The NationStates Feminism Thread IV: Fight Like A Girl!

[Purgatio]

According to Dobash & Dobash, they based their research on interviews with men and women that were part of a criminal justice IPV intervention studied that Dobash conducted in 2000. Thus, the men in the study had already been criminally-convicted of domestic violence. Before you say this skews the results of the study, Dobash & Dobash state specifically that " It should be noted that while the focus of this paper is on women’s violence to a malepartner, the sample is drawn from men who have used violence against a woman part-ner. As such, women’s violence is being examined in the context of men’s violence. While it might be useful to study only women who have been arrested for using non-lethal violence against a male partner, this is such a rare occurrence that it would bedifficult to obtain an adequate sample. As such, women’s violence within the contextof a sample of male abusers may be the most realistic approach to sampling, given that the focus is on violent behaviour and not domestic conflicts, disagreements, arguments, name calling and the sort of ‘aggressive’ behaviour often measured using the CTS and, in turn, defined as violence. As with all samples, this one has its limitations, but this sample has allowed us to open a window on the existing body of knowledge by providing intensive and extensive knowledge about intimate partner violence from both men and women partners, who discussed at length and in great detail their ownviolence and that of their partner."

So the system is so sexist they can't even sample it with the correct population.

Great.

Quelle surprise.

I mean, that's your interpretation of the data. An alternative interpretation, that Johnson and Dobash & Dobash seem to favour, is that cases of female DV against men are rarer, more infrequent, and generally less severe than cases of male DV against women. It all comes down to differing interpretations of the same data, but as Dobash & Dobash have stated, female-on-male DV is simply not as common and rare enough that they couldn't even build up a statistically-significant sample for their study, despite them clearly trying to build one up for that purpose. That should tell you something.

[Galloism]

According to Dobash & Dobash, they based their research on interviews with men and women that were part of a criminal justice IPV intervention studied that Dobash conducted in 2000. Thus, the men in the study had already been criminally-convicted of domestic violence. Before you say this skews the results of the study, Dobash & Dobash state specifically that " It should be noted that while the focus of this paper is on women’s violence to a malepartner, the sample is drawn from men who have used violence against a woman part-ner. As such, women’s violence is being examined in the context of men’s violence. While it might be useful to study only women who have been arrested for using non-lethal violence against a male partner, this is such a rare occurrence that it would bedifficult to obtain an adequate sample. As such, women’s violence within the contextof a sample of male abusers may be the most realistic approach to sampling, given that the focus is on violent behaviour and not domestic conflicts, disagreements, arguments, name calling and the sort of ‘aggressive’ behaviour often measured using the CTS and, in turn, defined as violence. As with all samples, this one has its limitations, but this sample has allowed us to open a window on the existing body of knowledge by providing intensive and extensive knowledge about intimate partner violence from both men and women partners, who discussed at length and in great detail their ownviolence and that of their partner."

That's what the researcher claims, but it's an example of the catch 22 we're discussing here. When you don't skew the results, you end up with figures showing parity. As Galloism said, the justice figures are useful *only when used in comparison to others* because it shows the presence of the bias within the justice system. Your example here shows that bias is so pronounced that studying it means you can't even find enough female abusers to be statistically reliable, and so they have to look outside the system for them.

Well, and notably, they're essentially ignoring the concept of a female batterer - as in, one way battering perpetrated by women - by not sampling that scenario at all. I know research is hard, but given that most violence is reciprocal, but a significant portion is non reciprocal, and the majority of THAT is perpetrated by women, we are completely missing the sample of women who use violence against their domestic partner and the partner does NOT retaliate.

You can't make broad classifications about women's violence without examining the one way matriarchal violence.

[Galloism]

So the system is so sexist they can't even sample it with the correct population.

Great.

Quelle surprise.

I mean, that's your interpretation of the data. An alternative interpretation, that Johnson and Dobash & Dobash seem to favour, is that cases of female DV against men are rarer, more infrequent, and generally less severe than cases of male DV against women. It all comes down to differing interpretations of the same data, but as Dobash & Dobash have stated, female-on-male DV is simply not as common and rare enough that they couldn't even build up a statistically-significant sample for their study, despite them clearly trying to build one up for that purpose. That should tell you something.

Data doesn't support that unless you survey the wrong population.

The majority of violence is reciprocal (that is, both partners are aggressively violent at different times - not counting defensive). The majority of nonreciprocal violence is perpetrated by women. The least common form of violence is the classic male batterer.

And yet, the justice system is so sexist in this regard they can't even build up a sample of women battering.

What does that tell you?

