Dennis Prager says women campus assualts lie

[The Romulan Republic]

Saying the accuser is lying is an obvious method of defending oneself against charges in general weather its true or not. Its horrible for those making honest accusations but there's really no way to prevent it other than assuming the accuser is telling the truth and censoring any opinions to the contrary, which in my opinion would be worse.

[Tanasinn]

Not to mention a direct contravention of law, which assumes innocence until guilt is actually proven.

[Terralthra]

Whether or not the law must treat someone as innocent until proven guilty has nothing to do with whether or not I personally think someone did something.

[Phillip Hone]

Mongoose: Yeah, it's a little frightening that these discussions tend to center on the dangers of getting carried away in dealing with the problem - the idea of false rape allegations hypothetically becoming a problem for men is considered more serious and urgent than the actual widespread rape of women that is already happening.

False rape allegations are a problem for men. According to the FBI nearly 10% of rape allegations are untrue or false.

And do me a favor and please head off any tantrum or tirade before you begin. I am in no way minimizing or approving of rape simply because I point out the very real fear that some men have of being falsely accused of rape. Both things (rape, and being falsely accused of rape) are bad, and false accusations are harmful to efforts to actually reduce or eliminate rape, because they perpetuate the idea that many/most women are lying about rape. High profile false accusations (like Duke lacrosse) may be even worse, because they cause people to question and doubt women who have actually been raped as liars and attention seekers.

It's not that being falsely accused of rape isn't something that happens, or that it isn't a serious problem for someone it happens to. That's not the point.

You asked nicely, but nope, alas, you're getting the full SJW tantrum. :p

You are to some extent minimizing(though I wouldn't say approving of) rape when you bring up "but what if false allegations omg" because that isn't a problem on anywhere near the same scale that rape is a problem for women, yet it's always 50% of these discussions. Pretty much all the women in my life are afraid to walk around by themselves at night for fear of being raped.

Now, if we were living in a society where the vast majority of men were terrified to be in a room alone with a woman without a witness for fear of a false allegation, a society where 1/4 of college age men were falsely accused of rape at some point in their lives, then yeah, I would definitely approve of the amount you and many others fret about false allegations. But that's not the case so yes, you are focusing on the wrong thing here.

[Simon_Jester]

On the other hand, the survey apparently included questions like "Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs" - which really doesn't adequately disambiguate between consensual (but regrettable) sex under the influence of alcohol versus non-consensual sex after being seriously drugged via something like Narcozep or other date-rape drugs.

1) The effect on the woman in a case of 'consensual but regrettable' sex may not be that different from the effect of 'being seriously drugged.'
2) The problem here is that if you ask outright "have you ever been raped," you get a lot of people who rationalize that sex with a girl passed out unconscious on the floor isn't really sex, so the girl in question wasn't raped... even if they are the girl in question. Except that's obviously not true from a legal standpoint. So there has to be some way to ask the question by building up to it. And when it comes to "sex you didn't want, because a man gave you alcohol or drugs," there is very often a real case for sexual assault charges, even if a judge might find there is insufficient evidence to convict of rape beyond a reasonable doubt.

But it's shit like this that gives so much ammo to detractors. Obviously, the reality is that college campus rape is a serious, widely-occurring problem. But this should serve as a reminder that it never helps to exaggerate the data that supports any sort of important cause - it just gives ammo to detractors and hurts the credibility of advocates.

Lesson: if you're passionate about some cause, don't fucking exaggerate. It may rally your supporters in the short term, but it just hurts your cause in the long run. Anyway, I'm not saying the 1-in-4 statistic is necessarily exaggerated because I honestly don't know - I'm saying that it detracts from the real issue, which is that campus rape actually does happen frequently.

So... when we don't even know if it's exaggerated, we shouldn't spread it because it will give detractors an excuse to mock us as exaggerating?

What if that statistic were true? Should we then suppress that information consciously, for fear that people wouldn't believe it? How monstrous would that be?

Mongoose: Yeah, it's a little frightening that these discussions tend to center on the dangers of getting carried away in dealing with the problem - the idea of false rape allegations hypothetically becoming a problem for men is considered more serious and urgent than the actual widespread rape of women that is already happening.

False rape allegations are a problem for men. According to the FBI nearly 10% of rape allegations are untrue or false.

In which case 90% of them are true. And that's ignoring any question of whether the FBI data are accurate.

Does one false allegation hurting one man outweigh the problem nine actual rapes present for nine women? If so, that's horribly, hideously misogynistic. If not, then remember the following:

The "one in four" campaign does not involve any actual, specific man being charged with rape. The only thing that is being harmed here is men's collective reputation, in that it may make women more fearful of them. I don't know about you, but I can live with the stereotype of "male stranger danger" or "don't be alone with a man unless you have excellent reason to trust him" getting a little stronger... if this prevents thousands of actual rapes, which it can.

It's stupid for us to pretend that there is anything like the same amount of male suffering going on here as female suffering, or that the male suffering should somehow dominate our discussion of the issue while the female suffering is just waved off as "oh yeah, that goes without saying, of course we disapprove of rape, but let's not get crazy and do anything drastic here, eh?" It's like saying you disapprove of racism while quietly refusing to hire black employees.

High profile false accusations (like Duke lacrosse) may be even worse, because they cause people to question and doubt women who have actually been raped as liars and attention seekers.

Obviously, lying and perjury are wrong. But if they're harming people by motivating someone to think "women who say they've been raped are liars..." well frankly, that ship has sailed anyway. Lots of men simply refuse to treat complaints, accusations, or ideas by women as credible statements that merit a serious response.

I am again reminded of a passage from the article that gave rise to the term 'mansplaining,' which I think applies and which I try to honor:

Credibility is a basic survival tool. When I was very young and just beginning to get what feminism was about and why it was necessary, I had a boyfriend whose uncle was a nuclear physicist. One Christmas, he was telling -- as though it were a light and amusing subject -- how a neighbor's wife in his suburban bomb-making community had come running out of her house naked in the middle of the night screaming that her husband was trying to kill her. How, I asked, did you know that he wasn't trying to kill her? He explained, patiently, that they were respectable middle-class people. Therefore, her-husband-trying-to-kill-her was simply not a credible explanation for her fleeing the house yelling that her husband was trying to kill her. That she was crazy, on the other hand....

Even getting a restraining order -- a fairly new legal tool -- requires acquiring the credibility to convince the courts that some guy is a menace and then getting the cops to enforce it. Restraining orders often don't work anyway. Violence is one way to silence people, to deny their voice and their credibility, to assert your right to control over their right to exist. About three women a day are murdered by spouses or ex-spouses in this country. It's one of the main causes of death in pregnant women in the U.S. At the heart of the struggle of feminism to give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment legal standing as crimes has been the necessity of making women credible and audible.

I tend to believe that women acquired the status of human beings when these kinds of acts started to be taken seriously, when the big things that stop us and kill us were addressed legally from the mid-1970s on; well after, that is, my birth...

