely available online as a wiki, which I think is pretty cool. You can find it here:
http://wiki.stat.ucla.edu/socr/index.php/EBook
Maybe Argenti or someone can tell me if it’s any good. :-)
@Shaun DarthBatman Bay
I don’t feel like I need that many hugs, but I always like them anyway :3
That’s a good thing to do. Hopefully some of it sticks with them.
@Tamen
You need to take this up with the journalists who did a piss poor job when they wrote articles discussing the CDC study. I don’t see how the CDC or David are responsible for their slipshod journalism.
The list below is taken from the eight page CDC’s Executive Summary, which I assume functions as a press release for journalists too lazy to read the full report. You can disagree with the terminology but I think it’s disingenuous to accuse them of minimizing male victims when they are in fact providing extremely useful data about male victimization.
Howard, Dave has stated that he thinks “made to penetrate” should not be called “rape”. And I have stated why it should. I will restate for you.
1. Rape is having your body stolen and used against you in the most painful and personal way possible. I believe MTP fits that description, and it is the description I use to describe rape to those who have not experienced it. It seems to help them understand sometimes.
2. Subcatagorising rape is not a Sysiphean task, we already do so.
3. Under Canadian law, all sexual assault including rape is labelled as sexual assault. When we do this I believe that it permits the media, among others, to call rape “sex”. Call it all rape, do not allow rape to be in any way related to sex.
37% of rape victims in 2010 were raped by women.
Even if you interpret rape victims as having multiple rapists, the above statement is almost the same. I did, however, never make a statement specifying the number of rapists that were women… That is simply a misinterpretation of what I wrote.
Statistical interpretation can be tricky but I think we can finally agree that my math supports the wording of the above conclusion.
Ally S your critique is based off an interpretation I didn’t provide. Stop attacking the strawman. And the other guy who rambled on about number of rapes per person, you were right, and so I slightly adjusted the conclusion to satisfy that condition.
That whole purpose of drawing attention to the ~50% of rape victims in 2010 were men, and ~37% of rape victims in 2010 were raped by women, is to raise awareness that men are victims, and women are perpretators, in substantial numbers. Mainstream media would lead you to think 99% of rapists are men, and <10% of rape victims are men. That falsehood has a negative impact on male victims because it unfairly causes society to dismiss their plight since they are incorrectly percieved as being the overwhelming force behind rape occurances. Who cares if men are raped when it's other men doing it? <- Dumb thinking like this.
The easiest thing to do to counter this unfairness to male victims is to use what resources are available, almost always from feminist organisations, to figure out the prevalence of male victims and female perpetrators.
Honestly, I calculated that 37% like a year after I did the 50%. Male victims was really my only concern but the argument get getting trampled on because people think it's a non-issue since they believe men make up 99% of rapists. It's bizzare but that's what necessitated the 37% figure.
To think that people still considered MTP victims not rape victims still blows my mind in this day and age.
@Shaun –
What I’m saying is that even if what you are saying is exactly true and exactly right, that your before comment is exaggerating David’s position and making it say things it does not.
More broadly, I’ll add, that as I said before, I have had discussions with a man who was, as a child, raped. A lot of the reason I’m hesitant to jump into any discussion about what is and isn’t categorized as rape is because I have a suspicion he’ll read this and I’m not going to start quantifying his experiences for him.
So, trying to catch up here and a little confused:
Is the issue the way the CDC defined “rape” and “made to penetrate” as separate categories? It seems to me that: a. Whether or not you agree with the CDC’s separating these, nobody here is arguing that MTP is “not as serious” or “not as bad” as forced penetration; b. I can understand why the CDC would make separate categories, but I do not agree with the terminology used. The aim of the study is to describe victims of sexual violence, it seems like the researchers were attempting to break down what types of sexual violence victims were experiencing, not attempting to put a value judgement on the victims experience. That said, rape is a word that in and of itself evokes strong emotions (as it should), and just by classifying one form of sexual violence as “rape” and another form as something else, it seems like the CDC are minimizing the experience of the victims of those forms of sexual violence (whether they intended to or not). So, no, while I agree that MTP and forced penetration are different acts, both are rape, and it seems like the CDC could have found a better way to label their categories (like, why not use “forced penetration” and “made to penetrate” to seperate the categories and put them both under the category of “rape”?).
But anyway you slice it, you can in no way, shape or form make any inferences about perpetrators, because this is a study about victims.
(And, correct me if I’m wrong, but multiplying a percentage with a whole number gives you garbage, right? I mean, if you wanted to know the percentage of rapists who are women, you need the total number of rapists and a breakdown of male rapists and female rapists, right? I mean, it’s been a long time since Stats. class, but I’m pretty sure that’s how that works).
I think someone here posted this a while back (not on this thread), but it also explains why the “40% of rapists are women” number is way wrong. 11:10 is hilarious.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=phM3XLHp0CY