I see that Krakauer has written an op-ed in advance of the book's release: "The bungled Rolling Stone rape article doesn’t change the fact that sexual assault is the most under-reported crime in the US/When someone is raped in this country, the rapist gets away with it more than 97 percent of the time."
Make no mistake... Women sometimes lie about being raped. According to the most reliable peer-reviewed research, between two percent and 10 percent of rape reports are bogus. As one ponders this discomfiting information, though, it’s important to keep in mind what the flip side of these numbers reveal: Between 90 percent and 98 percent of rape allegations are true. Rape, moreover, is this country’s most underreported serious crime by a wide margin. Rigorous studies consistently indicate that at least 80 percent of rapes are never disclosed to law enforcement agencies or other authorities....And it's important to keep in mind that statistics sometimes lie. Krakauer says those numbers come from studies that are "most reliable" and "rigorous," but I don't think that will satisfy people whose skepticism has been so recently roused by the Rolling Stone mess. At the Amazon page, Krakauer's book is described as a "dispassionate, carefully documented account" of "the searing experiences of several women in Missoula — the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them." Searing... but dispassionate? Is that even possible?
पोस्ट्स
१३५ टिप्पण्या:
The bungled Rolling Stone rape article"
Bungled? As in 'they had a good narrative going but dropped the ball. They should have been more clever in their lies.'
I have a feeling Jon Krakauer's book will just be better smelling crap.
Here's a question for you:
Bigger problem in America today_ women getting raped on college campuses, or men getting raped in prison?
Too bad. I liked Krakauer's other books. I didn't read the third one but the earlier two were good. I knew the exact spot the kid in "Into the Wild" had walked into Denali Park.
The whole rape culture thing is, as far as I am concerned, another moral panic like the day care abuse scandal and "recovered memories." I actually had a friend who went to a psychologist for help with alcoholism and was convinced her father molested her as a child. I backed away from the friendship and saw her about ten years later. There was no mention of the father thing then and she had moved back to the town she grew up in.
This is the latest iteration of the Salem witch trials.
2% of rape allegations are false therefore 98% are true.
Interesting theory.
No chance that the accuser is simply wrong or the wrong guy was arrested. not-guilty-in-a-court-of-law is now considered "got away with it"
I am waiting for the first Women's Studies course to teach that "To Kill a Mockingbird" as misogyny.
"or to prepare for the different kind of scrutiny this book will get, now that skepticism and fact-checking zeal is cranked up far beyond what Krakauer could have envisioned when he was doing his research and writing."
And that right there is precisely the problem. EVERYONE who sets out to write a work of nonfiction should "envision" the resulting fact-checking. I hope Krakauer includes stats on the likelihood of being raped in Missoula on campus vs. off. OTOH, just from what I've read here, it is not clear to me whether his point is about a "college town" or the campus itself.
And I'm quite certain rape is not the most under-reported crime in the U.S. Not even the most under-reported felony. Likely the most under-reported violent crime, but very sloppy expression of ideas seems to be the norm amongst people who write for a living these days.
[Full disclosure for the ignorant assholes who are going to say I am pro-rape or some equally baseless claim: I once, many years ago, seriously plotted to kill someone who was accused of raping someone very close to me. I was fully prepared to spend the rest of my life in prison, assuming I was caught. What stopped me? I told a friend about it. Didn't want to have to kill him too.]
The increase in college rape is directly connected to climate change. I don't think any explanation is necessary.
I am Laslo.
Okay, yet again: the 2-8% number is the percentage of rapes reported to police that are verifiably dis-proven, i.e. the accused has an ironclad alibi or the accuser recants the accusation. This in no way means that the other 90+% of claims are valid.
Add this to the long list of statistical claims well known to be bogus or misinterpreted that the Left nonetheless continues to trumpet:
- 20% incidence of rape on college campuses
- 97% of scientists agree with the Left on global warming
- women make $.70 for every dollar men make
- etc., etc.
"Between 90 percent and 98 percent of rape allegations are true."
Now how can you know that? Do 90 percent of rape charges result in a conviction? And even if they did, how can we possibly know that the unreported rapes actually occurred, if they were never reported and investigated, let alone subject to judicial proceedings?
This is bunk in its purest form--a statement that cannot possibly have any basis. Here's the most we can say about rape allegations--we know there are valid allegations, and we know there are phony allegations. We can assume there are some valid allegations that never got proven, and some phony allegations that never got disproven. We have no reliable way of knowing what percent of rape allegations are valid.
"The linked academic study actually concludes that false rape allegations occur at a rate of 2 to 10 percent, but leave aside the typo. Readers could easily interpret the above paragraph to mean that when a woman files a complaint about sexual assault, then an assault did in fact occur over 90 percent of the time. That interpretation is wrong.
A “false” rape allegation is provably false – meaning, for example, that the accused has a bulletproof alibi or the accuser eventually recants. In many of the cases examined by the authors of the study, there was simply not enough evidence to bring charges. A rape might have occurred, but it might not have. Such cases are not classified as false.
Specifically, in their analysis of sexual-assault cases at a large university, the authors found that 5.9 percent of cases were provably false. However, 44.9 percent cases “did not proceed” – meaning there was insufficient evidence, the accuser was uncooperative, or the incident did not meet the legal standard of assault. An additional 13.9 percent of cases could not be categorized due to lack of information. That leaves 35.3 percent of cases that led to formal charges or discipline against the accused. So there is obviously a lot of uncertainty here, a lot of he-said/she-said when allegations are filed. It would be a mistake to conclude, on the basis of the existing evidence, that nine out of ten assault claims are genuine."
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416536/only-2-8-percent-rape-accusations-are-false-stat-extremely-misleading-jason-richwine
Althouse posted -
"...but I don't think that will satisfy people whose skepticism has been so recently roused by the Rolling Stone mess."
Personally, my skepticisn was roused as soon as I saw the author was Jon Krakauer.
Between 90 percent and 98 percent of rape allegations are true.
William Blackstone: "for the law holds it better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent party suffer."
Another dead (18th century) white male whose values are irrelevant to the glorious progressive future.
It's also perfectly correct to point out that the trauma of being raped makes it difficult to report, press charges and testify, and that in any case rape is very difficult to prove because it often comes down to one word against another. Based on that, it's also perfectly correct to suggest a lot of rapists go unpunished, while conceding that a lot of fabulists also get away with smearing an innocent party. But to suggest you have any idea how many unreported rapes there are, or how many rapists walk free, or how many rape claims are valid, is total crap and you sir are a walking lord of lies.
