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.
@hannasoumaki
The blowhard tumblrer you threw at us should read more John Locke and less Genderradic if he wants to be an “Egalitarian”, but YMMV.
This paragraph is so frothing at the mouth it’s hard to figure out what zie’s going on about, but I enjoy how outraged zie is because David, via MBZ, has “no initiatives whatsoever to devote significant attention to female rapists”. Learn how to use the word “initiative” correctly and google “commentary” dude.
The blog is called SirYouAreBeingMocked, which makes the incomprehensible last sentence even more strange. I will give a cookie to anyone who can actually explain what the hell the last sentence means. Actually I will apologize profusely for making you read this gibberish first and then give you a cookie.
I am getting credit for what was actually inurashii’s idea about having David list “Actual Resources for Men” — I just had a suggestion about the location. But if we’re making unsolicited suggestions for David… Could I suggest changing all the “Boob Roll” links to donotlink.com versions? I’d be willing to create them for you, since I know it would be kind of time-consuming.
I’d rather group them both under “rape” and then split that into subtypes like “penetrative rape” and “non-penetrative rape” as needed for better specificity.
Prevents MRAs from flipping their shit about that, among other reasons.
I’m just gonna throw my opinion in since everyone else is doing it,
Mtp is rape, not that if I didn’t call it rape for whatever reason, it would be any less horrible.
Hrovitnor, I agree, people are different and respond differently to those things. It can lead to blaming non rape sexual assault victims and telling them to “get over it”(like someone saying “you’re crying because you got groped? Get over it, I’ve known rape victims who don’t give a shit about their rape”).
katz’s age-related explanation doesn’t work here. That explanation could explain the lifetime numbers being higher than you’d naively expect based on 12 month numbers.
There’s no way it could explain the lifetime numbers being *lower* unless the sample population was extremely implausibly skewed.
2 alternative hypotheses to explain the discrepancy spring to mind:
1) MTP is something a lot of people forget ever happen to them so they’re just not remembering many incidences from before the last year. (I think this hypothesis has to at least be mentioned; it seems dismissive both of the criminal coercion involved and of the genuine trauma victims have experienced to mention this idea, but it may be the case.)
2) The same victims are repeatedly revictimised over their lifetimes.
If it’s explanation 2, the most plausible explanation for repeated revictimisation of the same men is that it’s abusive behaviour within a long term relationship. So not just the same victims, but also same perpetrators, over and over again.
This is deeply disturbing for anyone who cares about abused men, or anyone with basic empathy. It might also be deeply disturbing for the MRM, because this interpretation of the data means that the percentage of female perpetrators is nowhere near as high as they’d like it to be.
I can actually see why people aren’t liking David’s way of defining things, though, since he wants to call MTP rape if the victim was underage, and the stat rape idea hinges on the victim’s inability to consent. If you’re working with a system where each type of sexual assault gets its own classification then sure, make MTP separate from penetrated against your will, but if the classification is rape or other types of sexual assault then I think MTP should be classified under “rape”. I feel like the rape vs other types of sexual assault classification hinges on whether or not things that we’d classify as “sex” in a consensual situation happened, versus groping and other stuff that’s sexual in nature but not what people normally think of if you say “sex”. Does that make sense?
That’s the first time I used gender neutral pronouns, BTW. I thought I’d give it a whirl since other MBZ posters use them.
@ Brooked
A cookie? I want a martini first if I’m going to wade through more than a couple of sentences of that gibberish.
@Athywren
I don’t know how far back I’m going in the comments here (just pressed refresh so it might be a few pages) but basically, all English criminal law uses subjective mens rea (guilty mind/intention). So instead of the prosecution proving that a reasonable person did know, or ought to have known, that doing X would result in Y offence – an objective standard – the defence can show that they, subjectively, did not realise this. It’s a blanket rule based on the idea that guilt should be shown at the highest level before a person loses their liberty. It mainly applies if a defendant is under 18 or of extremely low intelligence. It’s not easy to prove, obviously a jury has to believe them. So yeah, while I can’t think of a specific example as to when it would apply, that’s why it’s phrased in that manner.
