Are rapes really down 85% ?

went down.. adult male crimes went down. Demographics. Don't let the GOP take ownership of that.. like Gulliani did.

It peaked in about '93 and is now down to pre-1960's levels, I thought. But it's been rising again over the past 5 years or so, but still is well below its peak levels.

the ten commandments in the courthouses.

of sexually oriented adult entertainment in our society. Porn decreases rape.

Well, if *some* (so-called) feminists can say that porn causes rape, I can use correlation to prove just the opposite.

When I was a student in the 80's, rape -- stranger and date rape -- was a constant fear. I assumed it was because I was older or because the campus near me wasn't reporting its crimes, but it appears that the numbers really have gone down.

Some of the stigma has been lifted from rape, too. I have the feeling women are less likely to be shamed into silence than they once were -- perhaps, in the old days, rapists were more confident that they could get away with it.

make everyone aware of rape and sexual assault in the 80s. TBtN was only one of the efforts. I think all of that organizing, speaking, and making public nuisances of ourselves had a very strong effect. Nobody could pretend that rape and sexual assault weren't happening, or weren't serious.

because the paradigm of males as predators and females as prey is THEIR problem. We're just the ones who get hurt and sometimes destroyed by it.

There won't be a meaningful decrease in rapes not related to demographic changes until the culture changes.

Care to explain that comment?

the paradigm of males as predators and females as prey is THEIR problem.

Wow. A statement like this is as innane as saying that women would not get raped if THEY just went into estrus like other mammals.

I would suspect that there are still a lot of women who just don't want to relive the experience for 5 years going through the legal process and then relive it all in public at court..

I agree on the demographics theory too.. As a population ages, the types of crimes change.. Notice how we have seen an UPSURGE of adult-male-CEO crime :evilgrin:

a higher percentage of rapes are reported.

It's true, sexual crime really is waaaay down from what it was 20 years ago.

But, oddly enough, we seem to be even more hyper afraid of sexual crime than ever before.

For example, my neighborhood discovered a sex offender living in our midst. Holy shit the response ranged from people moving to death threats (also illegal, BTW). Good God, the man was like 80, in a walker, and his crime was committed some 60 years ago.

It's statistics like this that convince me that the ever popular freakout bandwagon is a load of crap.

On edit, it's not demographics. We don't have 85% fewer under 35's (even per capits) than we did in the 60's-70's. That's just dumb.