Slashdot Mirror
The War On Campus Sexual Assault Goes Digital
HughPickens.com writes: According to a recent study of 27 schools, about one-quarter of female undergraduates said they had experienced nonconsensual sex or touching since entering college, but most of the students said they did not report it to school officials or support services. Now Natasha Singer reports at the NYT that in an effort to give students additional options — and to provide schools with more concrete data — a nonprofit software start-up in San Francisco called Sexual Health Innovations has developed an online reporting system for campus sexual violence. One of the most interesting features of Callisto is a matching system — in which a student can ask the site to store information about an assault in escrow and forward it to the school only if someone else reports another attack identifying the same assailant. The point is not just to discover possible repeat offenders. In college communities, where many survivors of sexual assault know their assailants, the idea of the information escrow is to reduce students' fears that the first person to make an accusation could face undue repercussions.
"It's this last option that makes Callisto unique," writes Olga Khazan. "Most rapes are committed by repeat offenders, yet most victims know their attackers. Some victims are reluctant to report assaults because they aren't sure whether a crime occurred, or they write it off as a one-time incident. Knowing about other victims might be the final straw that puts an end to their hesitation—or their benefit of the doubt. Callisto's creators claim that if they could stop perpetrators after their second victim, 60 percent of campus rapes could be prevented." This kind of system is based partly on a Michigan Law Review article about "information escrows," or systems that allow for the transmitting of sensitive information in ways that reduce "first-mover disadvantage" also known to economists as the "hungry penguin problem". As game theorist Michael Chwe points out, the fact that each person creates her report independently makes it less likely they'll later be accused of submitting copycat reports, if there are similarities between the incidents.
"It's this last option that makes Callisto unique," writes Olga Khazan. "Most rapes are committed by repeat offenders, yet most victims know their attackers. Some victims are reluctant to report assaults because they aren't sure whether a crime occurred, or they write it off as a one-time incident. Knowing about other victims might be the final straw that puts an end to their hesitation—or their benefit of the doubt. Callisto's creators claim that if they could stop perpetrators after their second victim, 60 percent of campus rapes could be prevented." This kind of system is based partly on a Michigan Law Review article about "information escrows," or systems that allow for the transmitting of sensitive information in ways that reduce "first-mover disadvantage" also known to economists as the "hungry penguin problem". As game theorist Michael Chwe points out, the fact that each person creates her report independently makes it less likely they'll later be accused of submitting copycat reports, if there are similarities between the incidents.
Or will they just assume the guy is guilty?
"Hey, I don't like that guy. Let's all report him through the rape app. We're girls so we'll be believed over him, particularly by the media. The media will even believe us after it's been shown that we were lying because it fits with their narrative."
If you look up the study, the exact quote is “nonconsensual penetration or sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation,”.
The summary is brain-dead, but in a way that *understates* the problem, compared to the actual quote (which doesn't contain the word "rape"). After all, you're interpreting this as lower arms and shoulders, but that's clearly not "sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation"..
That means that the average rapist has raped 5 times. I *hope* that is waaaay to high.
It's not. The vast majority of men don't do non-consensual sex, meaning that non-consensual sex is practiced by a small minority of men.
One argument is that they don't even know. That our dating language and culture are so strongly based on conquest, that (some) men may have trouble distinguishing between pretend resistance as sexual play and real resistance to unwanted contact. If the victim is afraid, embarrassed, or discouraged from making an accusation, then the perpetrator is taught that all those "No!" "Stop!" "Get out!" cries were just play.
It's clear there are people exaggerating the claims or severity of sexual violence, but it's also clear that many women have participated in "real sex" that they wanted no part of, either before, during or after. That latter number is hard to pin down, but does consistently seem to be somewhere in the 10-20% range. We have to stop that.
Maybe its not PC to say what he said, but look at it this way. I have a 6 year old daughter. I am going to teach her (when she's older of course), "if, in college, you go to a party without any friends and get totally smashed and dress very revealing, your likelihood of something bad happening to you is going to rise dramatically. Use your common sense."
Is it non-PC to tell my daughter that? Should I instead say, "honey, do whatever you want, get drunk, show your cleavage, go to parties where you don't know anyone. Cause you know, nothing that happens is ever your fault."
If you look up the study, the exact quote is âoenonconsensual penetration or sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation,â.
The summary is brain-dead, but in a way that *understates* the problem, compared to the actual quote (which doesn't contain the word "rape").
Two things:
(1) You'll notice that the section of the summary which mentions "touching" is actually a very close paraphrase of the NYT article which is linked there. So the NYT is actually what's "brain-dead," and TFS just continued the "brain-dead" trend of not looking at the source.
(2) I'm sure this will be ignored by most people here, but can I just offer a plea to moderators to think about posts a bit before modding them "+1 Insightful" or "+1 Informative"?