[/quote]So when we see a group in society that basically says "women are not credible," that is not a new reaction to some specific woman lying about some specific thing. That is an old reaction that is based, at heart, on the notion that a woman's words do not 'really' have weight and that men should condescendingly take care of everything while telling women not to step outside the box they're in.

I see no reason to coddle this mindset.

[PainRack]

On the other hand, the survey apparently included questions like "Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs" - which really doesn't adequately disambiguate between consensual (but regrettable) sex under the influence of alcohol versus non-consensual sex after being seriously drugged via something like Narcozep or other date-rape drugs.

1) The effect on the woman in a case of 'consensual but regrettable' sex may not be that different from the effect of 'being seriously drugged.'
2) The problem here is that if you ask outright "have you ever been raped," you get a lot of people who rationalize that sex with a girl passed out unconscious on the floor isn't really sex, so the girl in question wasn't raped... even if they are the girl in question. Except that's obviously not true from a legal standpoint. So there has to be some way to ask the question by building up to it. And when it comes to "sex you didn't want, because a man gave you alcohol or drugs," there is very often a real case for sexual assault charges, even if a judge might find there is insufficient evidence to convict of rape beyond a reasonable doubt.

Hang on..... There are some problems with building up and framing the question that way, because it might lead to a false high positive. The survey faults rests in the huge amounts of cueing it did to frame incidents as rape, a potential huge issue when its a self-reporting survey, meaning that even false perceptions/memories will become a factor.

Now, its justification is that based on other data, we know that most women underreport rapes or dismiss incidents as sexual assault and this is an attempt to balance out that psychological factor and thus encourage a more truer reporting by eliminating denials.
Its why although the 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 figures can be cast into doubt as an extrapolation, it does still suggest that there is a huge problem of potential unreported sexual incidents in the USA.

In which case 90% of them are true. And that's ignoring any question of whether the FBI data are accurate.

Does one false allegation hurting one man outweigh the problem nine actual rapes present for nine women? If so, that's horribly, hideously misogynistic. If not, then remember the following:

The "one in four" campaign does not involve any actual, specific man being charged with rape. The only thing that is being harmed here is men's collective reputation, in that it may make women more fearful of them. I don't know about you, but I can live with the stereotype of "male stranger danger" or "don't be alone with a man unless you have excellent reason to trust him" getting a little stronger... if this prevents thousands of actual rapes, which it can.

It's stupid for us to pretend that there is anything like the same amount of male suffering going on here as female suffering, or that the male suffering should somehow dominate our discussion of the issue while the female suffering is just waved off as "oh yeah, that goes without saying, of course we disapprove of rape, but let's not get crazy and do anything drastic here, eh?" It's like saying you disapprove of racism while quietly refusing to hire black employees.

This only holds true if by creating an atmosphere that condones 10% of false rape accussations, we force the total number of rape incidents downwards..

Granted, I think we're shifting away from the fact that a Republican is engaging in active denialism here but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that somehow, preventing rape means guys have to be persecuted, which although not your intent, is what you're projecting in your post.

[Phillip Hone]

It's not guys that need to be persecuted, it's rapists, wherever they sit on the spectrum of gender identity.

[Covenant]

I get what Painrack is saying through. It's a messy issue because the increased fear of groups of men is not really the answer to the vast majority of rapes, which occur in your own home or near it, with people you know, and with a single offender. Being more afraid of being raped may allow some women to avoid blatantly dangerous situations, but I am not sure it is actually useful when you consider the situation that most rape occurs in. Even the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network states it clearly:

The Rapist isn't a Masked Stranger

Approximately 2/3 of rapes were committed by someone known to the victim.

• 73% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a non-stranger.
  38% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance.
  28% are an intimate.
  7% are a relative.

More than 50% of all rape/sexual assault incidents were reported by victims to have occurred within 1 mile of their home or at their home.

• 4 in 10 take place at the victim's home.
  2 in 10 take place at the home of a friend, neighbor, or relative.
  1 in 10 take place on a street away from home.
  1 in 12 take place in a parking garage.
  43% of rapes occur between 6:00pm and midnight.
  24% occur between midnight and 6:00am.
  The other 33% take place between 6:00am and 6:00pm.

The Criminal

• The average age of a rapist is 31 years old.
  52% are white.
  22% of imprisoned rapists report that they are married.
  40% were 30 and older.
  40% were between 18 and 30.
  10% were younger than 18.
  In 1 in 3 sexual assaults, the perpetrator was intoxicated — 30% with alcohol, 4% with drugs.
  In 2001, 11% of rapes involved the use of a weapon — 3% used a gun, 6% used a knife, and 2 % used another form of weapon.
  84% of victims reported that the attacker was unarmed.
  Rapists are more likely to be a serial criminal than a serial rapist.

46% of rapists who were released from prison were re-arrested within 3 years of their release for another crime.

• 18.6% for a violent offense.
  14.8% for a property offense.
  11.2% for a drug offense.
  20.5% for a public-order offense.

There's another stat from the original source document that says 70% of victims resisted in some way and of those half reported that it was helpful. 20% felt it didn't really make things much better or actually made it worse. Here's the breakdown of that resistance:

• 19% resisted or captured the offender
  11% scared or warned the offender
  10% persuaded or appeased the offender (presumably not to make the attack)
  7% ran away or hid
  6% attacked the offender without a weapon
  4% screamed from pain or fear
  4% got help or gave alarm (presumably with the expectation that help was near)
  10% took other measures

Attacking the defender with a weapon or other self-defense assistance is lumped up with other measures and presumably not a high enough number to be remarkable, and "getting help" is also about as low on the list as you can go. You are like 5 times as likely to capture the attacker yourself than you are to get assistance from the mythical big burly heroic men around.

So clearly, some attacks do occur at random, from strangers, in a parking garage or on the street. I was actually surprised how many. But the culture of fear around men in general may not be super helpful when the vast majority of rapes are being done by people you know and in your own home, or the home of a friend or acquaintance. It's men doing it, for sure, but what we should really be telling people to be afraid of is any situation where they are alone (even in their own home) or entertaining a lone individual, no matter how well they know them.

This also exacerbates the problem with reporting and prosecuting rapes.

Clearly the solution is to collectivize the family unit so you're never truly alone at home, stress the importance of public transportation, and encourage polyamory. Problem solved!

Anyway, just wanted to throw that in. Yeah, increasing the fear probably helps reduce the number of rape victims that would have put themselves in a bad situation, but most of them are in a totally safe situation (their own home, a friend's home, with people they know and presumably trust) and everything goes horribly wrong anyway.

[Simon_Jester]

Hang on..... There are some problems with building up and framing the question that way, because it might lead to a false high positive. The survey faults rests in the huge amounts of cueing it did to frame incidents as rape, a potential huge issue when its a self-reporting survey, meaning that even false perceptions/memories will become a factor.

