For me, alarmist feminist research that comes to radical conclusions don’t pass the sniff test. When someone says 1 in 4 women are raped, I say that’s a heavy burden of proof, and simply stating the word “research” isn’t going to cut it.
Some people actively engage with this kind of research and find pretty severe problems with it. Consider this article on “rape culture” by Christina Hoff Sommers. In response to one feminist rape study by Mary Kross , Sommers points out:
Only about a quarter of the women Koss calls rape victims labeled what happened to them as rape. According to Koss, the answers to the follow-up questions revealed that "only 27 percent" of the women she counted as having been raped labeled themselves as rape victims.[10] Of the remainder, 49 percent said it was "miscommunication," 14 percent said it was a "crime but not rape," and 11 percent said they "don't feel victimized.
And more,
Koss and her colleagues counted as victims of rape any respondent who answered "yes" to the question "Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?" That opened the door wide to regarding as a rape victim anyone who regretted her liaison of the previous night. If your date mixes a pitcher of margaritas and encourages you to drink with him and you accept a drink, have you been "administered" an intoxicant, and has your judgment been impaired? Certainly, if you pass out and are molested, one would call it rape. But if you drink and, while intoxicated, engage in sex that you later come to regret, have you been raped?
The article points out the radical discrepancy between the studies in question and other rape research get much lower figures and don’t draw as much attention. One answer is that women don’t feel comfortable admitting to being raped:
True, women are often extremely reluctant to talk about sexual violence that they have experienced. But the Harris pollsters had asked a lot of other awkward personal questions to which the women responded with candor: six percent said they had considered suicide, five percent admitted to using hard drugs, 10 percent said they had been sexually abused when they were growing up.
The article ends with a plea to end the growing trend of general violence, not just the variety of rape.
Equity feminists find it reasonable to approach the problem of violence against women by addressing the root causes of the general rise in violence and the decline in civility…The real challenge we face in our society is how to reverse the tide of violence.
I would like to see the data on the decline in civility, and the general rise in violence is patently false. Violent crime rates have been going down for decades. For such a great article on un-careful rape alarmism, it’s unfortunate that it ends by appealing to commonsense pessimism.
