Why Don’t You Have A Seat Over Here
I’ve been following the Steubenville rape case in the news for weeks now, and we now have a guilty verdict that will send two boys to a juvenile correction facility where they could possibly remain incarcerated until they are 21. Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond have received sentences of a minimum of two years and one year respectfully, but must also register as sex offenders for the rape; the act of penetration to the victim with their hands constitutes rape under Ohio law. The event was fueled by drugs and alcohol and teenagers behaving like teenagers; living in the moment, having fun, and not giving a thought to the consequences of their actions.
What the two boys did was horrible. What the teenagers who witnessed the event did by covering things up is equally as bad, as is the actions of a few on social media sites by threatening the victim with bodily harm. It’s an all around terrible situation. No one deserves to be violated in this way and to be shamed by their community. No one deserves the trauma and the backlash or to be told that it’s their fault that they were sexually assaulted. The victim did make a poor choice in becoming so inebriated that she had no control over her actions and couldn’t even manage to stay conscious, but that doesn’t mean she deserved what happened to her and what continues to happen as people angry over the sentencing place the blame on her shoulders.
Mays and Richmond definitely deserve to serve time for what they did to this female. They chose to treat her like a piece of trash, to laugh as they violated her, and to act like it was all a joke. That said, the pair are still only children. They screwed up and no doubt, this ordeal and all the time in court and in the spotlight has hit them both hard and taught them a serious lesson. The time in the juvenile facility will help to strongly drive home that what they did was all kinds of wrong. But do they really deserve to become sex offenders? Do these teenager boys deserve to have to register as offenders and have that thrown on top of what is already a very heavy load of grief, regret, shame and anguish?
I’m not saying I sympathize with rapists because that is simply ridiculous. But I do sympathize with two young lives who are going to be ruined even further if they must register as sex offenders. Mays and Richmond are already paying for their crime dearly with all the negative attention that is coming their way, the effect this has had on their families and community, and the time they must serve in the juvenile facility. Their mistake is likely not one that these boys will ever repeat in their lives. In addition to registering as sex offenders, they are ordered to undergo treatment, which I feel is absolutely necessary and will further assist the two in fully understanding what they did, why it was wrong, and why it should never happen again. The punishment and rehabilitation are enough without putting the sex offender registry on top of it.
I understand why this is a sexual offense, but I don’t know if their mistake and poor choices justify carrying the extra stigma of being a registered sex offender. This is something that will affect where they can live and who they can live with. It will affect where they can work and the ease of getting employment. It will affect their livelihood well after they have served their time and undergone their rehabilitation, well after we have all forgotten about their crime, and well after their victim is recovered and has moved on. I can’t help but be very bothered by the fact that these two boys are going to have their entire lives ruined over one dumb night of partying.
Mays and Richmond are both minors, 17 and 16 respectfully, and still very obviously not thinking as a rational adult would. I’m not suggesting that their age and lack of maturity is enough to excuse their poor actions, but I do believe it is enough to save them from becoming registered sex offenders. Richmond’s attorney, Walter Madison, is planning to appeal this decision in order to save his client from becoming a registered offender and I do hope that he is successful. Having the boys register will not teach them or save them from repeating this act again later in life. They need to be punished, they need to learn, and they must make amends. Perhaps they also need to spend time doing volunteer work with battered and abused women in order to imprint it into their brains. They simply need to be saved.
When we are dealing with people as young as Mays and Richmond, the goal should be on rehabilitation and on saving these two lives, not simply on piling punishment on top of punishment. Force the two to apologize directly to their victim and to their community. Ensure they understand the severity of their crime and make them learn proper boundaries. Make them see the damage they have done and make them understand how rape affects a person. Show them what will happen if they continue along a path of wrongdoing by putting them face to face with people who have made the same or worse mistakes. Ensure they serve enough time in the juvenile facility to where they have no desire to ever break a law again. But don’t lump them in with pedophiles, serial rapists, and other adults who simply can’t or won’t learn their lesson. Give them a chance.
Posted on March 19, 2013, in Kids, News, Party! and tagged crime, jail, Ma'lik Richmond, ohio, rape, sex offender, steubenville, Trent Mays, twitter. Bookmark the permalink. 48 Comments.
We live in a country where (as of 2010) 1 in 5 women are raped while another 2 of the remaining 5 are sexually assaulted (but not full-on penetration raped). This means (depending on how you do the math to account for repeat offenders) that in 2010 we had somewhere between 81-91 million men in this country raping and/or sexually assaulting women (given the population statistics in this country that year) and an additional million or so that sexually assault/rape other men (source is here http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/index.html).