Now, its justification is that based on other data, we know that most women underreport rapes or dismiss incidents as sexual assault and this is an attempt to balance out that psychological factor and thus encourage a more truer reporting by eliminating denials.
Its why although the 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 figures can be cast into doubt as an extrapolation, it does still suggest that there is a huge problem of potential unreported sexual incidents in the USA.

This only holds true if by creating an atmosphere that condones 10% of false rape accussations, we force the total number of rape incidents downwards..

Granted, I think we're shifting away from the fact that a Republican is engaging in active denialism here but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that somehow, preventing rape means guys have to be persecuted, which although not your intent, is what you're projecting in your post.

I don't think so. My point here is that if we have to choose between relative degrees of harm, we should remove the beam in our own eye before we worry about the speck in someone else's.

It is not the case that an increase in women's ability to speak out about rape, and get rapists held accountable for their actions, automatically means persecution of men. However, we now live in a society where men routinely get away with rape and experience zero consequences, because women are systematically prevented from talking about the crime, while men are given cultural reinforcement to make them think the crime is okay.

The real problem that needs serious effort to remedy here is not "10% of rape accusations are false." It's "10 to 25% of women get raped." Once we have fixed that larger problem, then perhaps we can fine-tune to make sure we haven't accidentally bumped up the 10% of false rape accusations to 11% or 12%.

I get what Painrack is saying through. It's a messy issue because the increased fear of groups of men is not really the answer to the vast majority of rapes, which occur in your own home or near it, with people you know, and with a single offender.

Thing is, creating accurate fear, telling people what they really have to watch out for, is important... but it can't happen until we're prepared to realistically acknowledge that there's a major problem.

A woman cannot reasonably take appropriate steps to protect herself until she knows roughly how likely it is that she'll need them. Just as we couldn't take appropriate steps to protect ourself from car accidents if we pretended car accidents were only 5% or 10% as common as they really were and normally matched some stereotype of a masked driver jumping out of a bush and T-boning our car.

Basically, it's bad to be unrealistic about the incidence rate of rapes. It's also bad to be so concerned about hurting men's feelings and increasing the tiny fear they might have, that we ignore the much larger level of fear and very real, concrete harm women experience.

Being more afraid of being raped may allow some women to avoid blatantly dangerous situations, but I am not sure it is actually useful when you consider the situation that most rape occurs in...

Fear in itself, probably not- but being alerted to the fact that "hey, this guy is the sort of person who might well decide to rape you if you refuse him sex when he feels entitled..." that's not the same thing.

Certain males might reasonably ping your detector for "wow, this guy is a rapist waiting to happen." But this cannot be recognized or taken advantage of, unless we first make sure it is known that:
1) A double-digit percentage of all woman are raped, usually by
2) Someone they know, who
3) Feels entitled to physical affection whether a woman wants to give it to them or not, partly because
4) Their culture and media exposure makes them think they have such a right, and that
5) They think women want to give them physical affection even if they say otherwise.

There is no reason why the average guy should be especially terrified at the idea of women knowing this stuff. And yet every damn time anyone talks about spreading awareness of these basic facts, we get guys who go "but, but, we're not all rapists!"

It's like, there was this time in college where a female friend invited me to come back to her dorm so we could finish a conversation. And she spelled out to me, because she had good reason to be concerned about her ability to defend herself against physical aggression, and because we hadn't yet known each other for that long, that no she wasn't inviting me up for sex, and I was OK with that, right?

And I was thinking "Cool, my friend is showing basic common sense, and yes, I already knew this wasn't an invitation to a romantic fling."

But apparently there are guys out there who would get all offended and be like "How DARE you treat me like a potential rapist!" and act as though she was doing the wrong thing.

As though their sense of outrage at a woman taking basic precautions to reduce her exposure to harm somehow outweighs the actual harm that woman might suffer. As though men's feelings about what a woman does are more important in an objective sense than the consequences to the woman of what she does.

And that's the mindset I have no sympathy for. The idea that my hurt feelings and slight risk of maybe coming to legal harm outweigh the severe physical and emotional violation suffered by large numbers of women who actually do come to physical harm... and so we shouldn't even talk about how women might reduce the rape rate by promoting an anti-rape cultural discourse, or by being mindful of what type of men are most likely to commit the rape in the first place.

Attacking the defender with a weapon or other self-defense assistance is lumped up with other measures and presumably not a high enough number to be remarkable, and "getting help" is also about as low on the list as you can go. You are like 5 times as likely to capture the attacker yourself than you are to get assistance from the mythical big burly heroic men around.

So clearly, some attacks do occur at random, from strangers, in a parking garage or on the street. I was actually surprised how many. But the culture of fear around men in general may not be super helpful when the vast majority of rapes are being done by people you know and in your own home, or the home of a friend or acquaintance. It's men doing it, for sure, but what we should really be telling people to be afraid of is any situation where they are alone (even in their own home) or entertaining a lone individual, no matter how well they know them.

Debateable. What we really should be telling people to be afraid of is a situation where they entertain a certain type of individual, one who feels entitled to ignore the law to get what they want. It's not that purely random individual males, when alone with a woman, suddenly turn from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde and commit rape. It's that some males are quite simply not worthy of the level of trust entailed in being alone with them.

So to fix this problem, all women should know from a young age what such men are like and what warning signs may exist about them. And, far more to the point, society needs to change the way it talks to and acculturates boys. So that boys don't grow to adulthood thinking that they are 'owed' sex just for being the studly beast that they are. So that boys don't grow to adulthood thinking that "men are men and women are baby factories with dumb opinions," to paraphrase something from earlier. And that a rape is just as much out of line and unacceptable as a theft or a murder, except for the part where you might be able to say a murder victim had it coming.

Anyway, just wanted to throw that in. Yeah, increasing the fear probably helps reduce the number of rape victims that would have put themselves in a bad situation, but most of them are in a totally safe situation (their own home, a friend's home, with people they know and presumably trust) and everything goes horribly wrong anyway.

Well, on a realistic level, intelligent measures taken to reduce the risk of rape will involve women learning the profile of a man likely to commit rape (that they might avoid him). And far more to the point, men learning not to commit rape, and to not tolerate other men who do so, and certainly not to encourage them in any way. Just as the decline of public racial slurs in American society has a lot to do with the majority learning to stop thinking it's funny or acceptable to use the slurs in the first place.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

@Simon_Jester: You're right that reducing the cultural camouflage that can make marginal men more likely to attempt rape is more important than hurting the feelings of men. However, I think you're missing the possibility of blowback. This movement isn't going to get us anywhere if the majority of men don't feel that they're on board with a sense of "we're all in this together". If women go into college with the (probably inaccurate) 1 in 5 statistic in their heads, but no one tells them that the average rapist has multiple victims so the number of perpetrators is closer to 1 in 100 and most of them carry tell-tale warning signs, they might think there are rapists around every corner and treat men accordingly, and that's not going to help. Neither is telling males that they're part of a culture of rape. Even if there's truth to it, it causes people to dig in their heels and fight against a movement they feel is attacking them. Now that marriage equality has reached critical momentum, sexual assault awareness is a great candidate for the next cultural debate, but it's going to fizzle if the tone doesn't become more inclusive.

