{"id":51210,"date":"2012-09-21T10:21:13","date_gmt":"2012-09-21T15:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/?p=4731"},"modified":"2012-09-21T00:23:35","modified_gmt":"2012-09-21T05:23:35","slug":"debunking-hanna-rosins-end-of-rape-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/09\/21\/debunking-hanna-rosins-end-of-rape-claim\/","title":{"rendered":"Debunking Hanna Rosin’s “End of Rape” Claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t get 18 pages into Hanna Rosin\u2019s blockbuster myth-making machine The End of Men<\/em>, before you get to this (on page 19):<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 for white women especially \u2014 that criminologists can\u2019t plot the numbers on a chart. \u201cWomen in much of America might as well be living in Sweden,* they\u2019re so safe,\u201d says criminologist Mike Males.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s ridiculous, as I\u2019ll show. Rape is difficult to measure, partly because of limiting state definitions<\/a>, 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 \u2014 along with violent crime in general. This is good news. Here is the rate of reported \u201cforcible rape\u201d (of women) as defined by the FBI\u2019s crime reporting system, the Uniform Crime Reports.** \u00a0See the big drop \u2014 and also that the rate of decline slowed in the 2000s compared with the 1990s:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>(Source: Uniform Crime Reports, 2010<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The claim in Rosin\u2019s book \u2014 which, like much of the book, is not sourced in the footnotes \u2014 is almost too vague to fact-check. What is \u201cmuch of the country,\u201d and what is a number \u201cso low\u201d that a criminologist \u201ccan\u2019t plot\u201d it on a chart? (I\u2019m no criminologist, but I have even plotted negative numbers on a chart.)<\/p>\n

Even though she makes things up and her publisher apparently doesn\u2019t care, we must resist the urge to just ignore it. The book is getting a lot of attention, and it\u2019s climbing bestseller lists. Just staying with the FBI database of reported rates, they do report them by state, so we can look for that \u201cmuch of the country\u201d she\u2019s talking about. I made a map using this handy free tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>(Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 2010, <\/span>Table 47<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/a>). 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<\/em><\/a>, for 32 countries in 2007, the median rate was just 5 per 100,000 \u2014 which is lower than every U.S. metropolitan area for 2010 (except Carson City, Nevada).<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Crime Victimization Survey<\/a> (CVS), 65% of rape\/sexual assault is not reported. The CVS<\/a> 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).<\/p>\n

And what about the \u201cfor white women especially\u201d part of Rosin\u2019s claim? According to the Crime Victimization Survey (Table 9), the white victimization rate is the same as the national average: 70 per 100,000.<\/p>\n

I hope it\u2019s true, as Rosin says, that \u201cwhat makes [this era] stand out is the new power women have to ward off men if they want to.\u201d But it\u2019s hard to see how that cause is served by inventing an end of rape.<\/p>\n

—————————<\/p>\n

*That is an unintentionally ironic reference, because Sweden actually has very high (for Europe) rate reported rape, which has been attributed<\/a> to its broad definition and aggressive attempts at prosecution and data collection.<\/p>\n

** Believe it or not, this was their definition<\/a>: \u201cthe 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.\u201d That is being changed<\/a> to include oral and anal penetration, as well as male victims, but data based on those changes aren\u2019t reported yet.<\/p>\n

Check the Hanna Rosin tag<\/a> for other posts in this series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are sexual assault rates “so low in parts of the country … that criminologists can’t plot the numbers on a chart”? No.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,55,2090,274,133],"class_list":["post-51210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-gender","tag-gender-violence","tag-methodsuse-of-data","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51210"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51229,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51210\/revisions\/51229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}