The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Feminist Barbie and ‘Rape Culture’

Posted on | January 7, 2016 | 44 Comments

 

“Math class is tough!”

With that simple four-word phrase, Mattel’s “Teen Talk Barbie” became the focus of a feminist uproar in 1992. The prestige of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) was invoked in a successful crusade to make the talking doll shut up. The abundant research showing that, on average, boys actually do better at math, and that Teen Talk Barbie’s complaint was therefore something many girls could relate to, did not matter to feminist fanatics at the AAUW who targeted the Mattel toy in “a report on how schools shortchange girls.”

Of course, as with everything else feminists say, this was a lie. It is actually boys who are shortchanged in American schools, which now systematically discourage male academic achievement:

Statistically, boys drop out of high school at higher rates than girls. Boys get lower grades and report liking school less. Men enter college at lower rates than women, and are more likely to drop out once they get there. Women receive the majority of master’s and doctorate degrees. The suicide rate is about four times higher among men than women.

Anti-male discrimination in the American education system is part of what Christina Hoff Sommers calls The War Against Boys. (See also  The Decline of Males by Lionel Tiger and Men on Strike by Helen Smith.) Women are now 57% of college undergraduate enrollment and feminists have stirred up a phony “rape epidemic” hysteria to make it clear — if it was not already clear — that heterosexual males are not welcome on university campuses. Feminists seek to achieve “equality” by preventing male achievement; stigmatizing college men as rapists and mocking them as “nerds” is part of a deliberate campaign to reduce educational and employment opportunities for young males.

Creating an attitude of anti-male sexual paranoia (“Fear and Loathing of the Penis”) is essential to the success of this feminist effort. Promoting the false claim that 1-in-5 female college students are victims of rape was the centerpiece of a “rape culture” discourse used to deprive male students of due-process rights. More than 100 lawsuits have been filed by college men who say they were falsely accused of sexual assault and denied their constitutional rights in campus disciplinary procedures demanded by feminist activists and imposed by Obama administration officials (the infamous 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter).

 

Having enlisted Democrat politicians and the media in a nationwide campaign to create a climate of anti-male rage among female university students, however, feminists are now confronted by an absence of evidence (“The Campus Rape Shortage”) of the alleged epidemic of sexual assault. “Math class is tough,” like Barbie said, and the actual numbers don’t add up to anything remotely near the 1-in-5 claim that feminists have promoted. Mark J. Perry at the American Enterprise Institute has done the math:

In a January 2014 report titled “Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action” (which led to the creation of the “White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault” headed by Vice-President Joe Biden), the White House made the following two claims:
White House Claim 1. Sexual assault is a particular problem on college campuses: 1 in 5 women has been sexually assaulted while in college (pages 1, 2, 10, 14).
White House Claim 2. Reporting rates for campus sexual assault are also very low: on average only 12% of student victims report the assault to law enforcement (page 14). . . .
I’ve done the math using: a) the actual number of reported sexual assaults for several major college campuses and b) the White House reporting percentage claim of only 12%, for the University of Florida, Ohio State University, the University of Texas-Austin, Michigan State University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, and UC-Berkeley, and found that the estimated number of college women who are sexually assaulted while in college is between 1 in 20 and 1 in 79. That’s still too high, but it’s nowhere near 1 in 5.
Let’s do some more math using recently updated crime statistics from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for the four years from 2011-2014 (data are available here for 2012-2014 and here for 2011, and those data are summarized in the Table 1 above) and the White House’s reporting assumption of 12%. Over the most recent four-year period, there were 80 reports of “forcible sex offenses” at the University of Minnesota’s main Twin Cities campus. We’ll assume that 100% of the sexual assaults victims were female and 100% of the offenders were male. Using the White House claim that only 12% of campus sexual assaults get reported, there would have been approximately 587 unreported sexual assaults at UM during that period, bringing the total number of sexual assaults (reported + unreported) to 667. . . .
The University of Minnesota main campus has a total student population of 50,500, and about 26,000 of those students are female. Dividing the 667 estimated sexual assaults (80 reported + 587 unreported) over the most recent four-year period into the 26,000 Minnesota female students would mean that only 2.56% of University Minnesota women, or about 1 in 39, would be sexually assaulted while in college for four years. . . .

Read the whole thing and remember that Perry’s calculations are based on the assumption that 88% of campus sexual assaults are never reported, a generous concession to the ideologues who fomented this anti-male hoax with Statistical Voodoo and Elastic Definitions.