[Channel72]

And that's the mindset I have no sympathy for. The idea that my hurt feelings and slight risk of maybe coming to legal harm outweigh the severe physical and emotional violation suffered by large numbers of women who actually do come to physical harm... and so we shouldn't even talk about how women might reduce the rape rate by promoting an anti-rape cultural discourse, or by being mindful of what type of men are most likely to commit the rape in the first place.

I think you need to absorb Arthur Tuxedo's point a bit.

Firstly, realistically speaking, men will be offended by automatically being treated as potential rapists, regardless of how many stats you throw around. As a comparison, around 7% of all adults in the US - that's like 24 million people - are victims of identify theft every year. Okay so 7% is less than the 10-25% stat we're hearing about rape - but it's not that much lower than the lower estimates - so we could very well start a "7% or 1 in 14" anti-identity theft campaign... I could probably get that up to 1 in 10 if I expand the definition of identity theft to include things like wearing someone else's name tag to get into a conference. Yet somehow, I doubt you'd appreciate it if I suddenly started treating you like a potential identity thief, even though statistically speaking you very well might be.

Yes - precautions are always necessary - for both rape and identity theft. But the conversation about identity theft doesn't begin by automatically treating everyone as a potential suspect - it begins by responsibly managing access to your Social Security Number and Credit Card info, etc. The conversation about rape prevention should begin with similar common-sense precautions - not the idea that random strangers are likely rapists. I'm talking about precautions like going out in groups, not going back alone to a house/bedroom of a guy you just met at some bar, etc. I actually know someone who was almost raped - and most people here probably do too - I don't think anyone here wants to minimize this problem. But we have to be practical - as Arthur Tuxedo puts it - we need to get everyone "on board" with this. Starting with an accusative attitude because you have no sympathy for any objections about this is not productive.

And my only initial point was that it never helps to play fast and loose with statistics, no matter how good your intentions are. Again - the 1 in 4 stat is widely claimed to apply soley to college campuses, but that's blatantly not true. It includes girls who were raped starting from the age of 14, which could include things like abusive family members, or any number of things that occurred outside of college. It could also include sex that was consensual under certain circumstances. Again, see my earlier global warming example. This shit doesn't help, okay? We all agree rape is a major fucking problem, and the best way to address it is to inform everyone of the danger, provide practical common-sense avoidance tactics for women, and try to change the culture in the long-term by educating young men to the extent that their raging hormones don't obscure the reality that women are actual human beings with their own desires and goals.

I think a lot of the cultural problem comes from the Animal House/John Hughes/American Pie Hollywood tradition that men who don't immediately "score with the ladies" are utter failures, and that "getting some action" during high-school/college is the most significant and self-worth-affirming goal ever. I really have no great suggestions on how to change that sort of culture, as it has deep biological and cultural roots, but it's definitely a contributing factor to the idea that men are "owed" sex - or at least pressured into associating sex with self-worth - so doing things like using drugs or alcohol to encourage a women to have sex (or sometimes outright physically forcing them) is acceptable - and even commendable among male peers.

[Simon_Jester]

@Simon_Jester: You're right that reducing the cultural camouflage that can make marginal men more likely to attempt rape is more important than hurting the feelings of men. However, I think you're missing the possibility of blowback. This movement isn't going to get us anywhere if the majority of men don't feel that they're on board with a sense of "we're all in this together". If women go into college with the (probably inaccurate) 1 in 5 statistic in their heads, but no one tells them that the average rapist has multiple victims so the number of perpetrators is closer to 1 in 100 and most of them carry tell-tale warning signs, they might think there are rapists around every corner and treat men accordingly, and that's not going to help...

Except that the number of perpetrators is, by said perpetrators' own admission on anonymous surveys, more like 1 in 10 to 1 in 20. So it is high enough that all women need to be looking out for it, high enough that statistically speaking the average person does in fact personally know someone who has committed rape or will do so in the future.

Neither is telling males that they're part of a culture of rape. Even if there's truth to it, it causes people to dig in their heels and fight against a movement they feel is attacking them. Now that marriage equality has reached critical momentum, sexual assault awareness is a great candidate for the next cultural debate, but it's going to fizzle if the tone doesn't become more inclusive.

I support this, but I think that the men participating in this debate have a lot to say about the tenor of the debate. Men who decide to whine and posture rather than listen and think about the problem can sink any attempt at 'dialogue' whether feminist spokespersons are being measured and responsible in their tone or not.

At which point one can really only say "Well, to hell with it. Let's at least make sure the women are warned about the problem. Even if the men are (on the whole) not interested in a mature dialogue."

I think you need to absorb Arthur Tuxedo's point a bit.

Firstly, realistically speaking, men will be offended by automatically being treated as potential rapists, regardless of how many stats you throw around. As a comparison, around 7% of all adults in the US - that's like 24 million people - are victims of identify theft every year. Okay so 7% is less than the 10-25% stat we're hearing about rape - but it's not that much lower than the lower estimates - so we could very well start a "7% or 1 in 14" anti-identity theft campaign... I could probably get that up to 1 in 10 if I expand the definition of identity theft to include things like wearing someone else's name tag to get into a conference. Yet somehow, I doubt you'd appreciate it if I suddenly started treating you like a potential identity thief, even though statistically speaking you very well might be.

Uh... in what way? Would I be offended if you hesitated to give me (or, say, my website that takes microtransactions) personally identifying information like a Social Security number over the Internet? Would I be offended if you were hesitant to reveal your real age and identity on a public message forum? If I started behaving suspiciously and asking for your credit card number, would I have a right to be offended if you not only refused but suddenly became more standoffish toward me?

You (presumably) already do all these things, based on the awareness that I (or anyone) might be out to steal your identity information. You are (presumably) careful about taking risks with that information, knowing that once it gets out there you have little ability to control or limit the consequences.

Because it would be asinine of me to be 'offended' at such actions. They're common sense precautions based on a real interpretation of the threat. And yet these are the precise equivalents of what people actually aware of the threat tend to be recommending. Avoid being isolated with people you don't fully trust, whether because you're in a stairwell or parking lot alone at night, or at home alone in the middle of the day. If someone seems obsessed with you, try to preserve a safe social distance and/or see them only in public. Keep an eye on whether a person has the ability to take 'no' for an answer, and avoid men who don't. Pay attention to who around you seems to have issues with anger management or latent misogyny. And so on.

The idea that anyone in this discourse (aside from about six screaming idiots) is saying "women, all the men you see are RAPISTS so AVOID MEN or they will ALL RAPE YOU" is just... a complete fiction as far as I can tell.