The particular issue is with the common type of Slashdot post which shows up frequently around just about any study -- "Well, gee, a proper study of X would have to consider [obvious factor Y]." The default policy here seems to be to assume that all researchers running studies are absolute morons and would never consider whatever obvious flaw I came up with after 2 seconds of thought and posted on Slashdot. Or, as in this case, we assume that the researchers have some sort of agenda and ignored obvious data flaws or whatever.
Guess what, mods? 90% of these posts are WRONG. Most studies do have some subtle flaws, but researchers generally make an attempt to address many of the obvious ones.
The problem is that summaries are generally too short to contain all the details, so you'd actually have to RTFA to see that the researchers actually did take into account "obvious factor Y." Sometimes TFS is also misleading or poorly worded in such a way, which contributes to the problem. This is an editorial problem, but complaining about the editors here is fruitless, so I'll appeal to those with moderation points:
If you see a post that seems "too good to be true" in claiming to have found some obvious flaw that completely invalidates a study, either take a minute and look at the study and check it, or just ignore the post. Don't just mod it as "Insightful" or "informative" because you wish it were true, or you'd like to think everyone else in the world is an idiot (or, in this case, a manipulative idiot).
I'm tired of seeing obviously stupid posts rise to "+5 Informative" within an hour of a story going up (two such posts in a row here). I'll excuse the people posting such crap, because there's always a lot of crap posts here. But moderation should be taken at least a little more seriously.
Women shouldn't have to tame their behaviour because some guys can't handle it
Police officers shouldn't have to wear heavy uncomfortable bullet proof vests because some gun wielding criminals can't handle being good law abiding citizens. That's about as sensical as your statement. It's unrealistic to expect there to be no criminals, just as it is unrealistic to expect there to be no rapists. "They can't handle it" cause that's the stereotypical macho masculine view. That a man should just man up and if he doesn't he's a pussy that can't handle it. Fuck things like mental health or how he grew up or whatever the fuck else right? Being piss drunk makes you an easier target as you can't think/control your bodily normally. By no means does not drinking remove all risk, it just reduces it. It's hysterical that rather than acknowledging that fact, you'd rather refute it by saying we should be living in some utopia where no one does any wrong. Fuck off.
From TFS:
https://www.aau.edu/uploadedFi...
Overall, 11.7 percent of students across the 27 universities reported experiencing nonconsensual penetration or sexual touching by force or incapacitation since enrolling at the IHE.
Which is about HALF of the fabled 25%.
The magic 25% (i.e. the long parroted and continuously debunked legend of 1 in 4 women being raped) was reached through following fiddling of numbers.
Again, from TFS:
To assess the overall risk of nonconsensual sexual contact, prevalence measures were estimated that combine the two behaviors that constitute sexual contact (penetration and sexual touching) and the four tactics discussed above (physical or threat of physical force; incapacitation; coercion; AAC [Absence of Affirmative Consent]).
Absence of Affirmative Consent being a catch-all category for any kind of "explicit" and "active, ongoing voluntary agreement" of "both partners".
The question that makes 11.7% into "1 in 4 women" being:
Since you have been a student at [University], has someone had contact with you involving penetration or oral sex without your active, ongoing voluntary agreement? Examples include someone:
- initiating sexual activity despite your refusal
- ignoring your cues to stop or slow down
- went ahead without checking in or while you were still deciding
- otherwise failed to obtain your consent
When that question, which no longer talks about rape but about failure to read minds and thus tell if someone is still deciding and a failure to "otherwise obtain consent" (possibly in written form) we get the magical 1 in 4 numbers.
Which would dictate that every family that has at least one female child, also has at least one rape victim (two grandmas + mom + daughter = 1 of them must be have been raped).
But even then more fiddling with numbers is needed to reach the magic 1 in 4 value. Such as limiting the survey response to seniors only.
According to the AAU survey, 16.5 percent of seniors experienced sexual contact involving penetration or sexual touching as a result of physical force or incapacitation. Senior females (26.1%) and those identifying as TGQN (29.5%) are, by far, the most likely to experience this type of victimization.
And if it needs to be more obvious that they get those numbers by padding the set and expanding the time frame...
Students who are relatively new to school may experience higher risk because they are not as familiar with situations that may lead to an incident of sexual assault or misconduct.
Examination of the rates for the current academic year show this pattern holds for undergraduate females.
Among freshmen, 16.9 percent of females reported sexual contact by physical force or incapacitation.
This percentage steadily declines by year in school to a low of 11.1 percent for seniors.
And then there are other issues...
Like defining "penetration" as "when someone's mouth or tongue makes contact with someone else's genitals", without defining whose mouth and whose genitals are in question.
The way question is defined, both giving and receiving oral sex constitutes penetration.
On whom? Well... On both giver and receiver of oral sex, according to such a loose definition.
Or "physical force" being defined as "holding you down with his or her body weight, pinning your arms, hitting or kicking you, or using or threatening to use a weapon against you".
Which equates physical violence and a gun to your head with "being on the bottom".
Or how numbers reported don't really match up.
Like penetration numbers for fem
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens