Popular rape statistic misleading, causes unnecessary panic

You’ve been lied to. Your emotions have been used without your consent to spread fear. This isn’t fear of terrorism or climate change. This is an unnecessary fear of rape. 

Don’t get me wrong – rape happens and it’s horrible. But it doesn’t happen as often as you think it does. You may have heard that one in five women get raped. This is a blatant lie, and the people who told you this know it.  

The study this statistic is based on is called The Campus Sexual Assault (CSA) Study. This study is fundamentally flawed, should not be trusted and is often used out of context to support a regressive leftist argument.  

When you’ve heard the “1-in-5″ statistic, has it ever been in the context of college campuses? I’m betting it hasn’t. The CSA Study was a survey that was conducted on two large college campuses, one in the Midwest and one in the Southeast. It only asked students at the campuses about incidents that occurred on campus. “1-in-5” doesn’t mean one in five women in general; it means one in five women on college campuses.  

The CSA Study provides a list of what they considered sexual harassment and what would count towards their final statistic. One of the items on this list is consensual contact under the influence of alcohol. This means that two people who got drunk at a party and started making out have committed sexual harassment. The CSA Study comes to the conclusion that 19 percent of women on college campuses experience sexual assault.  

So, why do leftist sources like Buzzfeed try to convince us that one in five women in America get raped? It’s simple and diabolic. It’s fear mongering. These platforms try to convince the public that women are in constant danger of men’s libido. That they need special protections. For so-called “progressive” platforms, this seems very regressive. After all, modern women shouldn’t be sheltered and protected from the world like children.  

The things these platforms do with the “1-in-5″ statistic are purposefully misleading. FCKH8.com, a for-profit site that sells sloganed merch to “raise awareness” for various causes, posted a video titled “Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism” in 2014. The video featured girls from age six to thirteen counting themselves off and explaining how one of them will be raped, prompting the watcher to ask which one it would be. Appealing to the emotions of the audience by incorrectly stating that one in five of these cute little girls will be raped is blatant manipulation. Of course, the audience won’t want any of these girls getting raped, so they’ll focus more on this issue, which has been blown out of proportion, than on issues such as male domestic abuse or female genital mutilation.  

Now, could these platforms simply not know that the statistic applies only to college campuses and considers a large range of acts to be sexual assault? It’s possible. But there is no reason for them to not do their homework. Going to Google and typing in “1 in five rape” will suggest an article by Forbes titled “The Stat that 1 in 5 Women Are Sexually Assaulted Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means.” If these platforms were actually concerned about women’s rights, they’d do their research, but that’s not their main goal. Organizations like FCKH8 want to sell you t-shirts and Buzzfeed wants to remain at the top of the liberal “news” supply. They don’t care about rape; they care about themselves. 

The “1-in-5″ statistic has been dragged through the mud and reappeared torn. None of this is to say rape doesn’t happen or that it’s a non-issue. In fact, victims of sexual assault should feel outrage that their pain is being used to sell merch and manipulate people into holding other issues in low regard.  

One in five women don’t get raped. Stop spreading this misinformation and stop putting fear in young girls’ hearts.