/been doing too much law tutoring lately
@Cassandra A wise choice.
@hannasoumaki You should probably keep your tumblr excursions to yourself for now.
@Brooked, is this the sentence you’re talking about?
I think it’s about illiteracy? Something about a call for teaching men’s rights activists to understand how words work?
Mr. Futrelle. I’ve tried to make this a simple point to be made regarding MTP being considered rape.
In multiple replies you have yet to quantify and actually explain your reasoning and justification for why MTP should be considered sexual assault. Your explanations all go back to, “Well that just makes sense to me.” With no real qualifier there.
You even contradicted your own logic a bit by saying that statutory rape by MTP should be called rape and considered rape (you seemed to imply this in a legal context. While adult MTP should be sexual assault and not rape. Where as rape by being penetrated is considered rape with age being considered under statutory rape.
Why does the offense qualify as sexual assault and not rape? Why are you consistently supporting a definition that is legally treated as a lesser crime with lesser punishment?
You support a definition that has being penetrated with objects, body parts of any kind (not just genitalia), being considered rape. But actual sexual intercourse involving someone forcing you to penetrate them or an object is sexual assault?
Mr. Futrelle, I can’t be gentle about saying this. Your stance is completely inconsistent with your stated goal that you want it to be treated as equally heinous. Regardless of the cultural implications of the differences between the terms of “sexual assault” and “rape”. There is a strong legal difference between the two. In many countries and states sexual assault carries a lighter penalty than rape.
By continuing to support this definition that clearly treats sexual assault as a lighter punishment you’re effectively saying that MTP is lesser than rape. Regardless of your intent. Because you’re defending the definition that legally treats it as such.
@Cassandra
I agree with you. I think statutory rape muddies the water because it’s usually classified an a non-forcible sex offense (like incest) rather than a forcible act (like rape and sexual assault). In the US, most states don’t have a “statutory rape law”, but instead have a group of laws that deal with voluntary sexual acts involving minors. Often these laws overlap with child abuse laws, it depends on the specifics of the crime.
I think it means “SirYouAreBeingMocked” doesn’t actually have any facts or evidence to make an argument, so ze is throwing together as many three syllable words as possible, in hopes that the casual reader will be impressed enough to not look too closely.
Ash sure is beating the shit out of that straw David Futrelle.
I love how so many MRAs echo SYABM’s complaints yet at the same time get all pissed off when a feminist comes into a discussion about rape against men and talks about female victims. That’s not hypocritical at all.
SYABM is literally the densest person I’ve seen on Tumblr. And that’s saying a lot.
@ Athywren
Ah, I remember when I wrote like that, thinking it would impress people. I was 12.
I note how on the TS piece a couple of people linked earlier, he basically says “FEMINISTS say MRAs never provide advice, information or any kind of help to male victims and instead just want to rag on feminists, but we TOTES DO THAT”… and then just leaves it there without actually, you know, providing advice, information or help to male victims.
He said his argument is a semantic one, not a legal one. Why are you talking about legal differences? Those are irrelevant to his point.
More r/mr discussion (tangential) on this piece.
@katz
Sounds like a plan, so long as they’re categorised in such a way that they don’t get too confusing to work with.
HAH! You’re funny! :3
@thenatfantastic
Ok, fair point, I can see the value of that. I mean… I still have issues with it, but none that have any obvious solutions.
@augzilliary
Urgh, fuck. I hate “get over it” at the best of times, but that’s just repulsive. As if people have the right to dictate how others feel about what they’ve been through. Other people have dealt with them in supposedly “better” ways, good for them. Not everyone can do that. Mostly, though, I hate the assumptions behind it – that you know exactly how bad it was, exactly how many other things have happened to that person, that there is a correct reaction, and that other reactions are unacceptable.
I’ve had that thrown at me a few times in my life, thankfully never because I’d been raped, however you define it. The most obvious examples were when I was still in school.