Yes - precautions are always necessary - for both rape and identity theft. But the conversation about identity theft doesn't begin by automatically treating everyone as a potential suspect - it begins by responsibly managing access to your Social Security Number and Credit Card info, etc. The conversation about rape prevention should begin with similar common-sense precautions - not the idea that random strangers are likely rapists. I'm talking about precautions like going out in groups, not going back alone to a house/bedroom of a guy you just met at some bar, etc. I actually know someone who was almost raped - and most people here probably do too - I don't think anyone here wants to minimize this problem. But we have to be practical - as Arthur Tuxedo puts it - we need to get everyone "on board" with this. Starting with an accusative attitude because you have no sympathy for any objections about this is not productive.

Except that there's like six people who are actually starting out accusative. The fraction of people who start out accusative is tiny compared to the fraction of people who are trying to naysay the whole issue to death by (essentially) claiming that the way to avoid rape is "don't dress like a slut" or some bullshit like that.

And my only initial point was that it never helps to play fast and loose with statistics, no matter how good your intentions are. Again - the 1 in 4 stat is widely claimed to apply soley to college campuses, but that's blatantly not true. It includes girls who were raped starting from the age of 14, which could include things like abusive family members, or any number of things that occurred outside of college. It could also include sex that was consensual under certain circumstances. Again, see my earlier global warming example. This shit doesn't help, okay? We all agree rape is a major fucking problem, and the best way to address it is to inform everyone of the danger, provide practical common-sense avoidance tactics for women, and try to change the culture in the long-term by educating young men to the extent that their raging hormones don't obscure the reality that women are actual human beings with their own desires and goals.

I'm still a little unclear on exactly why the "one in four" figure is so obviously inflated. I can concede happily that IF it is inflated it should not be drummed up endlessly...

...But I don't think it's worth spending a lot of energy disputing against it when it is unlikely to cause nearly as much harm as other, more significant things.

I think a lot of the cultural problem comes from the Animal House/John Hughes/American Pie Hollywood tradition that men who don't immediately "score with the ladies" are utter failures, and that "getting some action" during high-school/college is the most significant and self-worth-affirming goal ever. I really have no great suggestions on how to change that sort of culture, as it has deep biological and cultural roots, but it's definitely a contributing factor to the idea that men are "owed" sex - or at least pressured into associating sex with self-worth - so doing things like using drugs or alcohol to encourage a women to have sex (or sometimes outright physically forcing them) is acceptable - and even commendable among male peers.

Agreed.

[PainRack]

I don't think so. My point here is that if we have to choose between relative degrees of harm, we should remove the beam in our own eye before we worry about the speck in someone else's.

It is not the case that an increase in women's ability to speak out about rape, and get rapists held accountable for their actions, automatically means persecution of men. However, we now live in a society where men routinely get away with rape and experience zero consequences, because women are systematically prevented from talking about the crime, while men are given cultural reinforcement to make them think the crime is okay.

The real problem that needs serious effort to remedy here is not "10% of rape accusations are false." It's "10 to 25% of women get raped." Once we have fixed that larger problem, then perhaps we can fine-tune to make sure we haven't accidentally bumped up the 10% of false rape accusations to 11% or 12%.

As I said jester, I do know that's not your intent, but your post is projecting otherwise.
There's a significant difference between "We need to address the problems of rape first" and "it doesn't matter if men get accused of false allegations"


Right now, the problem is that women can get themselves into potentially compromised positions and men exploit this.
The messages should be to avoid potentially compromising situations and to set clear boundaries for women and for men to actually get off their ID horse and not commit rape. There are a great series of such ads regarding the later right now, from youtube videos about a guy saying watch what I'm going to do to this girl and Don't be that Guy.


I'm not sure what the proper action should be towards denial as espoused by the Republican in the OP but that smells to me of politics. For social engineering, Don't Be that Guy is one of the more important aspects of the rape prevention messages right now. People like Praeger......... I don't know what to do but there's got to be a better way to combat his message.

[Simon_Jester]

As I said jester, I do know that's not your intent, but your post is projecting otherwise.

There's a significant difference between "We need to address the problems of rape first" and "it doesn't matter if men get accused of false allegations"

I'm like:

Target #1 is to drastically reduce the extremely high rape rate.

Target #2 (legitimately important but quite a bit less so) is to reduce or at least not increase the (roughly 10-100 times lower) rate of false rape accusations against specific men.

Target #3 (barely even on the radar) is to protect men from having their feelings hurt because the big nasty feminists said mean mildly exaggerated things about the rape rate.

As noted earlier, if men routinely had to modify their behavior as much for fear of false rape accusations as women routinely do to avoid actual rapes... it'd be a different world. Then I'd say that Targets One and Two would be of roughly equal priority.

As it is, they're just not.

It's like, when you're in the middle of a famine, first you worry about getting enough calories for everyone to stay alive. Then you worry about whether one person in 200 has an allergy to the aid food.

That doesn't mean you ignore the question of food allergies or don't think about it or don't have procedures in place to keep people from being endangered by food allergies.

But it would be sheer insanity to say "we shouldn't ship food into the country because 1 in 200 people is allergic and might eat it and die." The consequences of NOT shipping food into the country are a heck of a lot worse.

And either way, the third target is irrelevant. If some men are offended by facts or mildly exaggerated facts about rape, then that is their problem. Spreading the facts is more important than preserving men's feelings by being in denial about just how bad the current situation is for women, and how advantageous it is for actual rapists.

There are a great series of such ads regarding the later right now, from youtube videos about a guy saying watch what I'm going to do to this girl and Don't be that Guy.

Sure. Point is, preventing rapes is most important.

Preventing false accusations of rape (which is still a crime but is on the order of 100 times less common than rapes) is less important but still worthwhile.*

Preventing men from getting hurt feelings because they feel like "10% of men are rapists, watch out for men with these behavior patterns" is somehow a personal insult... is not important.

*Think about it. If 1 in 10 rape accusations is false, and if something like 1 in 5 to 1 in 20 rapes is reported, then for every 50-200 rapes there is ONE false rape accusation. Even supposing that a rape accusation is as damaging as an actual rape, from a utilitarian point of view it's easy to prioritize one problem over the other.

I'm not sure what the proper action should be towards denial as espoused by the Republican in the OP but that smells to me of politics. For social engineering, Don't Be that Guy is one of the more important aspects of the rape prevention messages right now. People like Praeger......... I don't know what to do but there's got to be a better way to combat his message.

Well, the basic issue here is that his message is combated by pointing out that rape is a real problem, which requires at least trying to spread (as accurate as feasible) statistics about its frequency and scale. Somehow.

[PainRack]

As noted earlier, if men routinely had to modify their behavior as much for fear of false rape accusations as women routinely do to avoid actual rapes... it'd be a different world. Then I'd say that Targets One and Two would be of roughly equal priority.

Different worlds then.
I do.

But you're not absorbing the point. Why would maintaining a culture of fear work to reduce rape? Hell, as it is, we are trying to rework rape prevention to remove the stigmatization of fear for women. As in, why should women be afraid to wear slutty clothes and the nugatory use of sluts as a justification for rape?(Slutwalk).
Why should women be the ones to live in a culture of fear?