[Ostroeuropa]

Dude your whole "men bear the burden of flirting" argument has literally nothing to do with rape and sexual assault, and your cooking example doesn't help to back that up. It honestly doesn't matter whether men or women are 'expected' to flirt or make the first move, and therefore 'bungle it up' (a very trivialising way of describing sexual assault, which is far more than just messing up your flirtation). Whether or not men or women are expected to flirt first, the fact remains that women are more likely to be the victims of rape and sexual violence. Whether that would be true in some alternative universe whether men and women flirt at equal rates is kind of irrelevant to the question of which sex is more likely to suffer lifetime sexual violence in the current, present world that we live in. And no, sexual assault is not the "result of a clumsy, inconsiderate, and overly aggressive flirtation". It's the result of not respect the bodily and seuxal autonomy of another person, and viewing them as an object, property, or play-thing that you can use for your own sexual gratification, disregarding their wishes and desires in the process. Sexual assault is not 'flirtation gone wrong'. Its sexual violence that comes from a particularly toxic type of sexually-entitled mentality and the sexual objectification of women.

Its not smearing men because, again, the statistics from the CDC and ONS both show women are more likely to suffer rape and sexual violence than men, so clearly there's a gendered aspect to sexual violence that we can't ignore. Its not saying every man is a rapist or women can't rape men, which would be smearing men.

You claim it's got nothing to do with it... but then start explaining what it's got to do with it and acknowledge that there's a possible world where flirtation rates were equal where it wouldn't be the case that women are most victims of sexual assault.

But then you start rambling about how it's down to a bunch of negative personality traits and mentalities about sex and the opposite gender, without acknowledging *Women have those traits too*, and so the source of the disparity *is not these traits*, the source of the disparity is women not putting the work in.

It might be true to say sexual assault is rooted in the traits you outline, but they *aren't* why it happens to women more.

[Galloism]

wrong post

[Purgatio]

This has literally nothing to do with 'feminism' or the fact that your rapist was a woman. I was raped by a man and the system protected him too. The problem is a criminal justice system that is pathologically unkind and suspicious to complainants in such cases, juries and judges and prosecutors and police officers that are so distrusting of accusers whose accounts are even just slightly less-than-perfect, resulting in such an under-prosecution and under-conviction of both sexual offences and DV-related offences.

You're taking a tragic event that happened to you and your brother and blaming it on an entire political movement when they have nothing to do with one another. The implication is that your rapist and his abuser would have been arrested if they were both men, which is categorically untrue, as evidenced by how unlikely it is for male rapists and male batterers to be arrested, prosecuted, and convicted.

The police likely wouldn't have laughed.

And I do mean big belly guffaw laughed.

But in any case, I'm not really talking about the police response except as part of a wider societal problem - framing these things as "women's issues" and "almost always perpetrated by men" leaves a large number of victims literally out in the cold with no recourse.

Its pretending that male perpetrators of sexual violence and DV against women don't get away with that behaviour on a fairly regular basis, as it stands. According to the CRVAW in the UK (https://opsvaw.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/07_Rape_Prosecution.pdf), only 18% of prosecuted rapes of adult women in the UK result in a criminal conviction, and when you factor in that not all rapes of women are reported to the police in the first place, and not all of those reported rapes result in prosecutions, CRVAW found that a meagre 3.4% of all rapes of women in the UK result in criminal conviction.

This is a problem, and is why VAW is a problem and why feminism remains so necessary. What happened to you and your brother was terrible, just like what happened to me was terrible, but I don't shake my fist at feminists for not talking about male-on-male rapes more, and you shouldn't blame the feminist movement as the culprit for why those two women weren't brought to justice. This is ultimately a systemic failure of a criminal justice system that fails to take sexual violence and intimate partner violence with the severity and gravity it deserves, and fails to treat complainants with the respect, trust, and confidence, that complainants ought to receive when navigating through that process. This is a problem that we can work to fix without the knee-jerk reaction of just blaming an entire political movement for what happened to you and your brother, which is not productive and literally solves nothing.

[Purgatio]

wrong post

I did include men forced to penetrate women. In the numbers. 1 in 14 men are made to penetrate a woman against their will (or attempted thereof). 1 in 5 women suffer rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. The CDC isn't sexist, they specifically recognised and accounted for both types of rape and non-consensual penetration (i.e. when the person being penetrated is not consenting, when the person penetrating is not consenting). Women still suffer rape more often than men.

[Galloism]

The police likely wouldn't have laughed.

And I do mean big belly guffaw laughed.

But in any case, I'm not really talking about the police response except as part of a wider societal problem - framing these things as "women's issues" and "almost always perpetrated by men" leaves a large number of victims literally out in the cold with no recourse.

Its pretending that male perpetrators of sexual violence and DV against women don't get away with that behaviour on a fairly regular basis, as it stands. According to the CRVAW in the UK (https://opsvaw.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/07_Rape_Prosecution.pdf), only 18% of prosecuted rapes of adult women in the UK result in a criminal conviction, and when you factor in that not all rapes of women are reported to the police in the first place, and not all of those reported rapes result in prosecutions, CRVAW found that a meagre 3.4% of all rapes of women in the UK result in criminal conviction.