80 percent of UFO and Bigfoot sightings go unreported, so we really have a UFO and Bigfoot problem that no one is willing talking about.
What? You doubt that 80% of the sightings go unreported? What are you, some kind of UFO and Bigfoot denier?
The "80% unreported" figure is inherently un-provable.
It's sheer speculation, touted as a solid statistic and then used to as an ideological cudgel against critics.
Some actual police department studies of actual reported rapes by real people have a 40% false charge rate and that is based on the accusers actually admitting that they lied when confronted with contrary evidence.
Actual DOJ combined sexual assault statistics, not just rape, show the rate for College women at around 1 in 165.
But that MEANS NOTHING, RAPE APOLOGIST MISOGYNISTS!! 1 IN 5!!! RAPE CULTURE!!!!!ELEVENTY!!!
The book will be yet more "fake but accurate" and "the narrative is about the Higher Truth of the Oppression of the Wimmens, even when we lie about it" anti-male propaganda bullshit.
My proposal is do away with rape as a crime and go with assault and battery.
The term rape seems to confuse women.
Ashe Schow (wish I knew how to pronounce her name) writes that there should be a much closer look taken at Rolling Stone's rape-writer Erdely's other pieces.
Specifically the Catholic Church one and the military one since they were written in the same breathless, first person narrative found in the UVA story.
Lots of similarities may mean lots of similar errors or lies.
Onto Thin Ice
96% of false rape charges go undetected.
Disprove that.
Let me go lightning rod here!
I'm starting to see rape, and abortion in the same light. They are both about allowing a woman to punish a man. Both rape, and abortion can be seen as "A woman's right to choose."
Let me re-state that....
Both rape, and abortion can NOW be seen as "A woman's right to choose."
In the fine art of lies, damn lies, and statistics these are some of the worst I've enjoyed seeing widely reported:
"Between 2% and 10% of rape reports are bogus" = we have no clue exactly what percent are bogus, so we've applied a 5-fold factor to establish the extremes of the range we consider likely.
"The rapist gets away with it more than 97% of the time." meaning that since 2-10% are falsely reported, and 97% of rapists get away it with, there is almost no successful prosecution of rape according to these statistics.
Like so many other areas, if I apply these statistics to the very situation in which they are being reported I see that women are raped wantonly and there is almost no chance of successfully pressing charges.
In other words: despite all the press, advocacy, speeches, and even leadership attention from the white house: law enforcement of rape is completely broken.
If this is accurate, then all current efforts have actually hurt women and we should scrap them and start over - because you can't get any worse than the current statistics.
I hope the book sets forth a convincing case that nearly all college rapists are majoring in evolutionary psychology.
"because you can't get any worse than the current statistics."
Sure you can. Until we reach 5 out of 5 women raped and 100% of rapists getting away, there's room for worse.
It's also perfectly correct to point out that the trauma of being raped makes it difficult to report, press charges and testify, and that in any case rape is very difficult to prove because it often comes down to one word against another. Based on that, it's also perfectly correct to suggest a lot of rapists go unpunished, while conceding that a lot of fabulists also get away with smearing an innocent party. But to suggest you have any idea how many unreported rapes there are, or how many rapists walk free, or how many rape claims are valid, is total crap and you sir are a walking lord of lies.
I agree with much of this, Brando.
Although I believe the more traumatic the rape, the more likely a woman is to report it. Which is true of most crimes.
It doesn't mean a woman who ended up having sex pushed upon her when she just ended to make out isn't bothered by it. But it's a "I can handle this myself rather than go through a whole big thing" mindset. Similar to a man getting punched by a drunk buddy. You aren't likely to press charges because it isn't worth dealing with.
So what happens to campus rapists once they graduate from college?
Do they stop raping?
I would have thought that Jon Krakauer could make a lot more money writing more books about mountain climbing than writing a book about dubious rape statistics.
Mine should say "just intended" to make out.
I want to hear about the logistics of rape.
How do you do it? You try to rape my wife and you're gonna get your dick pulled off. By my wife. I'm not a big, strong man like a WWE wrestler, but it seems to me that it would be a difficult task against a woman who had any sense of resistance.
How long does it take? Do you maintain an erection throughout? How do you get the panties off? Do you finish? I can barely get my dog to swallow an arthritis pill, and she weighs only 70 pounds.
Sorry. These are disgusting questions. I don't ask them out of prurient interest. Surely law-enforcement folks have to ask them.
Let's have a bright-line definition of rape first. Not "I know it when I see it."
Currently popular definitions would include much of marital sex, on both sides, since it occurs under a sense of obligation - i.e., coercion. [Would I have sex with my spouse if we weren't married, if I didn't need his/her support and help, if I wasn't afraid of emotional repercussions from my spouse? Hell, no. RRRRAAAAPPPPE!]
"Let's have a bright-line definition of rape first. Not "I know it when I see it.""
Here's a definition that works for normal people--sex without consent. Now, the "without consent" is the trickier part to define, and that's where all the controversy lies.
Another opinionated, agenda driven Krakauer book. I enjoy reading his books, but it annoys me when people don't recognize his bias.
People who are serious about science and climate change recognize that the exhaust fumes of a single American SUV cause more environmental damage than any coal fired Chinese power plant. That's because SUVs are, for the most part, owned by privileged white males, and everything they do is especially toxic and harmful......In raw numbers I suppose that you could point to other groups who are more rape prone than fraternity members, but that's not the point. They're not white and privileged, and their rapes are thus attributable to their lack of status and power in a world of white privilege. As Eldridge Cleaver pointed out, he was the real rape victim.
"Although I believe the more traumatic the rape, the more likely a woman is to report it. Which is true of most crimes."
That may be true--I have no first hand experience on this--and I suspect other factors may cause a victim to not report as well (same reason spouses frequently refuse to report abuse).
But then, there's not much that can be done about the failure to report--the authorities can only act on what they know about. The frustration with this fact is what leads some activists to push for this argument that we must automatically believe the accuser (when in our legal system, the benefit of doubt is otherwise ALWAYS for the accused).
Ironically, many of these same activists go on a lot about how for other crimes the accused is often railroaded by rogue police and prosecutors, particularly when the accused is black or poor. Their concern for the accused seems to end when we're talking about rape, where interestingly the accused tend to be disproportionately black and poor.
