The breathless repetition of exaggerated numbers by the President and by journalists is getting
in the way of genuine solutions to the scourge of sexual violence.
Coming up next, we check the facts behind the 1-in-5 estimate.
The 1-in 5 rape figure comes from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey,
released in 2011 by the Centers for Disease Control.
Newspapers everywhere carried the alarming news: That CDC Survey reported that, in the
United States in 2010, approximately 1.3 million women were raped and an additional 12.7 million
women and men were victims of sexual violence.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hailed the report for giving
what she called "a clear picture" of sexual violence in the United States.
But was it a clear picture?
First of all, the agency's figures are wildly at odds with official crime statistics.
The Justice Department's annual crime survey, which is the gold standard in crime research,
it reports that there were about 188,000 thousand rapes and sexual assaults in 2010.
Where did the CDC find more than a million and nearly 14 million victims of sexual violence
that professional criminologists somehow overlooked?
It found them by using a poorly constructed telephone survey, with a low response rate
and a non-representative sample of respondents.
No one interviewed was asked if they had been raped or sexually assaulted.
Instead of such straightforward questions, the CDC determined whether the responses indicated
sexual violation.
61.5 percent of the women the CDC projected as rape victims in 2010 experienced what the
CDC called, "alcohol or drug facilitated penetration."
What does that mean?
If a woman was unconscious or incapacitated, every civilized person would call it rape.
But what about sex while inebriated?
Few people would say that intoxicated sex alone constitutes rape — indeed, a nontrivial
percentage of all customary sexual intimacy, including marital sex, probably falls under
that definition.
In short, by using a non-representative sample and vaguely worded questions, the CDC yielded
the one in five lifetime rate, and 1.3 million female rape victims per year.
Now how did the CDC come up with nearly 13 million female and male victims of sexual
violence other than rape in 2010?
Participants were asked if they had ever had sex because someone pressured them by "telling
you lies," or did you ever have sex because someone "made promises about the future they
knew were untrue" or did someone ever pressure you into sex by show "showing they were unhappy?"
Any affirmative answers to these questions counted as "sexual violence."
Look: to prevent rape and sexual assault, we need state of the art research we need
sober estimates.
False and sensational statistics are gonna get in the way of effective policies.
Unfortunately, when it comes to research on sexual violence, exaggeration and sensation
are not the exception-- they are the rule.
If you hear about a study that shows epidemic levels of sexual violence against American
women--or college students, or women in the military, I can almost guarantee the researchers
used some version of the defective CDC methodology.
Now by this method, known as advocacy research: you can easily manufacture a women's crisis.
But here's the bottom line: this is madness.
First of all, it trivializes the horrific pain and suffering of survivors and it sends
scarce resources in the wrong direction.
Sexual violence is too serious a matter for antics for politically motivating posturing.
And right now the media, politicians, rape culture activist they are deeply invested
in these exaggerated numbers.
Its hard to see how this trend is gonna be corrected.
I welcome your suggestions for solutions.
Please leave your comments below the video, and if you find this video series helpful,
I invite you to subscribe.
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Now remember: if you hear any claims about women that strike you as reckless exaggerations,
send them my way.
Thank you for watching the Factual Feminist.