shades of gray (rape)
Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, had an essay in yesterday's
Los Angeles Times railing against the "phony"
rape epidemic on America's college campuses. MacDonald claims that the statistic used by many university rape crisis centers — 20-25% of college women will be sexually victimized — is grossly over-inflated. The statistic, she says, comes from a 1988 study commissioned by
Ms., in which a researcher, Mary Koss, classified things as rape that the respondents didn't construe as rape
themselves. Writes MacDonald: "One question, for example, asked, 'Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?' — a question that is ambiguous on several fronts, including the woman's degree of incapacitation, the causal relation between being given a drink and having sexual intercourse, and the man's intentions."
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