Has the world gotten crazier or was it always this crazy? It seemed to me that the period spanning the late 60s and early 70s was exceptionally crazy but not so crazy as now. Certainly the late 1930s and the war years that followed were crazy but they also had a certain clarity that allowed many of those who lived through them (e.g., my parents) to regard them to some extent as the most meaningful and exciting years of their lives. Auden famously characterized the 1930s as a "low, dishonest decade," and I think that characterization can apply to the present period. So much so, I am increasingly thinking that "going Benedict" is the only viable means of achieving and retaining even a modicum of peace of mind. I just re-read Alistair Macintyre's "After Virtue" in which he asserts that another dark age has arrived and that people of good will--virtuous people--must live their lives accordingly. I'm included to agree with him.
If a rape leads to the birth of the next democrat president of the United States, then the charge should be cranked up to crime against humanity.
I used to think that the backlash we're reading here against certain crimes or practices like rape, especially with such dubious facts, would prevail.
No longer.
We are simply adding another victim class to our list, giving voice to a sympathetic issue without justice for those wrongly accused.
We are a society increasingly populated with "victims" and special interests and privileged classes.
Campy - According to standard margin of error, if 97% of rapists get free then its' really 97-100% - and my point was that using these statistics then all current efforts to reduce rape and help women come forward are completely failing and therefore the law enforcement side of things does not appear to be able to get any worse (according to these statistics).
The term rape seems to confuse women.
In the colloquial (vulgar) Dominican Spanish the term "rapar" translate as 'fucking'.
The first time a high-visibility "So what?" doesn't result in a massive public beat-down the whole edifice begins to slowly slide into the sea, because everyone intuitively understands actual rape and only alleged rape alike utterly depends upon the citizenry or audience being able to be turned with Pavlovian immediacy against the misbehaving target.
But, as with the same cases with racism, both the boy-cries-wolf and deliberately and maliciously false accounts can end up leaching peoples' caring out of the process, or reducing it to only token online response: "Terrible! Yawn."
There really is no margin for error. With respect to racism or rape, every false case further delegitimizes the whole.
Our "national conversation" on "rape culture" is hobbled by a cognitive dissonance that doesn't situate it within the context of our collapse of sexual norms.
As a child of the sixties, I watched as the pill ushered in a new ethos of sex divorced from responsibility. in those heady, early days, we supposed that we could transcend the dull, bourgeois existence that marriage, childbearing and fidelty represented and explore more evolved "alternative" lifestyles. At first, sex was divorced from childbearing; then it became divorced from marriage; and now it's divorced from any sense of sacredness or commitment at all.
here in Dallas we are reeling-- speaking for myself, anyway-- at a "hazing" incident in which six volunteer firefighters sodomized a recruit with various objects and recorded their actions for posterity. I'm gobsmacked by this level of depravity on the part of no doubt decent people who would otherwise go out of their way to change your tire. What is in the air we breathe that could create such a climate? Look at our culture. ..who are the admired celebrities, the sexualized, bestial lyrics we tune to, the Fifty Shades of Gray phenom, porn addiction...when was the last time you saw a movie, sitcom or drama inwhich the main character struggles against his or her impulses? When was the last time you saw a depiction of chastity as something other than ridiculous and anachronistic? Or sex portrayed as the seal of commitment? Or modesty as an expression of a woman's dignity?
The best and the brightest supposedly raping each other while the developed countries struggle with low birth rates. I don't know, maybe Iran's future nuclear bomb attack will bring clarification.
Ironically, many of these same activists go on a lot about how for other crimes the accused is often railroaded by rogue police and prosecutors, particularly when the accused is black or poor. Their concern for the accused seems to end when we're talking about rape, where interestingly the accused tend to be disproportionately black and poo
Brando- I suspect this is why the focus on *campus* rape. So the featured accused can be middle class and white.
I enjoyed Into the Wild. I have no interest in Everest climbing so I didn't read Into Thin Air, and I've never heard of the Into...what?...Heaven? book.
So I suppose that makes me a middling fan, but I really did enjoy Into the Wild so I'm a bit sad that Krakauer may have just Krakauered his career by trying to jump onto the rape culture bandwagon just a little too late.
MayBee said...Brando- I suspect this is why the focus on *campus* rape. So the featured accused can be middle class and white.
I suspect one more reason--on-campus isn't just where many white males live, it's also where the lion's share of SJWs live.
They can join the cause of social justice without having to go to a scary neighborhood or even learn about one.
My problem with the campus rape narrative and the "Teach men not to rape" activists is I believe they are fostering an unsafe environment for girls and young women.
When I was in college, it was a given that if you drunkenly went home with a guy you didn't know, something might happen. We were encouraged to stay with friends, to not walk home alone in the dark, stuff like that.
But are girls today being taught that? Or are they being empowered to do whatever they want to be one the assumption that guys have been taught to get affirmative consent? Are they empowered with the idea that they can drink as much as they want and go where they want and it's sexist to think otherwise?
I ask because Hannah Graham- a true UVa student victim- got into a horrible position when she walked away from her friends when she was drunk, and apparently had a drink with the guy who eventually murdered her. Her judgement was gone.
I think what used to be common sense is now blaming the victim, and we are more or less telling college age girls that they can do what they want and the college administration will just weed out all the dangerous guys for them.
Oh- but the thing about Hannah Graham. We don't talk about her situation. There's no big lesson for all of us to learn there, apparently.
Personally, my skepticism was roused as soon as I saw the author was Jon Krakauer.
HA! Me too. I hated Into the Wild. Hated. Never gave anything else a try.
He can write a spicy critique of the RS "Rape on Campus" story and call it "Out of Thin Air."
MayBee said...But it's a "I can handle this myself rather than go through a whole big thing" mindset. Similar to a man getting punched by a drunk buddy. You aren't likely to press charges because it isn't worth dealing with
Hmm, that's interesting--is rape really the most underreported crime? Most of these statistics (on the prevalance of rape) come out of surveys that ask women whether they've ever had a sexual encounter they now think was wrong due to something like coercion or force, and count something like beging nagged into having sex and being forcably raped equally. They then divide the number of "rapes" reported there with the number of rapes reported to the police and determine that only some small percentage of rapes are prosecuted.
What if you gave a survey for battery, or assualt, though? I've never filed charges against anyone for either but I can think of several times I've been pushed, struck, etc, so if a survey asked if I was a victim of any of those (in general terms) I'd have to say yes--and counting the adolescent and teenage years I'd bet the vast majority of men would have to likewise say yes. It'd turn out that only a tiny percentage of such crimes against men were ever prosecuted--what a scandal!
