What is "Rape Culture"?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Bowser, Nov 8, 2015.

  1. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

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    264
    No it's not. It was 16,005 people, 8000 women, and 8005 men. Eight thousand is a large sample size. The numbers that you're so inclined to believe, the FBI stats, are less realistic than these findings from the U.S. Department of Justice.

    https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/172837.pdf

    "The FBI projected that the number of rapes will increase by as much as 41.7% as the more inclusive definition is implemented.

    It’s important to note that though closer to accurate, the 2013 UCR rape statistics are still an incomplete snapshot: Not all law enforcement agencies have converted their records management systems to reflect the new definition yet."


    FBI Releases First Annual Report Using Revised Definition of Rape

    How Did the FBI Miss Over 1 Million rapes?
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2015
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Any culture in which the behavior seen in that video is accepted as "hello, how are you" is a culture in which sexual coercion and public sexual abuse of women is accepted as a normal aspect of the ordinary workings of society.

    A rape culture, in short.
    At what percentage of actual rapist,

    as opposed to standard tolerance of their presence and casual jokes about their interests and acceptance of their existence as not requiring emergency response and recurrent demands for vigilance against them among potential victims, which is in your estimation not culturally significant

    would you consider rape to have become a significant aspect of a culture?
     
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  5. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

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    The 2013 estimate of 79,770 rapes were under the legacy definition, not the revised definition.

    There were an estimated 79,770 rapes (legacy definition) reported to law enforcement.

    https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/november/crime-statistics-for-2013-released

    According to their rape addendum, they expect a 41.7 increase when the revised definition is fully implemented.

    Third, because the revised definition, unlike the legacy definition, includes offenses of rape, sodomy, sexual assaults with objects, and offenses in which males were the victims, the number of rape offenses may appear to increase for various agencies or in certain aggregations. Except where comparisons are made based on the same definitions of rape, readers are cautioned against assuming increases in rape numbers are due to an increase of violence or number of sexual assaults, but rather, the increase may simply be a reflection of the more inclusive definition.

    To estimate how much rape numbers might be expected to increase in agencies and states based on the revised definition, the UCR Program made a comparison of sex offenses in the NIBRS, which includes male victims and the additional offenses mentioned above. As the table below shows, this change may yield as much as a 41.7 percent increase in the number of sex offenses.


    https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/u...e-u.s.-2013/rape-addendum/rape_addendum_final
     
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  7. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. I excluded the male portion because it wasnt included on the earliest FBI rape info. I should have said that.

    Those numbers are actual numbers rather than extrapolated poll data. And they are incomplete as you point out later. The revised rape statistics doesnt change the legacy numbers, though I have no doubt the numbers in the past would also be higher. Date rape for example, occurred throughout time, but it wasnt called that. Hence the term shotgun wedding and our past with Homes for Wayward Girls.... and those were just the cases that resulted in pregnancy.


    Again, changing the definitions will raise the numbers but not change the past when it was/remains excluded. So I think for discussion, we almost have to use the legacy data or its apples/oranges.

    Full version of his report here:

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2404424##

    Its a long read and time constraints prevent me from more than skimming his report. While it is true some police depts badgered people to reduce the reported rapes, that also happened in the past, reducing the number of reported rapes then also.

    And even using his methods of comparing murder rates and extrapolating that to rape, the actual murder rates have fallen. So while rape remains under-reported, it is more likely than not falling along with murder rates:

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  8. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

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    An estimated 41.7% increase for the FBI would be 113,034.09

    Between 1989-90

    (NWS), estimated 683,000 female victims per year

    (FBI) reported 102,500 female victims

    (NCS) estimated 130,000 female victims

    In 2010

    (NISVS) estimated 1,270,000 male and female victims, which was many times higher than the (NCVS) estimate of female victimization 188,380.

    Thus, an important barrier to understanding the extent of rape and sexual assault in the United States is the existence of multiple sources of information providing different answers. These surveys and programs have somewhat different objectives, are conducted within a different “context,” and use different measurement tools. The end result is that they provide different estimates of the extent of rape and sexual assault. This in turn, creates confusion for the public, for law enforcement, for policy makers, for researchers, and for victim advocacy groups.

