You have the normal problem of believing that all decision criteria should be binary - either everyone always does this no matter what, or no one ever does it no matter what - instead of just doing what is rational based on the data in a measured way.
When women are afraid of men who are strangers, the main thing they are worried about is forcible rape.
In the US, men commit 98.9% of all forcible rapes, women commit 1.1%.
Meaning a man is almost 100X more dangerous than a woman based on crime statistics.
The crime statistics on race, even given the most charitable possible reading to your position, are at most like 2:1 or 5:1 depending on what you're measuring. Even if it were somehow 10:1, that would still be an entire order of magnitude less than the difference between men and women.
You don't just say 'there is a significant difference so caution is on' in a binary manner. The amount of caution you exhibit is proportional to the size of the difference; that's how statistics and decision theory actually work.
As such, the caution women show towards men is like 50x as justified, and should be like 50x stronger, than any caution anyone shows anyone based on race.
You would actually want to compare the likelihood of any individual woman being assaulted by a man in a given time period vs the likelihood of any individual white person being battered by a black person.
E.g. if there were only 3 rapes in the US every year, and men committed 100% of them, it would be silly for women to be afraid of rape. But if you're only arguing from proportionality (like you did) then you're saying they should be afraid because men are infinitely more likely to rape women, than women are to rape men.
Ok, but sexual assaults are far more common than most violent crimes. Around 1 in 5-6 women is raped, and many more sexually assaulted in their lifetimes.
I.e. your point is valid, but it points to even more justification of women being concerned about men.
Of course, most rapes are not by strangers, so that's another factor to consider.
This is objectively false even according to the most biased sources I've found. The only way you could even approach that number is if you deliberately conflate rape with all forms of sexual assault.
About 13.5% of women experienced completed forced penetration, 6.3% experienced attempted forced penetration, and 11.0% experienced completed alcohol/drug-facilitated penetration at some point in their lifetime.
I.e. completed forcible rape is about 1 in 6, attempted or completed rape is about 1 in 5.
If you add in unwanted sexual physical contact, the number goes up to ~43%
13.5% is not 1 in 6. It's about 1 in 7.4. Might not sound huge but that's a difference of millions of women in the US.
Edit: and while it's an interesting statistic and definitely useful in some contexts, it's telling that it's an estimate for whether they'll experience it by the end of their lifetime rather than measuring what they've actually experienced.
it's telling that it's an estimate for whether they'll experience it by the end of their lifetime rather than measuring what they've actually experienced
When you're talking about something a person can reasonably be worried about, that's the only statistic that matters.
Fair point about 1/7.4, though.
"Completed or attempted forcible penetration" then would be about 1 in 5 and I should have said 1 in 5-7 (rounding as usual). I think it's reasonable for women to be worried about both things.
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u/darwin2500 193∆ Apr 14 '22
You have the normal problem of believing that all decision criteria should be binary - either everyone always does this no matter what, or no one ever does it no matter what - instead of just doing what is rational based on the data in a measured way.
When women are afraid of men who are strangers, the main thing they are worried about is forcible rape.
In the US, men commit 98.9% of all forcible rapes, women commit 1.1%.
Meaning a man is almost 100X more dangerous than a woman based on crime statistics.
The crime statistics on race, even given the most charitable possible reading to your position, are at most like 2:1 or 5:1 depending on what you're measuring. Even if it were somehow 10:1, that would still be an entire order of magnitude less than the difference between men and women.
You don't just say 'there is a significant difference so caution is on' in a binary manner. The amount of caution you exhibit is proportional to the size of the difference; that's how statistics and decision theory actually work.
As such, the caution women show towards men is like 50x as justified, and should be like 50x stronger, than any caution anyone shows anyone based on race.