On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 06:12:15PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> 
> You appear to be arguing that both the 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 figures are 
> misleading due to them using definitions of sexual assault or rape that 
> don't match the definitions of sexual assault or rape that you're using. 
> I'm unclear how making that argument in this manner is anything other 
> than diminishing what rape is, and bringing up arguments like "But they 
> had sex with the same individual subsequently" would work much better in 
> a world where beaten women don't tend to suffer in silence. Please 
> re-read what you wrote and think about whether it actually conveyed the 
> message you meant to imply, because right now to me it looks massively 
> ill-judged.

There's a good discussion of the debate here:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,157165,00.html

There is a spectrum of what can be considered "rape".  One of the
things which I think is dishonest is when the loosest possible
definition of rape is used when creating the statistics, but when it
comes down to saying how horribly women are affected by rape, the
worst possible scenario is used.

If the statistics include cases where both college students are drunk,
and sexual penetration occurs, and since the women didn't give
consent, obviously its rape, then it's fair to ask what percentage of
the statistics are this sort of case, and what percentage of the cases
are one where the women is jumped from behind in Central Park by a
strange, and raped at knifepoint.

Surely you recognize the two cases might be somewhat different?

And if 73% of the women who were classified as being raped in the Koss
study, denied that they would themselves characterize it as rape, then
maybe there is a certain lack of precision in how the term is defined,
and this could lead to some extremely misleading uses of the term.
Not that I'm justifying miscommunication leading to sex; but I do
characterize that as being different than being raped at gunpoint.

But miscommunication doesn't have the same emotional impact as
**rape**, so guess which term people with an agenda use?

              	   	     	     - Ted