I HONESTLY don't see how it make sense, from both a practical and moral point of view to craft a message of fear.

And either way, the third target is irrelevant. If some men are offended by facts or mildly exaggerated facts about rape, then that is their problem. Spreading the facts is more important than preserving men's feelings by being in denial about just how bad the current situation is for women, and how advantageous it is for actual rapists.

Except spreading the information that there is a problem of rape in the US and the rape culture, where what men view as "seduction or gaming a woman to get sex or what not is sexual assault and disrespectful and needs to change" doesn't need to involve labeling men as potential rapists.

Preventing men from getting hurt feelings because they feel like "10% of men are rapists, watch out for men with these behavior patterns" is somehow a personal insult... is not important.

[/quote]
Its NOT about preventing men from getting hurt feelings. Its about crafting your message of change SO that it doesn't unfairly create a culture of fear for men, which will be more effective both in actually getting the message across as well as morally correct.

Again. Don't be that Guy is a much better message than Schrodinger rapist.

*Think about it. If 1 in 10 rape accusations is false, and if something like 1 in 5 to 1 in 20 rapes is reported, then for every 50-200 rapes there is ONE false rape accusation. Even supposing that a rape accusation is as damaging as an actual rape, from a utilitarian point of view it's easy to prioritize one problem over the other.

Except false allegations aren't just rape alone, but range from everything from sexual harassment to molestation.

[Simon_Jester]

As noted earlier, if men routinely had to modify their behavior as much for fear of false rape accusations as women routinely do to avoid actual rapes... it'd be a different world. Then I'd say that Targets One and Two would be of roughly equal priority.

Different worlds then.
I do.

Er... as in, you hold that men actually do modify their behavior as much for fear of rape accusations as women do for fear of rapes?

But you're not absorbing the point. Why would maintaining a culture of fear work to reduce rape?

I don't think it would, but I think fixating on this supposed fear of a plague of false rape accusations is a red herring. It's sort of like the role of the "journalistic ethics" defense in the GamerGate thing. Sure, for you maybe it really is about journalistic ethics, but for those five guys over there it's pretty obviously not, it's about shrieking at women who make them feel bad by accusing them of misogyny.

Or in this case, for you maybe it's fear of being accused of rape falsely. But for those five guys over there it's pretty obviously not, it's about making sure their frat brother who likes to put roofies in girls' drinks doesn't get thrown in jail.

Hell, as it is, we are trying to rework rape prevention to remove the stigmatization of fear for women. As in, why should women be afraid to wear slutty clothes and the nugatory use of sluts as a justification for rape?(Slutwalk).
Why should women be the ones to live in a culture of fear?

They shouldn't. My point is that if we are using legitimate statistics, or at most statistics that are maybe somewhat high due to the inherent difficulty of getting ANY accurate statistics on the subject...

...I don't think anyone has grounds for complaint. If those statistics create a culture of fear, then we need to change the culture, not silence the statistics.

I HONESTLY don't see how it make sense, from both a practical and moral point of view to craft a message of fear.

I don't feel that's what's actually being done, though. It is BECAUSE I don't feel that is what's being done that I view the whole "don't spread fear!" as a distraction.

Either a 1 in 4 or a much lower 1 in 8 or 1 in 10 chance of being raped is, indeed, very frightening. Yes, it will cause some fear... but it's a fact that we live in a world that is this scary, so any intelligent response must begin with (informed) fear that motivates us to want things fixed.

I'm reminded of a lecture Herman Kahn recounts giving about nuclear fallout, and predicting that in the fallout from a limited nuclear exchange, the rate of infant birth defects would increase by about 1%. A woman in the audience said she wouldn't want to live in a world where the birth defect rate was 1 in 100. Kahn replied "well then, madam, you have a problem, because the rate is already 4 in 100 right now."

That's insensitive, but he had a point. One cannot start from false pretenses when trying to deal with a serious problem, and persistently trying to downplay the scope of the problem is a great way to start from false pretenses.

And either way, the third target is irrelevant. If some men are offended by facts or mildly exaggerated facts about rape, then that is their problem. Spreading the facts is more important than preserving men's feelings by being in denial about just how bad the current situation is for women, and how advantageous it is for actual rapists.

Except spreading the information that there is a problem of rape in the US and the rape culture, where what men view as "seduction or gaming a woman to get sex or what not is sexual assault and disrespectful and needs to change" doesn't need to involve labeling men as potential rapists.

OK, fine. But if some men are offended and believe that they have just been labeled as potential rapists by someone who spreads accurate information and talks about rape culture...

...Frankly, the feelings of those men are not important to me.

Preventing men from getting hurt feelings because they feel like "10% of men are rapists, watch out for men with these behavior patterns" is somehow a personal insult... is not important.

Its NOT about preventing men from getting hurt feelings. Its about crafting your message of change SO that it doesn't unfairly create a culture of fear for men, which will be more effective both in actually getting the message across as well as morally correct.

Again. Don't be that Guy is a much better message than Schrodinger rapist.

Please note the part where I said 'watch out for men with these behavior patterns...'

The messages we're talking about are not mutually exclusive. I see no problem with spreading BOTH:
1) Statistics about the actual rape rate, in an attempt to emphasize that this is an important problem, and so actual rape victims don't feel like they're alone in the universe, AND
2) Messages designed to demote rather than promote rape culture among men.

*Think about it. If 1 in 10 rape accusations is false, and if something like 1 in 5 to 1 in 20 rapes is reported, then for every 50-200 rapes there is ONE false rape accusation. Even supposing that a rape accusation is as damaging as an actual rape, from a utilitarian point of view it's easy to prioritize one problem over the other.

Except false allegations aren't just rape alone, but range from everything from sexual harassment to molestation.

Is my analysis made incorrect by that?

10% of all sexual misconduct accusations being false would (all else being equal) still mean 10% of rape accusations are false... in which case my analysis applies.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

@Simon_Jester: You're right that reducing the cultural camouflage that can make marginal men more likely to attempt rape is more important than hurting the feelings of men. However, I think you're missing the possibility of blowback. This movement isn't going to get us anywhere if the majority of men don't feel that they're on board with a sense of "we're all in this together". If women go into college with the (probably inaccurate) 1 in 5 statistic in their heads, but no one tells them that the average rapist has multiple victims so the number of perpetrators is closer to 1 in 100 and most of them carry tell-tale warning signs, they might think there are rapists around every corner and treat men accordingly, and that's not going to help...

Except that the number of perpetrators is, by said perpetrators' own admission on anonymous surveys, more like 1 in 10 to 1 in 20. So it is high enough that all women need to be looking out for it, high enough that statistically speaking the average person does in fact personally know someone who has committed rape or will do so in the future.