As one in Montana that has seen/heard/read quite a bit of the Missoula "rapes", I await the picking apart of this book. "Under the Banner of Heaven" was interesting as the Mormons are and easy target with the hard core polygamists still out in the wilds of Utah (and other places, esp. in the West. I am not a Mormon, or rape apologist, just one who is not happy with agenda driven "facts".
I think that MayBee is right about what is happening on campus these days. Thinking back 45 or so years since I was an undergraduate, back then the only women who would drink heavily were in stable sexual relationships (most typically with a guy). Now, a lot of the co-eds not only get drunk in the evenings, but start before that at pre-parties with their close friends. And, they end up blotto drunk, week in, and week out, or at least on multiple occasions, so it is hard to argue that their over-imbibing was accidental. We are talking 2-3-4 times the legal level for driving - enough that having to call paramedics is common.
This amount of sexual freedom would be fine if the young women were identical emotionally with the young men they are hooking up with. But, they aren't. Which is probably part of why so many of the alleged campus "sexual assaults" involve either drunken behavior of both parties, or the sort of ambiguous behavior (such as sleeping in the same bed with someone you have had sex with). The guys are happy with the sex act, and want to get along with their lives. The gals - not so much. They put out, without any emotional commitment from the guys, and now regret it.
Libruls doubling-down on misandry.
Bruce - if they're drinking that much they're at severe risk of pancreatitis.
I think what used to be common sense is now blaming the victim, and we are more or less telling college age girls that they can do what they want and the college administration will just weed out all the dangerous guys for them.
Yeah my thoughts on that are "good luck with that". Because the attempt to "educate men" not the be rapists is lost on the real rapists. This is just another attempt to harangue the good men who just want to chat up a woman because they've been told by the culture to be more assertive.
What bothers me a bit was a fairly recent discussion with a recently graduated co-ed on this subject. She jumped straight from the campus rape epidemic to a couple friends of her giving up their virginity to guys who didn't appreciate it. An earlier generation would have known that giving it up without an emotional commitment was risky. This generation, the millenniums who returned Obama to office, seems to think that they were owed emotional commitment in trade for sex.
I think that the thing that bothers me the most here is that young co-eds, and probably young women in general, are assumed these days to be seriously in need of being taken care of. No longer, being able to take care of themselves, which is what I thought feminism and the sexual revolution were all about, but rather, that they are such weak and spineless creatures, that they shouldn't have responsibility for their own actions.
I guess libruls never read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". Or they want to tell people not to pay attention to that fable.
Bruce - what we do have is an epidemic of women who have regrets about sex and have been told that equals "I've been raped". Men should be on guard these days. Don't go to bed with a blotto woman. You just might get arrested on rape charges in a couple of days.
TreeJoe - but in the absence of any actual evidence, let's demonize the entire male gender. That'll work.
Bruce - if they're drinking that much they're at severe risk of pancreatitis.
Probably - but the thing that might save them is that for many/most of them, it is for a brief period of time - for many, maybe freshman and sophomore years. My guess is that the drunken hookups are more earlier in their college careers, and ambiguous situations later, after they have been sexually active for awhile.
At the college my kid graduated from a couple years ago, they would apparently have at least a couple kids "transported" most every Fri. and Sat. nights. Both boys and girls, but surprising to me, slightly more girls.
One problem that I see for these young women is that ultimately they graduate, and then the normal rules of society apply. And, expecting that they can get drunk and won't end up having sex, and that it won't be legally actionable, is just going to get them in trouble. Outside college, due process and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt apply. And, yes, probably a lot more predators out there (since most college men are of a similar age to the college women, etc.)
Krakauer is using the popular quasi-scientific method exploited by civil and human rights advocates to justify progressive civil rights violations through liberal doses of statistical inference and wild extrapolation from circumstantial evidence to establish a pet theory. The majority of women will accept this, as they do elective abortion, because it secures their "rights" through dissociation of risk and shifting liability for consequences of personal behavior.
That said, the problem may be real, but it may also be created, or distorted. Perhaps debasing human life has triggered psychotic behavior in women and men who are immature, without a religious (i.e. moral) orientation, and lack discernment of consequences that follow from lending their support to this enterprise. The anarchists and delinquents serve at the pleasure of left-wing regimes.
HoodlumDoodlum - exactly!
I bet everyone can think of a few instances where they were physically (not sexually) hurt or witnessed someone else being physically assaulted. I bet few people can think of a time where the police were involved.
Bruce Hayden- thanks for the thoughts.
Alex: Yeah my thoughts on that are "good luck with that". Because the attempt to "educate men" not the be rapists is lost on the real rapists.
That's just it! You can't go through life thinking you can do whatever you want to do because the field has been cleared for you. Yet that's what the messaging seems to be.
Good to see Jason Richwine in NR--if only they could get the Derb back. But he'd not have them now. Or maybe he would, if they gave him money.
One problem that I see for these young women is that ultimately they graduate, and then the normal rules of society apply.
Yeah, that's one thing that bothers me. Yes, I think women should be able to get as drunk as they want to. But they have to do it going in knowing that it makes you more vulnerable to either making bad decisions for yourself, or to a predator. That's true for both men and women.
They also should have a plan about how to get themselves home safely.
And the other aspect is....this is all supposedly a campus epidemic. We hear about campus being so dangerous for women. But college is only 4 years. What is happening to all the rapists once they graduate from college?
Are 1 in 5 women in the general population being raped? Do the rapists just grow out of it?
How does it make any sense to anyone that this would be a campus-specific epidemic?
@treejoe:"Between 2% and 10% of rape reports are bogus" = we have no clue exactly what percent are bogus, so we've applied a 5-fold factor to establish the extremes of the range we consider likely.
Probably this is not what they did. Most likely in their sample they got 6%, and then they applied binomial statistics to esimate what bound should contain 95% of cases in the general population.
+/- 4% suggests a sample size in the hundreds of rape accusations, with dozens of them being false.
"Brando- I suspect this is why the focus on *campus* rape. So the featured accused can be middle class and white."
Exactly why the UVA story was "too good to fact check"--presumably rich, white, even southern young men doing the raping? Precisely the villains the activists need! If it were black men on scholarship it might have complicated their simplistic worldview.
I like Krakauer's writing, but he's too late to the party. The epidemic-of-rape-on-campus thing is done. Now we need an expose of the epidemic-of-rape-hoaxes-on-campus. Some aspiring journalist needs to catch the wave.
"They can join the cause of social justice without having to go to a scary neighborhood or even learn about one."