This is a problem, and is why VAW is a problem and why feminism remains so necessary. What happened to you and your brother was terrible, just like what happened to me was terrible, but I don't shake my fist at feminists for not talking about male-on-male rapes more, and you shouldn't blame the feminist movement as the culprit for why those two women weren't brought to justice. This is ultimately a systemic failure of a criminal justice system that fails to take sexual violence and intimate partner violence with the severity and gravity it deserves, and fails to treat complainants with the respect, trust, and confidence, that complainants ought to receive when navigating through that process. This is a problem that we can work to fix without the knee-jerk reaction of just blaming an entire political movement for what happened to you and your brother, which is not productive and literally solves nothing.

I'm aware. But keep in mind, women who rape men are literally not rapists in the UK because the law explicitly excludes that scenario from being counted as rape. I'm aware the conviction rate for rapists isn't good for women, and I recognize your point. I'm not trying to diminish your point.

But there's a substantial difference between "we try to prosecute that as rape, and a lot of times it doesn't work", and "that's not rape. see? the law says it's not rape for you to be forced into sex by a woman."

These things are not equivalent problems. "It's not rape under the law, go away" and "sorry, we weren't able to convict your rapist" are both problems, but they are not equivalent problems. Do you understand?

[Ostroeuropa]

wrong post

I did include men forced to penetrate women. In the numbers. 1 in 14 men are made to penetrate a woman against their will (or attempted thereof). 1 in 5 women suffer rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. The CDC isn't sexist, they specifically recognised and accounted for both types of rape and non-consensual penetration (i.e. when the person being penetrated is not consenting, when the person penetrating is not consenting). Women still suffer rape more often than men.

Why are you using the lifetime figures to discuss whether men and women *ARE* raped at different rates?
Why don't you use the yearly figures, which are much more relevant for discussing *The present tense*?

[Galloism]

wrong post

I did include men forced to penetrate women. In the numbers. 1 in 14 men are made to penetrate a woman against their will (or attempted thereof). 1 in 5 women suffer rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. The CDC isn't sexist, they specifically recognised and accounted for both types of rape and non-consensual penetration (i.e. when the person being penetrated is not consenting, when the person penetrating is not consenting). Women still suffer rape more often than men.

And in the current timeframe, about the same number of men and women are raped each year (about 0.8%).

(Not counting prison rapes, except by accident - the CDC doesn't survey prisons, but it might survey people who just got out)

[Purgatio]

I mean, that's your interpretation of the data. An alternative interpretation, that Johnson and Dobash & Dobash seem to favour, is that cases of female DV against men are rarer, more infrequent, and generally less severe than cases of male DV against women. It all comes down to differing interpretations of the same data, but as Dobash & Dobash have stated, female-on-male DV is simply not as common and rare enough that they couldn't even build up a statistically-significant sample for their study, despite them clearly trying to build one up for that purpose. That should tell you something.

Data doesn't support that unless you survey the wrong population.

The majority of violence is reciprocal (that is, both partners are aggressively violent at different times - not counting defensive). The majority of nonreciprocal violence is perpetrated by women. The least common form of violence is the classic male batterer.

And yet, the justice system is so sexist in this regard they can't even build up a sample of women battering.

What does that tell you?

Well the data does survey that, given that a crime survey in England and Wales shows that in 2018, 7.5% of women and 3.8% of men experienced domestic violence. And if you think that's down to men under-reporting or not recognising their experiences as DV or what not, I think the homicide numbers are particularly-instructive (since there's generally no confusion or ambiguity about when someone's been killed by their intimate partner, death tends to be far more conclusive I'm sure you'd agree). 74% of intimate partner homicide victims are women. Only 13% of non-domestic homicide victims are women. The data more than amply supports a gender-asymmetry hypothesis here.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabusevictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2019

[Purgatio]

Its pretending that male perpetrators of sexual violence and DV against women don't get away with that behaviour on a fairly regular basis, as it stands. According to the CRVAW in the UK (https://opsvaw.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/07_Rape_Prosecution.pdf), only 18% of prosecuted rapes of adult women in the UK result in a criminal conviction, and when you factor in that not all rapes of women are reported to the police in the first place, and not all of those reported rapes result in prosecutions, CRVAW found that a meagre 3.4% of all rapes of women in the UK result in criminal conviction.

This is a problem, and is why VAW is a problem and why feminism remains so necessary. What happened to you and your brother was terrible, just like what happened to me was terrible, but I don't shake my fist at feminists for not talking about male-on-male rapes more, and you shouldn't blame the feminist movement as the culprit for why those two women weren't brought to justice. This is ultimately a systemic failure of a criminal justice system that fails to take sexual violence and intimate partner violence with the severity and gravity it deserves, and fails to treat complainants with the respect, trust, and confidence, that complainants ought to receive when navigating through that process. This is a problem that we can work to fix without the knee-jerk reaction of just blaming an entire political movement for what happened to you and your brother, which is not productive and literally solves nothing.

I'm aware. But keep in mind, women who rape men are literally not rapists in the UK because the law explicitly excludes that scenario from being counted as rape. I'm aware the conviction rate for rapists isn't good for women, and I recognize your point. I'm not trying to diminish your point.

