No scientific paper or survey can ever sample every individual in a population. The idea is to get an accurate representation of the population with a smaller sample size. And people who deny the prevalence of this issue (not saying you are) are only adding to the problem.
As long as you realise that there is currently a huge media rush to publish anything that might paint women in this fashion. Fact-checking is always necessary in these scenarios and unfortunately a lot of the people who do critically analyse these studies are often times pushed away as "denying the prevalence of the issue" -- myself (often) included.
A great example is 9 Facts About Violence Against Women. The first "fact" they explain is:
"Most women experience physical abuse in their lifetime"
All you need to do is give the source's Key Findings section a quick read to understand how presenting data in this fashion can be harmful:
Physical assault is widespread among adults in the United States:
51.9 percent of surveyed women and 66.4 percent of surveyed men said they were physically assaulted as a child by an adult caretaker and/or as an adult by any type of attacker.
An estimated 1.9 million women and 3.2 million men are physically assaulted annually in the United States.
So, whilst Vox is accurate to the source, they are particularly picky with which side of the facts they choose to convey to readers.
Some people might suggest that these figures, when disclosed together and discussing both males and females indicates a much larger issue of physical abuse in general. Vox, on the other hand, reads the findings and looks for a way to spin it into something that they know people care deeply about -- in order to get pageviews and ad impressions.
This type of careless journalism only makes the problem worse, and unfortunately it seems more and more of these click-bait attention-grabbing "facts" are getting regurgitated time after time by "activists", until most begin to question how it materialized in the first place.
Also consider that many of those involved here have their own agendas - take the "potty mouthed princesses" video - put together by a viral t-shirt company who also jumped onto the Ferguson incident with a "Dear White People" video to make a quick buck.
Do these media creators really care about the underlying issues here? That's something you have to find out on your own.
The percentage of rape claims that are "false" is in the low single digits. And I think you're underestimating how deeply embedded a tolerance for rape is embedded in American culture:
A survey of 11-to-14 year-olds found:
· 51% of the boys and 41% of the girls said forced sex was acceptable if the boy, "spent a lot of money" on the girl;
· 31% of the boys and 32% of the girls said it was acceptable for a man to rape a woman with past sexual experience;
· 87% of boys and 79% of girls said sexual assault was acceptable if the man and the woman were married;
· 65% of the boys and 47% of the girls said it was acceptable for a boy to rape a girl if they had been dating for more than six months.
I was interested in looking directly at the source and instead came across a tumblr post from SAFER (Students Active For Ending Rape) where they posted the same excerpt. Only they later added the following:
UDPATE from SAFER: Thanks for all of the thoughts and comments on this post. To answer some of your questions, the study itself is dated back to 1991. (White, Jacqueline W. and John A. Humphrey. “Young People’s Attitudes Toward Acquaintance Rape.” Acquaintance Rape: The Hidden crime.” John Wiley and Sons, 1991.) While it is likely that attitudes are not completely dissimilar to those of 1991, it is worth noting that this research is dated and to be taken with a grain of salt. If you have any other particular questions, please feel free to email us at [email protected]. Thanks!
I think if a group dedicated to ending rape won't even take this almost-24 year-old source as an accurate representation of current attitudes, neither should we...
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It's really telling how many gender activists will pull up damning studies long ago whilst completely ignoring anything more recent.
Here - let's consider the crime statistics from 1992-2011, provided by the FBI:
Gender activists wouldn't have you believe it, but instances of rape, just like almost all other crime, have been in steady decline over the last 20 years
... and we've managed to do it all
without teaching boys to "not rape"...
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But to answer the question in the OP regarding jokes about rape, Bill Cosby, and other distasteful subjects, the following quote springs to mind:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