One was in winter, when it had snowed: “Get over it! It’s just snow!” I’d been pinned down and had “just snow” stuffed into my mouth, almost suffocating me. This was followed by a fist, apparently made of just snow, in my face when I chased after the bastard with the intention of tearing him limb from limb (I failed at that).
The other was after my grandfather died. It was affecting my school work because I was miserable and don’t work well when miserable. My teacher told me I was milking it, and to get over it. What a brilliant teacher, way to motivate. Because mourning is just the excuse of a lazy student.
So, yeah, fuck “get over it.”
@ Ally
And he has yet to quantify his reasoning and statements regarding even as a semantic issue. The fact of the matter is that legally and culturally there are a number of people who consider sexual assault below rape on some kind of hierarchy of horrible things to happen to you.
This is supported by legal punishments treating sexual assault as a lower crime than rape.
Mr. Futrelle is continuing to support a definition, semantically and legally, that treats rape as a lesser offense.
He also contradicted his thinking as I’ve seen so far by stating that statutory rape of a minor by MTP is rape, but that adult MTP is not. Imagine if he’d said that penetrative rape of a minor is statutory rape, but that penetration without consent is sexual assault?
He has consistently defended the definition semantically when I see no benefit to do so. There is little reason to justify upholding calling MTP sexual assault instead of rape.
It is sexual intercourse without consent.
@Cassandra
Is that aimed at something I said, or at what SYABM said?
(Just want to be clear, so I can correct myself if it’s something I said.)
@Ash
I don’t know how it is in other parts of the world, but in England, sexual assault has a variety of penalties, depending on the specifics – it isn’t universally lighter. In fact, being forced to commit a sexual act, which includes being forced to penetrate, has exactly the same penalty attached. I don’t see the rationale for conflating exactly equal treatment with being considered lesser?
@ Athywren
Aimed at him, not you, sorry. He’s just so wordy and pretentious, and I remember when I thought that writing like that would make people think I was very clever. Like if you throw enough adjectives into the debate then you automatically win.
They shouldn’t. Rape is a sexual assault.
@Cassandra
Most excellent. I shall put away my fears and reinvigorate my literary confidence in this most important of current matters.
I tend to agree in general with the assessment in the body article. There exists a masculine-oriented argument to be made, and that argument is not hiding in the numbers but rather in the fact that researchers deemed it proper to say that a woman forcing sex on a man isn’t rape.
I however STRONGLY disagree with Futrelle’s comments in this section.
Look, from a certain perspective I get it. I cut my teeth on feminist philosophy as both activism and healing for women as well. I get the gut reaction to want to set aside non-penetrative sexual assault as something different. If we do this though we are robbing male survivors (or if indeed that term is underline and defined elsewhere to be something else, “victims” if you prefer) of not only useful labels, but useful language and useful therapeutic measures.
That is should I treat victims of non-penetrative assault differently? How does one advocate for them? Does our philosophy allow for such advocacy? What new language should I develop? RapeBeta perhaps? How long before those words become common enough for the average victim to be able to use them? How much longer before it is in general use by the population? What is gained by demanding that rape be a crime of penetration? Can lesbians rape without the use of a fist or a strap-on? Isn’t it homophobic to define rape of men in terms of things that will most likely happen between men? Isn’t it sexism by apotheosis (putting on a pedestal) to define away the possibility of a woman raping a man without penetrating him?
The most important question up there I think is “what is gained?” What is the point of defining victims of non-penetrative assault as not being victims of rape? Convince me that there is a reason to separate the groups that is beneficial to survivors (and/or victims) of BOTH groups and I will be right there with you defending it until I am blue in the face.
For the moment, granting that your “separate but equal” apologetics stand, how would you go about convincing the current group of male victims that what they experienced was not “rape?” How would that feel if you were in that position and someone told you, “Oh, rape means something every specific that only happens with forced penetration, but you were assaulted just the same?” Or worse yet, “Oh, that support group is only for rape survivors, you weren’t raped, so we really don’t have any offerings.”
