CSW

Jessica Valenti reports on the 52nd session of the United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women (CSW):

In the session's opening address, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke out against violence against women, noting that "at least one out of every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime." Ban also announced the launch of a new campaign to battle global violence against women, which will run until 2015.

How long do we think it'll take Heather MacDonald to come up with an op-ed on how those numbers are inflated and insofar as it happens the real blame lies with college girls these days being drunken sluts? Actually, I was disappointed to see nothing whatsoever on the event from the professional anti-feminists at the Independent Women's Forum, but they are taking on crucial issues like why unskilled workers on campus should get paid less.

Comments

"The bitch asked for it.............."

Misogyny defines the planet.

Posted by steve duncan | February 26, 2008 10:40 AM

I bet when Matt's a dad, he'll try to bring up his daughters to not get plastered and go have first night sex at frat parties.

Posted by TACreader | February 26, 2008 10:47 AM

or maybe when matt's a dad he'll teach his sons not to be asshole rapists! that could work too.

Posted by belle waring | February 26, 2008 10:57 AM

Maybe a better question is what percent of people are abused somehow. Are women abused that much more than the general population? I would assume so, but by how much?

Posted by mike | February 26, 2008 10:59 AM

Mike, who knows? In all honesty, there are no reliable figures on this. All of them come from organizations with axes to grind, and they are all estimates. domestic violence organizations pad their numbers with so-called 'unreported' cases (ie, they add to the number till they think it looks right) and conservative organizations often seriously fuck with the definition of abuse to make the number a lot smaller than it should be.

Posted by Soullite | February 26, 2008 11:13 AM

belle waring: yes, that too. But Heather's article (at least in the longer version) reports that much of the second is done, and not much of the first. That's the root of the problem.

Posted by TACreader | February 26, 2008 11:28 AM

Thank you, Matthew.

Posted by Jennifer | February 26, 2008 12:02 PM

or maybe when matt's a dad he'll teach his sons not to be asshole rapists! that could work too.

He should, and surely will, but this won't help his own daughter(s) nearly as much as will taking to heart some benevolent paternal advice to the effect that "Your boyfriend is a loser" and "Getting wasted is stupid - getting wasted in the company of other wasted people you don't know and can't trust is much more so."

One arguably has the right to do a lot of dumb things - hang out with criminals, play with fire, train tigers to do tricks, or pass out drunk at frat parties. As exciting as these activities are (and they are exciting precisely because they are at least a little dangerous), sometimes people get hurt. Why not you? Safety is elusive, and we all die eventually, but one generally gets a lot further by not doing dumb s--t.

Posted by TheOtherCyrus | February 26, 2008 12:08 PM

Heather McDonald properly pointed out a side effect of lying, hysterical feminists is campuses with "rape crisis centers" that no one calls and warnings against vicious white male oppressors and sexual exploiters - mixed in with student functions that extoll liberal sex, gay sex, race-blind sex, sex toy parties.

McDonald points out the long-ridiculed "feminist math" is simply self-serving political shit feminazis have tried foisting on America for decades that is not validated in studies or math.

Crocks of shit like:

"Statistics show a woman is raped every 3 seconds on some American campus"

No they don't.

"One in every 4 young women that goes off to college will be savagely raped while they are there."

Nope.

"Avoid superbowl parties. They are a known epidemic of violence against women that results in the highest one day battering of women in home by their husbands and by testosterone-enflamed male college students wishing to emulate their helmeted, violent ballfield heroes."

Another crock of shit publicity campaign by feminists.

"The most dangerous man any coed will meet while at college is the apparantly nice white guy sitting next to them in class that lives in a sea of pornography and rape fantasies."

2/3rds of coed rapes are committed by people external to campus. Blacks committ 98% of the rapes on black coeds, half the rapes on white coeds, over half the rapes of Asian and hispanic coeds.
Feminists exaggerate the danger, then warn coeds of the wrong risk groups.

"Women would never lie frequently about a crime as serious as rape, given the embarassment it takes to simply come forth. At best, women who have exhaustively analyzed male parchiarchal oppression mechanisms have determined that false rape reports are at most, 3% and only because the woman may have been impaired in memory."

30-40% of rape accusations are false. More bogus feminist math.

Instead of going after McDonald, perhaps Yglesias could do his campus readership some good and note that Ban Ki-moon's words against violence against women, noting that "at least one out of every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime."
are predominantly addressing the problem of black African and Muslim countries and communities. And that campus activism may be better directed at those communities than the "hidden epidemics the empty female and male vessels awaiting elightenment might be duped to believe are major white, Asian, hispanic problems.

(And stipulate "coerced into sex" does not mean "you better put out or you get dumped or your shopping credit cards get cancelled".)

Posted by chris ford | February 26, 2008 12:24 PM

Usually Matt is smarter than this.

McDonald made the rather mundane point that 1 in 4 college women are not raped during their college years. She supports this point by pointing out that colleges have set up rape "hot lines," which just about nobody ever uses.

