The New York Times takes on the college sexual assault myth and comes to the conclusion that...poor single moms are more likely to victims.
The entire article is pasted below -- important parts in bold, my notes in italics. They closed the comments section already, but if you can stand giving them a click, it's worth going over there to see how far in outer space some of their readers are ("Campus assault is a civil rights violation!!" Oh, so I guess then assaulting a non-college-educated woman is a civil rights victory.)
***
Privilege, Among Rape Victims
Who Suffers Most From Rape and Sexual Assault in America?
By CALLIE MARIE RENNISONDEC. 21, 2014
DENVER — LATELY, people have been bombarded with the notion that universities and colleges are hotbeds of sexual violence. Parents fear that sending their teenagers to school is equivalent to shipping them off to be sexually victimized.
But the truth is, young women who don’t go to college are more likely to be raped. Lynn A. Addington at American University and I recently published a study based on the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey data from 1995 to 2011. We found that the estimated rate of sexual assault and rape of female college students, ages 18 to 24, was 6.1 per 1,000 students.
(My note: notice how this doesn't add up to 1 in 5. Are we making progress in that the paper of record went public with this?)
This is nothing to be proud of, but it is significantly lower than the rate experienced by women that age who don’t attend college — eight per 1,000. In other words, these women are victims of sexual violence at a rate around 30 percent greater than their more educated counterparts.
The focus on sexual violence against some of our most privileged young people has distracted us from the victimization of those enjoying less social and economic advantage.
(Heheheh. I'm sure mattress girl loved reading that one.)
Surprisingly, we don’t know much about the latter group. After an exhaustive search, colleagues and I could find no major study that focuses on the relationship between social and economic disadvantage and rape and sexual assault risk in the United States. But existing research does show that disadvantaged women are more likely to experience violence generally, as well as violence perpetrated by an intimate partner. Does this hold true for sexual assault?
(You're kidding! There's more violence in poor communities?! Shocked. Stunned!!)
I recently tried to answer this question by comparing female sexual victimization rates with a variety of social and economic disadvantage measures from National Crime Victimization Survey data, from 1992 to 2012. These data, like all data, are imperfect, and it is believed that they underestimate sexual victimization rates to some degree. But for my purpose this underestimation was unimportant since it was constant and therefore would not affect the relative differences between groups.
The statistics did indeed show that disadvantaged women, age 12 and older, were sexually victimized (including rape or sexual assault) at the highest rates. Women in the lowest income bracket, with annual household incomes of less than $7,500, are sexually victimized at 3.7 times the rate of women with household incomes of $35,000 to $49,999, and at about six times the rate of women in the highest income bracket (households earning $75,000 or more annually). Homeownership is another example of how economic advantage serves to protect women from sexual violence. Woman living in rented properties are sexually victimized at 3.2 times the rate of women living in homes that they or a family member own.
There are also disparities in rates of violence when marital status and children are taken into account. Single women with children living in the home have the highest rate of sexual victimization: 2.3 times that of single women with no children living in the home; 3.6 times that of married women with children living in the home; and 9.1 times that of married women with no children in the home.
(What conclusion do we draw from what I put in bold? Single women who have kids should not bring strange men home? Ding ding ding!! We have a winner. Sadly, this will not be what anyone in the lamestream media will think -- even though all our grandparents knew this instinctively.)
Finally, we can look at educational attainment and the risk of sexual violence. Women without a high school diploma are sexually victimized at a rate 53 percent greater than women with a high school diploma or some college, and more than 400 percent greater than those with a bachelor’s degree or more.
More research should be done to replicate these findings, but it is clear that there is a relationship between disadvantage and sexual victimization. To better understand why disadvantage acts as a catalyst for sexual violence, we must hear directly from the women affected, who can provide valuable information as to how they cope with living on the margins.
There are obvious steps we as a society can take to better support all victims of sexual violence: We have to stop blaming and shaming survivors, and to start holding perpetrators accountable. But we also need to do much more to support women in disadvantaged communities. These are the same women who have the least flexibility at work, the least access to reliable transportation, the least help with child care, and the least resources with which to pursue legal representation or medical treatment on their own. We need to do a better job of bringing health, legal and psychological services to them.
Above all, we need to remember these women when we talk about rape and sexual assault. Women at the margins are the ones who bear the brunt of the harshest realities, including sexual violence, and they do so with the least resources. Am I saying that we should ignore sexual violence against the wealthy and educated? Of course not. Nor is it wrong to pay special attention to college-age women: The one risk factor that remains consistent whether women are advantaged or disadvantaged is age, and women ages 16 to 20 are sexually victimized at the highest rates.
(Showing rape probably has more to do with horny low-grade guys wanting to fuck hot young women than "violence." It's been called a reproductive shortcut by some.)
But we cannot let attention to a particular group, or the suggestion of an epidemic where one does not exist, distract us from the pressing needs of others.
(I almost spit out my orange juice reading that. The college rape epidemic doesn't exist -- says the NYT.)
