@TV4caster, as a quantitative social scientist, I get tremendously annoyed by arguments via anecdote.
I have opinions, but I want to see what others think before expressing them.
“IMO, Ms. Young is making the accusation that “feminists” are turning these into rape accusations up out of whole cloth. As far as I know, NOBODY is calling the scenarios rape. BTW, this is not the first article on the subject Ms. Young has written. Google her name and rape and you’ll find more articles in which she claims that feminists are all encouraging young women to regard unpleasant sexual encounters as rape. And, after reading a few of these articles, it sure seems like she has an agenda.”
Does she? Or do they?
What she said is the truth.
For Maine
it’s going to hinge on this I think, but I’d have to listen to the defense and the prosecution and understand what they are both saying occurred and how it occurred as I don’t have a gut feeling at all about this one. It sounds like she admits she didn’t stop him, but he freaked out and ran when she started crying. I also don’t know what Maine laws are, doesn’t sound like force was used so maybe they have something like unlawful sexual conduct if the grand jury feels that she did not imply consent or maybe he’ll plead to that if the accuser is in favor of prosecution - I’m guessing that is what would go down in Michigan…the equivalent in michigan is what is called a high misdemeanor crime. I’m guessing if she’s not supportive of prosecution all bets are off although his lawyer might try for probation and no sex registry.
The USDOE has a tool that lists the number of officially reported crimes on college campuses at http://ope.ed.gov/security/ . All the studies agree that the overwhelming majority of campus sex offenses are not officially reported, so underreporting is expected with this tool, like with the USDOJ numbers. However, we can still look at how the rate has changed over time. The number of officially reported on campus “forcible sex offenses” by year are below for the 13 years in which they list data. The number of reported incidents does not appear be decreasing. Instead there is a sharp increase between 2009 and 2013.
2001 - 2,235
2002 - 2,352
2003 - 2,621
2004 - 2,689
2005 - 2,772
2006 - 2,717
2007 - 2,740
2008 - 2,676
2009 - 2,608
2010 - 2,986
2011 - 3,443
2012 – 4,108
2013 – 5,050
This sharp increase does not occur with other types of crimes, suggesting it was not due to including a larger sample group or similar. For example, the most frequently reported crime of burglary gradually decreased from 32k in 2006 to 24k in 2009 to 16k in 2013. However, this also does not mean the rate of sexual assault has shot up. Instead the increase might relate to recent campaigns encouraging students to officially report crimes or similar reasons to increase the portion of victims who report. We really don’t have any way to tell. Similarly there are countless possible explanations for why the USDOJ numbers have fell over the past couple decades. For example, attitudes towards phones have changed dramatically over the past couple decades and may influence how likely students are to talk about sexual assaults with interviewers over the phone. There are countless possibilities. In short, I don’t think we have a clear indication of whether numbers are going up or down from the information listed in this thread.
@dfbdfb I don’t see her article as making an argument via anecdote. She was giving specific instances of incidents that happened to her and saying that similar situations are seen by some people as sexual assault, but that in her opinion they were not.
What is she supposed to do, take a survey of people to see what they think happened to her and base her feelings off of that? Would it be better to give the circumstances of the incident that happened to her and see if, in general, people agree or disagree that it was sexual assault? That isn’t going to change her feelings, or that she think she was assaulted.
As a scientist I also prefer data, but I also realize that the analysis of data isn’t always the answer to every question.
ETA- also, as a quantitative social scientist you should know that a lot of information can be derived from a small sample size*. The margin of error is much smaller than people think with relatively small samples. That means that while single anecdotes might not be statistically valid, that cases where someone is making a generalization based on a larger number of experiences might have some validity.
*assuming that the samples are representative of the population, etc. I know more is involved, and that I am making generalizations, but I think/hope you get the point.
I turned 21 in 1978, and I never slept with anyone that I met in a bar.
My friends and I went to bars/ discos, to dance, listen to music & play pool, not to meet strangers.
i was also never sexually assaulted by someone I met in a bar.
Looking back on the incidents, I believe they were multi- causal.
I am on the aspergry spectrum, and take people at face value.( but without looking at their face! 
) If someone said they were willing to give me a ride home, and they were known to me, or my coworkers, it did not ring any alarm bells. I’m not a flirt, if I was interested in someone, they would know, I was not coy & I didn’t play games, but very, very, very, few people that I knew, was I interested in enough to let them touch me, let alone have sex with.