Now, it could be that there are thousands of rapes a year at each university, but there's little evidence that this is the case, aside from feminist fantasies.

I guess Matt's point here is that if you don't accept the feminist "facts" then you are a rape apologist. As I said, usually he's much smarter than this.

Posted by Chris | February 26, 2008 12:51 PM

Wow, a new and execrable low for Chris Ford.

Chris, where are the quotes you ridicule are from where? Where do you get your race-baiting stats from? I think there's a bit of a pot-kettle problem here with your post.

Also, it's astonishing for the sheer ferocity and hatred -- towards women, blacks, and Muslims -- it contains.

As per usual, you're a conduit for the worst angels of the American psyche.

Posted by Daniel Shays | February 26, 2008 1:37 PM

There seem to be a bunch of tools on this thread.

I saw MacDonald in person once and was not impressed. She spoke on a panel at an international law conference last year, at what was an otherwise academic discussion of consular rights and privileges and railed against the perfidy of the Mexican government for a solid half hour. It was like everyone was talking like this and SHE WAS TALKING LIKE THIS. Her style was not intended to persuade, but simply to overwhelm, with opposite effects. From what Matt and Ezra have explained, this may be a product of the insulated, overfunded right-wing think tank environment. One hopes they will be brought back to reality at some point.

Posted by yave begnet | February 26, 2008 1:58 PM

Yave and Matt and everyone else attacking Heather Macdonald might be completely right about her or her compatriots (I don't know her and I don't care frankly) but no one addresses her argument.

Feministing also declined to do so. Instead of talking about her tone or about how she should written her article about something else, why don't we ever hear legitimate counterarguments on the statistics involved? No, saying rape is underreported does not really cut if you define rape differently than the 'victim' or a majority of society do...Moreover I would like to hear some actual criticism of Chris Ford's stats and why if they are true, we spend a bunch of resources informing people about minor threats when there are major risk factors to rape. And yes, before we talk about him being a racist, I preemptively agree. However, it doesnt change the uncomfortable truth (if it is truth) that I will have to face if I have to daughter...

Feminist propaganda I usually view as harmless (how many abusers are going to be deterred by consciousness-raising?) but if they really are misinforming a vulnerable group of people on a matter as serious as rape, then that is not acceptable behavior...Ad hominem attacks on this macdonald woman or other commenters isnt really very relevant...

Posted by v | February 26, 2008 2:08 PM

Yave and Matt and everyone else attacking Heather Macdonald might be completely right about her or her compatriots (I don't know her and I don't care frankly) but no one addresses her argument.

Feministing also declined to do so. Instead of talking about her tone or about how she should written her article about something else, why don't we ever hear legitimate counterarguments on the statistics involved? No, saying rape is underreported does not really cut if you define rape differently than the 'victim' or a majority of society do...Moreover I would like to hear some actual criticism of Chris Ford's stats and why if they are true, we spend a bunch of resources informing people about minor threats when there are major risk factors to rape. And yes, before we talk about him being a racist, I preemptively agree. However, it doesnt change the uncomfortable truth (if it is truth) that I will have to face if I have a daughter...

Feminist propaganda I usually view as harmless (how many abusers are going to be deterred by consciousness-raising?) but if they really are misinforming a vulnerable group of people on a matter as serious as rape, then that is not acceptable behavior...Ad hominem attacks on this macdonald woman or other commenters isnt really very relevant...

Posted by v | February 26, 2008 2:08 PM

It might also be noted that although most professional feminists went to college, most victims of rape, sexual assault or harrassment (indeed, of violence in general) have not.

College campuses have the most stringent anti-harrassment policies of any institution because they have the highest concentration of feminists, not because they have the highest concentration of victims.

And Belle, I think even you have to agree that there is very little chance that Matt will encourage any sort of mysogyny in his children. It's other people's children he needs to be worried about.

Posted by heedless | February 26, 2008 2:22 PM

Based on an unscientific mental review of the literature I've read over the last 20 years, Chris Ford may be right on one claim: the vast majority of the global abuse of women is in the Arab and Sub-Saharan African cultures. The idea seems to be that women in general are prone to be hysterical children that need a firm hand to keep them focused on their proper roles.

However, if I were going to rattle on about that claim in "public" public, rather than comments in a blog, I'd probably add a few footnotes.

Posted by cmholm | February 26, 2008 2:32 PM

I prefer Sarah Connor.

In last night's episode, she told Derek Reese that if he ever went into her bedroom again, "I'll bust your head." - very matter-of-factly, no emphasis at all - it was gonna be done. And all he had done was go in and reload all the guns in the trunk under her bed due to his paranoia.

Then Cameron confronted a Russian Mafia guy, told him "I can make sure you never dance again", and when he told her to get lost, she kicked him into the wall.

My kind of ladies (well, lady and robot.)

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 27, 2008 12:03 AM