Quote:
Originally posted by sugar and spice
Maybe this is a generational thing -- no clue. I'm not talking about ass-grabbing in bars (which, to me, would fall under sexual harassment and not assault -- and I don't think there's a women alive who hasn't experienced sexual harassment), although I'm not necessarily talking about near-rape, either. I remember a conversation with three of my really close girlfriends in high school where it came up that out of the four of us, one had been raped, one had almost been raped, one had been sexually assaulted walking home from school when she was 12 or 13 and the fourth had been sexually assaulted by a male babysitter when she was younger. (Keep in mind that this was when we were 17, almost five years ago, and by now some of us have been assaulted or just narrowly escaped more than once.) Every conversation I've had with close (and some not-so-close) female friends has taken similar turns. Maybe the 1 in 4 rule is and my friends are just extraordinarily unlucky. Maybe Madison is just a hotbed of sexual assault.  Or maybe the 1 in 4 is an estimate based off guesses of how many people report it and they are vastly underestimating. I do know that not a single person I know who has been assaulted or raped has reported it, which is something I've never stopped to think about before but is pretty interesting now that I have.
|
Maybe your friends are an unrepresentative sample (not to mention an exceptionally small one compared to the total population), and because of your experiences you see things slightly differently than the majority.
This would explain both your (completely understandable) views, plus those of others who think you're seeing monsters under the bed, and also satisfies Occam's Razor.
-RC
--most of those studies tend to take into consideration that many assaults aren't recorded, at least the Harvard School of Public Health did . . . I believe they estimated 75% go unreported in college-aged women
ETA: before anyone gets cute with the numbers, the "25% of all women" included the "75% that were never reported to police or other authorities"
Threaded Mode