The short version is pretty much that one out of every two men in this country has raped or sexually assaulted a woman (and this is just out of the statistics of reported rapes that the CDC has access to).
Sexual assault and rape is an epidemic in this country and the only thing that will change it is by making it very clear that we will no longer tolerate it (both on the criminal prosecution end of things and on the education/awareness end of things). There was an article floating around a while back that referenced these same statistics that said “How about instead of teaching women not to travel alone and that they cannot safely enjoy the same entertainments men enjoy, we teach our young men not to rape women?”.
The fact that this entire debate is couched in terms of what women should do to avoid rape should illustrate pretty clearly just how fucking backwards we are as a country on this.
Also, keep those statistics in mind the next time you wonder why we have Republicans at the state level passing laws in 31 states that allow a rapist to use child visitation rights against his victim as leverage to get the charges against him dropped (plea bargain being that the rapist will sign away custody rights in exchange for the charge against him being dropped).
Please go ahead and site your information for this comment.
Sure, here is a PDF that breaks down how it works around the country: http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/pdf/98-3/Prewitt.PDF
Footnotes 195-205 in that PDF give further sources.
So I see that there are states that require a criminal conviction in order to terminate parental rights and the report is stating that the chance of a criminal conviction is remote, statistically.
1. Where does it say this is a Republican’s fault?
2. Where does it say that these plea bargain’s are occurring?
3. Do you believe that a woman has never accused a man of raping her after she consented to sex?
4. Do you believe in innocent until proven guilty?
5. Based on #4, do you believe that it may be hard to get convictions on rape trials because proving rape is inherently difficult in the he-said she-said world of incredibly complex interpersonal relationships?
1. Republican politicians are literally the only politicians that oppose movements to change these laws. To keep things contemporary with the 2010 report I cited, you can look around at voting records of the Senate here: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_111_2.htm and the house here: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/index.asp (I’m going to assume here that you’ve already done enough homework on your end to know which specific bills to look for so you can look at the relevant voting records of the Republicans on those bills and see just how many times they voted Nay–even if the some bills passed in spite of those Nays–almost without exception the Nays will comprise entirely of Republicans from the Deep South, with no Democrat Nays any where else).
2. The only story I know of that was reported on the national level was the one by Prewitt (this is mostly because it wasn’t until very recently that media outlets were allowed to post stories based on court records of private citizens). The rest of them depend on actually knowing how to search your local court records (this is a good way to lose any faith that the community you live in is a good one, though).
3. This is stupid. http://theenlivenproject.com/the-truth-about-false-accusation/
4. See #3 and pay attention.
5. See #3 again.
LOL!!! I’m not doing your work for you bud. You claimed that, “Republicans are passing laws in 31 states that allow a rapist to use child visitation rights against his victim as leverage to get the charges against him dropped.”
You have yet to prove this. Citing me a general roll call site is not going to cut it. You need to cite the actual bill or bills in question. And don’t get me wrong, I HATE Republicans. I HATE Democrats too. I HATE Big Government, so I’m not picking sides here, but what I am saying is that when it comes to how D’s and R’s do business when passing a bill, it’s always the same dog and pony show. Team A piles dog shit up in the bill that smells so bad to Team B that they HAVE to vote against it. This gives Team A the opportunity to point the finger at Team B and say, “See? They hate children! They hate the elderly! They hate the poor!” or whatever special class of citizens is popular that day. Perhaps, the popular special class that day was rape victims. But we won’t know until we see what was in the bill. Unless you take Nancy Pelosi’s position where we, “have to pass the bill to find out what is in it.” LOL. Dumbest woman ever. Yes, let’s pass a law on ourselves that we are subject to without knowing anything about it. Love it.
So without reviewing the entire text of the actual bill or bills in question, I still don’t know that Republicans are to blame for this. And that’s great if they are. Just one more reason for me to hate them. But you have not proven that yet.