Do you really feel comfortable knowing that your philosophy allows for both of the above things with no problems?
As far as I am concerned the NISVS study is all but a lost cause. With such biases creeping in to the final report, who is to say what sort of biases infected the researchers actually collecting the data. We should give this hill up and focus on publishing something of a higher calibre. Perhaps something where I do not need to be a probabilist to understand the final report.
So, why exactly are you excluding a huge chunk of female-on-male rape while including comparable incidents for male-on-female rape? That’s not a very fair comparison David and it shouldn’t take a genius to see that you can easily reduce the number of female-on-male rapes when you just exclude them from your numbers.
@PsyConomics
Is it disrespectful to, or dismissive of someone who was attacked with a knife to say that they were not shot? Does it minimise what happened to them, or deny them access to the relevant support?
@psyconomics
I agreed with what you said in this paragraph except this:
“I get the gut reaction to want to set aside non-penetrative sexual assault as something different.”
I got the opposite reaction, and it seems like most others here have too. It kinda sounds like you’re playing the “feminists secretly hate all men” stereotype.
The rest seems pretty bad though.
“Can lesbians rape without the use of a fist or a strap-on?”
Did you forget about fingers, tongues, and other toys like vibrators?
“That is should I treat victims of non-penetrative assault differently? How does one advocate for them? Does our philosophy allow for such advocacy? What new language should I develop? RapeBeta perhaps? How long before those words become common enough for the average victim to be able to use them? How much longer before it is in general use by the population? What is gained by demanding that rape be a crime of penetration?”
None of this made sense, since David said they should be treated equally.
“For the moment, granting that your “separate but equal” apologetics stand, how would you go about convincing the current group of male victims that what they experienced was not “rape?” ”
David already said he wasn’t going to question how people defined their assault.
“Or worse yet, “Oh, that support group is only for rape survivors, you weren’t raped, so we really don’t have any offerings.””
I’m pretty sure David isn’t running his own shelter. And I’m pretty sure most shelters would still help them. Actually some countries don’t even call rape “rape” for anyone legally, like the UK, but everyone still refers to rape as “rape” and treats it as such.
“As far as I am concerned the NISVS study is all but a lost cause. With such biases creeping in to the final report, who is to say what sort of biases infected the researchers actually collecting the data.”
What makes you think there’s biases like that? Did you look into the research?
“We should give this hill up and focus on publishing something of a higher calibre.”
Who is “we”? Manboobz? We aren’t a research center.
Is it me, or are some folks reading things into Mr. Futrelle’s words that weren’t actually said?
It seems like nowhere did David state that “made to penetrate” victims (which include both men and women, by the way) should be treated differently, should not be taken serious, should not be able to define their own experience, or should not have access to resources and supports.
@Athywren
I think you cracked the code, now have to figure out the cookie delivery logistics.
@Cassandra
I directed an earlier post at you and, after rereading it, I realize it has fuck all to do with anything you wrote. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then ignore this, but if you read my bit about statutory rape and thought ‘well that doesn’t really have anything to do with the straightforward argument I’m making’, then I apologize.
Yes, I’m this awkward and self-conscious in real life too. *sigh*
sparky: it’s not just you.
So, I’m off to bed, but I want to clarify my last comment because I’m not going to be able to for at least 8 hours in case somebody takes it the way that it could be taken.
If you’re attacked with a knife or with a gun, the range of injury is more or less the same. It can be just intimidation, or it can be wounding, crippling, killing, and a few things in between – that’s all available to both. They’re both serious issues, and victims of both deserve support, emotionally, legally, and medically. They’re more or less equivalent in severity, but they are different in the details.
If we’re going to use the same label to refer to them, we should say a person was assaulted, rather than that they were stabbed or shot, and I don’t think it’s terrible to say that a victim of a stabbing was not shot.
Granted, the colloquial definition of rape is more or less synonymous with sexual assault, and I have no problem with using that colloquially… but unless there actually is a benefit to doing the same with legal language, it seems, to me, to make as little sense as saying a person was shot when they were stabbed.