Or for that matter actual societies that suffer "rape culture"--where the rape victim is actually punished for coming forward, or shunned for having been desecrated. But such societies have little tolerance for the SJWs, and the SJWs aren't comfortable criticizing non-Western cultures either. Much easier to invent a "rape culture" right here on college campuses, where violence is far less frequent and you can be surrounded by your fellow travelers.
The sheer idiocy of Krakauer's statistical analysis is illustrated by Jackie's case itself. The 2-10% of rape allegations that are provably bogus usually collapse due to the woman confessing to authorities that she made the whole thing up.
Jackie, of course, has never so confessed, and, as the Charlotte Police Report reflected, it was impossible (particularly absent her cooperation) to establish whether anything occurred or didn't occur.
By Krakauer's own statistical analysis, then Jackie's case is one of the 90-98% of rape allegations that must be accepted as true.
"Outside college, due process and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt apply."
For now.
I'm gonna get on record as being the first to doubt the veracity of anything said in this book. Any problems, I predicted them first.
"I think what used to be common sense is now blaming the victim, and we are more or less telling college age girls that they can do what they want and the college administration will just weed out all the dangerous guys for them."
That's one of the most offensive things about the SJW crusaders--if they actually got their way, young women would be more likely to make themselves prey for predatory men while waiting for society to somehow fix these predators (through public relations campaigns with celebrities saying "rape isn't cool" which is sure to prevent exactly zero rapes).
There is such a thing as "blaming the victim"--we see it in actual rape cultures all the time (e.g., a woman claims she was raped, and instead of investigating or charging the accused, the woman is told it is her own fault for enticing the man). But suggesting that the young and stupid avoid getting blitzed and stay near people they can trust when they go out does not equate to that.
"When was the last time you saw a depiction of chastity as something other than ridiculous and anachronistic?"
Long ago when my youngest daughter was in high school, we talked about sex. I pointed out that herpes, unlike love, is really forever. I think it helped.
"Don't go to bed with a blotto woman. You just might get arrested on rape charges in a couple of days."
Another role for body cameras.
Kidding but not completely.
Gabriel said, "Probably this is not what they did. Most likely in their sample they got 6%, and then they applied binomial statistics to esimate what bound should contain 95% of cases in the general population.
+/- 4% suggests a sample size in the hundreds of rape accusations, with dozens of them being false."
If you read how it's presented, it sounds as if it's multiple small scale studies which found either 2% or 10% false report rates.
You could totally be right. I was making fun of it, because the way I read it was that the best studies done had found somewhere between base and base*5 in false rape reporting, which would indicate that either one study was completely off, they both were, or no real studies had ever been conducted to focus on that metric.
Unless the woman shows up bloody from the waist down, covered in bruises, with a man's skin under her fingernails and a man's semen leaking out of her or dripping down her leg, I shall henceforth refuse to believe she's been raped. That's my new standard of evidence, and it should be everyone's.
"Didn't wanna fight back?" Consent.
"Didn't hit or scratch your attacker?" Consent.
"Waited a week to report it?" Consent.
"Talked to a journalist first?" Consent.
I don't care anymore. I was almost the subject of a false rape accusation back in high school. It was with a girl that, to this day, I've never slept with or done anything more than feel her breasts (which she was fine with). Then her best friend broke up with one of my friends, and she tried to get even with me by spreading rumors over AOL Instant Messenger. The rumors started with her claiming that I had ED and couldn't get it up (laughable, since we'd never tried to go that far, and I'd had girls before her), and morphed into "date rape" (which, in the early 2000's, was still a new-ish term). Finally, one of her other friends stopped her from going to the school principal with her accusation. See, I'd saved the AIM transcripts of our conversations and the conversations surrounding the rumors, and I pointed out to her reasonable friend that if I did have ED, it would be impossible for me to rape her. There were also other transcripts (emailed to me by other people) that showed her trying to evolve the rumors to maximize the trouble I could get in. Much like the Facebook conversations between "Mattress Girl" and her falsely-accused rapist, it was social media transcripts that prevented me from going through a total shitstorm.
The girl who accused me had 3 kids before she turned 22. She lives in a trailer now, and of her previous boyfriends (and baby-daddy's), there isn't a single one that isn't a drug dealer or wife beater. Yeah, I hope she lives a pitiful life for even entertaining the notion of ruining mine.
Well 97% of rapists getting away with it is just unacceptable.
So, if only 2-10% of rape accusations are false, I think we can just skip the trials altogether and send all the accused rapists to prison. Yeah, we'll incarcerate a few innocents, but not many. It's a price we should be willing to pay.
Now the non-reporting problem is harder to deal with. Maybe we could incentivize women to make rape accusations by paying a prize for every accusation, say $1,000 for each? If that doesn't work, then how about this: If 80% of rapes are unreported, then at the end of each year we count up the number of reported rapes and multiple by 4. We then randomly arrest that number of men and throw them in prison for unreported rape.
That should do it.
You're welcome.
I should note that the reason she tried to get even with me was because I refused to take her friend's side in the argument, and stuck up for my friend instead. Both of those girls were what I now recognize as seriously unstable, but back then they just counted as somewhat shrill and excitable.
"Unless the woman shows up bloody from the waist down, covered in bruises, with a man's skin under her fingernails and a man's semen leaking out of her or dripping down her leg, I shall henceforth refuse to believe she's been raped. That's my new standard of evidence, and it should be everyone's."
That's as extreme as the "I will believe any rape accusation because no one would ever lie about that" approach. How about considering any accusation on its own merits and drawing conclusions based on the evidence or lack therof? Sort of like how we should for any alleged criminal act.
"We then randomly arrest that number of men and throw them in prison for unreported rape."
We then randomly arrest that number of white men and throw them in prison for unreported rape.
FTFY
Instapundit has said that he'll take global warming seriously when the people who tell us it's a problem start acting like it's a problem. I feel the same about campus rape.
Have all the NY Times readers who say they believe the campus rape stats now bandied about pulled their daughters from school? If I really thought my beloved daughter was in an environment where she stood a 1-in-5 chance of being raped, I'd drive to that campus and tell her to start emptying out her dorm room. But I'm not seeing that happen anywhere. What are these parents telling their daughters? "You have a 20% chance of being raped by those seemingly nice boys who sit next to you in English 101, but it's a risk we have to take, darling. You'll need that decree from Columbia."
I don't believe anybody but the most deluded rad fems really believes the stats. What I do believe is that people are deathly afraid of being called sexist and being told they are part of rape culture if they question the stats, just as people are afraid of being labeled racists by the race hustlers.