    Chapter 10 details the panel's conclusion that the NCVS is not an adequate vehicle for the goal of accurate measurement and presents the panel's recommendations for best practices, including a recommendation for a separate survey to measure rape and sexual assault victimizations. It provides guidelines on the optimum design of this new survey, as well as lower-cost variations. It also includes recommendations for specialized training and monitoring, research, and enhanced communication with data users.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK202270/
     
  9. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    264
    Even if you stick with the FBI's stats, I still don't think that 113,034 females per year is a drop in the bucket. Our largest stadium in the U.S. only holds 107,601.
     
  10. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    3,252

    Here is a good one.
    Police Seek Twerkers Accused Of Sexual Assault
    Police in Washington, D.C., are asking the public's help to identify two women accused of sexually assaulting a man by twerking against him and fondling his genitalia.The incident happened Oct. 7 around 4 p.m. at a store on the 1700 block of New York Avenue.Surveillance video shows a man talking on…

    Huffington Post
     
  11. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    So you would reject Infinite Prevention Advocacy?

    You know, that ever-growing list of things women can do to prevent their own rape? Like how they should cut their hair. Or when they should or shouldn't use their mobile phone. Or shouldn't drink alcohol. Or what clothes and shoes to wear when they go out. Because, after all, we're pretty much telling women to plan their day around the expectation of being sexually assaulted.

    And that requires them to suspect every man.

    Except, you know, #NotAllMen.

    Which, observably, simply comes down to #JustNotMe.

    As I have noted before↱, effort is a prerequisite of failure to notice overlapping demands for mutually exclusive conditions.
     
  12. tali89 Registered Senior Member

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    343


    But I performed my calculation with the 2013 data, not the 2010 data. I made this very clear. Indeed, you even cited me saying as such, so I'm rather perplexed as to why you're responding as though I was using the 2010 data set and definition of rape.

    The key word here being 'if'. You keep quoting studies with radically different estimates of the prevalence of rape, not realizing how doing so shows just how unreliable all these studies are.

    Do you think it is sexual harassment for a man to ask a woman how they are going? Do you think that whenever a man asks another man how they are going, they want to have sex with them? Why or why not?
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Nope.

    When you guys get done figuring out just how many tens of thousands of rapes are being committed every year in the US, you might want to return to the thread topic - perhaps by giving us an estimate of how many rapes it would take to justify the influence on everyone's behavior we see all around us in the US. The entire culture is structurally adjusted to the presence of rape as a continual, ever present, normal part of the environment. Are all these people foolish, or is the prevalence of rape sufficient to justify this significant structuring of the entire society we live in?
     
    pjdude1219 likes this.
  14. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

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    264
    I used the 2010 stats to compare the two numbers but the new definition of rape wasn’t fully implemented in 2013 either.

    They are unreliable because it’s very difficult to get accurate numbers. Most statutes related to these crimes differ considerably among the 50 states. For example, New Mexico’s definition of non-penetration contact requires that the contact be skin to skin, not through clothing. Seven jurisdictions (Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Wisconsin, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands) do not criminalize penetration by non-penile body parts. The capacity to consent for rape, not statutory rape, but rape is another one. Georgia is the lowest at age 10.

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    http://www.womenslaw.org/statutes_detail.php?statute_id=6161#statute-top

    http://www.womenslawproject.org/resources/Rape and Sexual Assault in the Legal System FINAL.pdf

    "Rape and sexual assault laws are complex and evolving. Rape originated as a crime against property, not a crime against a person. As such, the crime related to patriarchal inheritance rights and a female's reproductive capacity and therefore was limited to a crime against unmarried virgins and included only forcible penile/vaginal penetration. These laws have evolved but retain vestiges of their archaic origins. The result is inconsistency and variability in sex crime terminology and elements from state to state as well as anomalies."
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2015
  15. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    16,479
    tali's misogyny is well recorded here. along with anything liberal. its not about having an alternative opinion. its about down playing a heinious crime. Tali has shown his colors in this regard that you defend him speaks poorly of you. but than again you and him are much the same in your views on women.
     
  16. milkweed Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,654
    There are problems with the data on rape and sexual assault since record keeping began. Under-reporting, police badgering/reclassing/ignoring, victims changing their story later... this is nothing new. Happened in the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc.

    And now we have changed the definition of rape to include acts formerly placed into assault. Rightly so, but none-the-less it changes the numbers without an actual change in the number of incidents occurring.