Yes, but that's according to the 1985 survey that includes consensual but regretted sex under the influence, is it not? I once got drunk with and woke up next to someone who regretted the incident. Does that make me a rapist? I was intoxicated too, so I guess we both assaulted each other? This is an example of using the broadest possible statistic instead of the most accurate one, and the effect is to make men feel like they could get caught up for normal sexual behavior and perceive the sexual assault awareness movement as trying to throw them in prison for having a one-night-stand (most of which involve alcohol). It doesn't help that the conservative media will characterize the movement as doing exactly that even if they don't use broad statistics.

Look, you're going to have a small percentage of men who are rapists, and a larger but still small percentage who reflexively side with accused men and dismiss rape accusations. You're also going to have a small percentage of women who say all straight sex is rape, and a larger minority who feel that sex after drinking is usually rape. That still leaves the vast majority of people somewhere in the middle, and using broad statistics or hyperbole to make the male half of that majority feel that they could lose their freedom over a misunderstanding or conflating them with rape apologists is going to make Fox News and Breitbart's goal of smothering the movement in the crib very easy.

Neither is telling males that they're part of a culture of rape. Even if there's truth to it, it causes people to dig in their heels and fight against a movement they feel is attacking them. Now that marriage equality has reached critical momentum, sexual assault awareness is a great candidate for the next cultural debate, but it's going to fizzle if the tone doesn't become more inclusive.

I support this, but I think that the men participating in this debate have a lot to say about the tenor of the debate. Men who decide to whine and posture rather than listen and think about the problem can sink any attempt at 'dialogue' whether feminist spokespersons are being measured and responsible in their tone or not.

At which point one can really only say "Well, to hell with it. Let's at least make sure the women are warned about the problem. Even if the men are (on the whole) not interested in a mature dialogue."

There's a lot more to it than that. We need much better statistics with a very clear definition of what is and isn't rape that the majority of people can agree with as a starting point. Without that, people are just going to spout their unfounded opinions for a while and the debate will move on unresolved to the latest Islamist group or Hillary's imaginary health problems or whatever.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, but that's according to the 1985 survey that includes consensual but regretted sex under the influence, is it not?

I confess I do not recall where the figure about which survey had men (inadvertently) identifying themselves as rapists.

That still leaves the vast majority of people somewhere in the middle, and using broad statistics or hyperbole to make the male half of that majority feel that they could lose their freedom over a misunderstanding or conflating them with rape apologists is going to make Fox News and Breitbart's goal of smothering the movement in the crib very easy.

Frankly, the existing legal definition strikes me as fine, focusing on "were you too drunk to consent?" The only thing remotely challenging here is designing an appropriate survey...

There's a lot more to it than that. We need much better statistics with a very clear definition of what is and isn't rape that the majority of people can agree with as a starting point. Without that, people are just going to spout their unfounded opinions for a while and the debate will move on unresolved to the latest Islamist group or Hillary's imaginary health problems or whatever.

Possibly, but the issue is serious enough that I'm not a big fan of deciding to punt it down the road pending a redefinition of our terms. Just to give one example of what I'm talking about, progress on civil rights was not made by first spending ten years in scholarly debate about what "racism" means.

Getting stuck in contention over whether your statistics is inflated is a very real trap that a movement can get stuck in, and you're right to point it out. Getting stuck in an endless argument over what the issue really means is another such trap, though.

[Terralthra]

@Simon_Jester: You're right that reducing the cultural camouflage that can make marginal men more likely to attempt rape is more important than hurting the feelings of men. However, I think you're missing the possibility of blowback. This movement isn't going to get us anywhere if the majority of men don't feel that they're on board with a sense of "we're all in this together". If women go into college with the (probably inaccurate) 1 in 5 statistic in their heads, but no one tells them that the average rapist has multiple victims so the number of perpetrators is closer to 1 in 100 and most of them carry tell-tale warning signs, they might think there are rapists around every corner and treat men accordingly, and that's not going to help...

Except that the number of perpetrators is, by said perpetrators' own admission on anonymous surveys, more like 1 in 10 to 1 in 20. So it is high enough that all women need to be looking out for it, high enough that statistically speaking the average person does in fact personally know someone who has committed rape or will do so in the future.

Yes, but that's according to the 1985 survey that includes consensual but regretted sex under the influence, is it not? I once got drunk with and woke up next to someone who regretted the incident. Does that make me a rapist? I was intoxicated too, so I guess we both assaulted each other? This is an example of using the broadest possible statistic instead of the most accurate one, and the effect is to make men feel like they could get caught up for normal sexual behavior and perceive the sexual assault awareness movement as trying to throw them in prison for having a one-night-stand (most of which involve alcohol). It doesn't help that the conservative media will characterize the movement as doing exactly that even if they don't use broad statistics.

Look, you're going to have a small percentage of men who are rapists, and a larger but still small percentage who reflexively side with accused men and dismiss rape accusations. You're also going to have a small percentage of women who say all straight sex is rape, and a larger minority who feel that sex after drinking is usually rape. That still leaves the vast majority of people somewhere in the middle, and using broad statistics or hyperbole to make the male half of that majority feel that they could lose their freedom over a misunderstanding or conflating them with rape apologists is going to make Fox News and Breitbart's goal of smothering the movement in the crib very easy.

No, it's not a bullshit and overexpansive definition used in the study. It's quite reasonable using definitions of rape and sexual assault I'm pretty sure we can all agree on. I'm actually getting tired of having to trot it out, because every time someone mentions rape, this horrible whining sound emerges from some people who think that if only they can characterize the definition of rape as silly, the statistics will go away.

Once again, the study can be found here. It's from 2002.

It was a survey of college-aged males, 1882 of them to be precise. Among other questions, it asked:

1. Have you ever been in a situation where you tried, but for various reasons did not succeed, in having sexual intercourse with an adult by using or threatening to use physical force (twisting their arm, holding them down, etc.) if they did not cooperate?
2. Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did no want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances (e.g., removing their clothes)?
3. Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn't want to because you used or threatened to use physical force (twisting their arm; holding them down, etc.) if they didn't cooperate?
4. Have you ever had oral sex with an adult when they didn't want to because you used or threatened to use physical force (twisting their arm; holding them down, etc.) if they didn't cooperate?

Those questions pretty clearly and unambiguously describe attempted rape, rape by intoxication, rape, and sexual assault. There is no bullshit about "regretting drunk sex."

120 out of 1882 (6%) answered yes to one or more of these questions, indicating they had committed rape, attempted rape, sexual assault, or attempted sexual assault. The majority said yes to #2. Those who answered yes were given another survey attempting to find the number of rapes committed, and the average was 4, though that's somewhat misleading - a minority of those surveyed attempted or committed it once, while a majority (59% or so) had attempted or completed an average of 5.8 rapes each.