“Urgh, fuck. I hate “get over it” at the best of times, but that’s just repulsive. As if people have the right to dictate how others feel about what they’ve been through. Other people have dealt with them in supposedly “better” ways, good for them. Not everyone can do that. Mostly, though, I hate the assumptions behind it – that you know exactly how bad it was, exactly how many other things have happened to that person, that there is a correct reaction, and that other reactions are unacceptable.”
So, you remember my psych making me see their vocational counsellor? She said basically that — she’d been through traumatic things and some people go on to lead perfectly productive lives! >.< (email me if you want the long sordid story, no one here wants to sit through years of things ranging from groping to the topic at hand)
“As far as I am concerned the NISVS study is all but a lost cause. With such biases creeping in to the final report, who is to say what sort of biases infected the researchers actually collecting the data.”
Please learn to math, or read the summary, or something. Good research requires solid research and stats skills to explain to any degree, and if you want hard numbers — he ones that require factoring in multiple variables — you just plain need to math. Look, I am perfectly happy to translate to not-math for anyone who asks, but you not getting it because the math is over your head doesn't automatically invalidate the study. It's a matter of definition, one they explained in the report. There is absolutely no logical reason to assume that over 100+ pages of the report this one category's definition means the data in the entire thing is a lost cause.
:( Argenti. If you want to rant about it to someone, you have my email. Otherwise I can only offer hugs.
O_O
Don’t you need some kind of qualification or sensitivity to be a psych or a counsellor? How is that even possible‽
And since when does being perfectly productive have any bearing on your mental health? I’ve had periods of perfect productivity, but I’m still terrified of entering rooms that’re occupied by more than one stranger if they’ll all see me. (I’m also really bad at keeping email conversations going… but I’m sure you haven’t noticed that! :P)
Also, hugs are available if you want them.
What on earth are you talking about? How hard is it to use the term “sexual assault?” Why would using a different term mean treating them “differently” in a bad way, or not advocating for victims of made-to-penetrate? You’ve just tacked a whole set of bizarre assumptions onto a word choice. If you call a truck a lorry, you can still drive it.
I’m not separating the groups. I’m simply using different terminology to describe different forms of sexual assault. Victims of sexual assault are still victims of sexual assault.
If a male survivor of made-to-penetrate calls what happened to him rape rather than sexual assault or sexual violence, I’m not going to tell him to call it anything different. And no one is going to kick him out of a survivor group because of a difference in terminology. .
I find it hard to believe that the people making these arguments about what my stance allegedly means really believe all this and are making these arguments in good faith. I just had a similar discussion with someone on Twitter who clearly wasn’t.
If you were asking in good faith, I apologize, but you certainly jumped to a lot of conclusions about what I meant that were not what I meant at all.
sparky: As one of the folks disagreeing strongly with David on this point… no, you’re absolutely right, a lot of folks ARE reading more into his statements–and, in fact, are selectively ignoring parts of them to continue the attack. I feel there’s a strong case to be made for MtP being included, on a semantic basis, in the ‘rape’ category, and part of that does hinge on how common language use affects the systematic approaches (ie, getting people to think of marital rape as ‘rape’ was key to getting the laws about it changed, and I think the same concept works here–whatever the legal terminology is, the two violations should be discussed with the same vernacular language, outside of cases where there’s a need for distinction).
But at no time is David suggesting, implying or stating a hostility towards the idea of MtP being treated identically to penetrative rape, and claiming he has done so is probably actually HURTING efforts to get him to change his mind on the matter, so I really wish they would STOP already.
Rescue cats to the rescue! (We need something cute, this is getting a little in-group heated, I think.)
Ash, I simply do not believe that by calling MTP by a different term than rape that I am inherently declaring it less serious/important than rape. Obviously you disagree. We’ve both made our arguments. There is really no point in continuing this particular discussion.
