UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

In all fairness, if these are RS's standards it could be any number of stories that has them in hot water.

 

OK, let's address the 1 in 5 figure once and for all.

That number is accurate, but does not come from a "study," it comes from a national telephone survey, meaning that number is entirely based on people self-reporting. You can read the entire thing here: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=ss6308a1_e. Be sure to check out the section on limitations, including an admission of the possibility of recall bias on the part of respondents, and also other limitations that suggest the statistics might actually be higher.

The definition of "rape," for that survey, was not overly broad, and was limited to complete forced penetration, attempted forced penetration and completed alcohol- or drug-facilitated penetration.

The main issue is the alcohol and drug questions, in that the way the survey is conducted strongly implies that women cannot give true consent unless she's stone-cold sober and seemingly assumes that any amount of impairment, no matter how negligible, constitutes incapacitation in the eyes of the law. Which is not true.

 

"That number is accurate."

Accurate to what? Accurate to the belief that 20 percent of all adult women have been raped?

Sorry. That's ridiculous.

 

So we should never believe anything from Fox News?

 

It's accurate that 1 in 5 women reported being raped in a 2011 survey conducted by the CDC.

Also, remember, a survey conducted by psychologists and public health folks, not law enforcement.

 

Isn't this the one dq deconstructed earlier? I thought the psychologists defined the sex as rape after the fact based on whether the woman had been drinking. Or maybe that was another study that came out with the same numbers.

Whatever the background, the net effect is to trivialize the matter, because nobody is going to (nor should anybody) believe that number.

 

You clearly didn't read my original post.

But, to answer the question again, not exactly. It differentiates between drunk or high rape and drunk or high consensual sex, but does so in a way that "strongly implies that women cannot give true consent unless she's stone-cold sober and seemingly assumes that any amount of impairment, no matter how negligible, constitutes incapacitation in the eyes of the law." -- Creosote, about 10 minutes ago.

And, again, I'll ask, so what if the 1 in 5 number isn't true? So what if it's 1 in 20, 1 in 50, or 1 in 100? Even if it's 1 in 500, that's still about 200,000 rapes a year in the U.S. alone. Is that acceptable?

There's no doubt it trivializes the matter. By choosing to focus on the results of a random phone survey just because the numbers are sexier for headlines not only puts the focus on faulty data, but implies that the real data isn't that bad, which is demonstrably false.

 

Rape is bad. Rape should go away forever. It appears you think we have a disagreement on that point.

The advocacy community has taken a great interest in making true the numbers that we are now realizing are quite false.

 

Of course it has. It's an advocacy community. My general point was that, from a journalistic standpoint, the issue is with the language, not the numbers.

False: "A study shows 1 in 5 women have been raped."
Correct: "In a national survey, 1 in 5 women responded that they've been raped."

Anyway, let's look at real numbers. Can we agree to give credence to the FBI and DOJ statistics? (This is really addressed at journalists as a whole, not you specifically.)

According to the FBI, in 2013, a total of 79,770 rapes (meaning forcible penetration against the victim's will) were reported in the U.S. The DOJ estimates that only about 18 percent of rapes are reported.

Given those numbers, that would mean more than 400,000 rapes per year, or 1 in 250. Count statutory rape, incest and child molestation, and the numbers go even higher. Add in that almost 40 percent of victims are raped between the ages of 18-24.

Add in other forms of sexual assault or unwelcome sexual contact, it's not that long a trip to get from here to 1 in 5.

 

And to get to that 1 in 5, all we have to do is drop whatever the hell we're talking about and make the definition be whatever we want, no matter how nebulous. "Unwelcome" is even a fungible word in that.

 

The image I have in my brain is "meathead meets girl at bar, tries to dance with her even though she wants nothing to do with him, grabs her ass or something else."

But, what's the alternative? "You can grab her ass against her will, but not her boobs?" Unwelcome is unwelcome. How to prove that legally is another issue, but it's not hard to draw that line in the sand socially.

 

What I'm referring to are the cases where it was welcome at the time but turns unwelcome in the re-telling. Or is automatically ruled unwelcome because alcohol was involved.