Brando, I'd like to do that, but as we've seen, it's high heresy to question the motives of someone reporting they've been raped. Therefore, if the evidence is stark and undeniable, there is no need to question the victim. All that's left is finding the perp. If a woman won't fight her rapist, or report it the very first moment she is able to, then I conclude it never happened and the woman is making a false claim.
"What are these parents telling their daughters? "You have a 20% chance of being raped by those seemingly nice boys who sit next to you in English 101, but it's a risk we have to take, darling. You'll need that decree from Columbia.""
For that matter, if these SJW parents actually believed their own bunk, they'd take their daughters out of the Columbia dorms and have them live off campus, in the South Bronx, where statistically there is far less than a 20% chance of being raped.
"Brando, I'd like to do that, but as we've seen, it's high heresy to question the motives of someone reporting they've been raped."
Maybe for the SJWs--of course they make a notable exception for Bill Clinton, who was actually accused of rape. I suppose that was the only time in history a woman ever lied about being raped.
What are these parents telling their daughters? "You have a 20% chance of being raped by those seemingly nice boys who sit next to you in English 101, but it's a risk we have to take, darling. You'll need that decree from Columbia."
I don't believe anybody but the most deluded rad fems really believes the stats. What I do believe is that people are deathly afraid of being called sexist and being told they are part of rape culture if they question the stats, just as people are afraid of being labeled racists by the race hustlers.
Exaclty, Katrina!!
I'm glad I hit the Bings on this one because I was really stumped trying to figure out what the heck any of this had to do with Single Jewish Women.
I'm coming around to the point of view that maybe women are just too fragile for college.
There is a further assumption that human freewill can be modeled with a probability distribution. This argument is only valid on the basis that mortal beings are capable of finite degrees of freedom. However, human behavior is a chaotic process, and only yields to stochastic models in a limited frame of reference. The author would like to rationalize discrimination of a class of individuals based on a prejudice or stereotype.
"between two percent and 10 percent of rape reports are bogus."
-- That's a huge range. I wonder how they got that number.
"I'm glad I hit the Bings on this one because I was really stumped trying to figure out what the heck any of this had to do with Single Jewish Women."
I used to try and write out "social justice warrior" just to avoid that confusion, but it became unwieldy. It is a more apt term than "liberal" as there is nothing "liberal" in the literal sense about people who are trying to reduce freedom, and "leftist" is too broad a term to cover the particularly nasty activist sorts whose minds are addled with hatreds and nonsense.
This entire narrative never gets off the ground because it assumes only two possibilities: a woman is raped or is lying about being raped.
But the obvious reality is that there are rapes, a small amount of unbalanced women who lie about being raped, and then a certain amount of sexual encounters that are in a gray area. This third category is an obvious reality, but it is often shouted down by anti-rape activists.
Matthew Sablan said...
"between two percent and 10 percent of rape reports are bogus."
-- That's a huge range. I wonder how they got that number.
Between x and 5x of animals that quack like ducks are ducks.
Between x and 400% more of x are ducks.
Between x and only 20% of x are ducks.
I bet if one was able to apply an omniscient eye to the world, they'd find that there are more wackjob women out there making false accusations than there are real instances of "date rape", or "gray area" encounters.
I bet.
'Best-selling author Jon Krakauer interviewed no one from the University of Montana for his upcoming book about campus rape called "Missoula," according to UM President Royce Engstrom.'
Sounds like the Sabrina Rubin Erdely approach.
If you want a good chuckle coming from the best and brightest minds at public universities, check out this gem from Penn State's campus newspaper....basically arguing that the fraternity should not sue Rolling Stone cause it'd hurt the women
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/opinion/editorials/article_eaec4bc8-de3b-11e4-b593-7b278b3005da.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/07/in-an-iowa-courtroom-an-astonishing-case-of-sex-and-alzheimers/
Lydia,
That's SOP for Krakauer. He's a pretty good writer. If he can't get over himself to do non-fiction without his own spin, why doesn't he just hang up his journalist shoes and become a novelist. Because as it is he is neither.
BTW, how do you become #1 on anyone's list if you haven't yet gone to press?
And if unpublished, you are #1 in gender studies or whatever, what does that say about everyone else further down the list?
Has anyone considered that all this bragging about how easy it is to get away with rape, makes it seem like an extremely attractive crime for people inclined that way? Easy to do, easy to avoid consequences.
Thirty-two times as many rapes as are reported? I am skeptical.
If those statistics are actually true, then most men (and women) will have known some woman who has been raped. Any commenters on here who know a rape victim?
The closest I have come is a girlfriend who had a friend who was raped in Griffith Park.
Every one of those stats is based on fraudulent numbers. How are we determining the percentages of rapes thst are real if they go unreported? If it's unrpeorted it means there's no case on it. Therefore there is no proof thst it occurred.
"Rape, moreover, is this country’s most underreported serious crime by a wide margin. Rigorous studies consistently indicate that at least 80 percent of rapes are never disclosed to law enforcement agencies or other authorities...."
That sounds like a stat that can't possibly be verified. Since the rapes aren't reported.
And then thst 97% of rapists are never caught.and then the fwct that 90% of rapes are real. 90% of what, reported or unreported rapes? And 97% of racists get away? 97% of reported or unreported?
It sounds like he's just putting numbers in thst sound impressive. Where is any verification whatsoever?
Katrina wrote:
Instapundit has said that he'll take global warming seriously when the people who tell us it's a problem start acting like it's a problem. I feel the same about campus rape.
I'll take it seriously when more than 20% of people who get raped actually report it.
If it's such an epidemic and only 1 in 5 wowen say anything and 97% of rapists get away, perhaps that because 4 out of 5 women didn't say anything. So they are in effect enabling the rapist to continue raping.
It also says something about the racists cunning. Those are some arch criminals thse rapists. Only 3% get caught. Somehow they are able to avoid any section and leave no DNA on the scene to identify themselves. Even though they are very possibly exchanging bodily flhide and getting their skin ripped when their victim scratches them. Or maybe a hair falls out. Nothing? What is their secret as criminals?
I submit that cases of males being raped are far and away the most under reported crimes.
If those statistics are actually true, then most men (and women) will have known some woman who has been raped. Any commenters on here who know a rape victim?
I have three people I can think of who I know were raped. Two were good friends in high school- one taken behind the school and forced at knifepoint to perform oral sex. One a drunken make out that he (a much older man) forced into sex even though she said no. And one a violet rape that I'm pretty sure was hired as part of a custody/divorce dispute that was incredibly nasty.
i do not believe 1 in 5 of the girls I knew in college were raped, and I do not hear the college kids I know now talking about how many of their friends have been raped.
