Surveys, Rape and Percentages

I just came across this Think Progress post entitled:

1 In 3 College Men Say They Would Rape A Woman If They Could Get Away With It

Misleading headline city! The survey was done at a small North Dakota college and the results are based on the responses of just 73 men, all of whom attend that school.

According to the survey, which analyzed responses from 73 men attending the same college, 31.7 percent of participants said they would act on “intentions to force a woman to sexual intercourse” if they were confident they could get away with it.

My question is this — what college is this, where exactly is it (I wanna make sure no one I know goes there even to visit), what are their recruiting practices (is there a line on the applications given to boys "do you like to force yourselves on girls? If so, we're the school for you!") AND can the administration put out a warning or disclaimer? “If you’re female, you’re likely be raped if you attend college here.”

But, when the researchers actually used the word “rape” in their question, those numbers dropped much lower — suggesting that many college men don’t associate the act of forcing a woman to have sex with them with the crime of committing rape.

 Joy. What does this mean? These boys read The Story of O, thought it was a How To book and believe all women are like that sad protagonist? Or maybe none of them are terribly familiar with the dictionary?

They found that the men who were comfortable admitting their “intentions to rape” displayed a wide range of outwardly hostile attitudes toward women.

Yeah, there’s a shocker.
The researchers hope to do the study on a larger scale. Good idea. I hope they can AND I sure as fuck hope the results are less dire.

From the Newsweek article When Campus Rapists Don’t Think They’re Rapists:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, almost 20 percent of women in the United States have suffered rape. The survey also notes that some 43.9 percent of women “experienced other forms of sexual violence during their lifetimes, including being made to penetrate, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and noncontact unwanted sexual experiences.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey was conducted in 50 states plus D.C. There were 12,727 interviews completed and 1,428 interviews partially completed. I’m gonna step out on a limb here and  say that this survey is more indicative of what we experience nationwide (and it's bad enough) whereas the one done at the North Dakota college HOPEFULLY is just a reflection of that school, that locale.

That is, I really don't want reality, nationwide, to be that one in three men are potential rapists. Duh.

By the by, you may wonder if your faithful scribe has ever been raped. Yes. Not by some crazed stranger in a dark alley but, in college, by a young man who seemed SO nice! We met in the student union cafeteria. He was so attractive — looked like Cat Stevens (remember, this was the late ‘70s) AND we were talking about Buddhism, Alan Watts, god, zen, art and a bunch more hippy groovy shite. Cool, no? We went back to where he was staying that summer — tellingly, at a frat house — he wanted to show me some awesomely spiritual pics he’d taken.

Yeah, at 19 years of age I didn’t see this for the deceitful line of slug shit that it was.

Bottom line? I said no and he didn’t seem to understand the word. At all.

It’s rape even if you weren’t hit over the head or held at gun point. Really.

Rape
to force someone to have sex when he or she is unwilling

Rape 
unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim.