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Cake day: August 14th, 2023

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  • Who the fuck taught you statistics? A large percentage of a small percentage added to the larger percentage of the whole doesn’t make a medium percentage of the whole. JFC 😮‍💨

    Tell me you didn’t read my comment without telling me you didn’t read my comment (the paragraph you want is the one immediately above the one you quoted, btw - I’ve made an edit to the paragraph you quoted to make the math clearer).

    You could also feel free to check the Time article I linked to see someone else come to the same numbers I did.

    And misandry isn’t really a thing. It’s something misogynists say in order to perpetuate a false equivalency. So thanks for outing yourself.

    Big oof. I can see that you’re far too set in your sexism for me to waste any more time trying to have a constructive conversation with you.


  • I can’t speak for how their “sexual violence” criterion is defined, but as for the “rape” statistic, most western countries (France probably included) define rape for reporting purposes as “forced penetration”, specifically excluding “forced envelopment” from the statistic, and thereby excluding practically all male rape victims with female perpetrators from crime statistics.

    For example, here are the statistics for sexual violence in the year 2011, according to the CDC (note that these are for the US, and may be significantly different for France, though the reporting method is likely the same - there’s also a 2013 CDC report with effectively the same numbers for the US):

    an estimated 1.6% of women reported that they were raped in the 12 months preceding the survey. The case count for men reporting rape in the preceding 12 months was too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate.

    And

    The percentages of women and men who experienced these other forms of sexual violence victimization in the 12 months preceding the survey were an estimated 5.5% and 5.1%, respectively.

    Added together, we see that 7.1% of women and 5.1% of men reported being victims of sexual violence in 2011. That is, 58% of victims of all sexual violence in 2011 were women, and 42% were men. For every 3 female victims, there were 2 male victims.

    Now on to the frequently cited claim that more than 95% of perpetrators are men. From the “Characteristics of Sexual Violence Perpetrators” section about a third of the way down, keeping in mind the percentages above:

    For female rape victims, an estimated 99.0% had only male perpetrators (more on this later…). In addition, an estimated 94.7% of female victims of sexual violence other than rape had only male perpetrators.

    And

    For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (an estimated 79.3%) had only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims had only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (an estimated 82.6%), sexual coercion (an estimated 80.0%), and unwanted sexual contact (an estimated 54.7%). For noncontact unwanted sexual experiences, nearly half of male victims (an estimated 46.0%) had only male perpetrators and an estimated 43.6% had only female perpetrators.

    To help us with the breakdowns of these numbers, earlier in the report we find that:

    1.7% of men were made to penetrate a perpetrator in the 12 months preceding the survey [and] an estimated 1.3% of men experienced sexual coercion in the 12 months before taking the survey [and] an estimated 1.6% of men having experienced unwanted sexual contact in the 12 months before taking the survey [and] an estimated 2.5% of men experienced this type of victimization (noncontact unwanted sexual experiences) in the previous 12 months

    So, of the 1.7% of made to penetrate male victims, 82.6% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.3% sexual coercion, 80% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, 54.7% were female, and of the 2.5% noncontact, 43.6% were female.

    So, 1.4% of the 1.7% made to penetrate, 1% of the 1.3% sexual coercion, .9% of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, and 1.1% of the 2.5% noncontact.

    So, 4.4% of the 7.1% of men reporting sexual violence had female perpetrators. That is, 62% of sexual violence against men is committed by women (in 2011).

    So, going back to our numbers above, we see that 62% of the 42% of sexual violence with men as victims was committed by women.

    Our final numbers are: 74% of sexual violence in total in the US is committed by men, and 26% is committed by women. Which ain’t great, but that feels a lot more realistic than “95%”, and it’s a far cry from the intentionally misleading numbers you’re citing.

    BUT IT GETS WORSE…

    What happens when we look at just rape? Note that first we have to figure out what the CDC means by “rape”, because at first “99% of rape is committed by men” looks pretty damning.

    Well, “rape” is defined by the CDC for the purposes of this study as “completed or attempted forced penetration or alcohol- or drug-facilitated penetration”. That is, only being penetrated counts as rape.

    Men, on the other hand, get the completely separate category “made to penetrate”, that is, “being forced to have sex with someone, just doing the penetrating instead of being penetrated.”

    So, 99% of rapists are men because rape is intentionally defined as “being penetrated” to exclude male victims of rape from the statistics. I wonder why…

    Well, what happens when we actually look at those numbers, counting “made to penetrate” as, y’know, rape, because it is rape?

    an estimated 1.6% of women (or approximately 1.9 million women) were raped in the 12 months before taking the survey

    And

    The case count for men reporting rape in the preceding 12 months was too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate.

    Which is, again, because male rape victims are effectively excluded from this definition. Also, we have this:

    an estimated 1.7% of men were made to penetrate a perpetrator in the 12 months preceding the survey

    And

    Characteristics of Sexual Violence Perpetrators For female rape victims, an estimated 99.0% had only male perpetrators. In addition, an estimated 94.7% of female victims of sexual violence other than rape had only male perpetrators. For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (an estimated 79.3%) had only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims had only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (an estimated 82.6%), sexual coercion (an estimated 80.0%),

    Note that these numbers clearly show that made to penetrate happens just as much each year as “rape”. This means that fully half of rape victims are men (in 2011 - the number fluctuates in the other years of the study, but not more than 5%).

    Finally, if 99% of rapists are men and 83% of an equal number of “made to penetrators” are women … then an estimated 42% of the perpetrators of nonconsensual sex (that is, rape) in 2011 were women.

    Sorry for the wall of text, but I think it’s important to debunk this sort of misandrist misinformation.