As for the website you mentioned for the rest of your answers. Yes, it’s very pretty. Nice homemade website. I assume you are citing that because you have researched every one of the links she cited at the bottom, and you understand how all of that was used to create the pretty graphic? If you did, you are the only one. Everyone else is just looking at the pretty picture and passing laws. So without looking at everything she cited, I can’t say if she is accurate or not. What I can say is…
In researching myself, there seems to be a problem with reporting rape when it comes to the difference between attrition and conviction reporting. There are several articles about this problem from the U.K noted below. It would appear that attrition rates are the ones most often cited for “rape conviction”, and they are always low. But as attrition rates for other crimes are not calculated, there is no way to know if attrition rates for rape are better or worse than any other crime. In addition, by citing the attrition figures when discussing “rape convictions” and not the actual conviction figures, it gives women a sense of hopelessness they should not have when it comes to reporting a rape. As usual, “lying through omission” by simply leaving out certain data to create a false impression. This is rampant in Government reporting, and statistical reports. As the article explains…
“An attrition rate is the amount of convictions resulting from reports of a crime, and is not routinely calculated for any crime other than rape. Therefore without manually undertaking the exercise, it is impossible to compare the (true) attrition figure for rape with other crimes. A conviction rate is the amount of convictions following a trial, and is calculated for all reportable crimes.
Why is this important? Because the rhetoric of rape, which largely propounds myths, puts survivors off reporting the crimes committed against them, making them perceive that the system designed to assist them is actually wholly against them.”
So I looked to see if attrition rates could be used in the United States to make rape “convictions” sound worse than they are. And this appears to be true here, as in the UK. So below I cited a study, and right off the bat I am going to say I did not read the whole thing or background check the authors, but it is certainly worth more of our attention. You will note on page 71 that the conviction rate for the United States in 2002 for murder was 81%, for robbery was 66% and for rape was 67%. These are conviction rates, not attrition rates. If it goes to trial, that is the rate of conviction.
We can argue all day that attrition rates are low, and therefore bad, but without knowing attrition rates for murder and robbery, how do we know if rape attrition rates are any better or worse and are therefore, possibly not bad at all, when measured against other crimes? For all we know attrition rates for murder and robbery are 7% and 5% and so when we see “conviction rates” that are really attrition rates at 4% or 6% or whatever, they would be considered in-line with other crimes and so, not bad. But we DON’T KNOW what attrition rates are for other crimes and that is a problem. We DO KNOW the conviction rates, and they look good.
Since the UK likes to bandy around their 6% “conviction rate” which is really their attrition rate, and all Big Government’s think alike, there is a more than reasonable chance that the U.S. does the same thing. Considering that the conviction rate for rape in the U.S. in 2002 was 67%, I think women should be aware of that number, at least at a minimum in addition to the attrition rate. I think if a woman heard that the true conviction rate was 67%, she would be more than likely to report the crime. But yes, if we continue using the attrition rate figure, sure, women will continue believing they have no chance at winning and the Government can continue elevating and politically promoting rape “convictions” as a “problem” in need of a government “solution.”
In the same report, as far as attrition rates of conviction go for rape, it was reported that 41% lead to conviction for the United States. I would say that is significantly higher than the numbers being reported here in the U.S. and a number that women should be made aware of. If we want to do right by women, we should be honest with them about the conviction rates, and not parrot what politicians and government agencies tell us when they have money to be made in doing so. And by that I mean…MY money.
Lastly, there is this…
Reported March 3, 2013…”Last summer, a study came out that suggested that more than one in ten of the men convicted of sexual assault in Virginia between 1973 and 1987 were innocent. To be precise, the proven wrongful conviction rate was between 8 and 15 percent — significantly higher than the false conviction rate for homicide…”
http://www.straightstatistics.org/article/how-panic-over-rape-was-orchestrated
http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/136384/Rape_attrition_Part3_paper1.pdf
http://www.saveservices.org/2013/03/rape-may-have-the-highest-wrongful-conviction-rate-of-all-violent-crimes/
How about instead of shitting up Jamie’s blog arguing with you about this you just head on over to Republicansforrape.org and argue with the people there? The entire thing is formatted as satire, but the sources are real and if you go back to the beginning of the blog and work your way to the last entry you’ll have a pretty nice history of how Republicans have handled legislation regarding rape since 2009.
Shitting up? LOL. Really?
On the bright side, you cited something relevant that I enjoyed reading about. So here’s what I got:
The blog you posted is a parody site, as you’ve said, but in reading various articles about it, it appears its primary purpose was to educate and publicize the Jamie Leigh Jones case where she was raped and held hostage in a container, etc.. Very serious case, and I can appreciate the website that was created to highlight the 30 Republicans that voted against the Franken Amendment that would have prevented the DoD from doing business with contractors that had an arbitration clause in the contract. Got it.