I also knew a great many men & boys, who were raised with an entitlement complex.
We see this still today, in the way that the Duggars view their son who molested at least four of their daughters.
It also can be thought of as people who should know better, acting like they are two years olds.
You know " If I want it, it is mine, If I used to have one like it, it is mine, if I can take it from you, it is mine".
Even more so than today, our culture told men that it was desirable to have many " conquests" as a sign of " manliness & virility". That when women said no, they meant maybe, and if they were trying to let him down easy & he thought they said " maybe", that was as good as a yes.
Especially when their appearance & social skills did not lend them to great success with women, some men seemed to grab onto any kindness from the opposite sex as evidence that they were interested in them, and when the women tried to stop being manhandled, they were " a female dog who led them on, and deserves what she gets".
I had several instances in different jobs, when my male employer/supervisor touched me in a sexual way at work.
I was not dressed inappropriately, I was not suggestive, at all, they just thought they could get away with grabbing at me. I quit those jobs, but it’s probable that women coming before or after me, felt that they didn’t have that luxury. And with one of the jobs, I didn’t quit right away, because I didn’t know what to do, and because I had also been conditioned by society that was just how men " behaved".
It took me over thirty years to realize that my first experience, was in fact rape.
I fought the whole time to get away, but it was someone that I had gone out with a few times, and actually even did afterwards, I was so brainwashed, that it took me that long to admit to myself, that he should have listened when I said no, and especially when I fought to get away.
But I had been raised by my family and my surroundings, to devalue my own opinion, and to defer to others.
Which is one reason why I started to give my kids choices, almost as soon as they had opinions!
Data 10 – I think it is pretty reasonable to tie the increase in reported incidents in the US DOE stats to all the news and efforts in recent years on this issue (which is a good thing). For example, the reporting spike coincides precisely with US DOE’s Dear Colleague letter, which came out in 2011 and which has been driving big media and awareness since.
Because of the length and breadth of its 20 year data set, I still keep coming back to the US DOJ longitudinal study. I have not heard any good reason to believe that those trends aren’t valid. Also intriguing to me that those US DOJ numbers were generated by the same Obama administration that has been backing US DOE OCR on this issue big time. So there’s no reason to suspect that Obama’s US DOJ was sand-bagging the data on the low side. I also think the US DOJ trend data for campus rape is made more credible because it correlates strongly with other data that is generally accepted and not controversial – data that shows declines in overall crime rates over the same periods, including sex assault data for non-student women of college age and also women not of college age.
The narrative we hear is “Campus Sexual Assault May be Even Worse Than We Previously Thought.” Yet the best single piece of data we have supports the narrative of “Campus Sexual Assault Has Declined by Over 50% in the Past 20 Years.” So which is it? Sure we can always do better. But it is quite possible that we have been doing much better for over 15 years.
Perhaps the only narrative that really has been proven is that no one knows what they are talking about. Not me. Not you. Not Fang. Not Stark. Not US DOJ. Not US DOE OCR either. Not Sen Gillibrand or Mattress Girl. Not Cathy Young.
Peace out.
I did, but then again it wasn’t until quite a while later and she later became my wife 
So, who said earlier on this thread that nothing good ever comes from late night meetings at bars.
That’s easy- both those headlines are correct.
The rate of sexual assault is higher than was acknowledged, ten, twenty or thirty years ago, because many, many, many people did not report, and we did not want to acknowledge that our sons and daughters were being preyed
upon.
However, if we had accurate numbers of sexual assaults, say in the 70’s, when women were supposed to just “deal”, those numbers are higher than the guesstimation of the current level of sexual assaults.
I like this because the studies are cited.
http://www.oneinfourusa.org/statistics.php
Here is one study. Talks about weaknesses in the DOJ study.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/219181.pdf
@dstark any idea what “the men’s program” is that was mentioned in the first link you just posted? If watching that really reduces rapes by 40% of whatever the number was, why aren’t all incoming freshmen required to watch/participate in it?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/women-casual-sex_n_7191424.html
An interesting study popped up on one of my national news feeds today regarding women and casual flings. I wonder how the changing dynamic re sexual attitudes will affect issues like we have been talking about going forward.