But there's a substantial difference between "we try to prosecute that as rape, and a lot of times it doesn't work", and "that's not rape. see? the law says it's not rape for you to be forced into sex by a woman."

These things are not equivalent problems. "It's not rape under the law, go away" and "sorry, we weren't able to convict your rapist" are both problems, but they are not equivalent problems. Do you understand?

Its still illegal. It might not be called 'rape' under the law but its still prohibited under Section 4 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, of inducing sexual activity without consent. It's still a sexual offence and it is still criminal behaviour on her part.

[Purgatio]

I did include men forced to penetrate women. In the numbers. 1 in 14 men are made to penetrate a woman against their will (or attempted thereof). 1 in 5 women suffer rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. The CDC isn't sexist, they specifically recognised and accounted for both types of rape and non-consensual penetration (i.e. when the person being penetrated is not consenting, when the person penetrating is not consenting). Women still suffer rape more often than men.

Why are you using the lifetime figures to discuss whether men and women *ARE* raped at different rates?
Why don't you use the yearly figures, which are much more relevant for discussing *The present tense*?

I don't see the issue with using lifetime figures, since it gives an indication of whether an individual man is likely to suffer sexual violence in his life at the same likelihood as an individual woman in her life. The figures are perfectly comparable and, unlike an annual statistic, they give an indication of the likelihood of a man suffering sexual violence, versus a woman. X% of men are raped in one year doesn't tell you the likelihood that an individual man has to be raped, period.

[Ostroeuropa]

Data doesn't support that unless you survey the wrong population.

The majority of violence is reciprocal (that is, both partners are aggressively violent at different times - not counting defensive). The majority of nonreciprocal violence is perpetrated by women. The least common form of violence is the classic male batterer.

And yet, the justice system is so sexist in this regard they can't even build up a sample of women battering.

What does that tell you?

Well the data does survey that, given that a crime survey in England and Wales shows that in 2018, 7.5% of women and 3.8% of men experienced domestic violence. And if you think that's down to men under-reporting or not recognising their experiences as DV or what not, I think the homicide numbers are particularly-instructive (since there's generally no confusion or ambiguity about when someone's been killed by their intimate partner, death tends to be far more conclusive I'm sure you'd agree). 74% of intimate partner homicide victims are women. Only 13% of non-domestic homicide victims are women. The data more than amply supports a gender-asymmetry hypothesis here.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabusevictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2019

The homicide numbers are a reflection of biological reality and return to the point I made about feminism up and deciding to characterize the problem as existing because men have an evil set of views, rather than admit women are physically weaker. It will always be the case if two people are violent and one is stronger, and you repeat that experiment multiple times, the stronger party will end up killing the weaker one more often. It is nothing to do with their mindset or how they were socialized.

[Galloism]

Data doesn't support that unless you survey the wrong population.

The majority of violence is reciprocal (that is, both partners are aggressively violent at different times - not counting defensive). The majority of nonreciprocal violence is perpetrated by women. The least common form of violence is the classic male batterer.

And yet, the justice system is so sexist in this regard they can't even build up a sample of women battering.

What does that tell you?

Well the data does survey that, given that a crime survey in England and Wales shows that in 2018, 7.5% of women and 3.8% of men experienced domestic violence. And if you think that's down to men under-reporting or not recognising their experiences as DV or what not, I think the homicide numbers are particularly-instructive (since there's generally no confusion or ambiguity about when someone's been killed by their intimate partner, death tends to be far more conclusive I'm sure you'd agree). 74% of intimate partner homicide victims are women. Only 13% of non-domestic homicide victims are women. The data more than amply supports a gender-asymmetry hypothesis here.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabusevictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2019

I will agree that at the higher end of violence (death), adult women suffer more than adult men. Women's battering is less likely to lead to death or serious injury.

However, given women are more likely to be first to strike (if you think about social influences, there's a logical reason for that to be the case - we tell them their violence isn't bad and even laugh if they do it in public), there's probably a fair number of those women killed in self defense, and we just don't recognize that as a society when that happens.

There's a reason men's rate of death in domestic violence scenarios dropped dramatically when we introduce women's shelters. This was a good thing. It's because desperate women were killing their abusive partners in self defense. It's not unlikely that women's didn't really budge for the same reason.

There's a reason CTS was developed and, although it's not perfect, people don't always recognize what's been done to them as a crime, so we have to ask specific behavioral questions to get the right answers. Asking "have you ever been a victim of domestic violence" is likely to substantially suppress male reporting. Asking "have you ever been punched by your partner?" will get a lot of "yes's" where the former answer go "no's".

[Ostroeuropa]

Why are you using the lifetime figures to discuss whether men and women *ARE* raped at different rates?
Why don't you use the yearly figures, which are much more relevant for discussing *The present tense*?

I don't see the issue with using lifetime figures, since it gives an indication of whether an individual man is likely to suffer sexual violence in his life at the same likelihood as an individual woman in her life. The figures are perfectly comparable and, unlike an annual statistic, they give an indication of the likelihood of a man suffering sexual violence, versus a woman. X% of men are raped in one year doesn't tell you the likelihood that an individual man has to be raped, period.

