I believe the the original 1 in 6 statistic comes from a national survey conducted in 1996 (not by the Colorado Coalition against Sexual Violence, pace ESR), in which 17.6 % of the surveyed women said they had been victims of completed or attempted rape in their lifetimes. In the survey questions, rape was explicitly defined as vaginal, oral or anal penetration under force or the threat of force.
The statistical analysis is interesting, but the author’s implicit assertion that non-forcible rape is somehow less rape-y than forcible is extremely offputting.
I don’t think my then-girlfriend waking me up with oral sex—that’s sex without consent, incidentally, and she and I had a very serious conversation about that afterwards, and set some boundaries for implicit consent for future use—is the same kind of act as what is commonly thought of as rape. I certainly don’t think the legal punishments should be the same.
Eric Raymond has a post here explaining why that statistic is massively exaggerated.
I believe the the original 1 in 6 statistic comes from a national survey conducted in 1996 (not by the Colorado Coalition against Sexual Violence, pace ESR), in which 17.6 % of the surveyed women said they had been victims of completed or attempted rape in their lifetimes. In the survey questions, rape was explicitly defined as vaginal, oral or anal penetration under force or the threat of force.
The statistical analysis is interesting, but the author’s implicit assertion that non-forcible rape is somehow less rape-y than forcible is extremely offputting.
There are necessary gradients.
I don’t think my then-girlfriend waking me up with oral sex—that’s sex without consent, incidentally, and she and I had a very serious conversation about that afterwards, and set some boundaries for implicit consent for future use—is the same kind of act as what is commonly thought of as rape. I certainly don’t think the legal punishments should be the same.