As I say every time, keep in mind that despite it being an anonymous survey, there were surely those who took it and realized that checking yes to any of those 4 questions would be an admission of sexual assault, rape, or attempted rape, and checked no when the answer should have been yes. So, the 6% or 1 in 12 figure for college-aged men who are rapists is almost certainly a floor, not a ceiling. In addition, despite stereotypes regarding "frat boys", the average college student is statistically less violent/felonious than non-college-students. Hence, the average rate among the general population would be somewhat higher still.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Thanks for referencing that study, Terralthra. That does lend credence to the 1 in 4 statistic (6% rapists * 4 rapes each), so I concede any doubt about the validity of those estimates. I do stand by the other point about framing the debate inclusively, however.

[slebetman]

Thanks for referencing that study, Terralthra. That does lend credence to the 1 in 4 statistic (6% rapists * 4 rapes each), so I concede any doubt about the validity of those estimates. I do stand by the other point about framing the debate inclusively, however.

Wait, when has the debate ever been exclusive? There isn't even an "inclusiveness" or "exclusiveness" part of the debate. The debate is "rape is a serious/non-marginal problem in colleges/society". That is all the number 20% says. The number 20% does not blame anyone. It just indicates that the problem is not a small one. That's the debate this Dennis Prager guy is talking about. That's the debate the government report talks about. The point you concede is the ENTIRE debate.

The real problem is why men feel threatened when this is pointed out?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The debate is what can we do to reduce the prevalence and under-reporting of attempted and carried-out sexual assault. Having good statistics (which I now realize that we already do) is vital, but it's a starting point for that debate. So far, the tone of the debate has been too adversarial to make headway, although that's probably mostly because of conservative media. Even so, I don't think the term "rape culture" is helpful, as it causes many men to feel accused of something and react with hostility. The main challenge is getting guys to accept that they probably have a friend or acquaintance who does not appropriately value consent and rumors or accusations against that person should not result in stunned disbelief. I don't think most males feel "threatened", as you put it, just that it's a lot easier to do nothing when you don't have the facts.

By the way, when I first read your sentence about men feeling threatened in response to my post, I wanted to tell you to go fuck yourself, so that's a prime example of the exclusive tone that I was talking about. People don't respond well to being told they're part of a criminal culture or that they are threatened by the truth. More likely they just haven't come across a convincing argument yet, and if it took me this long to realize how prevalent sexual assault is, the average person is lot farther away.

[Simon_Jester]

The defensiveness is an understandable response; the basic complaint about it seems to be that adults are supposed to be able to get over their own defensiveness long enough to at least comprehend that a problem exists rather than denying its existence.

I've found that refusal to do this is one of the less charming things about adolescence.

"Uh, Timmy? I'm concerned, because it looks like you copied the last three essays."

"NO I DIDN'T IT WASN'T ME IT WAS THAT INVISIBLE KID AND MY FRIENDS WILL ALL TELL YOU I DIDN'T DO IT"

"Uh... I'm seriously concerned here about your ability to read and write at a functional level. You have an actual problem here and we would LOVE to help you fix it, but we need you to reach out to us about it."

"I DIDN'T DIDN'T DIDN'T DO IT! WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN! WAAAAH!"

This is of course a paraphrase but it captures the essentials. It's very frustrating dealing with that level of kneejerk denial. As Alcoholics Anonymous observes, the first step (or first half of the first step) is realizing you have a serious problem.

Now, this often inspires denial among the 94% or so of men who are not rapists. But I've never understood this. I mean, if someone shows that 6% of men are thieves, I'm not going to get denialist about theft. Theft is a problem. Theft is bad. Measures taken to reduce or deter theft are good.

While I agree that people trying to be effective at reducing the rape rate should NEVER be willfully insulting or hostile towards anyone other than actual rapists... I think that the kneejerk reaction is a problem that can block useful discourse on the issue.

[TheHammer]

Simon, the reason you see such a knee jerk reaction to this issue is that often times men being accused of rape are presumed guilty until proven innocent. The same isn't true of a crime of thievery in most cases.

Further:

Theft is a problem. Theft is bad. Measures taken to reduce or deter theft are good.

Not every solution is "good". Statistically, we know that minorities commit more acts of theft. Therefore if we round them up, or hunt them down "purge" style then thefts will certainly be reduced. But no reasonable person would argue that this is "good".

I think the biggest resistance you'll encounter is the expansion of what "rape" is from the obvious "she said no/resisted" to the much more ambiguous "she wasn't completely enthusiastic".

A fine article (by a woman) on a poor solution to campus rape is California's "yes means yes" law.

http://time.com/3222176/campus-rape-the ... means-yes/

The bill’s supporters praise it as an important step in preventing sexual violence on campus. In fact, it is very unlikely to deter predators or protect victims. Instead, its effect will be to codify vague and capricious rules governing student conduct, to shift the burden of proof to (usually male) students accused of sexual offenses, and to create a disturbing precedent for government regulation of consensual sex.
...
Until now, these sanctions have been voluntarily adopted by colleges; SB-967 gives them the backing of a government mandate. In addition to creating a vaguely and subjectively defined offense of nonconsensual sex, the bill also explicitly places the burden of proof on the accused, who must demonstrate that he (or she) took “reasonable steps … to ascertain whether the complainant affirmatively consented.” When the San Gabriel Valley Tribune asked Lowenthal how an innocent person could prove consent under such a standard, her reply was, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
...
“if both partners were enthusiastic about the sexual encounter, there will be no reason for anyone to report a rape later.” But it’s not always that simple. One of the partners could start feeling ambivalent about an encounter after the fact and reinterpret it as coerced — especially after repeatedly hearing the message that only a clear “yes” constitutes real consent. In essence, advocates of affirmative consent are admitting that they’re not sure what constitutes a violation; they are asking people to trust that the system won’t be abused. This is not how the rule of law works.

[Guardsman Bass]

By the way, when I first read your sentence about men feeling threatened in response to my post, I wanted to tell you to go fuck yourself, so that's a prime example of the exclusive tone that I was talking about. People don't respond well to being told they're part of a criminal culture or that they are threatened by the truth. More likely they just haven't come across a convincing argument yet, and if it took me this long to realize how prevalent sexual assault is, the average person is lot farther away.

A whole ton of men are going to (and have) gotten defensive by the mere fact that women are raising the topic, so worrying about them being butthurt is a lot like worrying about all those #NotAllMen assholes on twitter. But you know what? That doesn't mean change isn't happening just because you're making people uncomfortable. Just look at campus sexual assault - the Title IX lawsuits and heightened media attention has made a lot of people (especially over the conservative spectrum of things) uncomfortable and led to a lot of whining about "railroading" and "false accusations", but it's also finally pushing colleges to take the problem more seriously and reform their sexual assault policies and procedures.

It's the same thing with previous movements. Antiracist campaigns made a lot of white people incredibly uncomfortable and defensive; pro-women's suffrage campaigns made a lot of men defensive; pro-LGBT campaigns made a lot of bigoted straight people very uncomfortable. It's not just about "having the best argument" - the mere fact that you're raising the criticism at all will hurt feelings, but it still needs to happen.

EDIT: Speaking of the antisuffrage stuff, take a look at this piece of antisuffrage art. Notice anything familiar about the tone and "argument"?