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Definitely agreed that these things are hard to measure. But those numbers aren't even in the same universe either. One of them is almost certainly way off. Both are probably off to some degree, but one is likely to be much more wrong.
I think most people would be shocked to know the number of women in their lives who have been a victim of sexual assault or rape at some part of their lives. Mothers, aunts, grandmothers, sisters, co-workers, friends. I happen to think the 20% number is more correct (side-note: this doesn't have to implicate a "rape-culture," which I don't really undertand that term). But I think many more woman are victims than men truly understand.
I'm highly skeptical of any number attached to something like this, if for no other reason than you can drive the statistics by how you define "sexual assault." The one-in-five number that people sometimes throw around has an extremely broad definition of sexual assault that includes things like "unwanted kissing," which might technically be assault in a hyper-literal legal sense but, it's not the something that anyone really cares about either. Likewise, I'm sure you could get engineer a low number by defining your terms very narrowly. No idea if that's what the DOJ did, but I could see a researcher doing that if they had an agenda.
Come on. The Times "covered" her in a one off story about a weird party a rich person had; they do stuff like that all the time in their Sunday back pages. I'm guessing the reason you know about it is because some sort of conservative commentator dug it up and shared it. If so that would prove my point. She's the anti-feminist boogeyman. They chose her not because she's particularly outspoken or outrageous, but because her family's wealth/social status/education and her physical appearance push their buttons. Which, as I mentioned before, is ironic and revealing considering the foundation for this anti-Dunham movement came from the magazine founded by this guy.
My friends, long veterans of both journalism and politics, had never even heard of her when I brought her up a few years ago on an annual trip we used to take. I was stunned. "Never heard of Lena Dunham?"
Weirdly, and this has to be anecdotal and for that I apologize, I happen to be friends with people who aren't my age for various reasons. A few years ago, they were still in their late twenties, and some of the single women love Lena Dunham. My Facebook feed is full of some Lena Dunham. And the politics and musings about men that you see from these girls is appalling. So I can see those conservatives that work on campuses and stuff -- well, I can see what they deal with when it comes to proselytizing and the like. So there's a huge cottage industry here and she isn't a boogeyman, but really a generational voice that conservatives rightly feel that they have to contend with.
I had to google her
I suspect your longstanding familiarity with her is not the case for most people. Most people know her from the TV show and nothing else, and know about her politics only because of the National Review's ridiculous hatchet job of a cover story (which is where the "rape accuser" stuff started).
Absolutely agree, IK. You would probably be really interested, just from an intellecual level, to read the second and third page of the linked report, which talks about the methodology used: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf
Probably not. I wasn't saying it to prove my longstanding knowledge of her. I was doing it to show how even plugged in people had heard nothing of her when she first came out, and it shouldn't surprise anybody that people still don't know of her political activism. I was relating to Steve Tasker by saying, "yeah, even friends I'd expect to know don't know." My knowledge of her came from two girls on my Facebook feed and having had caught the first episode of Girls, which I was immediately struck by.
only in America would we politicize even this statistic. America has truly lost its moral compass as fewer and fewer or our institutions are concerned about the actual facts.
I'm not a politics geek, but the first time I became aware of Dunham in a political context was when she did those campaign ads for Obama in 2012....
It was a horrible hatchet job, intentionally inflammatory red meat meant to appeal to idiots who prefer personal attacks to substantive arguments. The Post highlighted some of it here. It was also, as I mentioned before, incredibly silly and lacking in self-awareness to attack her "privilege" considering the source.
I really don't care about her that much. I care more about your defense of her and casting aspersions on those who think she acted wrongly in her personal life and the way she wrote her memoir. And declaratives about Williamson's piece aren't going to make them any more true for your own certitude. What's funny is that you keep defending her and casting aspersions on those that sort of have an issue with her "memoir" and her general ridiculousness, which is going to lead to one guy being falsely accused of rape and a large settlement.
(1) regarding your first sentence: of course this statistic is politicized. Gender issues have been politicized since the beginning of our country (which, by the way, is probably one of the best places for a woman to be, fwiw).