They really don't, given that society today is vastly different to society 30 years ago, let alone 50 or 60 years ago. They're not useful for determining future likelihoods compared to the yearly statistics.

[Purgatio]

Dude your whole "men bear the burden of flirting" argument has literally nothing to do with rape and sexual assault, and your cooking example doesn't help to back that up. It honestly doesn't matter whether men or women are 'expected' to flirt or make the first move, and therefore 'bungle it up' (a very trivialising way of describing sexual assault, which is far more than just messing up your flirtation). Whether or not men or women are expected to flirt first, the fact remains that women are more likely to be the victims of rape and sexual violence. Whether that would be true in some alternative universe whether men and women flirt at equal rates is kind of irrelevant to the question of which sex is more likely to suffer lifetime sexual violence in the current, present world that we live in. And no, sexual assault is not the "result of a clumsy, inconsiderate, and overly aggressive flirtation". It's the result of not respect the bodily and seuxal autonomy of another person, and viewing them as an object, property, or play-thing that you can use for your own sexual gratification, disregarding their wishes and desires in the process. Sexual assault is not 'flirtation gone wrong'. Its sexual violence that comes from a particularly toxic type of sexually-entitled mentality and the sexual objectification of women.

Its not smearing men because, again, the statistics from the CDC and ONS both show women are more likely to suffer rape and sexual violence than men, so clearly there's a gendered aspect to sexual violence that we can't ignore. Its not saying every man is a rapist or women can't rape men, which would be smearing men.

You claim it's got nothing to do with it... but then start explaining what it's got to do with it and acknowledge that there's a possible world where flirtation rates were equal where it wouldn't be the case that women are most victims of sexual assault.

But then you start rambling about how it's down to a bunch of negative personality traits and mentalities about sex and the opposite gender, without acknowledging *Women have those traits too*, and so the source of the disparity *is not these traits*, the source of the disparity is women not putting the work in.

It might be true to say sexual assault is rooted in the traits you outline, but they *aren't* why it happens to women more.

Its not "negative personality traits", your issue is you think I'm pathologising or insulting masculinity or male behaviour, when I'm really not, I'm trying to point to a broader problem of sexual objectification and a culture that encourages or fetishises male sexual dominance over women as the epitome of 'manhood' or a way to be a real man, and stigmatises men who don't behave in a stereotypically-masculine and sexually-dominant fashion in their treatment of women, and how that kind of culture can naturally contribute to the problem of sexual violence. The issue is you keep taking broader statements about socio-cultural problems and reducing them to personal or vitriolic accusations against the personality of men, which is really not the point. "This is a problem in our society which we need to fix" is very different from "men are terrible, I hate men", but you keep conflating the two.

[Ostroeuropa]

I'm aware. But keep in mind, women who rape men are literally not rapists in the UK because the law explicitly excludes that scenario from being counted as rape. I'm aware the conviction rate for rapists isn't good for women, and I recognize your point. I'm not trying to diminish your point.

But there's a substantial difference between "we try to prosecute that as rape, and a lot of times it doesn't work", and "that's not rape. see? the law says it's not rape for you to be forced into sex by a woman."

These things are not equivalent problems. "It's not rape under the law, go away" and "sorry, we weren't able to convict your rapist" are both problems, but they are not equivalent problems. Do you understand?

Its still illegal. It might not be called 'rape' under the law but its still prohibited under Section 4 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, of inducing sexual activity without consent. It's still a sexual offence and it is still criminal behaviour on her part.

It's treated as a lesser crime. While the theoretical maximum sentence is the same, the standard sentence is lower. With aggravating circusmtances (Such as, the woman kidnapped and raped a man VS a man raped a woman), they will be treated the same as one without. But comparing two rapes without aggravating factors, the sentence is not the same.

[Galloism]

I'm aware. But keep in mind, women who rape men are literally not rapists in the UK because the law explicitly excludes that scenario from being counted as rape. I'm aware the conviction rate for rapists isn't good for women, and I recognize your point. I'm not trying to diminish your point.

But there's a substantial difference between "we try to prosecute that as rape, and a lot of times it doesn't work", and "that's not rape. see? the law says it's not rape for you to be forced into sex by a woman."

These things are not equivalent problems. "It's not rape under the law, go away" and "sorry, we weren't able to convict your rapist" are both problems, but they are not equivalent problems. Do you understand?

Its still illegal. It might not be called 'rape' under the law but its still prohibited under Section 4 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, of inducing sexual activity without consent. It's still a sexual offence and it is still criminal behaviour on her part.

I understand, but words have impact and meaning. When we repeatedly reclassify things as "not rape" based on the gender of the perpetrator and victim, it drives a social narrative. Since the lay person sees "rape" as sex without consent, when you say that 90 or 99 percent of victims of rape are women repeatedly (whatever the number is today), and women never commit rape (which is impossible for them in the UK), it means that the person is even less likely to recognize what happened as rape. The police are less likely to recognize it as rape. Juries are less likely to convict for the same reason - because they're told repeatedly this never happens.

