Rape Statistics May Not Be So Scary After All

If you do a quick Google search of the word “rape,” you get dozens of headlines about the victims of sex crimes around the world.

Most of us have no trouble saying that a great deal of these victims are women. In the Pickton inquiry alone there’s an ever-increasing list of women who are coming forward in search of justice and to raise awareness of violence against women, especially the ones that tend to fall through social and legal cracks.

When we hear statistics like “62 percent of women at university say they have been sexually harassed” and “a quarter of all university women say they’ve been victims of rape or attempted rape,” it’s hard to deny that incidents of rape are running rampant. And it’s clear that women need to be protected more than ever when, according to The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, 17.7 million American women are the victims of attempted or completed rape.

But Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker paints a much different picture. Although rape statistics seem high in snapshots, Pinker says that they’re actually declining and have been for a while. In his new book, The Better Angels of our Nature, he points out that the rate of rape is now 50 per 100,000 people (“several magnitudes removed from one in four”) and incidents of domestic violence have plummeted by two-thirds since 1993. As it turns out, Pinker’s different picture may also be the bigger picture.

Wait. It’s still hard to believe. Is violence against women really on the decline?

Amid the mile-high pile of grim statistics relentlessly plaguing us, Pinker reminds us there is such a thing as good news. History proves that it may be okay to have hope. For one, sexual abuse (if reported) is now taken seriously and punishment is strictly enforced. It’s no longer a man’s prerogative to hit his wife as if she was his property. Human rights bills are designed to engender equality and it seems victims are heard in judicial proceedings more than ever. There are specific police units trained to handle sex crimes with professionalism and compassion.

Despite evidence of good news, there are countless victims who don’t even come forward. So many women will never even be part of a statistic. And even though men are certainly included in the silent victims category, they are, time and time again, demonized for being the more aggressive and violent sex — the sex that is more likely to commit rape. So why are men still perceived in such a bad light? Is it unfair to pin negative statistics (although they’re now being called into question) on men in general?

Considering that “the incidence of rape has fallen faster than every other major crime,” according to Pinker, it’s time to ease up on men a bit. It may be easy to portray men as monsters with the body parts and power to execute these heinous crimes, but the truth is that men really are more enlightened and women are not necessarily innocent bystanders of sexual violence.

Thanks to Pinker, we can find some solace and start to feel more optimistic about the future. But in the process, we must not forget that violence against women remains a part of our reality. As much as we reflect on the non-violent trajectory Pinker has set out, perhaps we still focus on negative statistics as a reminder to stop at nothing to make sure incidents of rape continue to decrease, whether the perpetrator is male or female.

Regardless, we must not be blinded by predominant beliefs about rape (positive or negative) so we can see the full picture, nuances and all.

Contact the author here: tinybart@morningquickie.com