General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How to Lie with Rape Statistics: America's Hidden Rape Crisis [View all]BainsBane
(53,135 posts)but was previously much higher than thought for reasons similar to those outlined above?
What most often happens is that people point to a decline in rape statistics to insist rape is being combatted, rather than simply reflecting the demographic changes leading to an overall decline in violent crime. The point is often made in order to insist rape isn't really that much of a problem. The comment seared in my memory that accompanied the use of such statistics was that rape prevention campaigns amount to "haranguing men." When such arguments are advanced, it's hard to see their use of statistics as anything other than an effort to delegitimate the experience of rape victims, the majority of whom know their assaults don't appear among those numbers.
Statistics are merely one form of evidence, as prone to bias as any other. The historian Joan Scott makes that point effectively in "A Statistical Representation of Work: La Statistique de l'Industrie à Paris, 1847-48." in Gender and the Politics of History (1988).
http://books.google.com/books?id=o2lApVRwxEoC&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=joan+scott+la+statistique&source=bl&ots=mWa5namQW3&sig=UrYHv3V1AubNu5tOrBbxSO13i2o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=axxFU9nEGsTisATR9ILoAw&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=joan%20scott%20la%20statistique&f=false