OTOH, I know two people who were murdered and multiple people who died in private plane crashes.
My problem with the campus rape narrative and the "Teach men not to rape" activists is I believe they are fostering an unsafe environment for girls and young women.
No joke. To paraphrase Sargon of Akkad (if you don't know who he is, he's a liberal anti-radical feminist Youtube personality), why should your personal protection be anybody else's job to provide? Your personal protection is your job.
I think that MayBee is right about what is happening on campus these days. Thinking back 45 or so years since I was an undergraduate, back then the only women who would drink heavily were in stable sexual relationships (most typically with a guy). Now, a lot of the co-eds not only get drunk in the evenings, but start before that at pre-parties with their close friends. And, they end up blotto drunk, week in, and week out, or at least on multiple occasions, so it is hard to argue that their over-imbibing was accidental. We are talking 2-3-4 times the legal level for driving - enough that having to call paramedics is common.
As I've said before, until they move to ban alcohol from being near college campuses, then they're not serious about "fighting campus sexual assault".
Because alcohol is the main similiarity in all of the stories.
One problem that I see for these young women is that ultimately they graduate, and then the normal rules of society apply. And, expecting that they can get drunk and won't end up having sex, and that it won't be legally actionable, is just going to get them in trouble. Outside college, due process and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt apply. And, yes, probably a lot more predators out there (since most college men are of a similar age to the college women, etc.)
Also, there's way fewer dudes on campuses than in the real world.
Misogynists of the 1950's wouldn't treat women as being as incompetent as modern radical feminists do.
Of the rapes I described- the two that included violence reported it. The one that did not include violence was not reported, mostly because she just didn't think it was worth reporting. She was upset by it, in a "I cannot believe that happened, what an asshole" way.
How long until we begin to hear calls to ban men from college campuses?
" I do not hear the college kids I know now talking about how many of their friends have been raped."
My youngest daughter graduated in May 2013 and did not know any girls who were raped. There was an awful lot of drinking going on, though.
She did have an incident where she was out with two friends and the guy started beating up his girlfriend. They were not students. Annie called the cops and, when he started to threaten her, she locked herself in her car until the cops came.
MayBee,
I could share some similar stories. And thank you for your comments. The SJW version of a campus rape epidemic is a very bad cartoon. OTOH, your comments show the wide variation in what might happen to a young woman and how she responds to it. Life is not a SJW bumper sticker. As hard a they try.
Stanley Smith said...
Any commenters on here who know a rape victim?
I've known two women who I know have been raped, one of them on two different occasions. Of those, only one of the rapes was reported.
I assume I know more women who have been raped, but none that discussed such with me.
Pretty good discussion of the "rape culture" at colleges and why it might be going on.
OK, can I give you my theory about college campuses? We can talk about the professoriate, and we can talk about student activist groups, and all of this. But there is a third force on college campuses. And it is this bureaucracy of counseling. In field after field, in gender, in race, in sexuality, there is now this bureaucracy that has come up to help counsel kids with their problems on college campuses.
And one of the problems is, it’s a classic thing in economics: if you subsidize something, you get more of it. So if you have counseling bureaucracies, one of the things that a counselor in problems involving gender is going to find is more problems involving gender. More discrimination. More hostility. Same with race. Same with LGBT. And when you create a permanently-employed bureaucracy that is in part enriched by these things happening, because of course, then maybe you can hire more counselors and you are more central to the university’s mission, and your center gets more money, and you get raises, and all of that.
The medical school faculty ad a meeting with the "diversity person" last year. This was the first time I was ever in such a meeting. It was interesting, in the same way a visit to a zoo is interesting.
If the 1 in 5 statistic were true then all of us would know many women who have been raped.
But we have come to use language in funny ways. Rape and assault are now interchangeable, victims have become survivors and survivors and accusers are conflated. An unwanted kiss or a grope or a drunken pass all fall into a no-go zone for a certain type of campus activist
The "campus rape outbreak" trivializes actual rape and has become a sword to use against non-compliant males.
Perhaps we can get out hostess to chime in. UW Madison has about 40,000 students. Let's assume half are women; 20,000. At a 20% rape rate, that would mean roughly 4000 women are raped at Madison every four years (assuming that it takes 4 years to graduate) or 1000 rapes a year or about three rapes a day. I am not a resident so I wonder if Ann, as a resident will validate that statistic. Does Ann carry a gun to ward off the rapists at UW Madison?
Michael K:
Exactly so. Never has a bureaucracy designed to help helped enough to be able to disband. The helpers find a way to find those in need of help, to create the need of help if need be.
Out of curiosity as much as boredom I once consulted a psychiatrist, a rather noted guy, over the course of a year. I learned that you are deemed cured by those men when you don't make the next appointment. It made me laugh when I figured it out.
In other news, Ayatollah Kamanehi has just thrown Obama under a three wide fifteen deep covey of speeding Greyhounds. The result: The President of the United States is looking like three day road kill.
"Any commenters on here who know a rape victim?"
I've known two. One was in 7th grade when I was in 8th grade and was raped at knifepoint by a man in his 30's who was never caught,although she gave police a very detailed description of his appearance.
The other was a friend who was raped and badly beaten just a few yards from her apartment building. That was in Sheepshead's Bay, Brooklyn in the early '80's.
I don't remember hearing of any campus rapes in college, although I'm sure they must have occurred. I went to an urban college and car and apartment break-ins and muggings were fairly common.
What they have done is cheapen rape. I have been watching Downton Abbey on Amazon and a rape story line has been introduced. My reaction is now to roll my eyes.
I know of one rape victim from college. She was Israeli and she was gang raped by Palestinians. It obviously profoundly affected her. I don't take rape rape lightly.
I guess I know other rape victims too, since I knew lots of girls that got, what we used to call laid, but now call raped, after getting high or having a few drinks. That's rape now. I am a serial rapist. I hope the statute of limitations is up, but I kind of doubt my old girlfriends would turn me in.
I know someone who was raped in college. She snuck into a classmate's bedroom (he still lived at home), they fooled around. She said no, but he continued. I've never asked, but I assume she didn't cry out since his parents were home and she had to sneak in and sneak out. She majored in Women's Studies. She's now married to a woman. Make what you will of the information.
Who in the world would vilify a victim of a crime? And why?