If you wish to discuss the CDC study I suggest you do that instead.
hellkell: Oh good. I was starting to doubt myself.
freemage: I agree with everything you said. In case I caused confusion, my previous comment was directed at Ash and PsyConomics, not anyone else. I’m sorry, I should be more clear when I post :)
freemage, that is a good point about marital rape.
@David Futrelle & Athywren
Ah, ok. I see it a little more clearly now, though I still can’t say I agree with your position.
Reading your previous comments it sounded more like you wanted to try and draw more of a concrete philosophical line between the two than you seem to be doing. That is why I was so ardent about the motivation. Referencing Athywren’s knife and gun wound analogy, I wanted to hear what convinced us that the two acts were as essentially different as a knife and a gun wound are. But you weren’t even arguing that they are all that different, you were just organizing them in a specific way.
I don’t need different tools, I don’t need different advocacy, I don’t need different philosophies because I am not looking at different things, just at things with – what I would call oddly – differing labels.
As I said above I still find this odd, and I would never use such differences anywhere in my own life, philosophy, or philosophy I would teach/present/advocate to someone, but I now see that you weren’t trying to silence an entire group of survivors like it looked like you were.
Brooked: I’d say the last sentence (It’s also nakedly hypocritical coming from a website that’s openly about mockery.) is the most coherent.
It’s stupid, but comprehensible: The writer thinks that one can’t do both mockery, and serious commentary.
Which is funny as hell, because that’s what the writer is pretending to do.
Ally: He said his argument is a semantic one, not a legal one. Why are you talking about legal differences?
Because what Ash wants is an abject surrender on Dave’s part (probably with profuse apology and the admission that Ash was right all along).
The tone tells me there is a deeper agenda, and I’m betting on humiliating Dave being his desired end state. Were I to be completely cynical I’d say the protestations about our lack of reaction were meant to highlight our disagreement in an effort to get peer pressure brought on Dave to bring about those ends.
@Argenti
The issue of MTP comes up when the authors are discussing their methodology on page 84:
I get why people are infuriated over the the decision to limit rape to forced penetration, but this is the first national study of sexual violence to actually measure MTP. That’s straight up a good thing.
Brooked: OOoh, that’s a very helpful quote. I can see the point of separating it in the course of a study if part of your goal is to highlight the very existence of the sub-category. In my mental Venn diagrams, I’m putting the entirety of the MtP circle inside the Rape circle. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a worthless distinction to make at times.
Well, one thing I think I know about David is that he will change his mind or not based on whether or not he’s convinced, not based on peer pressure. I say that at the same time as I hope that he will give serious consideration to the arguments his peers here are making, and change his mind to agree that MTP is a form of rape because it’s a traumatic & intimate violation of personal autonomy.
cloudiah: Yes, but one of the things trolls, and trollish people, do is play, “let’s you and them fight”. Groups like the MRM are fond of using intra-group debates as proof of incoherence.
Since I have been of the opinion, from the first post, that Ash is a dishonest actor, with an agenda, I can see that trope being used; “look, even your supporters say you are wrong, how can you continue to have this opinion and still call yourself a feminist, etc.”.
Brooked — I missed that (I admit, I haven’t read all 100+ pages), that is indeed an important and good thing.
Athywren — “I’m also really bad at keeping email conversations going… but I’m sure you haven’t noticed that!”…I really hadn’t. But, as you know, I’ve been writing a WP theme from scratch and mmm PHP. It’ serving to keep me distracted (and I have yet to get the white page of death! [bad PHP all too often results in a white page, no errors like HTML or JS, no way to color code your way to finding your fuck up like CSS, nada, nothing, white page of death])
Pecunium — you see that one of your African violets has little leaves? You’re definitely getting at least one!
@pecunium, Let’s leave the trolls aside, since they will always be there. David is a feminist, and other feminists disagree & agree with him. Ash can be ignored. I get the sense that David is (rightly) ignoring Internet comments from asshats, but I hope and expect he’s not ignoring the rest of it. (Intra-group debates are actually a healthy thing, IMO.)