Feminists lie about rape, because feminists lie about everything.




 

Comments

44 Responses to “Feminist Barbie and ‘Rape Culture’”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 7th, 2016 @ 2:42 pm

    Who is doing the raping of Barbie, Ken? I don’t think so.

  2. CrustyB
    January 7th, 2016 @ 2:45 pm

    Women don’t know what it’s like having to shave everyday, getting kicked in the balls, being irresistibly drawn to big schmeebs, It’s hard to be a man!!

  3. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 7th, 2016 @ 2:46 pm
  4. RS
    January 7th, 2016 @ 2:47 pm

    Of course, the “facts” as recited by the various worthies are bullshit. As I’ve mentioned before, two years ago, I appeared for freshman orientation at a well-respected regional STEM university were my son was to be a freshman. A father of soon-to-be freshman daughter inquired of the campus police chief whether the university was safe for his daughter. The university, BTW, has a 60/40 ration of males to females. Quoth said campus police chief: “The worst crime we’ve had in six years was” . . . wait for it . . . “a stolen laptop.”

    Case closed, as they say.

  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 7th, 2016 @ 2:48 pm
  6. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 7th, 2016 @ 2:49 pm

    I am not sure I trust the guy in the turban…
    http://www.figurerealm.com/customfigure?action=view&id=35178

  7. texlovera
    January 7th, 2016 @ 3:01 pm

    What is it with feminazis and math?

    -They overcount the number of rapes on US college campuses.
    -They ignore the rapes by Muslim immigrants in Europe.
    -They deny the sexual assaults perpetrated by their own Democrat POTUS/Senators/activists.

    They actually prove that Barbie is right, at least about their own capabilities.

  8. Quartermaster
    January 7th, 2016 @ 3:29 pm

    Looks like Chuck Norris.

  9. Fail Burton
    January 7th, 2016 @ 3:33 pm

    The problem here is even the Dept. of Justice definition of “sexual assault” is a spectrum of scenarios which includes things like “verbal threats.” In other words we don’t really have figures on “rape” but can assume actual rape is far less common than thought. And what are “forcible sex offenses”? If that also included verbal remarks why would anyone be surprised someone wouldn’t laugh it off as a creep and never report it to the police. The police mostly aren’t going to do anything about stuff like that even if you know who did it, which you may not, and people know that. Given all those things, actual rape could be 1 in 500 or even a thousand.

    The problem is that when statistics are used as weapons of propaganda by including stuff not really relevant, they become weapons of fear and propaganda whose sole purpose is to demonize men. And I wouldn’t trust the neo-Nazi-like supremacist cult of Third Wave Feminism about anything. It is an ideology of serial and even pathological sociopathic liars with fairly serious mental health issues. What normal healthy human being claims heterosexuality was “invented” or throws down all men on earth as a virtual opposing enemy. That’s just nuts, and we shouldn’t be surprised any stats manipulated by TWFs in any way aren’t equally as nuts.

  10. Fail Burton
    January 7th, 2016 @ 3:40 pm

    I’d like to add the legally required reporting of the Clery Act had 91% of 11,000 colleges reporting zero rapes in 2014. Is that a conspiracy or a cover-up? Naturally feminists think so, but then feminists want to include stalking an ex-lover on Twitter.

  11. Fail Burton
    January 7th, 2016 @ 3:43 pm

    It’s perfectly predictable given this “feminism” is a combination of lesbian liberation ideology and postcolonial ideas of racial guilt and innocence. Race and sex are a moral ethos and all one need do is read the hierarchy of feminism’s totem pole to see white straight males reside at the bottom with Muslims above them.

  12. Steve Skubinna
    January 7th, 2016 @ 5:24 pm

    So women are so fragile, weak and stupid that they take life instruction from a doll, huh?

    That’s the feminists’ argument, right?

    As for myself, I didn’t need a talking doll to clue me in that math class was tough. With my instinctive masculine grasp of stuff I figured it out right away.

  13. Steve Skubinna
    January 7th, 2016 @ 5:26 pm

    Oh, doesn’t he look fabulous!

    See, everyone assumes that Ken is Barbie’s boyfriend. I believe that it is clear that Ken is actually Barbie’s gay best friend.

  14. LastNameFirstNameLast
    January 7th, 2016 @ 6:33 pm

    Barbie still doesn’t have a Value Abstraction Gizmo.

