Statistics can be just as misleading as any other variety of rhetoric;
One of my “favorite’ examples, lately, is the purported incidence of sexual assault among young women in college.
Looking into the “stats” provided, one reaches a few logical roadblocks:
The Japanese brutal occupation of Nanjing, China is commonly known as the “Rape of Nanjing.” It is called this in part because so many local women were raped. The numbers are fought over by historians, but the best estimate is that 20,000 of the approximately 100,000 women who were in Nanjing at the time were raped by Japanese soldiers, or about one in five. This means that if the one in four number is correct, then colleges are more dangerous for women than being in Nanjing during the Japanese occupation. Now, I would venture to guess that if I tried to stuff you daughter into a time machine and send her back to Nanjing on December 13, 1937 you would probably fight me to the death to prevent it. But parents don’t act anything like this vis a vis going to college, ergo no one believes this figure. So why does everyone keep using it like it is accurate?
Because like most such inflamed rhetoric, especially (but not exclusively) from the left, it’s not about informing. It’s about bludgeoning, bum-rushing and bullying the gullible into giving them what they want.
Speaking of statistics – NPR has done some digging and found some non-narrative facts about the “epidemic” of school shootings:
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent
Problem is a) they don’t know what they want and if the problem went away they would just find something else to complain about, and b) I don’t think they want what they want, if they gave it even a modicum of thought. Of course, if the problem never existed in the first place, they have an advantage in that they can whine about it as long as they like, and after something (they don’t care what) is done to appease them (useful or not, almost always not), they can move on to something else.
I don’t know that it’s a lie as much as it is a broad definition of sexual assault. Sexual assault includes everything from a touch on the inside of the thigh without consent all the way to forcible rape, and it includes a lot of interactions where both participants were intoxicated and gave what they thought was consent, but was not legally speaking consent.
Perhaps instead of throwing the research out entirely, we ought to simply ask that the statistics be clarified by the type of sexual assault noted. Worth noting here is that the biggest area of Title IX investigations, police investigations, and the 20% statistic is “sex while drunk.” Maybe freshmen need to be informed when they come to college that “if she’s (he’s) intoxicated, she’s (he’s) off limits.”
All I know that is even if it is a false narrative, I support anything the will end fraternities at colleges because they just suck. The line we all used at the U back in 2009-10 was, “At least we dont have to pay for friends, unlike those losers.” We have a very low opinion of frats.
Why is college rape is prevalent?
Why is climate change creating millions of refugees?
Why must women seek back alley abortions rather than drive across a state line?
The answer lies not in college culture, climate change or abortion law, it is driven by simple group dynamics. If you belong to an advocacy group and want to be heard, you cannot merely repeat chanting points because everyone in the group does that. Instead to be recognized, you must shout over the chanters and take the rhetoric up a notch.
Thus:
Every lustful look must become a rape.
Even a paltry 3mm annual sea level rise must become a 20 foot storm surge.
Anything that even slightly impinges upon recreational abortion must become The Handmaiden’s Tale
I wonder about peer pressure, and feminist crusaders, whether this ever happens:
“You got home late, how was your date?”
“It was nice, we made out in his car.”
“Eeew, you did it with him? He’s such a loser. Slut!”
“Well, I didn’t want to, he made me.”
“OMG, you were raped! We hafta report it at once.”
“No, it wasn’t like rape-rape. I don’t want to report it.”
“Yes, you have to. I’ve read the flyers. I’m calling the Title IX office.”
Any guy that pressures a woman into sex is a criminal and general all around horrible human being. Plus even as a horny 20 something guy I never got, if the woman is at best indifferent wheres the joy in that? These guys need a good ass kicking.
One other thought; I don’t think that it belittles the horrid reality of rape to point out that the bigger atrocity at Nanking was the cold blooded murder of up to 300,000 people. The point of categories is well taken, but there is a reason it’s now often called the “massacre” at Nanking, despite thousands of forcible rapes also being committed there, too.
Side note: POD, I dare suggest that if you persuaded college students that having sex with a drunk person invited STDs, pregnancy, humiliation at waking up next to someone who was only sexy after six beers, and possible arrest and conviction, you’d drive a stake through the heart of the modern Greek system. You might still have Greek houses, but they’d be much more tolerable.
(there was a “Greek” Christmas party right next to my stepdad’s 80th birthday celebration, and suffice it to say that the waitstaff noted it was the day of the year they most dreaded)