I’m not going to not make an argument just because asshats agree with me. Their agreement is, frankly, accidental.
So I’ve been reading back through the comments here, and I’m thinking that the semantic (not legal) distinction I have been trying to make is really not worth the trouble that it is causing. I thought the distinction I was making was relatively clear, but the fact that it has been taken to mean all sorts of things I didn’t intend it to mean suggests to me that the distinction I was making did not serve to clarify matters but to muddy them and so is not actually a helpful distinction to make.
Obviously a lot of the people seizing on my comments — on r/mr in particular — are not doing so in good faith; they’re just playing “gotcha.”
But the issue is more important than that, and I’m not going to dig in my heels because of them.
I think MTP should be taken seriously regardless of whether it is classified as rape or as sexual assault other than rape. But I’ve been convinced by the comments here that this is probably overoptimistic on my part. If made-to-penetrate needs to be called rape to be taken as seriously as what has traditionally been called rape, then it should be called rape.
So, yes, I have changed my mind on this. Made-to-penetrate should be classified as rape.
That was my thought, too. Sure, you can want it to be treated the same, but it’s a stretch to expect “sexual assault” to carry the same severity in its connotations as “rape”, especially since “sexual assault” as an umbrella term will still include milder forms.
(Sorry, David, didn’t see your post.)
David: Thank you for reconsidering your position, and declaring. (Note: Trolls will now be using this as evidence that we have a groupthink hivemind and thought police. So no, we can’t win by trying to not give them something to point at. But we can win by being intellectually honest with each other, and mocking the little misogynistic fuckwits.)
And on that note, I’m just gonna say that Emergency Kittens is the most awesome use of Twitter out there, and be done for the night:
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens
Seconding freemage! (on both comments)
titianblue:
I am a member of a secret illuminati group with a hidden agenda or I voiced my disagreement with Davids Futrelle assertion that he wouldn’t call “made to penetrate” for rape. Feel free to take your pick, although I’d think it’s a pretty bleak outlook on the world to think that any outsiders who disagree with some insiders must have a secret agenda.
I think it is clear that it mattered how the “made to penetrate” act was categorized as non-rape and that the effect of that choice is clearly seen in how the media – and quite a few blogs – reported on the NISVS 2010 Report. And despite people assurances that wanting to keep “made to penetrate” out of the rape category is not setting up a hierarchy it remains pretty clear that for most people in the public there is a hierarchy. Several survivors have told here that they feel it’s a lessening of the violation committed against them. I saw someone stating that it’s somewhat similar as telling a gay person that it makes sense to call same-sex marriages for “civil unions” rather than “marriage”. Of course one could just handwave away the protests from the gay community by saying that it’s just a matter of semantics. That’d be wrong. It matters for the gay people who calls their marriage for marriage and it matters for the victims who calls their rape for rape. Saying that it make sense to call it civil unions in any official sense, but people who are in civil union are free to call it marriage doesn’t do much to placate those who are for an equal marriage act.
David,
I appreciate you changing your stance on this.
I’m **overjoyed** that David rethought “MTP as rape.” I was going to express my intense disappointment but was waiting to express it carefully.
Male rape is covered up, largely because of gender roles. No matter how seriously we take sexual assault (and I do believe it can be as bad as, or even worse than rape), the message many victims and other people will hear is that these are not rape victims.
David was right in an idealistic way: we shouldn’t have to call something rape to give it the attention it deserves. Murder is bad for example. But the context here is that many male victims struggle to convince themselves or others that they’re victims at all. We should take the strongest stance possible supporting them, and that means all penetrative sex without consent should be “rape.”
These comments are on page five now and I don’t have the time to read all of them, so if it’s been covered already, forgive me for repeating it, but my assumption is that the CDC differentiates between being penetrated and being forced to penetrate because it’s the center for DISEASE control, and disease is more effectively spread to those being penetrated than those who are doing the penetrating. So, while I totally understand the need for the CDC, as an organization that focuses on diseases and how they spread, to separate all them into different categories, next time, they should probably put them both under the title of “rape,” and consider them both subcategories of the same issue. The same goes for being forced to perform any sort of oral sex.