  15. M. Thompson
    January 7th, 2016 @ 8:18 pm

    I’ve thought about getting a GI Joe for getting a man who’ll show my niece’s Ken what he’s lost, but I don’t think she’d appreciate it.

  16. Matt_SE
    January 7th, 2016 @ 9:53 pm

    “Feminists seek to achieve ‘equality’ by preventing male achievement.”
    This has always been the case with Marxist, egalitarian movements because it is nearly impossible to make everyone excel, but it is relatively easy to dumb some of them down.

  17. Matt_SE
    January 7th, 2016 @ 9:59 pm

    “…the ‘White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault’ headed by Vice-President Joe ‘Wandering Hands’ Biden)”

    Wow. If that isn’t the fox in the henhouse!

  18. Julie Pascal
    January 7th, 2016 @ 10:05 pm

    I think that “math is hard” isn’t a good message for girls, no matter if they can relate to it, HOWEVER… omg… what they’ve done to math education is criminal and it’s been done mostly for the express purpose of “helping girls.” Several years ago when my kid was in special ed for math the coordinator lady said that it used to be if boys were in special ed for language they could usually stay in the classroom for math, but no more. Now, if you’re language challenged math is a disaster too. Curiously (or not) instead of doing math the new, better, way in special ed, the special ed math looked just like the math that we had when I was a kid.

    To describe how horrific the classroom math was in my kid’s middle school… not only could Dad and I not help with middle school math homework, we couldn’t figure out what the problems were… “Do problems 1-3 on page 20,” and there were no 1). 2). 3). to even identify the *problems*. In order to “succeed” in the classroom your student had to be a good listener and have exemplary language skills. It’s no wonder at all that boys who might have done okay at math in years past were all sitting in special ed math internalizing the message that they were dumb at *everything*.

  19. Gringao
    January 7th, 2016 @ 10:42 pm

    Victims are useful as bloody shirts to the Left. Fewer victims, less SJW-in’ goes one.

  20. mole
    January 7th, 2016 @ 11:37 pm

    You have to simultaneously believe the most ‘leftist”, educated and policed institutions in the USA are the most dangerous, nasty and sexist ones at the same time.

    A true lefty can do that AND claim the USSR wasnt real communism before breakfast.

  21. RKae
    January 8th, 2016 @ 12:01 am

    http://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/aD0OR4O_700b_v1.jpg

    Are they ever going to explain to us why boys aren’t led to eating disorders by “unrealistic expectations”?

  22. ubik
    January 8th, 2016 @ 12:19 am

    Raising Ophelia was the start of this BS.

  23. Micha_Elyi
    January 8th, 2016 @ 2:57 am

    You have to simultaneously believe the most ‘leftist”, educated and
    policed institutions in the USA are the most dangerous, nasty and sexist
    ones at the same time.
    –mole

    And despite all that, federal taxpayers should pitch in aid money so every girl can attend the Rapey U. of her choice.

  24. Micha_Elyi
    January 8th, 2016 @ 3:11 am

    Are they ever going to explain to us why boys aren’t led to eating disorders by “unrealistic expectations”?

    –RKae

    There are boys with eating disorders. Some boys are trying to stay under their wrestling class weight, other boys are trying to bulk up. But in Femitopia America, boys, like men, don’t count. Why? Because feminism doesn’t consider men and boys to be real people, human beings. To the feminist only females are people, men and boys are untermensch who are no more than animals as far as the feminist cares.

    When a feminist tells you “feminism is only about equality” the equality she’s referring to isn’t about females being equal with men. Females don’t want to climb down from any of their privileges! The “equality” that feminist is concerned with is the equality of one female with another female. Rush Limbaugh nailed it with his Undeniable Truth of Life #24.

  25. robertstacymccain
    January 8th, 2016 @ 6:21 am

    Reviving Ophelia, you say?

    Never paid any attention to that book, although I see now it was a New York Times bestseller. In general, I warn against all “self-help” psychology books, The parent who is caring and intelligent — that is to say, someone who enjoys reading books, and who would care enough to read a book about parenting — probably has enough common sense to do the right thing without advice from any “expert.”

    The contemporary “girlhood crisis”‘ is a very real thing, however, as any parent knows. The real problem, in the wake of the ’60s Cultural Revolution, is the highly sexualized culture, which places enormous psychological pressure on adolescent girls to live up to a media-created image of “sexy.” (Here, I would say, the radical feminist critique is much more helpful than the liberal “pro-sex” stance.) Any kid who watches too much TV, or whose parents don’t teach them to resist peer pressure, is apt to have all kinds of problems around adolescence, but these problems can be especially traumatic for girls.

