Feminists wrong about causes of rape

Rape is down 85% per capita since the early 1970s, and Tim Worstall explains the evidence which shows that more pornography is correlated with less rape.

This is a topic I wrote about in 2006, but what seems to be different here is the internet evidence. From a study showing the change in rape between 1980 and 2000 (quoting Tim Worstall):

Four states with lowest internet access Increase in rape of 53%

Four states with highest internet access Decrease in rape of 27%

Of course, the internet provides easy availability of all sorts of porn. Thus more internet access means more porn. And more porn means less rape.

It seems obvious to me. Men who can release their sexual urges with pornography don’t need to use live women. Yet people resisted the obvious explanation, because it conflicted with feminist theories of rape, and the Christian Right doesn’t like pornography much either

Feminists deny that rape is about men’s sexual urges; they say it’s about men seeking power and control and degrading women. I love it when feminists are proved wrong.

Comments

[Gil]

Meh. The correlation is too weak to imply causation. However there is a similar anecdote about access to violent media tends to be in low-crime places.

[Ted]

These statistics are meaningless because only a small percentage of rapes are reported. This allows large changes in the percentage of rapes that are reported to appear to be changes in the rape rate, when they are nothing of the sort.

A second very important factor is better DNA testing. Violent stranger rape is lot harder to get away with now, so we have a better deterrent in place.

Yet another factor is a decrease in the prime young raping and raped population relative to the rapidly increasing elderly population.

I noticed the paper this is based on was put online on the SSRN in 2006 and still has not been published. Despite a lot of work writing, it has seemingly been abandoned by its author or refused publication. The author is a law professor, not a statistician.

[Jason Malloy]

No, this falls under bad theory.

Except for a minority of men with victimizing paraphilias, men who commit rape are criminal generalists, *not* criminal specialists. For instance this is why rape rates over time mirror the rates of other major crimes like murder and assault.

The researcher needs to do the same Internet analysis with other violent crimes. He'd likely get the same result, and it's probably due to some third factor that correlates with both crime and Internet availability (e.g. people in Vermont are less criminal than people in Alabama, as well as more likely to be ahead on the technology curve-- in other words, more civilized).

[sabril]

Echoing Ted a bit, it seems to me that the obvious explanation for the drop in rapes is the widespread use of DNA testing and computer databases. It's just a lot easier now to apprehend and convict rapists and get them off the streets.

I also agree that you can't conclude from this study that access to porn reduces rape. There are too many confounds.

However, the study does seem to undermine the feminist claims about objectification. Which never had much empirical support to begin with.

Anyway, it's always been pretty clear that the feminists were wrong with their "rape is about power" mantra.

For example, the fact that rape victims are strongly disproportionately women in their childbearing years.

Also, the fact that there is a huge black/white rape disparity in the same direction as the marriage disparity.

[Jason Malloy]

Or to use HS's language from the post above this one:

"people from [a low-class] background are far more likely to use violence to resolve disputes than people with proper middle class values."

Just think of rape as a violent method to resolve a dispute over sex. The men that rape resolve their disputes with violence more generally.

Rape follows the trend over time of how likely men in the population are to resolve their disputes with violence.

[Gannon]

"Echoing Ted a bit, it seems to me that the obvious explanation for the drop in rapes is the widespread use of DNA testing and computer databases. It's just a lot easier now to apprehend and convict rapists and get them off the streets."
Basically, there are two defenses against rape:
denying that it happened or claiming that it was consensual. Due to DNA tests it's easy to prove sex: so the best defense strategy would be to claim that the intercourse was consensual: it is plaintif who has to prove that the intercourse was obtained by force beyond reasonable doubt. Not easy.

[HS: In the overwhelming majority of rape cases, the defense is that it was consensual. Half the time, the defendant wins. Rape has a very low conviction rate compared to other crimes.

I've observed two rape trials, and in one of them I would have voted to acquit the defendant if I were on the jury. That defendant was indeed acquitted.]

[X]

How about the fact that women in America continue to be more sluttier than they were in the past??? No need to rape when so many girls are willing to spread their legs after only a few hours of interaction.