When you believe something basically never happens, it requires a much higher level of proof to convict. Hence why there's almost no convictions for that scenario.

[Galloism]

I don't see the issue with using lifetime figures, since it gives an indication of whether an individual man is likely to suffer sexual violence in his life at the same likelihood as an individual woman in her life. The figures are perfectly comparable and, unlike an annual statistic, they give an indication of the likelihood of a man suffering sexual violence, versus a woman. X% of men are raped in one year doesn't tell you the likelihood that an individual man has to be raped, period.

They really don't, given that society today is vastly different to society 30 years ago, let alone 50 or 60 years ago. They're not useful for determining future likelihoods compared to the yearly statistics.

Besides that, memory is fickle and influenced by society.

I did a post on this - there's probably a large number of underage boys raped by teachers or relatives that reclassify it as not rape. The data's a little thin, but it's suggestive:

Ok, I know this is going to get a hell of a lot of feedback (at various gloating/loathing/fawning/random accusations of sexism levels, depending on the poster), but I've been putting this together for a while and I think I'm ready to have it critiqued.

Here's my assertion:

I think men and women are raped at approximately equal rates, give or take a few percentage points.

I can't quite prove it yet, but the data is suggestive. Let's go through it.

As you well know by now, the CDC reports that each year approximately as many men are raped as women if one uses a nonsexist definition of rape (unlike them) and include men forced to penetrate women.

Links here:

https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/ ... 2010-a.pdf

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrht ... ss6308a1_e

https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/ ... rtBook.pdf

We've been over these studies multiple times on NSG. If you need an explanation of the numbers, I can provide links to my old posts and threads.

As you also well know, the only reason that that is not included as rape in the statistical findings is due to the efforts of Mary Koss and her ilk, starting with her 1993 "detecting the scope of rape" study.

http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/wp ... agraph.pdf

Ok, why is this important? Because our memory sucks, and we tend to remember things in accordance with what society tells us to. Data telling us that men are never raped leads to the following:

http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/84762/1/Revi ... s_rape.pdf

As such, in their experiences some of the men explicitly documented that they did not report their experience to the police or indeed to anyone else for fear of stigmatisation and disbelief:

...

It’s one thing to deal with the aftereffect of being raped, but it also was a secondary hit for me — oh, you’re a guy, how could you be raped by a woman, that makes no sense … I was afraid to talk to anybody about it because of the stigma I felt I would receive in talking about it (Anderson et al., N.D).

Men KNOW that no one will believe them if they've been raped. Some stay silent and just don't tell anyone for fear of being mocked, but others do this:

Finally, one compelled penetration victim noted how he did not truthfully disclose what had happened, instead framing his experience to others as one that involved consensual sex in order to maintain his masculinity:

At that point, I decided to own it. Because if I owned it, it wasn't embarrassing and it didn't strip me of my masculinity. I had never heard of this happening to anybody else, and researching it online made my problem seem more real to me, which was frightening. Panic flooded me and all I wanted to do was scrub my soul of everything that was demoralising and demasculinising about the experience. My interpretation became consensual sex, and I proclaimed that sex was awesome, even though I had no clue what it felt like at all. I bragged to my neighbors, who could hear her wailing through paper-thin walls. The more I bragged, the more the agony subsided

A re-framing of the event. Here's the thing: if you repeat a lie over and over again for a sufficient timeframe, it BECOMES the truth to you. Our memory is like a telephone game. Also despite being attributed to Joseph Goebbels, he probably never said it, except it's asserted often enough it might become true (which could be the joke).

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2 ... phone-game

We can see this effect when it comes to analyzing adult recollections of childhood sexual abuse:

https://www.jimhopper.com/pdf/Widom1997.pdf

It is interesting that less than 1/5 (16%) of men with documented cases of sexual abuse considered their early experiences to be sexual abuse, compared with 64% of the sexually abused women.

So these were men and women with documented cases of sexual abuse. Documented. 36% of women and 84% of men had mentally erased that it was abuse. Both men and women do this, incidentally, but men do at 233% the rate of women. (Normal caveats about small sample size, more research, etc)

What's interesting about that is that a study by David Finkelhor shows 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of childhood sexual abuse.

http://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporti ... statistics

However, if you paste the "forgetting" section into that, you get (20%/64)*100 = 31.25% of girls, and (5%/16)*100 = 31.25% of boys.

And yes, that implies about 1/3 of children, of both genders, suffer sexual abuse. Proof? Not quite. Suggestive, however.

Combine that with the year by year study of adults and you wind up that there's suggestive evidence that men and women suffer sexual abuse at roughly equal rates as children, and suffer rape at roughly equal rates as adults. It's just men erase theirs.

Thoughts, NSG?

This will mess with the lifetime numbers.