    What is necessary first, I think, is to instill solid religious values, so that the child has a strong moral reason to resist the sexualized messages from popular culture. Secondly, creating a sense of family pride provides a bulwark against peer pressure. “Yes, other families may let their children run hog-wild, but you are a member of our family, and we do not do such awful things.”

  26. RS
    January 8th, 2016 @ 9:05 am

    Secondly, creating a sense of family pride provides a bulwark against peer pressure.

    What’s interesting is that the modern media is attempting to subvert the concept of family pride, including the idea that one should not bring shame upon one’s parents. In Amazon’s recent production of Philip Dick’s The Man In the High Castle, the bad guys, i.e. American Nazis would periodically enjoin various characters to behave so as to “make your family proud.” Clearly, the message was that familial obligations were the origin of all manner of evil. Just another shot at the institutions of Marriage and Family.

  27. werewife
    January 8th, 2016 @ 9:42 am

    Fail Burton, please return to the comment section at PJ Media. I miss you.

  28. Fail Burton
    January 8th, 2016 @ 10:40 am

    Whenever I think of social justice the first thing that naturally comes to mind are anti-white female supremacists. Who wouldn’t?

  29. Steve Skubinna
    January 8th, 2016 @ 12:28 pm

    Years ago I was musing on why anorexia and bulimia seemed largely restricted to women. I wondered if perhaps compulsive bodybuilding, where men take steroids to the point of incontinence, gynecomastia and roid rage, and still obsessively work out to the point they restrict their own movement, was the flip side of that coin.

    I should not have been surprised to read later that it was.

  30. Steve Skubinna
    January 8th, 2016 @ 12:29 pm

    Harrison Bergeron, please pick up the white courtesy phone.

  31. Steve Skubinna
    January 8th, 2016 @ 12:30 pm

    Plus, you can build an excellent podium from their bodies.

  32. Steve Skubinna
    January 8th, 2016 @ 12:32 pm

    The first thing that comes to my mind is “shrill.”

  33. Dana
    January 8th, 2016 @ 4:41 pm

    If her little black dress does not mean yes, then does her being a ho not mean no?

    I denounced myself.

  34. Fail Burton
    January 8th, 2016 @ 5:26 pm

    Anti-white lesbian “feminism” had not even a conflict of interest when it came to the sexual assaults in Cologne. When forced to choose between Muslims and heterosexual white women they chose Islam, because that’s how their supremacist hierarchy of “morality” works. Don’t look for gender feminists to be protesting with mattresses outside of mosques any time soon; that would be too dangerous and “racist,” and anyway, white cishet women are “tools of the racist colonialist patriarchy.” It’s far safer to go after white men at colleges although feminists lie and say colleges experience the same “sexual assault” casualty rates as dead/wounded in the average European battle in the 1,000 years after the fall of Rome. Third Wave Feminists are straight up liars when they use words like “equality,” “social justice” or even “feminists.” They are in fact supremacist ding-dongs mainstreaming hate speech by pretending to be advocates of neutral principles.

  35. ubik
    January 8th, 2016 @ 7:00 pm

    corrected

  36. DeadMessenger
    January 8th, 2016 @ 7:48 pm

    I should think that stalking ex-lovers on Twitter would be skewed heavily toward women stalking men. Hell hath no fury, and all that.

  37. DeadMessenger
    January 8th, 2016 @ 7:49 pm

    I only want my tax money to pay for a marketable education (if any exist at this point, what with all the H1B’s and all.)

  38. DeadMessenger
    January 8th, 2016 @ 7:58 pm

    Ain’t that the truth…

  39. lfstevens
    January 8th, 2016 @ 9:33 pm

    I guess math class is tough…

  40. mole
    January 9th, 2016 @ 2:43 am

    Always assume a lefty lies, even if they dont have to they often will, its like a Tourettes of truthiness in their heads.

    Its why “studies” are so important to them, as long as there is an appeal to authority it doesnt matter how crap the research was, or even if its debunked later on.

  41. Fail Burton
    January 9th, 2016 @ 6:24 am

    In a female supremacist ideology, angels don’t count.

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  43. News of the Week (January 10th, 2016) | The Political Hat
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    […] Feminist Barbie and “Rape Culture” “Math class is tough!” With that simple four-word phrase, Mattel’s “Teen Talk Barbie” became the focus of a feminist uproar in 1992. […]

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