A Crash Course in Feminism Mk. II (or, why everyone should be a feminist)

[Wolfshade]

I may be coming off that way, but that certainly isn't where I am coming from, as far as I am concerned the fact that there are victim support centres seeing people indicates that there is too many people being assaulted.
My issue is that the statistic is dodgy, and that is no slur against those that composed, and if you are unfamiliar with behavioural studies (which this does fall into) then you look around at your group of friends and go well there are eight of us in the pub so statistically two of us will be raped before we die. Whereas in actuality, removing any emotional attachment and just looking at the bare underlying statistics, is that it is an estimate, and depending what source you use that number varies, if we take the CSEW figure that is 1 in 15 so why discount that figure? Yes 1 in 4 makes a bold impacting headline but then if someone then quotes a source that shows it to be much lower then surely that weakens the argument somewhat. Then does it take into account multiple assaults on the same person? Most assaults are done by people that are known to them, say partner, so if I don't know 50% of all of the rapes are done on the same person then that drops the rate from 1 in 4 to 1 in 8 without adjusting the number of reported cases, just adjusting how you factor it up.
It is like there was a post saying that women only made up 1% of land owners a while ago, when in actuality, the Queen owns over 20%, so that is a fallacy, then you have that the statistic that was being reproduced was actually 1% of agricultural land was owned by women, which is a very different thing to 1% of land. Then when it came down to it it was sourced from a 70s UN report, so is massively out of date, and had no study associated with it, so it was someone's feeling about the number.
Yes I can accept that rape happens and that it should not, yes there is a rape culture, that photograph above shows that this is the case, but this is not what we are talking about, it is the reliability of statistics and how an unreliable stat can undermine ones credibility when making powerful points.

Take for instance studies of adolescence self-harm. If you are to do a survey of those admitted to hospital, then you will see that the vast majority are those that poison themselves.
If you do an anonymous schools survey you will find that the majority of them do cutting.
If you do a survey of mental in-patients then again you get a cutting majority.

So if you scale up from hospital occurrences you get a quite low self harm number, you do it from the school survey and you get a more medium rate number, do it from the in-patient facility and you get a high number. None, of these numbers are "wrong", it is how they are expanded upon and extrapolated from the relatively small sample size (vs total population) where the unreliability comes in. It is not to say that any stats that are extrapolated are useless, or are a deception, just that there is an inherent margin of error.

[eldargal]

Well the issue is the statistics are unreliable due to chronic under reporting. Rape centres get a better idea of the numbers because they deal with more of the victims than the police and so forth. It isn't a precise statistic it is based on the number of women they see each year and how many are repeat victims, how many aren't and so forth. Estimates usually range from 1 in 6 to 1 in 3 but 1 in 4 is used as an average.

[URL="http://www.themarysue.com/misogyny-in-comic-book-community/"]There has been another outburst of misogyny[/URL] from the comic book industry. A former comic book editor was harassed for her critique of a cover sexualising a teenage girl, with the usual rape threats and death threats. She was also running an industry survey on sexual harassment which was attacked by men denying sexual harassment problems in the industry and simultaneously sexually harassing her. Because Logic.

[Gotthammer]

[Nabterayl]

I fail to see why "feminists" are needed when woman are treated the same as men in my country (Mind you things are different here) However no mater what happens we have pissed off people protesting..........

Tiger, do you have statistics to back that up? Things like pay ratios men and women in equivalent jobs, sexual assault victimization rates, that sort of thing?

Either way, I think that "feminists" is too broad for the point you're making. Feminism is a political cause, and a social cause, and a critical theory. At the very least, I don't think "need" really applies to critical theories. We don't "need" feminism any more than we need modernism, but I wouldn't want either to disappear from the knowledge base.

[eldargal]

I don't know where White Tiger is (Frozen North isn't specific) but it is interesting that even in bastions of progressive liberality like Sweden, Denmark and Canada etc. there is still a significant culture of rape and sexual harassment. The number one cause of injury and death for women world wide is men. There is no where on this planet where feminism is not needed to make the world safe for women and let us reach the potential that has been denied us for thousands of years.

[Wolfshade]

I thought the number one cause of death was heart disease...

[Nabterayl]

[url=http://markmanson.net/vulnerability-and-manipulative-women]This seems relevant[/url] to the thread, and the times it's dipped into romantic relationship territory.

[Kirsten]

dating guys is clearly not my forte, but I seriously don't get the whole 'women only want scumbags' argument. I have never seen any evidence for it. occasionally you see someone who is horrible to their girlfriend, but it is very much in the minority, it is hardly 'all women'. sitting here now I can't think of a single friend who is currently dating a scumbag, male or female, because why would they? similarly the nice guys finish last idea, never seen any evidence of that either. pretty much all of my nice friends are in relationships with nice people, or recently have been, we are all still young, these things don't always work out. they are not finishing last.

[Nabterayl]

I've seen women date people that I would label as scumbags. And I've seen women who dated people who turned out to be scumbags (whereupon they were generally dropped). I think, honestly, the the vast majority of "women only want scumbags" perceptions come from guys who are unable to understand that (i) the fact that you think another guy is scum does not make him so, and (ii) the fact that women sometimes date scumbags before figuring out that they're scum doesn't mean that women want scumbags.

[Kirsten]

pretty much. I have known young people make bad choices and you do wonder what they are doing, but none of my 'grown up' friends have done lately. as you say, people can turn out to be trouble later, but that is hardly the fault of the woman, she didn't choose him knowing he was trouble. and I think we can safely say that it happens the other way just as often, men date horrible women because they don't know she is horrible. how many people here have ever thought, 'ooh they are really awful people, I will go out with them'. people of any gender or orientation can make bad decisions and be taken advantage of, it is hardly exclusive. if you consider yourself to always 'finish last' maybe you just don't actually go out much, or maybe you only have a small circle of friends. maybe you helplessly fancy a friend who isn't interested in you. maybe you are in to weird and depraved things
I have been single for a loooong time, and I know perfectly well that it is because I almost never go out, nor does that bother me because I am just not that sociable, I don't miss being in a couple. I certainly don't complain about how all women are terrible just because there isn't one here with me now.