Boy-Rape Epidemic, or Systematic Problem in Self-Reporting of Sexual Assault?
Interesting if slightly odd story today:
About 5 to 10 percent of U.S. high-school boys say they've been "physically forced" to have sexual intercourse against their will, according to survey results reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Those surprising numbers come from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance report published by the CDC on June 8, and are based on student-reported answers to 2011 national and state surveys.
Click here to see the report. The results concerning high-school students and forced sex can be seen on pages 66-68....
The survey results show girls reporting an even higher percentages of rapes -- 11.8 percent nationally.
So, what is your guess? Is their an epidemic of boy rape (homosexual I assume but apparently the survey is not taken in a way that one can tell) or are the CDC numbers that women's groups so often like to trumpet basically garbage?
delurking:
OK, so I don't have time to go look.
Why is it a 5% range for boys and accurate to 0.1% for girls?
June 21, 2012, 5:09 pmJason:
Could be somewhere in the middle. It depends what the students mean by “physically forced” to have sex. Does this mean physically restrained and violated against your will? It might mean that, and that would be a text book definition of rape, but I would wager that the people in question have a much broader definition of “physically forced” rather than that incidents of violent rape are that high. I could be wrong, but 1 in 10 seems like a lot.
Actually if it is homosexual sex, some amount of it could actually be "buyers remorse" like you get with rape cases.
June 21, 2012, 5:31 pmTJIC:
From the article:
Our best and brightest continue to selflessly gravitate towards government service.
June 21, 2012, 5:50 pmElliot:
The numbers likely vary because of the way the questions are phrased and where the researcher draws the lines to define rape. So, if your agenda is to shock and convince people to accept your narrative for your own ends, then you pick the questions which give the largest number.
June 21, 2012, 8:44 pmbradley13:
What a crappily (is that a word) written report. What ought to be tabular data presented as paragraphs of text, with little or no analysis. The tables are also there, so you could just delete the text - but then there would be no report...
Anyway, imagine the high school kid answering these questions. If these were all presented in a single questionnaire, sooner or later some kids are going to start checking things at random. Just for kicks. "Hey, man, I'm so hot my girlfriend *made* me have sex with her." Giggle, giggle.
June 21, 2012, 10:49 pmOrphan:
Hmmmm. What percent of high school boys have been woken up by girlfriends with sex? (That's legally defined as non-consensual sex.)
You can get just about any results you want, you just have to ask the right questions.
June 22, 2012, 7:25 amsteve:
I think Bradley has a point. Basically, I think the CDC has shown that something like 3 to 8% of high school boys are wise asses.
June 22, 2012, 7:57 ammark2:
It also depends on the definition of rape given to the kids before they took the survey. Those definitions tend to get pretty broad.
There is a lot of effort put into making people think they a victimes when before their victimhood was explained in detail to them, they were perfectly OK with it. Then it makes the kids second guess. When teach put his hand on my shoulder, was he just emphasising a point about the need to study for chemistry, or was it now - something else?
There are so many ways to manipulate these surveys, it is hard to tell if the problem is real.
June 22, 2012, 7:57 ammark2:
Something else I tend to find funny. Boys having sex with their female teachers - all of a sudden it is a hullabaloo.
I know that the teach shouldn't be doing this, but seriously if a 15 year old boy is asked by his hot teacher for sex, is the boy really harmed?
My answer is no - the boy is probably not being harmed by the teacher, but being harmed by his parents and the slew of of psychologists, who spend hours thoroughly 'splaining to the boy that his trophy badge was really a horrible victimization. Kid was all happy until the social worker folks got involved, now his sexual development is stunted for life.
June 22, 2012, 8:00 amLynne:
The YRBSS is a government boondoggle. The information is gathered in a peer environment during the school day in place of actual educational opportunities, where students self-report on questions regarding sex, drugs, and reckless behavior. It's seen by the kids as a big joke.
It is not a joke - its data are used by government agencies to justify intrusive programs in schools and in our communities. When one issue loses favor with the population (HIV took a bit of a back seat over the past few years) it's replaced (BMI is now huge). Check out the questions at the end of the report. This is just another example of how government education and health care moves us all toward becoming wards of the state.
June 22, 2012, 9:39 amLTMG:
Well designed, i.e. statistically robust, studies accompanied by rigorous analysis adhering to scientific principles followed by conclusions reflecting the study design and analysis tend to have zero popular news interest. And certainly no prurient interest.
Good science tends to bore the masses and give government agencies, elected bodies, and non-science journalists little to do.
Except for entertainment value, no good comes from the ignorant misinterpreting good science and then rocket-assing off on some wild tangent.