So, of course I want to know WHY 30 Republicans would vote against such an amendment when any normal human being, including myself (despite your reservations), would support such an amendment. Now, remember that I hate Republicans (and Democrats), so I’m happy to find stupidity in the GOP whenever I can. Additionally, if their is any reason for voting against the amendment that had anything to do with God, I would be equally happy because I’m an Agnostic, and as such, I don’t believe in passing any law based on some man who lives in clouds and decides our fate. So, I was assuming it would be a God-thing and I could actually congratulate you on citing a relevant document/trial/bill that supported your original claim that Republicans protect rapists. And I still can. Congratulations. But…
On THIS particular bill, the Franken Amendment, I ran into a glitch. You see, the Amendment prevents companies from binding employees to arbitration. Almost every company I have worked for has this binder because it is cheaper to arbitrate than to go to trial, or to even talk about going to trial, because even talking about going to trial involves lawyers, and lawyers cost millions of dollars.
Unethical people (employees and customers), of which there are many, like to threaten companies with lawsuits, because even talking about the threat of a lawsuit costs companies tons of money because lawyers are immediately involved. And trial lawyers are the most expensive. So what do most companies do? They settle. How do I know? Because I’ve worked for a company that in the past, when faced with a false accusation, would settle, because fighting it was, from a cost/business perspective, too expensive.
That led to a rise in frivolous lawsuits of course once everyone figured out they could get a free payday by just making false claims because the company never went to court to make them prove their claim was true. When that happened, the company I worked for decided to fight every single claim brought against them, no matter how many millions were spent doing so to send the message that all claims must be proved, in court. This reduced the number of lawsuits, not surprisingly.
The suits that were brought against that company were from outside the company (not employees), so they had no way to use an arbiter. But you can see why, with so many unethical people in the world, arbitration, using an independent third party company, is a God-send for businesses that need to squash frivolous lawsuits from inside the company. Consider, those people who bring lawsuits against other companies are an employee for some company somewhere, so what they are willing to do to a company they don’t know, they are certainly willing to do to a company they do know.
An employee that knows they are bound to arbitration will not file a claim unless something ACTUALLY happened because a company will never settle and hand you easy money when they can arbitrate instead. So that means the accuser will have to prove their case in arbitration, and those that can not because they made it up, will not bother. That is why companies build arbitration clauses into their contracts. We could solve this with tort reform to make it easier to discard frivolous lawsuits, but that’s another discussion.
At any rate, the Franken Amendment was a successful refusal of arbitration for companies dealing with the DoD. The Republicans did not vote against it because, Thank god, it was a god-thing, they voted against it because it would hurt businesses and their employees because they could no longer use arbitration and their legal fees would skyrocket from frivolous lawsuits.
Now, even though KBR, her employer, requested that she be held to arbitration as per her contract, the 5th Circuit Court refused the KBR appeal and she had her day in court. Unfortunately for her, a jury of her peers found KBR innocent and her suit was dismissed. KBR then sued her for $2M for legal fees but the court reduced that amount, even though it did find her responsible for paying KBR fees of $145,000.
So…this is not so clear cut as it was made out to be. Arbitration is good for business and the economy and employees and employers. If something egregious happens, the victim still has the option to file a civil or criminal lawsuit and the arbitration can be overturned, just like it was for her. The fact that KBR was found innocent by a jury of her peers, and that the sex was considered consensual, and that she simply made it up to get our of her contract after being there for three days, and that she was held to pay $145,000 in legal fees to KBR speaks volumes and none of that was on the website you sent me, so it is not sharing all of the relevant facts of this case that would give a rational mind sufficient information to make a rational decision. This is called, “truth through omission.”
Since, I believe, that website was originally created for this case, and I believe that arbitration is a right that companies should have the option of putting in their employee contracts (remember, in a free country you can say NO to working for an employer who has a binder like that and if enough people say no, the binders go away), and because she did get her day in court, and was found “guilty” in reverse by a jury of her peers, and did have to pay the legal fees…I can’t really fault the Republicans that voted against this amendment. Sounds like it was the right thing to do to me.
Now what I am NOT saying is that the Republicans are not god-slaved wackos that want to create all kinds of laws based on God’s will, that control a woman and her body. Because they are, and I disagree with those laws or attempts at laws. You cited that Republicans were passing laws to leverage child visitation, yada yada, which you never did provide a citation for, but you did provide the Republicansforrape website, and since that website seems to be originally about this case, I chose to address this particular case. I hope you can see that not everything is so cut and dry. These Republicans did not support rape, they supported the rule of law.