    And with the numbers in the estimates category being sooo wildly different, one probably should be skeptical of the methods used in these estimates for the time being.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    And with that decided, we return to the thread topic - unless that has also been decided, by such obvious posts as the description of the behavior in a harassment video as guys just saying hello, or the prevalence of rape references and precautions in daily life.
     
  18. tali89 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    343
    I'd like to know how anyone can say with certainty that there is a 'rape culture' when no-one can even agree on how many rapes occur. Perhaps those who argue that a 'rape culture' exists should first come to some consensus on the risk of a woman being raped, and explain what level of risk is indicative of a 'rape culture'. Attempting to discuss anything else before doing so would be putting the cart before the horse.
     
  19. Secular Sanity Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    264
    Ya, maybe you're right, Tali89. I looked for the origins of the term “Rape Culture”, and stumbled onto this article.

    "It was surprising to discover the origins of “Rape Culture”, and the first use of the term. It related to the work of a group of men, in prison fighting “Rape Culture” in the prison system as prisoners.

    It would appear that some saw only one side of the film relating to their sex/gender and ignored the other sex/gender and how “Rape Culture” was made manifest in their lives.

    It all started in 1973 when the Washington DC Rape Crisis Centre provided support to a group called “Prisoners against Rape”. This was a group of male prisoners in Lorton Prison Virginia, who were actively working to address the rape that men suffered in prison. Those rapes were carried out by one prisoner against another, and even by guards against prisoners. The sexual assaults were known about by the prison authorities but they did nothing to intervene or protect prisoners. The threat of sexual assault was used as a control measure and even facilitated."


    The credits from the beginning of the film.

    “A group of inmates at Lorton prison in Virginia organized “Prisoners against Rape”.

    Only one member was a convicted rapist, but all felt the need to fight rape in prison and on the “outside”.

    They worked with the DC Rape Crisis Centre.

    Since the filming two of these men have been killed, victims of prison violence.”

    http://www.cambridgedocumentaryfilms.org/filmsPages/rapeculture.html

    Prisoners Against Rape

    http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/Readings/RapeCultureSummers.pdf
     
  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Since anal tissue is not as strong and resilient as vaginal tissue, anal intercourse is much more likely to tear the tissue and rip open blood vessels than vaginal intercourse. Therefore, anal intercourse without a condom presents a much higher risk of disease transmission than vaginal. This is the reason that HIV became so shockingly prevalent among gay men when the disease first came on the scene 30-35 years ago. For years it was regarded by many as simply a "gay disease," feeding the still-rampant homophobia of that benighted era.

    Prisoners are not issued condoms (at least not in any prison I've read about), and even if they were, many of them have a rather casual attitude toward survival and would not likely use them routinely. Because of this, prisoners who serve their term and are released into the general population are, statistically, much more likely to have (and transmit) HIV than the general population.

    In an episode of the British series "Inspector Morse," a policeman made the pointed statement that AIDS was a major problem in British prisons also.
     
  21. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    8,828
    Do tell, what are my views on women?
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    That question, sincerely asked, is proof of the existence of rape culture - the questioner belongs to one.

    Those outside of a rape culture have no real problem recognizing it. US prisons often harbor rape cultures, right? Do you have to count the rapes accurately to know this?

    If it is possible to get into an argument over whether some completely and accurately described act was actually a rape or not, and if it wasn't the perp is exonerated and the victim is at fault, you have a rape culture.

    If the boundary line is blurred or outside the potential victim's control, so that a potential victim either cannot know or cannot control in advance exactly what their culture will or will not blame them for, you have a rape culture.

    If there are cultural norms or established, even named, social customs by which some people accept degradation and diminution of their lives as a precaution against being raped, you have a rape culture.

    And so forth. It's not that subtle a matter. Is it known and accepted in one's culture that some people have to routinely worry and take precautions against being raped by members in good standing of that culture, who can expect to come to no serious harm themselves?

    A rape culture exists whenever the source of the threat of rape is an ordinary and accepted part of the structure of one's society, jokes about rape and other casual references are common, norms of behavior include recognition of the ordinary possibility of being raped by members of the culture which includes those norms, etc.

    As with lynching, "disappearances", etc, it makes no difference whatsoever how many rapes are actually accomplished. Maybe none, maybe just threats and punishments for not taking precautions, and jokes about one's potential victim status.
     
  23. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    8,828
    Never heard a good rape joke in my time. My wife and daughter traverse the community without keys clenched in their fists or pepper spray in their pockets.
     

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