Rape stats and tractor stats!

I have just caught a news item on Sky News telling us all, yawn, that yet another 'survey', bigger yawn, has concluded that 10% of women are raped, a jaw-breaker yawn!  This total waste of oxygen and effort comes to us via the good offices of some outfit calling itself Mumsnet - yeeees, quite!  I suppose I had better make clear immediately, before a flock of harridans attacks me, that my sympathy for women who have genuinely been raped in the old-fashioned sense of the word, that is, sexually assaulted against their will with violence or the threat of violence, is considerable.  I use that word rather than total because I suspect that in some rape cases, even under my definition, there are complicated circumstances which would give one pause for thought.

However, I tend to treat these never-ending 'surveys' of rape stats with the same degree of scepticism as I treat similar 'surveys' in the, er, raunchier types of men's magazines which aim to tell us how many women the average man has slept with before the age of 40.  The fact of the matter is that we all know, do we not, chaps?, that the only certainty is that men always, but always, lie about their sexual prowess.  Also, I am not at all sure what Mumsnet defines as rape and sexual assault.  I suspect that if they actually have a definition it is rather loose, in fact so loose that it is possible that 'back in the day' my furtive fumblings might have made me guilty, too, m'Lud! 

IRONY ALERT!  And this one is delicious.  Further doubts might arise from the Mumsnet survey when The Daily Mail reports the following:

[T]he founders of Mumsnet are facing a rather delicate problem after their well-educated members began using the parenting website to exchange information on rather spicier activities.

Justine Roberts and Carrie Longton have been forced to delete dozens of highly explicit messages posted on the discussion boards after they were deemed pornographic.

But many of the explicit online conversations between the middle- class mothers remain, with new messages being posted daily. Editors at Mumsnet's headquarters in Kentish Town, North London, appear to have abandoned efforts to stop many of the X-rated discussions.

By Jove, a jolly lot these Mumsnet gals, what?  Ding-dong!

Needless to say, all these so-called 'surveys', far from clarifying a problem simply obfuscate it.  It is significant that the ladies of Mumsnet describe their 'survey' as "Our new campaign"!  (My emphasis) Oh, I see, just another bunch of axe-grinders, then.  And theyhave given their 'campaign' a rather twee name - "We Believe You" - which means in my book that you can safely reduce their figures by 90%.

 

Comments

[JuliaM]

Their figures are statistical garbage.

[Whyaxye]

I've just been on their site looking for evidence of the "spicier activities" which so exercise the Daily Mail. Just as well I didn't find any. I'm sure I read in some crappy self-report survey that over 120% of men who access such material go on to commit rape.

[Whyaxye]

Me again. I've just looked at the Daily Mail story. It is a bit ancient now, but many thanks for the best laugh of the week. I mean the "Pirate" bit, of course! Absolutely priceless!! I have asked Mrs. W to run up a couple of eye-patches and might even invest in a parrot. I just need to get her more interested in my, erm, crutch...

[David Duff]

Thank you, Julia, I think they summed it up very well.

'W', in my haste I hadn't reached the piratic bit - or do I mean 'priapic'? "Oh very witty, Wilde." And already I'm feeling sorry for the parrot!

[Able]

I'd say this makes me angry but I no longer have any energy left to feel so after the reams of utter bilge published as research year after year.

The MUMSNET 'research' is a perfect example. A self selecting group who still only managed to indicate a ten percent outcome, someone is obviously not trying hard enough. (I'm doing some research too, the question raised will be 'tall, balding men are the most intelligent, attractive and just all around best, yes or no'. Since only we tall etc. men will feel any interest or have strong enough feelings to even respond I'm sure we will have at least a 90% positive result, there's bound to be a few deluded vertically challenged, hirsute types to bugger up a perfect result when everyone knows I'm a heart-throb type [women only run screaming when they see me because I'm so attractive]).

I could query the base definition of rape and sexual assault with the variation in what constitutes 'force', 'threats', etc but I'd be preaching to the choir. This article is interesting:

help.northwest.nhs.uk/storage/library/Rape_and_sexual_assault_of_women_-_crime_survey.pdf

in that it states a rate of 32% of 'sexual attacks' committed by current partners and 45% of 'rapes'. So don't feel like sex tonight? have a headache? Feel pressured due to relationship? - Becomes rape???? (whilst a percentage will be like the seen from 'Once Were Warriors' they are lost in the garbage, well done ladies!)

Oh and it isn't just men included you know?

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/13/1/8.html

Have a look at the comparisons, lesbian partners are considerably more likely to use threats/coercion/force in a relationship when compared to male same-sex partners. (It raises some questions does it not? Is it that women are more likely to report this,or that women are more likely to interpret, then or retrospectively, that an action was forced on them???)

As a nurse I feel strongly about this because I have seen and cared for the real victims of rape (one of whom was a 23 year old colleague attacked whilst walking home from a shift, who required intensive care and surgery without even considering the shattering mental effects). To have these idiots comparing 'Shaz getting drunk, sleeping with Trev and in the morning deciding she didn't fancy him so it must be rape' or 'Trace, married to Dave, not feeling interested but giving in without bothering to tell him and then telling her anonymous mumsnet pals she was raped' is purely disgusting.

Maybe when they realise that the real victims of this rubbish are the women who have suffered violent rapes, whose reports are tarnished by comparison, then they will stop with the misandrist clap-trap, But I doubt it.

Oh and to put it all in perspective the BCS reported 64000 attacks (using their broad definitions) a year out of a population of 70 million, half of whom will be women. Yet 'all men are rapists' is still their battle cry?

I truly despair!

[Hank]

David

I understand the police say that 60% of rape reports are unprosecutable, often because the event did not happen or at least can't be proved to have happened. But of course that also is statistics.

I would think if a group gets paid by a third party for solving problems on per incident basis: their reports of the number of incidents at best suffer from a bias and at worst are knowingly inflated.

Or perhaps I am just being cynical.

http://eclecticmeanderings.blogspot.com/
Hank’s Eclectic Meanderings

[David Duff]

Able, you make a point I meant to make but lost in the writing. Yes, indeed, these ridiculous exercises obfuscate and trivialise the all too real tragedies and traumas of those women who are really raped or sexually assaulted.

Indeed, Hank,and it is this lack of proof in an age of forensic science which make sme wonder about the stats.