Maybe the men and women on the jury should be your target, and not the Republicans that tried to prevent corporations from having their right to contracts stripped, in a nation that supports the “rule of law” as a foundation of its freedom. I.E. a company can put anything it wants in its contract, because you are FREE not to work for them and bind yourself to it.
Either way, that was fun.
WTF? So according to your math, 81 million men raped women in 2010 alone, huh? That didn’t strike you as a teensy bit…um….ODD? Wikipedia cites the CIA Fact Book to state that there are/were approximately 103 million men in the U.S. between the ages of 15 and 64. So you are saying that 79% of the men in America raped someone? Holy shit. If that’s true, every female should immediately leave America and find an island somewhere. I mean…when you typed out the number 8-1 m-i-l-l-i-o-n on the keyboard knowing we have about 300 million souls, didn’t that set-off your “that’s gotta be crap” alarm? I tell ya, mine went off!
Did you even read the absurd testing methodology itself? Land line and cellphone interviews? WHAT? No raw statistical data from perhaps something you can trust, like hospitals, clinics, the FBI, police, some sort of quantitative irrefutable facts? Nope. Phone interviews. What a bunch of crap. And how many? 16,507 completed interviews (and that’s women AND men). So they interviewed 0.00008 of the male/female population of the U.S. for this survey and then used megalithic weighted averages to make those 16,000 people represent every adult man and woman in the U.S. and you want to cite this as gospel? Gimme a break!
The report you cite includes all kinds of things (as do most statistical reports that have something to gain (budget money) by manipulating the numbers) qualifying their definitions. They include if a guy told you what to wear. Hell, I told my girlfriends what to wear all the time…”That mini skirt looks good! Wear that!” The question does not say, “told you what to wear AGAINST your wishes or BY FORCE” it just says, “told you what to wear, a decision that should have been yours.”
It includes calling a girl names. I’m not saying it’s right, but in the heat of an argument, girls call their guys, and guys call their girls, every four letter word and playground name in the book. So the odds are pretty damn low that every girl and guy out of just 16,000 people did not at some point in their life, have a no-holds-barred verbal fight with their other half that just went potty mouth on their ass. C’mon now. Let’s be real.
This is how statistics get skewed. 95% of the questions are legitimate, but they throw a few softballs in, a few weakly worded questions that exponentially expand the net that then make people say, “Well…yes…once…I guess…a guy called me fat” and BOO YA! they get counted into whatever category they want to lump it into. Then they throw some really pretty kindergarten level pie charts in front of you with big numbers in red, and before you know it, everyone is running through the streets screaming and pulling their hair out in fear/anger/sadness/depression/satisfaction…whatever it was they wanted you to feel.
Do NOT cite statistical reports from a) anyone who has a dog in the fight and/or b) without reviewing the sample size and methodology used. Nine out of ten times, it’s garbage.
And for the weak minded, I am not condoning rape. I am simply saying that you need to exercise that muscle between your ears and look deeper into the data, otherwise, people/agencies are just telling you how to think, what to do, how to feel. Basically, raping your mind. And THAT statistic, is 100%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Age_structure
Citing wikipedia in the same argument where you are arguing that my citing the CDC is somehow a bad source is hilarious.
Also, learn how to read, I said that as of 2010 that there were 81 million men in the US that had committed acts of rape or sexual assault, not that there were 81 million of those acts occurring that year.
Now go back and re-read the PDF I linked. You did not read the 36 page document and type all that nonsense in the twenty minutes between when I posted the link and when you posted your reply.
You’re right. I did not read all 36 pages because you cited footnotes 195 through 205 specifically, so I read both the text itself and the specific footnotes within and including that range within the 20 minutes, and seeing as that was all of four pages, less the time it took to write my comment, I think four minutes a page was more than sufficient.
Why would I read more than what you cited? Why would anyone do that? When I cited Wikipedia for my male population figure I did not expect you to read all 50 pages of U.S. demographic information.
Take a few more minutes to go back and read the entire document, then. I pointed to those foot notes as a “Hey, if you want more than what that author talks about, those are the sources you can trace for more info” not “Those foot notes are the only things relevant to the discussion, ignore the rest of the paper”.
First, learn to write.
“This means…that in 2010 we had somewhere between 81-91 million men in this country raping and/or sexually assaulting women (given the population statistics in this country that year)”
You said “raping” specifically. Not raped. Not had at some point raped. What you wrote means, or at least due to poor word use suggests, that 81-91 million were “raping,” as in actively, or sexual assaulting women “in 2010,” given the “population statistics in this country that year.”