    Edit: Here’s a Time article that confirms these numbers. They also mention that boys under 15 are more likely to be sexually assaulted than women over 40, and are more than twice as likely to be assaulted as girls under 15. Again, this may be different for France, but it’s pretty damning for the US.





  • As they say, “everything is political”. And yes, “only the information I say is political is allowed” is quite the overreach.

    Believing that you’re the only person who deserves to exist and that everyone else should be killed is still a political view, and one that must be allowed to exist in a democracy as long as you don’t actually start killing people. Odious and hateful ideas are still political ideas (see: American Democrats and Republicans arguing that the others’ ideas are odious and hateful, for example), and if we believe in democracy we have to believe that the people can be trusted with unrestricted political information.

    A manipulable minority that acts on these calls to violence is enough to deeply damage a democracy.

    That’s why acting on those calls to violence is illegal, while speech is not.

    The majority did vote for democratic parties but that isn’t enough, it has to be an overhelming majority that votes for democratic parties.

    Yes, that’s a huge flaw of coalition system governments, but it doesn’t change the overall point - you either trust the people with the choice of electing their government, or you don’t. If you only trust some of the people with electing their government, you don’t have a democracy - you just have a slightly-larger-than-normal autocracy.

    Also, unless I’m misunderstanding something (which I very well may be), it seems to me that 70% of the people voted for democracy in Germany - your elected representatives not being able to agree with each other is what appears to be the problem.

    Also: I’d argue that representative democracies are a lot more susceptible to this kind of flaw where parties have to resort to manipulation to get the votes of people.

    I was going to argue in my previous comment that representative democracies are dangerously close to autocracies already, but thought it too far afield from my main point. So, I think I agree with you here.

    A system where more political decisions are voted on through direct democracy and representatives are only chosen to enact the policies already selected by the people would be less susceptible to these problems (but, again, would rely much more heavily on the people, which, again, is the entire question).

    (Also, I’ve enjoyed this conversation so far - thanks!)


  • I believe that if we allow advertisements at all, we must do so on the assumption that the majority of people have complete free will while shopping, especially in the modern world where we have so many more ways of accessing and sharing information than has ever been possible. It is, however, reasonable for the majority to enact advertising protections that would benefit the dumb/manipulable minority.

    The difference is that we can’t do so for political information in a democracy, because the entity that enacts and enforces the supposed “protections” (i.e. the government) is exactly the same entity that is directly affected by the subsequent political choices of the people based on that information.

    Once again, the question is, “Are the majority of people too dumb or easily manipulated to be trusted with the system?” If so, then we should do away with the system altogether and have a government of philosopher-kings decide how resources should be distributed.

    As for what I personally think, about both advertising and government? Nowadays I go back and forth. When I was younger and more naive, I believed that people could be trusted with making their own decisions, but the older I get and the more I see how truly stupid people are, the more I question whether that’s actually the case.

    At this point, politically I’m still firmly in the camp of, “The people must be fully trusted with information to make their own political decisions, for good or ill,” because to believe otherwise is to believe that democracy is not possible, and I’m not ready to make that step quite yet (and I honestly don’t really want to).

    What I do know is that there is no middle ground. I do not believe in “democracy” where the government restricts in any way the information that the people have access to when making decisions about that very government. That’s already autocracy under the guise of “democracy”, so we might as well stop fooling ourselves at that point.


  • If the people are too dumb to be trusted with an unrestricted marketplace of ideas, the they’re too dumb to be allowed to vote for their own government.

    If you believe in democracy, you have to also believe that the majority of people can be trusted with the information necessary to make informed political choices.

    If the people can’t be trusted to act in their best interests in an informed manner, then we might as well just adopt Plato’s philosopher-kings system instead, and make all of the peoples’ decisions for them.





  • (on mobile, so sorry for any formatting weirdness)

    English teachers will only give you an arbitrary, subjective answer about whether it’s a word - you want a linguist if you want an objective answer.

    Since we’re dealing with two different “words” (roots) here, factory and overclocked, the first thing to look for is compound stress. Many compound words in English get initial stress: compare “blackbird” and “a black bird”.

    This isn’t foolproof, however. For some speakers there are compounds that don’t get compound stress - some speakers say “paper towel” as expected, while others say “paper towel”, but it’s still a compound either way.

    So how can we actually tell that paper towel is one word? See if the first member of the potential compound (the non-head) can be modified in any way.

    For example, we know doghouse is a compound because in “a big doghouse” big can only refer to the house, and cannot refer to “the house of a big dog”. Similarly, blackboard must be one word because it can take what appear to be contradictory modifiers: " a green blackboard".

    So, in the same way, paper towel and toilet paper are one word because “big paper towel” can’t mean “a towel made from big paper” and “pink toilet paper” can’t mean “paper for a pink toilet”. (Toilet paper also gets compound stress.)

    Yet another way to test is by semantic drift (meaning shift). As mentioned earlier, blackboards don’t have to be black, so the meaning of the compound doesn’t perfectly correspond to the pieces of the word - instead, the fact that it’s a vertical board you write on in chalk is much more important to the meaning. This is because once the pieces combine to form a new word, that new word can start to shift away from the meaning of the pieces. Again, however this process takes time, so it’s not a perfect test.

    So, back to the original question: is “factory-overclocked” one word?

    Well, it doesn’t get compound stress, and for me I can still say things like “it’s home-factory-overclocked” to mean that it was overclocked in its home factory, so the first member can take modifiers. And, the whole thing still means what the pieces mean.

    So, in my grammar, “factory-overclocked” is two words. But for some of you “home factory overclocked” may not be possible, which would indicate that it’s started to become one word for you. Everyone’s grammar is different, but we can still test for these categories.

    If you instead mean by your question, “can factory and overclocked be combined with a hyphen?”, however, I can’t help you, because language-specific writing conventions are subjective and arbitrary, and not something that linguists usually care very much about.