Cross-posted at Family Inequality.
You can’t get 18 pages into Hanna Rosin’s blockbuster myth-making machine The End of Men, before you get to this (on page 19):
One of the great crime stories of the last twenty years is the dramatic decline of sexual assault. Rates are so low in parts of the country — for white women especially — that criminologists can’t plot the numbers on a chart. “Women in much of America might as well be living in Sweden,* they’re so safe,” says criminologist Mike Males.
That’s ridiculous, as I’ll show. Rape is difficult to measure, partly because of limiting state definitions, but the numbers are consistent enough from different sources to support the conclusion that reported rape in the United States has become less common in the last several decades — along with violent crime in general. This is good news. Here is the rate of reported “forcible rape” (of women) as defined by the FBI’s crime reporting system, the Uniform Crime Reports.** See the big drop — and also that the rate of decline slowed in the 2000s compared with the 1990s:
(Source: Uniform Crime Reports, 2010)
The claim in Rosin’s book — which, like much of the book, is not sourced in the footnotes — is almost too vague to fact-check. What is “much of the country,” and what is a number “so low” that a criminologist “can’t plot” it on a chart? (I’m no criminologist, but I have even plotted negative numbers on a chart.)
Even though she makes things up and her publisher apparently doesn’t care, we must resist the urge to just ignore it. The book is getting a lot of attention, and it’s climbing bestseller lists. Just staying with the FBI database of reported rates, they do report them by state, so we can look for that “much of the country” she’s talking about. I made a map using this handy free tool.
(Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 2010, Table 47)
The lowest state rate is 11.2 per 100,000 (New Jersey), the highest is 75 (Alaska). You can also get the numbers for 360 metropolitan areas. For these, the average rate of forcible rape reported was 31.5 per 100,000 population. One place, Carson City, Nevada, had a very low rate (just one reported in 2010), but no place else had a rate lower than 5.1. (you can see the full list here). I have no trouble plotting numbers that low. I could even plot numbers as low as those reported by police in Europe, where, according to the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, for 32 countries in 2007, the median rate was just 5 per 100,000 — which is lower than every U.S. metropolitan area for 2010 (except Carson City, Nevada).
These police reports are under-counts compared with population surveys that ask people whether they have been the victim of a crime, regardless of whether it was reported to police. According to the government’s Crime Victimization Survey (CVS), 65% of rape/sexual assault is not reported. The CVS rate of rape and sexual assault (combined) was 70 per 100,000 in 2010. That does reflect a substantial drop since 2001 (although there was also a significant increase from 2009 to 2010).
And what about the “for white women especially” part of Rosin’s claim? According to the Crime Victimization Survey (Table 9), the white victimization rate is the same as the national average: 70 per 100,000.
I hope it’s true, as Rosin says, that “what makes [this era] stand out is the new power women have to ward off men if they want to.” But it’s hard to see how that cause is served by inventing an end of rape.
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*That is an unintentionally ironic reference, because Sweden actually has very high (for Europe) rate reported rape, which has been attributed to its broad definition and aggressive attempts at prosecution and data collection.
** Believe it or not, this was their definition: “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will. Attempts or assaults to commit rape by force or threat of force are also included; however, statutory rape (without force) and other sex offenses are excluded.” That is being changed to include oral and anal penetration, as well as male victims, but data based on those changes aren’t reported yet.
Check the Hanna Rosin tag for other posts in this series.
Comments 16
Wife — September 21, 2012
Does this at all take into account the issue of rapes not being reported at all? Due to shame, the issue of blaming the victim, and threats of further violence?
Anna — September 21, 2012
"criminologists can't plot the numbers on a chart?" Um... what? That's impossible. Even if the number is zero, it can be plotted on a chart. Maybe she meant that the numbers were so small that you couldn't see them on a chart when compared to the higher rates in earlier times, but that is giving her one heck of the benefit of the doubt.
tree — September 21, 2012
The victim blaming here is breathtaking.
Mae — September 21, 2012
This is depressing. I can't deal with this woman
Snuhfoo — September 21, 2012
Okay, I know it's already mentioned in the OP, but can we take a longer look at the "for white women especially" part of the clam? Even if the numbers proved her point (they don't), this is not okay. This is basically saying white women are okay and eff everyone else. Sorry if I'm not being very cogent. This line makes me really angry...
md — September 22, 2012
The reference to Sweden is nothing short of ironic when you add in the situation with Julian Assange
LeilaM12 — September 22, 2012
Question: How do we know that actual rape has gone down and not just reporting of rape? I wouldn't report it if I was rape. Why? Too many negative experiences and articles on police reaction and too low conviction rates where I live.
Tusconian — September 22, 2012
"for white women especially" has a very different implication for me than it does for Mr. Cohen, apparently. What that says is not necessarily that the author of this book is bad at statitistics (though she clearly is), it's that through her faulty statitistics, she finds that SHE is safe, so the work against rape is done. The rapes of women like me, black women, Asian women, Native women, Hispanic women, Middle Eastern women, do not count and aren't important. This is, inadvertently, why so many women of color are uninterested in women's groups headed or primary composed of white women; white women who have the chance to be heard not only ignore us, but will often take any chance to throw women of color under the bus in order to elevate themselves and make it clear that the concerns of women of color, even if they are identical to the concerns of white women (in this case, "not being raped"), are unimportant and worthless.
Keith Appleby — September 23, 2012
On the face if it, as the *chart* indicates, there does seem to be a drop in the reported number of rapes. As others have pointed out, this could simply be a drop in reporting. I suspect, however, that this is a real drop in the number of rapes due to a number of structural changes in U.S. society. Still, 27.5 rapes per 100,000 is an alarming and problematic number that is way too high and it is a far cry from "the end of rape". Until the number is truly 0, we need to remain vigilant.
[link] Debunking Hanna Rosin’s “End of Rape” Claim « slendermeans — November 1, 2012
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quick hit: Debunking Hanna Rosin’s “End of Rape” Claim — January 5, 2014
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