I certainly don’t think the error in judgment was some intentional feminist conspiracy being played out through the CDC, but that social justice is probably not their primary concern when they’re classifying data. But for the sake of taking every victim seriously, because rape is horrible no matter who it happens to, they should adjust this next time.
And just to be clear, the way we may feel about the researchers’ terminology does not invalidate their results. Nor does it make the MRAs’ total ineptitude at maths suiddenly morph into accuracy.
Nor make rape of men the only real rape, which MRAs would love to be the case. /snark
This makes me kinda nervous about continuing to use it on my body…
lionicle:
That assumption is wrong.
I’d recommend visiting CDC’s page and reading their mission statement and their organizational chart to get a picture of the scope of CDC’s work.
The NISVS 2010 Report is authored and published by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control which is under the Office of Noncommunicable Diseases, Injury and Environmental Health which again is a part of CDC. In short – CDC concerns itself with health in general and not just communicable diseases.
The NISVS 2010 Report does not mention STDs at all.
Appreciated.
titianblue:
Yes, I have. The answer I got was basically a tautology where they defend the definition they use by referring to the definition they used. Here is the relevant parts of their reply:
@Blair, very bad math.
That’s exactly why you cannot take the lifetime prevalence data and apply it to the 12-month cases. Researchers expected, and found, that these categories would be/were very different, and now you agree. So all of the math you did was meaningless, already.
We do have a good reason. The “lifetime” data is not merely the sum of “12-month” data taken every year. Three examples:
(1) The survey is taken by adults. If young girls are far likelier to be assaulted than young boys, and if this gap closes for adults, then we’d expect survey’s lifetime rates to skew towards women and 12-month rates to be much closer.
(2) Sexual violence is not statistically random. For example, previous abuse increases the likelihood of future abuse. Your assumption that 12-month data should be statistically similar to lifetime data would imply the opposite, that your probability on any given year is the same.
(3) Multiplicities, as the CDC noted. Hypothetically, the same men could be assaulted every year while different women are assaulted every year.
But more importantly: surveys don’t need to have identified the reason for the discrepancy. Their most important job is just to identify the data. Our goal of course is to understand the cause, but when we don’t yet, that doesn’t mean we reject the data. “Astronomy must be wrong because we know the earth is flat and stationary.”
Wow! What an oddly specific place to draw the line. You concluded that 37% of rape victims had female perps, which means that there is roughly a “2x magnitude difference” (twice as many had male perps). You found this nearly 2x rate believable. Yet, even with men committing 2x the victimizations, and knowing that men will disproportionately target women, you somehow find 3x to be completely unbelievable.
Your actual math is wrong, too. You used the data mismatch that this entire CDC response debunked. Then you guestimated a number for 12-month male victims but there’s no indication this guestimate is accurate (can you even show your ~316k guestimate would have had a relative standard error over 30%, or cell size less than 20?). But it would not be a comfort even if it matched the CDC’s raw data exactly, since that data was excluded because it is not statistically reliable. So we cannot reliably measure the info you want.
Then, you do not extend this courtesy to other categories of violence that were excluded for the same reason (like women forced to penetrate) so you’re just refusing to count some victims entirely. And ultimately you’re only able to reach a conclusion about *victims*, while the CDC was refuting the bogus claims about *perpetrators*.
Bottom line: *WHY*? Just, take the CDC’s advice. Use research about perpetrators if you want conclusions about perpetrators. No abuse of math or conspiracy theories required that way.
lionicle — oh, don’t worry about that, I use it on fruit and such. I think it’s just really effective at breaking down oils, but I could be wrong there. It definitely isn’t doing its magic by any sort of corrosive effect.
Faint Praise — please stick around, I’d love to have someone else here who can help with this sort of statistical debunking, not like I know ALL THE MATHS or anything :)
David — Nth’ing the thank you for reconsidering.