In your post, you said that the USDOE increasing incident trend wasn’t reliable because the percentage of victims who reported probably increased, rather than the number of actual incidents. The USDOE numbers are especially prone to this type of influence from percent reporting because they only count incidents that are officially reported to authorities, which are extremely underreported. As you increase the rate of underreporting, you become more prone to measuring small changes in the percent who chose to report, rather than percent of events that occurred. For the same reason, the USDOJ trends are also less reliable since the USDOJ methadology of phone and in person interviews, using the word “rape”, etc. leads to greater underreporting than other methods.
If you look at other SES questionnaire type studies from 20 years ago, they do not suggest a strong decrease in rate of incident. For example the 1987 Koss study at http://www.soci270.carvajal.ca/documents/KossTheScopeofRape.pdf was particularly extensive since it looked at thousands of students across 32 universities in varied sections of the country. It found the following percentage of students reported different types of SA events since age 14. Including incidents before college should result in much higher numbers than the more recent questionnaire type studies/surveys that have been mentioned in this thread, yet instead they are in the ballpark of the more recent ones. Similarly the rate of reported incidents during the past 12 months were also lower than the more recent studies.
Forced Intercourse – 9%
Forced Oral/Anal – 6%
Incapacitated Intercourse – 8%
The other studies I’m aware of also do not suggest a decrease. You mentioned liking longitudinal studies, so I’ll refer this one from 2000 at http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/J_White_Womens_2000.pdf which tracked over 1500 women in each year using the SES survey. It found the following rate of “rape” by year of college, which is in the ballpark of some of the more recent ones, so again not suggesting a big decrease.
Before College — 13.0%
1st Year – 6.4%
2nd Year — 4.8%
3rd Year – 5.0%
4th Year - 3.9%
From Age 14 Through 4th Year - 21.2%
I am not in any way justifying rape on campuses, but it is important to note that the rate of sexual assault is higher off campus than on.
"One recent paper that does make that comparison, “Violence Against College Women” by Callie Marie Rennison and Lynn Addington, compares the crime experienced by college students and their peers who are not in college, using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. What the researchers found was the opposite of what Gillibrand says about the dangers of campuses: “Non-student females are victims of violence at rates 1.7 times greater than are college females,” the authors wrote, and this greater victimization holds true for sex crimes: “Even if the definition of violence were limited to sexual assaults, these crimes are more pervasive for young adult women who are not in college.”
I never said that nothing good ever happens in a bar. My point was/is that kids of both genders who make a practice of having sex with people they’ve met at a bar, with alcohol involved, have a different risk factor for someone to claim rape/coercion/unwanted sexual contact than kids who do not. Male and female.
The fact that many people can go to a bar and NOT have sex in no way undercuts my argument. There are behaviors which expose kids to risks- for sure, the lessening of one’s frontal cortex decision-making which often accompanies inebriation doesn’t help a man answer the question “does she want to be with me?” or help a woman answer the question “do I want to have sex with him”.
The most difficult point, data aside, is at what point do we has a society want to criminalize poor decision making on the part of two young adults and because of sex registries potentially punish them for life. Whatever point it is it must be accepted and supported by the accuser who will need to follow through and it must be accepted and support by society - or laws will not change.
You will never be able to change the law to match up with the type of data generated by the surveys. The constitutional rules on burden of proof, specificity of charges, men’s rea won’t permit it.
On a somewhat related note (to the topic of campus sexual assault)–a new online reporting system has been implemented at U of SF. It is called Callisto:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/28/university-of-san-francisco-callisto_n_7464174.html
"The system allows an alleged victim to hold back on submitting their report unless someone else reports the same assailant, or to save their file with a timestamp and come back at a later point to turn in their report. Sexual Health Innovations hopes the system can get more victims to come forward, identify serial perpetrators and mitigate responses by school or law enforcement officials that may exacerbate trauma experienced by a victim. "
What does everyone think? You can save the file and update it as you remember things; you can be notified if someone else names the same attacker and then decide to submit as well; or you never have to formally submit the report if you don’t want to.
“a university in upstate NY”?
That’s the “unbiased test case”?
Bull. If 1 in 5 are being raped, then who are the 1 in 5 rapists? Or are the same guys raping multiple women? Are they surveying men?
And the “first three months on campus freshman year”?
I’d like to see what questions were asked.
Anyway, let’s have some victim-blaming, straight from RAINN:
https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
Why are the crimes not reported? Do we not educate our children enough about reporting all crimes? Or are there reasons not to report a crime that should be considered (which doesn’t make the rapist innocent, but it doesn’t make the victim responsible for the safety of others)?