[Ostroeuropa]

You claim it's got nothing to do with it... but then start explaining what it's got to do with it and acknowledge that there's a possible world where flirtation rates were equal where it wouldn't be the case that women are most victims of sexual assault.

But then you start rambling about how it's down to a bunch of negative personality traits and mentalities about sex and the opposite gender, without acknowledging *Women have those traits too*, and so the source of the disparity *is not these traits*, the source of the disparity is women not putting the work in.

It might be true to say sexual assault is rooted in the traits you outline, but they *aren't* why it happens to women more.

Its not "negative personality traits", your issue is you think I'm pathologising or insulting masculinity or male behaviour, when I'm really not, I'm trying to point to a broader problem of sexual objectification and a culture that encourages or fetishises male sexual dominance over women as the epitome of 'manhood' or a way to be a real man, and stigmatises men who don't behave in a stereotypically-masculine and sexually-dominant fashion in their treatment of women, and how that kind of culture can naturally contribute to the problem of sexual violence. The issue is you keep taking broader statements about socio-cultural problems and reducing them to personal or vitriolic accusations against the personality of men, which is really not the point. "This is a problem in our society which we need to fix" is very different from "men are terrible, I hate men", but you keep conflating the two.

The problem is that's all bollocks mate. It's pointing out trends that don't exist, at least with regards to men. It's possible those trends exist in general for both men and women and are worth talking about, but specifically focusing in on how they exit *for men* very much is demonizing them. Making out there's a socio-cultural problem that produces this mindset in men specifically is false and demonizes them, precisely because it sets out a notion of "We need to fix this" by focusing on *men in particular* and how they are socialized, as though that will fix the problem.

When as I previously noted, the source of the disparity is *not* how men are socialized, but rather, how women are socialized not to do their share of the labor for flirtation.

It's also ignoring that these trends have a measurable impact on womens in group bias and prejudice against men. So whether you think you're not saying "Men are terrible, I hate men", the *impact* of what you're saying is pretty much that.

If I wrote thousands of books about how murder was a jewish trait because I fiddled with stats and ignored evidence against my hypothesis, and then said "I'm not demonizing Jews, i'm just talking about how society trains Jews to be murderers, and we need to fix that", that would be anti-Semitic, don't you think?

[Purgatio]

Well the data does survey that, given that a crime survey in England and Wales shows that in 2018, 7.5% of women and 3.8% of men experienced domestic violence. And if you think that's down to men under-reporting or not recognising their experiences as DV or what not, I think the homicide numbers are particularly-instructive (since there's generally no confusion or ambiguity about when someone's been killed by their intimate partner, death tends to be far more conclusive I'm sure you'd agree). 74% of intimate partner homicide victims are women. Only 13% of non-domestic homicide victims are women. The data more than amply supports a gender-asymmetry hypothesis here.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabusevictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2019

I will agree that at the higher end of violence (death), adult women suffer more than adult men. Women's battering is less likely to lead to death or serious injury.

However, given women are more likely to be first to strike (if you think about social influences, there's a logical reason for that to be the case - we tell them their violence isn't bad and even laugh if they do it in public), there's probably a fair number of those women killed in self defense, and we just don't recognize that as a society when that happens.

There's a reason men's rate of death in domestic violence scenarios dropped dramatically when we introduce women's shelters. This was a good thing. It's because desperate women were killing their abusive partners in self defense. It's not unlikely that women's didn't really budge for the same reason.

There's a reason CTS was developed and, although it's not perfect, people don't always recognize what's been done to them as a crime, so we have to ask specific behavioral questions to get the right answers. Asking "have you ever been a victim of domestic violence" is likely to substantially suppress male reporting. Asking "have you ever been punched by your partner?" will get a lot of "yes's" where the former answer go "no's".

But thats precisely the point Dobash & Dobash was making. Male DV against women is, generally, more severe, more violent, and more frequent or persistent, than female DV against men, which tends to be less severe and more sporadic/infrequent in quantity. And the statistics do seem to suggest that male DV against women tends to carry more severe outcomes, whether you measure it by the quantity of DV (more than 10 separate DV incidents), or lethality (homicide), or outcome (likelihood to report a physical injury), female DV victims are far more likely to report these severe outcomes than male DV victims (http://www.refuge.org.uk/files/Statistics-domestic-violence-and-gender.pdf). The same is true of the CDC study finding female DV victims were significantly more likely to report IPV-related impacts from said DV than male DV victims (https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/cdc_nisvs_ipv_report_2013_v17_single_a.pdf). For instance, 24.3% of women experienced severe intimate partner violence, compared to 13.8% of men. 1 in 3 women reported being slapped, pushed or shoved, compared to 1 in 4 men. Women were more likely to be stalked than men. Etc. etc.

[Purgatio]

Its still illegal. It might not be called 'rape' under the law but its still prohibited under Section 4 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, of inducing sexual activity without consent. It's still a sexual offence and it is still criminal behaviour on her part.

