Monday, March 27, 2017

I call BS on this fake "rape" survey


These statistics are so unbelievable they're ridiculous.

Nearly 15 percent of female undergraduates at the University of Texas at Austin reported being raped in a survey released by officials at the 50,000-student campus Friday.

. . .

The Texas survey data works out to about 1 in 7 undergraduate women in Austin. Nationwide, about 1 in 4 college women reported unwanted sexual contact in a 2015 survey by the Association of American Universities.

The flagship Texas campus is one of the largest in the U.S. and released Friday's report ahead of schedule after a legislator this week revealed the 15 percent figure during a hearing in the Texas Capitol.

. . .

The University of Texas report was the result of an internet survey of more than 7,600 students and was funded by the school. Among the other findings were 28 percent of female undergraduates reporting unwanted sexual touching, and that 87 percent of all incidents occurred off-campus.

There's more at the link.

This is simply nonsensical.  To say that one in seven women on campus has been raped is beyond the bounds of rationality.  It's prima facie impossible, if only because parents and siblings would long ago have taken the law into their own hands, and begun roaming the campus, heavily armed, to deal with those molesting their daughters and sisters.  This report is moonbattery and political correctness, masquerading as fact.

I think this survey concentrated on feelings rather than fact, asking respondents whether they had been raped without consideration for the legal definition of that crime.  It also ignores the reality that many teens and young adults get drunk, or use illegal narcotics, or go to high-risk places, or do other things that make them more vulnerable to being used (and abused) by others.  If one drunk teen sleeps with another drunk teen, who later cries "Rape!" because she really didn't want that, but was too drunk to make her lack of consent clear, that's not rape.  As one who's worked in and with the law enforcement profession as a chaplain, and also as a pastor of a church, I can assure you, there are many after-the-fact regrets that manifest themselves as false allegations like that.  Cops are all too familiar with them.  That's why a lot of rape accusations are never prosecuted - because cops and prosecutors know full well that there's no evidence to substantiate the allegations.

When such alarmist numbers are bandied about, it helps to look at the physical reality that they would imply, if true.  When you see undergraduate students wandering around a university campus freely, cheerfully, laughing and carrying on as they do . . . that campus does not have a serious rape problem.  If one in seven female undergraduates had been raped there, they wouldn't be behaving like that.  They'd be cowering in fear.  Q.E.D.

Peter

11 comments:

STxAR said...

When you balance ALL the issues at college, from the "rape" epidemic, to the party culture, to leftist indoctrination, why would you ever let your child, much less your DAUGHTER go there?

You can't even trust the sciences or engineering disciplines to be purely analytical anymore.

Tim Newman said...

As I said once:

"Anyone sensible knows this is bullshit: women on American college campuses are not raped and sexual assaulted at a rate only ever seen by women in African war zones, and hundreds of thousands of bright, middle-class women would not borrow so heavily to live in them if this were the case."

http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/?p=3458

Jonathan H said...

The link won't work for me; I get 'access denied'.

However, past "studies" like this that I have seen define rape as any unwanted contact, including verbal - so, for example, if a girl gets asked out by a guy she doesn't want to talk to, that counts.
We need real, clear, studies with open results to address what is a real issue without overblowing it to the point that people ignore it.

Kentucky Packrat said...

Little Miss was quoting the old 1 in 4 study (one in four women on campus are sexually assaulted). I had to point out to her that that was insane. "Little Miss, there wasn't a 25% rape rate on the German/Russian front in WW2. There isn't a 25% rape rate in the worst parts of Africa. That's the highest sexual assault rate in history, and it's not happening on college campuses." Of course, the 1 in 4 number included peaceful, unwanted sexual advances (i.e. date requests hinting at a sexual outcome).

The problem that campuses have is that there is a subset of women and men participating in a hookup culture that includes a large amount of sex regret. Feminists are then taking that regret and translating it into a removal of consent. It's absurd and it's infantile. They need to take responsibility for themselves and cut out the drinking and the sex.

Rob said...

Your reaction of 'it can't be true' is what got to me.

I saw many of the old excuses I've heard over the years ... the lack of the legal definition of rape (involving penetration) was a 'could be' valid point.

But what if it's true?

C. S. P. Schofield said...

Rob,

It isn't true. It isn't true because if it was we wouldn't need studies to show it. If it was true we would have at least half that number going to the cops. Furthermore, it's a familiar line of bushwa; the Left has trotted this out before.

VFM #7916 said...

Rob,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Coe

That's a rapist.

That guy met the legal definition of rape.

This is not happening to 15% of college students.

Simply because a woman believes a rape occurred does not make it true, because the definition of rape has been expanded to serve political and feminist purposes.

"I got drunk and had sex with an ugly guy" is not equal to what Coe did, and attempting to fit it under the same umbrella is an insult to women that have been brutally raped.

VFM #7916 said...

And I now have to do penance because my Infogalactic linking did not work:

https://infogalactic.com/info/Kevin_Coe

Sorry for inflicting the SJWpedia link.

kamas716 said...

I get Access Denied on the links in the post as well. But it's pretty obvious those statistics are utter bovine waste material.

1. As was already pointed out, if any community actually had such a high rate of sexual assault as 1 in 7, EVERY woman would be walking around terrified out of their wits. If 3,500-4,000 women in a community of 50K there would be a very noticeable response. People would be talking about it. Even if you assume it's cumulative over the roughly 5 years it takes for most people to get their degree, that's still around 2 rapes per day. Since we don't see women walking around in herds if going out at all, nor do most of them seem cognizant of any real danger since they are still going out, I think we can call BS pretty easily.

2. But, if you want to go further, look at quoted part again.

The University of Texas report was the result of an internet survey...

Since I can't access the actual survey I can't say definitively, but I have my doubts about the integrity of it. First off, I wouldn't be surprised if their definition was exceedingly wide. Beyond that, if this survey was one where the respondents self reported rather than a blind random sampling you're probably looking at most of the women who have ever been victimized (probably not all while attending either) filling it out and everyone else passing on it since it didn't really apply to them and therefor the results can be thrown in the trash.

Over the years I've taken a few calls on rape. The real ones are heart breaking. The last one I took was false (sex fantasy that boyfriend found out she had actually acted out and made her report it). And then there was the one lady who came to report a rape because she didn't enjoy the sex.

Ryan said...

1/7 is probably pretty close. The parents aren't up in arms because odds are really low Sally is going to tell daddy on their Sunday phone call that Friday someone spiked her drink and she doesn't remember what happened but woke up naked in some aplartment near campus.

I think stats vary widely. For instance the foster care system is rife with abusers.

Excluding designer rape drugs none of this is new. What is new is that rates rape is reported have gone up some since victim shaming has gotten better over recent years.

Feather Blade said...

If these statistics were actually true, the colleges themselves would be sponsoring gun safety and marksmanship classes for women, in addition to curfews, sponsored and chaperoned social events, and "Walk a woman home" programs.

The fact that they are uniformly horrified by the idea of people having concealed weapons permits and carrying on campus show that there is no serious threat here.