[HS: A reasonable-sounding argument.]

[amir]

What's missing from this analysis is how the internet has influenced women's attitudes. Most rape is "date rape". With increased internet porn there may me more promiscuity among women and more consensual date sex rather than date rape.

[Peter]

I sat through a two-week-long rape trial while working as a courtroom clerk in the early 1990's. The defendant was a 50ish black semi-skell, the "ish" part being appropriate because he literally did not know exactly how old he was. He'd been born around the time of World War II in the Deep South and had no birth certificate. The victim was a Hispanic warpig in her early 20's who had four children by four different men. Drug use had left her with perhaps 20% of her brain cells still functioning. The defendant claimed that the victim had consented to sex, and hollered rape when he failed to give her crack afterwards.

The testimony wasn't going too well for the defendant until the public defender, in a brilliant move, introduced the victim's underpants as an exhibit. You cannot begin to imagine how foul they were. I mean, we're talking multiple body fluids. She probably had been wearing the same pair for several days if not weeks. The jurors recoiled in disgust at the sight of the underpants, and the victim's credibility immediately dropped to zero. Soon after they found the defendant not guilty.

[agnostic]

The idea sounds plausible but is wrong. The Bureau of Justice Statistics website where Worstall got that graph from allows you to get a spreadsheet for forcible rape rate from 1960 to 2006 -- why he only looks at 1973 onward I don't know.

If you're not going to find it and plot it in Excel yourself, it looks like this: Flat from '60 to '63, increases steadily from '64 to a peak in '92, and decreases steadily afterward.

Of course, that contradicts that hypothesis: pornography exploded in availability or popularity starting in the mid-'50s and 1960s when Playboy became entrenched, and then Playboy plus Hustler plus bla bla bla in the '70s and after, as well as X-rated movies in the '70s and after.

But during this time period, rape rates were skyrocketing.

Since the mid-'90s, we've had a little access to porn via the internet, though a lot more since the late '90s. And during this time, rape rates were plummeting -- and before porn was widely available on the internet (in 1992).

In sum, no strong connection.

[silly girl]

La Griffe discusses crime rates correlated with enforcement. It could also be a factor. Would be interesting to see the racial breakdown in the areas of high and low incidence of rape.

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/hood.htm

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/hatecrime.htm

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/fuzzy.htm

La Griffe has a sense of humor but may be too thorough in his analyses for impatient or time pressed readers.

[ret]

"they say it’s about men seeking power and control and degrading women"

But "power" and "control" and "degrading" one's sexual partner can be erotic & exciting. Isn't that the point of pornography that flirts with non-consensual scenarios - viewers are not just getting off on the sex (they could watch any porn for that), they are getting off on the specific context in which the sex is occurring. Why does it have to be one or the other? I don't see why rape can't simultaneously be about sex and about the desire to control/degrade/profane etc.

Certainly many accounts of rape that I heard about while I was working in the courts involved the rapist saying or forcing the woman to say/do things that would imply that it was not just about getting any old kind of sex. The forced sex aspect was an important part of the thrill for the rapist.

[Jack]

I wonder if lower rape rates may not only be caused by female promiscuity, but also if female promiscuity is caused by lower rape rates. Women may feel more free to act forward and slutty if there really isn't the threat of rape. More rapes might influence women to act more morally.

[Tim Worstall]

"These statistics are meaningless because only a small percentage of rapes are reported. This allows large changes in the percentage of rapes that are reported to appear to be changes in the rape rate, when they are nothing of the sort."

For this to explain the decline in reported rapes you would need to show that the proportion of rapes that do happen but which are not reported has risen.

Givn the societal changes over the past 30 odd years I really think you'd struggle with that one.

[lissa]

Yes, It's a pretty weak correlation. You could just as easily say an increase in obesity is linked to a decrease in rape because people are too fat to be bothered and as far as rape being an act of violence rather male urges...this is not just the 'feminist' understandings,it's accepted as a given.
I also think a lot of 'feminist' theory is off the mark.