I understand, but words have impact and meaning. When we repeatedly reclassify things as "not rape" based on the gender of the perpetrator and victim, it drives a social narrative. Since the lay person sees "rape" as sex without consent, when you say that 90 or 99 percent of victims of rape are women repeatedly (whatever the number is today), and women never commit rape (which is impossible for them in the UK), it means that the person is even less likely to recognize what happened as rape. The police are less likely to recognize it as rape. Juries are less likely to convict for the same reason - because they're told repeatedly this never happens.

When you believe something basically never happens, it requires a much higher level of proof to convict. Hence why there's almost no convictions for that scenario.

Its not based on the gender of the victim, btw. Just the gender (or sex, rather) of the perpetrator. What happened to me in the UK when I was at Oxford is considered rape under Section 1 of the SOA 2003, even though I'm male and my rapist was male. The discrimination is solely on the perpetrator end, not the victim end. Both men and women can be victims of rape under UK law. But only biological males can commit rape. I agree that that's discrimination as well, but ultimately a man being forced to penetrate a woman is still criminal behaviour under UK law, and still considered a sexual offence.

I also don't see why it would result in less convictions, as long as the act fits the definition of Section 4 of the SOA 2003 of non-consensual sexual activity, and being coerced or forced to penetrate someone with your penis quite obviously fits the legal definition.

[Purgatio]

Its not "negative personality traits", your issue is you think I'm pathologising or insulting masculinity or male behaviour, when I'm really not, I'm trying to point to a broader problem of sexual objectification and a culture that encourages or fetishises male sexual dominance over women as the epitome of 'manhood' or a way to be a real man, and stigmatises men who don't behave in a stereotypically-masculine and sexually-dominant fashion in their treatment of women, and how that kind of culture can naturally contribute to the problem of sexual violence. The issue is you keep taking broader statements about socio-cultural problems and reducing them to personal or vitriolic accusations against the personality of men, which is really not the point. "This is a problem in our society which we need to fix" is very different from "men are terrible, I hate men", but you keep conflating the two.

The problem is that's all bollocks mate. It's pointing out trends that don't exist, at least with regards to men. It's possible those trends exist in general for both men and women and are worth talking about, but specifically focusing in on how they exit *for men* very much is demonizing them. Making out there's a socio-cultural problem that produces this mindset in men specifically is false and demonizes them, precisely because it sets out a notion of "We need to fix this" by focusing on *men in particular* and how they are socialized, as though that will fix the problem.

When as I previously noted, the source of the disparity is *not* how men are socialized, but rather, how women are socialized not to do their share of the labor for flirtation.

It's also ignoring that these trends have a measurable impact on womens in group bias and prejudice against men. So whether you think you're not saying "Men are terrible, I hate men", the *impact* of what you're saying is pretty much that.

If I wrote thousands of books about how murder was a jewish trait because I fiddled with stats and ignored evidence against my hypothesis, and then said "I'm not demonizing Jews, i'm just talking about how society trains Jews to be murderers, and we need to fix that", that would be anti-Semitic, don't you think?

Dude no, sexual objectification and sexual entitlement has nothing to do with women not 'putting in effort' to flirt. What the hell. Women are not responsible for getting sexually-assaulted because they aren't more sexually-aggressive with men or don't make the first move. That's a really, really 'hot' take my dude.

[Ostroeuropa]

The problem is that's all bollocks mate. It's pointing out trends that don't exist, at least with regards to men. It's possible those trends exist in general for both men and women and are worth talking about, but specifically focusing in on how they exit *for men* very much is demonizing them. Making out there's a socio-cultural problem that produces this mindset in men specifically is false and demonizes them, precisely because it sets out a notion of "We need to fix this" by focusing on *men in particular* and how they are socialized, as though that will fix the problem.

When as I previously noted, the source of the disparity is *not* how men are socialized, but rather, how women are socialized not to do their share of the labor for flirtation.

It's also ignoring that these trends have a measurable impact on womens in group bias and prejudice against men. So whether you think you're not saying "Men are terrible, I hate men", the *impact* of what you're saying is pretty much that.

If I wrote thousands of books about how murder was a jewish trait because I fiddled with stats and ignored evidence against my hypothesis, and then said "I'm not demonizing Jews, i'm just talking about how society trains Jews to be murderers, and we need to fix that", that would be anti-Semitic, don't you think?

Dude no, sexual objectification and sexual entitlement has nothing to do with women not 'putting in effort' to flirt. What the hell. Women are not responsible for getting sexually-assaulted because they aren't more sexually-aggressive with men or don't make the first move. That's a really, really 'hot' take my dude.

You've misunderstood.

The disparity in number of victims is due to women not putting in the effort.

The incidents themselves are obviously the fault of the perpetrator.

If women never drive, they won't be responsible for drunk driving incidents. But it's a leap to go from there to "And therefore, drunk driving incidents are due to how society construct masculinity", when the more sensible explanation is "The reason for the disparity is that society constructs femininity to feel entitled to have men do all the driving for them". Noting that doesn't mean that the individuals who drunk drive aren't at fault. It means noting the actual reasons for the disparity between perpetration rates among the sexes.