Or, do they mean, question in order to verify the crime happened?
If I were to say, get mugged at 2:00 AM in East St Louis, you can be damned sure the police would ask why I was there at the time.
One possible remedy for both genders to the "rape culture" problem would be to only engage in sexual relations with people with which you are in a committed, stable and monogamous relationship.
That was the accepted standard at one point; deviations from this standard were considered shameful. Shame is a powerful social regulator of behavior. (And the disallowal of shame in a society causes severe problems.)
"If I were to say, get mugged at 2:00 AM in East St Louis, you can be damned sure the police would ask why I was there at the time."
People sometimes lie about muggings.
Who in the world would vilify a victim of a crime? And why?
Or, do they mean, question in order to verify the crime happened?
The assumption is that women don't lie about being raped. But, that men would, because they are being accused of committing a crime. So, you should always believe the woman. But, the idea that women wouldn't lie about this is ludicrous. They do it on a routine basis.
Why do many females of our species lie about sexual matters? I would suggest that it is at least partially, if not primarily, the result of two somewhat competing sexual strategies. The older, more basic, strategy is to acquire the best sperm available for their offspring. That means mating with alpha males. The newer strategy is to pair bond with the best provider available. Given statistics, that typically means marrying beta males. The intersection of these is having the alpha father a woman's children, and her beta husband raise them. Except, of course, this means that the beta mate has squandered his resources on some other male's offspring. Which is not a sexual strategy that is going to advantage that male's genetic legacy, and, hence, much of why males act so aggressively when encountering adultery (etc.) Short story - females are wired to sometimes cheat on their mates, and males to react violently when they discover such (and to prefer females they believe won't cheat).
Let's flip it though, and look for a minute at the males' sexual strategy. And, that is essentially the opposite - to devote resources to a primary mate or mates for the raising of their children, and then spread their oats among as many other women as possible as bonus babies. They have a lesser chance at flourishing, but that chance is greater than zero. All it takes for an increased chance at a genetic legacy is a (renewable) quarter ounce (or so) of sperm and a little work up front.
Getting back to the female side - why do many women lie about sex? To hide the dissonance and conflicts between their two sexual strategies. That is how they get beta males to raise their children fathered by alpha males.
Why lie about rape in particular? Partly, I think, because being raped is a better excuse for screwing around with other guys than just desiring those alpha male sperm. I thin that this is also part of why so much of the sex in college these days is drunken sex. We have long had women crying "rape" when caught in bed with bed with men they shouldn't be in bed with. And, I think that esp. the Islamic response, not accepting the testimony of women in this regard, may also be indicative of this being a long term, innate human situation.
Note - I am not saying that all claims of rape are specious. Or, even half of them. Males have good reasons to lie here too. But, we have many too many historical and cultural reasons to believe that fictitious rape claims are far more common than claimed by that author.
Rereading my last post, let me add a bit. Why lie about rape in particular? I noted that getting raped is better than just screwing around on a guy. But, that skips a step. As I noted, one of the male strategies to circumvent females screwing alpha males for their sperm to be raised by beta mates is anger, violence, and aggression. Women die when caught in bed with other men. They always have, and likely will for a long time in the future. And, from a male point of view, that is somewhat justified - the woman is stealing his resources to raise some other man's genetic children. That means that cuckolded males have fewer children of their own having children, etc. Hence, presumably, the reason that males are wired to react violently to discovery of being cuckolded. But, women can divert this anger and violence away from themselves if they can convince their mates that they were innocent victims of rape, and had no intentional part in their sex with another man. And, that just makes the other guy that more of a villain.
Shame is a powerful social regulator of behavior.
Which is why the Left has spent the last fifty years trying to eradicate shame from our culture.
If I had a daughter in collage, I would have her actively participate in every school function involving "awareness" and every "rape culture" event held, and record them. Then if anyone in any official capacity mentioned the 1 in 5 stat, would find me a good lawyer go after them if that stat was not in their promotional literature. Go after them for failure to disclose a dangerous climate for my daughter and failure to protect. Get a free ride for my kid out of it.
Let that happen a few times and see how fast that stat dies. Hit them in the wallet...
"Are they empowered with the idea that they can drink as much as they want and go where they want and it's sexist to think otherwise?"
This. Walking into an emergency room where blood alcohol levels can be objectively measured may introduce an additional challenge to establishing a campus rape.
Emergency room staff, though compassionate and attentive, do tend to follow evidence protocol and scrutinize repeat visits.
"Repeat the lie often enough, and it becomes the truth." What famous German progressive philosopher said that?
"My problem with the campus rape narrative and the "Teach men not to rape" activists is I believe they are fostering an unsafe environment for girls and young women."
I agree with MayBee. It's irrational.
"Oh no! Stop that woman, she's headed into a war zone!"
"Oh? So women can't go where they want?"
"Of course they can go where they want. Someone should warn her though. There's a war zone down there. It's dangerous!"
"Sure, warn her so it's all on her. You warn her, and if she gets shot, it's all her fault, right?"
"No! What?! Look, I think she probably wants to know there's a war zone down there."
"Instead of hassling her, why don't you go tell those soldiers that killing people is wrong? Why is it about bossing her around? Why not tell them to quit having wars?"
"Hey, lady! Look out! There are a bunch of soldiers fighting it out down there!"
"I can't believe you did that. I can't believe you warned her. Do you hate women? This is exactly what I'm talking about when I bring up pro-killing culture."
Bruce, I like you, I really do, but all this about Alpha males, beta males, competing sexual strategies, women getting impregnated by Alphas to raise their offspring with betas really does not compute, as Spock would say. Or maybe Spock would agree with you. Did Spock has offspring?
But that’s not how humans mate. At some point in their development young men want to have sex, mostly with young women. And they try their hardest. Many succeed; some beget children. Some of those couplings result in marriage, a great many result in abortions, and many other result in single-parent families. There are even those who resist the urge to have intercourse and wait for marriage … or at least a commitment to marry. These were once the rule, now they seem to be the exception.
We’re not quite sure which is which because the information is provided by the same media that informed us that, statistically, at least 1000 women are raped at UW Madison per year and that a coed named Jackie was gang raped in a frat house at UVA by seven guys and a bottle as part of an initiation.
So all I have to go in is my memory of my own – and my friends – when we were in that phase of our lives. And it had nothing to do with “sexual strategy” from a 30,000 foot level. It had a lot to do with hormones, Playboy Magazine and the cultural zeitgeist of the times. Boys will be boys and will do what they do unless the culture they live in reins them in.
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