Then, learn to read.
I ignored your poor grammar anyway in my argument. Although I wrote, “in 2010 alone?” which was my understanding of your poorly worded sentence, the rest of my argument had nothing to do with the year so what I wrote was still accurate.
Now, with all that said, and as I said originally, that is STILL an absurd amount of the population. If I told someone that “at some point,” roughly 80% of the men in the U.S. between 15 and 65 had raped or sexually assaulted someone, they would be terrified. I mean…that only leaves 20% and half of that is men under 15 and over 65 so 9 out of 10 men have raped or sexually assaulted someone? I mean….c’mon. Seriously.
Are you suggesting that men raping women was something that stopped happening prior to 2010? The wording I used was perfectly fine in the context of describing an ongoing problem (especially since, you know, rapes occurred over the course of that year, which would mean that using the term “raping” instead of “raped” is actually applicable).
@ daniel871 March 21 9:06AM
I need an aspirin. Look man, you’re chasing your tail now. FOCUS.
The point is that you said in your original argument that 80% of the male adult population AT SOME POINT in their lives, prior to and including 2010, raped or sexually assaulted someone. That’s what you said. And I have said that is an incredibly high, to the point of unbelievable, number.
And for all your comments about this, or around this I should say, you have not refuted it. We can dance all day about -ed or -ing or whatever, but my point still stands. If you are going to reply to this then FOCUS on the 80% point. I would like to see the word “80%” somewhere in your reply, if you reply.
80%. Wow. That’s a scary country you live in.
81 million men is nowhere near 80% of the 128 million men living in this country in 2010 , so I don’t know what you’re going on about there.
Correction, 138 million. http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf
Correction…103,129,439 or 103 million.
138 million on the website you cited is ALL males. I was removing male toddlers and AARP members as potential rapists.
Using your citation, on page 4, if you add up MALES only, between the “rape-capable” ages of 15 and 64, which I just did in Excel, you get 103 million as of 2010 census.
So when you cite 81-91 million men in your first comment, you are saying that all men currently accounted for (by the website you cited) between the ages of 15 and 64 at some point in their lives raped or sexually abused someone which is equivalent to somewhere between 78.54% and 88.24% of said population demographic as I have defined it.
Holy Hell man. That sure is a lot. 80 to 90 percent of the “rape capable” male population.
All I am saying is not to take these statistics blindly. Statistics are marketing tricks and they are easy to make say anything they want and we are saturated by them and everyone just assumes the number pushed in front of them is gospel when most of the time, it ain’t.
Look at “Feeding America” that that idiot Ben Affleck was doing PSA’s for and Bank of America was pushing at their ATM’s. They had some incredible statistic on their commercials like 1 in 6 Americans is hungry. That’s pretty high, just on the face of it, no? I mean, that should be high enough for people to say hmmmmmm. But Americans are stupid. They don’t THINK! They don’t stop a second and THINK! about that. How WEIRD that number is. 1 in 6? We should be surrounded by starving people! They should be on every corner, outside our work, everywhere like zombies in a horror movie.
If you research their numbers, you find out that they count every person in the household, even if only one person felt hungry just one time in a whole year. So imagine a house of 8 people. Seven people have plenty of food all year. One person says they felt hungry…ONE TIME…in the WHOLE year. Boo Yah! Suddenly ALL EIGHT PEOPLE are counted as “going hungry” which is what makes that statistic so HIGH. But hey, it works. People dig down into their wallet so ONE guy who was hungry ONCE can get more free food. If those same people KNEW how that 1 in 6 was calculated, I think a lot of hands would be coming OUT of a lot of pockets, not digging in. But…it’s good marketing.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of the “poor” (which is also defined incorrectly and I did a post on this on my blog) are obese or overweight. Which means they get plenty of food. Too much even. But when you are overweight you WANT more food. You NEED more food. So you are more likely to report that you felt HUNGRY, if even only ONCE because hey, you’re fat, so you’re hungry all the freakin’ time.
And think about yourself for a second. Have you ever felt hungry? Even just once all year? It happens to me many times all year, I’m starving right now, but then I go and get something to eat just like I am going to do when I finish this. But if you were to answer this question truthfully, wouldn’t you have to say, “Yes, I have felt hungry at least once in the past year” but of course, you do not need assistance. But that’s okay, it’s all they needed you to say to increase their profits and report you as part of the 1 in 6.