Callie Marie Rennison is the co-director of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Research Initiative at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs.
The entire article is pasted below -- important parts in bold, my notes in italics. They closed the comments section already, but if you can stand giving them a click, it's worth going over there to see how far in outer space some of their readers are ("Campus assault is a civil rights violation!!" Oh, so I guess then assaulting a non-college-educated woman is a civil rights victory.)
***
Privilege, Among Rape Victims
Who Suffers Most From Rape and Sexual Assault in America?
By CALLIE MARIE RENNISONDEC. 21, 2014
DENVER — LATELY, people have been bombarded with the notion that universities and colleges are hotbeds of sexual violence. Parents fear that sending their teenagers to school is equivalent to shipping them off to be sexually victimized.
But the truth is, young women who don’t go to college are more likely to be raped. Lynn A. Addington at American University and I recently published a study based on the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey data from 1995 to 2011. We found that the estimated rate of sexual assault and rape of female college students, ages 18 to 24, was 6.1 per 1,000 students.
(My note: notice how this doesn't add up to 1 in 5. Are we making progress in that the paper of record went public with this?)
This is nothing to be proud of, but it is significantly lower than the rate experienced by women that age who don’t attend college — eight per 1,000. In other words, these women are victims of sexual violence at a rate around 30 percent greater than their more educated counterparts.
The focus on sexual violence against some of our most privileged young people has distracted us from the victimization of those enjoying less social and economic advantage.
(Heheheh. I'm sure mattress girl loved reading that one.)
Surprisingly, we don’t know much about the latter group. After an exhaustive search, colleagues and I could find no major study that focuses on the relationship between social and economic disadvantage and rape and sexual assault risk in the United States. But existing research does show that disadvantaged women are more likely to experience violence generally, as well as violence perpetrated by an intimate partner. Does this hold true for sexual assault?
(You're kidding! There's more violence in poor communities?! Shocked. Stunned!!)
I recently tried to answer this question by comparing female sexual victimization rates with a variety of social and economic disadvantage measures from National Crime Victimization Survey data, from 1992 to 2012. These data, like all data, are imperfect, and it is believed that they underestimate sexual victimization rates to some degree. But for my purpose this underestimation was unimportant since it was constant and therefore would not affect the relative differences between groups.
The statistics did indeed show that disadvantaged women, age 12 and older, were sexually victimized (including rape or sexual assault) at the highest rates. Women in the lowest income bracket, with annual household incomes of less than $7,500, are sexually victimized at 3.7 times the rate of women with household incomes of $35,000 to $49,999, and at about six times the rate of women in the highest income bracket (households earning $75,000 or more annually). Homeownership is another example of how economic advantage serves to protect women from sexual violence. Woman living in rented properties are sexually victimized at 3.2 times the rate of women living in homes that they or a family member own.
There are also disparities in rates of violence when marital status and children are taken into account. Single women with children living in the home have the highest rate of sexual victimization: 2.3 times that of single women with no children living in the home; 3.6 times that of married women with children living in the home; and 9.1 times that of married women with no children in the home.
(What conclusion do we draw from what I put in bold? Single women who have kids should not bring strange men home? Ding ding ding!! We have a winner. Sadly, this will not be what anyone in the lamestream media will think -- even though all our grandparents knew this instinctively.)
Finally, we can look at educational attainment and the risk of sexual violence. Women without a high school diploma are sexually victimized at a rate 53 percent greater than women with a high school diploma or some college, and more than 400 percent greater than those with a bachelor’s degree or more.
More research should be done to replicate these findings, but it is clear that there is a relationship between disadvantage and sexual victimization. To better understand why disadvantage acts as a catalyst for sexual violence, we must hear directly from the women affected, who can provide valuable information as to how they cope with living on the margins.
There are obvious steps we as a society can take to better support all victims of sexual violence: We have to stop blaming and shaming survivors, and to start holding perpetrators accountable. But we also need to do much more to support women in disadvantaged communities. These are the same women who have the least flexibility at work, the least access to reliable transportation, the least help with child care, and the least resources with which to pursue legal representation or medical treatment on their own. We need to do a better job of bringing health, legal and psychological services to them.
Above all, we need to remember these women when we talk about rape and sexual assault. Women at the margins are the ones who bear the brunt of the harshest realities, including sexual violence, and they do so with the least resources. Am I saying that we should ignore sexual violence against the wealthy and educated? Of course not. Nor is it wrong to pay special attention to college-age women: The one risk factor that remains consistent whether women are advantaged or disadvantaged is age, and women ages 16 to 20 are sexually victimized at the highest rates.
(Showing rape probably has more to do with horny low-grade guys wanting to fuck hot young women than "violence." It's been called a reproductive shortcut by some.)
But we cannot let attention to a particular group, or the suggestion of an epidemic where one does not exist, distract us from the pressing needs of others.
(I almost spit out my orange juice reading that. The college rape epidemic doesn't exist -- says the NYT.)
Callie Marie Rennison is the co-director of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Research Initiative at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs.