June 22, 2012, 10:45 amDoctorT:
The CDC stopped being a trustworthy source of data and statistics back in the 1990s when it became completely politicized under Clinton. It has gotten worse since. Not only does the CDC use biased survey questions and deliberately misinterpreted data, it also lies to the public.
The most blatant lie concerns viral hepatitis B. The CDC deliberately mixed stories about hepatitis A (transmitted via contaminated food and water) and hepatitis B (transmitted via blood or sexual intercourse) when it was promoting childhood vaccination against hepatitis B. Most states made such vaccinations mandatory. Most parents thought their children were being vaccinated against foodborne viral hepatitis.
Later, the CDC doubled-down on its lies by recommending that newborn babies be vaccinated against hepatitis B. The vaccine had never been tested in children under 2 years. There had been no reported cases of hepatitis B in young children (who rarely share needles or have repeated sexual intercourse with hepatitis B carriers). There was no evidence that vaccination, even if effective, would last for more than 7 years. Worst of all, newborn babies cannot manufacture antibodies (which is why no other vaccines are given until babies are at least 2 months old). Giving hepatitis vaccine to newborns is medical malpractice because there is no possible benefit, there is a 30% incidence of acute side effects, and there is a chance that the vaccinated newborns will NEVER be able to make antibodies against hepatitis B. (When infant immune systems start to make antibodies, they don't make them against existing antigens. This prevents antibodies against themselves. If hepatitis B antigens are lingering from the initial vaccination, the immune system may ignore them after revaccinations or exposure to the disease.)
In regards to the YRBS and rape, the question was worded "Have you ever been physically forced to have sexual intercourse when you did not want to?" The survey response (from a relatively small sampling of city high schools) showed that 1 in 12 9th grade girls answered "Yes" as did 1 in 28 boys. Does anyone believe such numbers? By 12th grade the "Yes" answers were 1 in 7 for girls and 1 in 22 for boys, so the vast majority of the "rapes" happened before the end of 9th grade. I don't believe the numbers especially since no efforts were made to assess the truthfulness of the responses.
June 22, 2012, 2:57 pmIGotBupkis, Legally Defined Cyberbully in All 57 States:
>>> are the CDC numbers that women’s groups so often like to trumpet basically garbage?
KA----CHING!!!
June 22, 2012, 3:11 pmIGotBupkis, Legally Defined Cyberbully in All 57 States:
>>> it is hard to tell if the problem is real.
No, it's not. Go out, talk to the children of everyone you know. Find out what percent have even had any kind of sexual encounter of any variety. It's a lot lower than usually stated. And that's allowing for reluctance to talk.
June 22, 2012, 3:20 pmIGotBupkis, Legally Defined Cyberbully in All 57 States:
>>>> The most blatant lie concerns viral hepatitis B.
Heterosexual AIDS is the biggest lie.
June 22, 2012, 3:22 pmRobert Hagedorn:
For something different, a change, but nothing new, Google First Scandal. It's relevant. And it really is all about sex.
June 22, 2012, 3:43 pmjdt:
I remember taking a survey in high school about drugs and violence. And being the skinny, punk-ass, brain-not-formed-yet puke I was at that time I though it was foolish and a huge waste of time. I am pretty sure I answered "daily" to the question about being "attacked with a gun, knife, or club."
I also recall claiming regular use of most of the drugs the pollster could come up with.
Actually, looking back on it, being a teenager was awesome!
June 22, 2012, 3:47 pmIGotBupkis, Legally Defined Cyberbully in All 57 States:
>>> For something different, a change, but nothing new, Google First Scandal. It’s relevant. And it really is all about sex.
OT spam? WTF?
June 22, 2012, 11:25 pmJames A. Donald:
From time to time women's movement groups and suchlike come up with astonishing rape figures, typically one hundred to one thousand times those reported in the crime victimization survey.
In this case, the numbers are about one hundred times higher than those reported in the crime victimization survey.
June 23, 2012, 4:59 amSHH:
As I recall, when my 2 kids took these 'surveys' in high school, before they figured they could opt out or leave it blank, word on the street was that most kids thought it was a joke or more likely, a massive waste of time & answered accordingly. I would like to see an actual survey & I would like to know how participants were selected & or rejected.
June 23, 2012, 11:48 amPacRim Jim:
Sorry, but I no longer trust government statistics.
June 23, 2012, 12:56 pmToo many lies for too long.
John Cunningham:
Government statistics=lies, almost always. These lefties at the CDC routinely make up data to advance their statist agenda.
June 23, 2012, 7:28 pm