And think about incentive. If you are “poor” or “lazy,” whichever, and you are being interviewed by an agency that is trying to secure donations to provide you with free food…where is your incentive? Your incentive is to say, “Yeah…I’m hungry ALL THE TIME” because you have skin in the game, a dog in the fight, an axe to grind…you stand to MAKE money from this non-profit by answering “correctly” because later you can apply for some Feed America money or food. And so you do, even if it ain’t true, or if you know what the “spirit” of the question is, but decide to answer “correctly” anyway.
Again, bad bad bad statistic. But people fall for it because people never stop to THINK and use common sense, just for a second, just to say…huh…I think I will look into that just a LITTLE bit further. Sounds fishy. I want to bring, “sounds fishy” back in vogue. We need more of that.
I’m 100% on board with bringing back “sounds fishy.” Getting started on that today
Are you serious? There is a grand canyon of difference between citing the CDC versus Wikipedia.
First, the CDC has an axe to grind. The more dire the news they sell, the more likely they can make a case for more “funding” using taxpayer money to “fix” the “problem.” This is a conflict of interest. How much should someone trust the used car salesman they are buying a car from? Wikipedia has no conflict of interest.
The CDC used an insignificant sample size of the population to represent the entire nation and called them on the phone for their opinion. Wikipedia cites the CIA Fact Book which uses U.S. Census Bureau information which actually does send out a letter to every household in the U.S., as close to 100% saturation at they can get. And those that fail to respond are called, or get a personal visit from a CB worker.
So if you HAD to rely on something to use as a source, would you rather pick the one that called 16,000 people on the phone to ask them their OPINION on something that is mutated to represent a “FACT” regarding 315,000,000 people, or the one that tried to contact every single home in the entire nation, more than once, and asked them factual questions that leave no room for opinion like, how many people live in your house and how old are they?
C’mon now. Citing Wiki vs citing the CDC is NOT the same thing, at all. Besides, if there was an alternate source of how many men are in the U.S. that somehow improved your comment, you would have already cited it by now. But feel free to do so if you find one. I’ll be happy to update my figures.
You’re right, there is a huge difference. The CDC publishes reports that are subject to peer review by other organizations while Wikipedia can be edited by anybody with an email address. And offering “The CDC has an ax to grind” as if that makes them different from anybody else that studies statistics is laughable. Would you also disregard the findings of the RAINN because their entire scope is centered on sexual crime statistics (here is a hint, the RAINN statistics paint an even worse picture than the CDC does, my numbers based on the CDC are conservative estimates).
I didn’t use the CDC’s population numbers in my estimates, though I did apply their factors to the raw population numbers that the 2010 census had in it (because any idiot could spend two seconds Googling and find this: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf if they wanted to double-check my math using the CDC’s rate figures).
This is basic Intro to Sociology stuff, man.
Thank you for the link. I already looked at that yesterday to confirm that Wikipedia’s numbers were close enough to make my point. And they were.
Unfortunately, the CDC report can’t be edited by anyone with an email address which means if they publish complete garbage, there is no way to update the garbage to something more accurate. That forces us (those who would refute it) to cite alternate sources, which I did.
As for RAINN, yes I would discount their statistics as well, and so should you. I took a gander at their consolidated financial statements, readily available on their website. Did you know that 66% of their revenues come from Federal departments? A rather large 43% with the Department of Defense and 23% with the Department of Justice. Good thing they are headquartered in Washington D.C. so they can lobby daily for more money. So again, I don’t trust any entity that has it’s hand in the cookie jar, and the number of cookies in the jar is based on how bad the entity can claim the demand for cookies is. As a side note, RAINN’s President also owns a publishing company that, incredibly, is the only publishing vendor RAINN can use, and they owe his company close to a quarter million dollars. Unfortunate conflict of interest there, not what I would do if I were the head of a company that supports victims of rape, and not what you would do either I am sure, but they have to disclose these things on the related parties disclosure. How do you feel about the President of a company that uses donations and taxpayer money to help victims of rape, forcing his non-profit to use his own publishing company, rather than finding the best, and cheapest vendor available, to make sure more money can be spent on victims and education rather than on his own company’s revenue? Just sayin’. So yeah, RAINN has it’s hands in the cookie jar, just like the CDC.