Sure, I can tell.
Rape is not a "gender issue", it's a crime issue....maybe this mindset is where the train starts to run off of the tracks...
I don't recall sharing any opinions about memoirs in general or Dunham's in particular. But yes, to the extent that you think a 26 year old writer/actress's memoirs are important enough to warrant a National Review cover with a photoshop of insults and buzzwords on her arm tattoo and a privilege, sex and weight-obsessed takedown in the story itself, then yeah, I suppose we have different opinions about them.
NR has been famous, even in its prouder journalistic days of which you are so well aware, of those covers. They've always been on the edge of bad taste, and I think Buckley liked it that way. Buckley himself dealt with so many insults, that often his own dry wit was absurdly, um, piquant, if one were the subject of his barbs. I think you're ascribing a new mode, a new method, a new mood to a magazine that has always had that mode, that method, that mood.
The facts remain that you and the National Review are taking personal shots at someone for what they did when they were seven years old. I'm fairly comfortable on the other side of this one.
Exactly. I don't think I could trust any data on sexual assault because of the fluid definitions and challenge of obtaining a verified statistic.
sounds like you are the one with the agenda... My only agenda is an accurate picture of crime statistics for rape and sexual assault and we are presented with wildly different numbers being touted by those who do have an agenda...It's says a lot about where we are as a society and the lack of intellectual honesty by those holding the megaphones.whatever, man. You've got your agenda, I don't know why I even bothered to engage.
A few weeks back I heard a report on NPR about how Title IX has created this whole problem with schools feeling compelled to lower the standards for assault and rape and harassment because the DOE requires reporting and if there are too few reports or just a lack of reports there are repercussions. The schools are more interested in meeting some imaginary quota than the details or facts of what is going on.
I like NR, but Kevin Williamson is a hack and a jerk. That guy is frequently nasty just to be nasty. He often resorts to name calling and trolling. He's the absolute worst writer at NR right now.
Thanks for the link. I was going to look at this at some point anyway, but I went ahead and read the two pages you mentioned. You're right that it seems like this survey uses a pretty narrow "criminal justice issue only" definition. The alternative CSA definition, which includes incapacitation, makes more sense to me. but I can see why the DOJ might choose this approach.
did I say those three people were politicizing anything?
You really don't see the point - which is actually being made by three people not trying to politicize anything, but merely using common sense - that relying heavily on rape statistics is a very bad and unreliable way to then conclude that there is a serious sociological issue?
Maybe they're talking about one specific group of 5 girls and one of them is a sloppy drunk ####-tease?chauncey said:
it's probably a safe presumption that the higher rate includes sexual assaults like smacking a person on her/his butt, while the lower rate is usually penetrative offenses.
I think it's unfair and wrong to label them sluts, but I think the central point is on target. Regret is not rape and if both parties are drunk and indicating consent, there should be no double standard. It's unbelievably unfair to blame the male automatically if both are drunk. I think this quote nails it:
It would be interesting to see how a school would handle a situation where 2 drunk students had consensual sex and the guy filed a complaint the next day.
I have a thread about how she also was in the same class, school, school paper, and academic department as known fabulist Stephen Glass of New Republic and Rolling Stone fame.
After reading that article, it is amazing to me that the places that are supposed to be educating our young adults, are implementing the suggested government policies in this article.
Okay, now you're doing this in the Islam thread, too. I'd be careful with what you're saying, lest you come off as an uneducated bigot and unreflective and unthoughtful religionist.
This is what's going on. Same kind of thing used to go on in Maoist and Stalinist area societies, basically crimes against the state had to be reported or it was treated as complicity. I know, it's not the same thing, but the state insistence on reporting is the same, bad reports and expanded standards to include meaningless, innocent activity lead to harmful identification of ordinary citizens as criminals. It also gives absurd power to those who do the accusing. It's bad enough that liberals and academics are complaining, it's really screwed up.
Ah, so the institutions don't really care about educating young adults. Gotcha.
