The Opinionated Bastard

Every time I see that “1-in-4 women will be raped” statistic it makes me grit my teeth. The local hippie rag (you know, the one I write for) trotted that one out a bit ago, and this article on Feminism at Newsvine I was reading said it lately as well.

I know I'm good at math, but does that mean no one else on the planet can multiply?

First off, even the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network only claims 1-in-6. But that number is obviously bogus, because on the same page, they say 200,780 victims/year.

200,780 victims/year over a life expectancy of 72 years is...14 million.

Out of 150 million women, that's 1-in-10. I guess RIANN can't multiply either.

Meanwhile, the FBI says 30.9/100,000. Over 72 years, thats 1-in-45.

But rape is underreported. According to RIANN, only 41% are reported.

So that 1-in-45 becomes 1-in-27. But that's nowhere near 1-in-4. You don't even have to be good at math to recognize that 1-in-4 is just a made up number. A woman is 8 times more likely to be mugged then raped, and being mugged is nowhere near 1-in-4, so there's no way rape could be that high.

Ok, so that said, lets talk about the other side. Just because the whole “bad at math” thing bugs me doesn't mean I think we should ignore the problem. I just think you have to get your numbers right before you can solve problems.

My wife has started carrying a baseball bat in her car, because she got tired of getting accosted by homeless people. She has had to pull it and threaten to use it nearly 3 times now in the last 6 months. My wife is not a small, helpless women, so I can't even imagine what its like for a less physically capable woman. We live in a fairly small city, Flagstaff AZ, so that's a pretty large number.

She got the idea when she was going to night school in CA 20 some years ago. There had been 20 rapes in a year on campus. When she called the local police the detective told her:

1. They weren't even allowed on campus until a crime had been committed.
2. The 20/year number.
3. That while he couldn't tell her she should start carrying a baseball bat, he could tell her that if the detectives daughter was going to Mt San Antonio College, he would give her a gun.
4. That bizarrely, the college had been reducing the number of security people.

So my wife started carrying a baseball bat.

The college starting hassling her, and after several other women on campus starting carrying bats instituted a rule that you weren't allowed to carry a baseball bat on school grounds. So my wife bought a length of pipe and put tape on it to make a handle...

Eventually, they threatened to expel her. So she told them they would be hearing from both her lawyer, and the press...

They didn't expel her, and the local paper ran a story, which got picked up by the LA Times, and the college hired 3 more security guards.

Why am I saying all this?

Because 1-in-4 is like the weather. It makes it sounds inevitable that you'll get raped if you're a woman. But 1-in-25 isn't inevitable. When my wife was carrying a baseball bat to class, the women students were supportive sure.

But the male students were even more supportive, and took it upon themselves to escort women to and from the far parking lots.

See, repeating 1-in-4 is like saying “All men are evil rapists”. But a rape rate of 60.9/100,000 women says that 99% of men are not evil rapists. So those good 99% of men can be part of the solution. But people who go around saying 1-in-4 don't seem to really want a solution.

Which I guess explains why I'm not a feminist. I'm a modern gentleman. Which means that I believe in chivalry. Men should protect women, not because the women are helpless, but because what it says about ourselves as men; might for right. On date nights, I open the door for my wife, not because doors are so hard to open in this modern age that she couldn't, but because of what that small kindness says about me as a man.

Too often, the dogma of feminism seems to get in the way of what I feel is the chivalrous ideal. I understand why; one need only look at a muslim country to see how my ideal of “protection for the weak” can turn into “we're going to lock you away so you can't get hurt”. So I understand, but I wish the feminists seemed more willing to work with the men to work out some sort of modern form of chivalry.

And I wish they could multiply.

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