And nice straw man argument. Setup Wikipedia to fail by tearing it down and saying anything can be changed by anyone with an email address, and use that weak argument as a reason to ignore a number cited in Wikipedia that I used to show that you believe that 80% of the adult male population at some point was a rapist or committed assault. If Wikipedia says that water only has two Hydrogen molecules, are you going to use the same logic to discount that citation? It’s simple and basic population data not an economic theorem for Bulgaria edited by a former Prince of Norway that once took cocaine. No need to make things more complicated. A population number is very UN-complicated until you try to make it so.
Give or take various estimates from the two million websites you and I could go back on, ultimately, there is a number that we would both agree on that represents the adult male population of the United States. And whatever that number is that we would both agree on is going to be pretty close, plus or minus, to the number on Wikipedia. Which means +/- a few points, you are still standing by the fact that 3/4′ths of the adult male population at some point raped or sexually assaulted someone. Got it. Sounds like a plan, so go ahead and stick with that.
This is basic intro to Corrupt Government…man.
Pretty sure that I never claimed anywhere near 80% of the male population being rapists. Look back at where I cited the 2010 US Census numbers and compare 81 million to 138 million. Divide 81 million by 138 million and you’ll get the actual percentage of men being talked about here.
As a reminder, what I actually said was:
“The short version is pretty much that one out of every two men in this country has raped or sexually assaulted a woman ”
That doesn’t sound anywhere near the 80% number you keep throwing out that I never said.
I can’t respond to all of these comments, so I picked yours to throw my comment on
so I had better quit while I’m ahead.
I hope that I didn’t come across as condoning rape or as thinking that these two boys weren’t at fault or anything of that nature. I’m a statistic myself, just one that didn’t report anything out of fear, disgust, and frustration. I also know about a dozen females who have lied about being assaulted and only one who has actually been assaulted. It’s frustrating that the liars are out there, and I have no doubt that they skew the statistics with their lies and false claims. When you have a crying female and a man who is angry and calling her a liar, it’s natural to want to believe the female and to sympathize with her. Makes things much harder for the women who have actually been assaulted and need help.
I took a marketing class in college that discussed statistics and the collection of data in great detail, so it’s hard for me to trust most statistics that go off a sampling of the community and not off of hard facts. I also know that a wide variety of sexual crimes are going on constantly. It’s hard to objectively sift through them all and come up with accurate percentages of who has experienced what, given all the variables and dishonesty. I don’t care about the stats, I care about the problem. I want to see it fixed, and I think that comes from both education and by teaching people how to avoid ending up in certain situations. That’s not to say we should tell people not to dress provocatively, but it would help if people weren’t getting wasted to the point of passing out around people they can’t trust, not walking alone at night, not assuming a kiss means consenting to sex, not thinking putting up a fight is foreplay, etc. My friend who was assaulted had no way of preventing what happened to her. I was acting like an idiot. Had I used my brain a bit, I would have been fine.
To reduce the amount of sexual assaults, everyone needs education. Respecting your partner (or potential partner), staying away from dangerous situations, understanding the impact a rape has on a person mentally and physically, understanding the legal ramifications of sexual assault, reducing the fear of reporting sexual crimes, knowing how to set clear boundaries and ensure they are not crossed, and so on. In the case of these two teenagers, I don’t see how having them become registered sex offenders is fixing anything. They screwed up royally and deserve punishment and rehabilitation, not the added stigma and difficulties that come with being registered. Punishment on top of punishment just teaches someone not to get caught. Rehabilitation and education (of them and the community) will teach prevention.
I’m reaching the lengths of one of your comments now
Jamie, no shit here, but go back and read the article I linked in the comment still awaiting moderation. Lots of people have anecdotal stories of people that falsely claimed rape, but that is still a different thing from people that actually falsely report it and have it go to trial (the link I posted in response to AWC’s #3 above breaks it down).
Just read through it. What worries me is that apparently not all states like Ohio have laws that make rape broader than just penis enters vagina. I don’t know the laws on forced oral/anal, but before reading about the Ohio incident, I assumed that any type of forced sexual acts would equal rape. It’s worrisome that just recently, laws were changed to broaden the definition. As far as the people who lie about rape, I suspect that most of them do so not to get someone in trouble, but to gain sympathy or free themselves of some sort of guilt or responsibility. So I’m not surprised to see that there aren’t many false claims reported as shown in those stats. I am surprised that the stats show so many reported cases go without justice for the victim. It’s scary to think that if I did report my incident, I would have likely sat in court and gone through all that nonsense for nothing.
interesting article: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/health/rape-survivors-future/index.html?hpt=hp_bn13
By the way, I apologize for my crap attitude. I’m having a shitty day.
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