A few months ago, the European Union released a report based on an EU-wide survey that purports to show a huge problem with “extensive” violence against women in the 28 nations that comprise the EU.
The report has a plethora of issues, starting with the fact that it mentions internet service providers as institutions that must be involved in combating violence against women—a suggestion that, when it comes from the EU, is a reason to be concerned.
But while it would take a book to explain all that’s wrong with this report, we will focus on the sole claim that 1 in 20 women over the age of 15 in the EU has been raped. What we’ll do is take the raw data and try to reach the same number. Moreover, we will use all the feminist assumptions in our attempt to reach the same result using the raw data in several countries. Trigger warning: There will be some oppression since we will be using mathematics.
The feminist assumptions, the approximations, and the methodology
Several feminist assumptions keep resurfacing whenever the topic of rape of women is raised. We will list them here so you’ll know what to expect. We will also use several approximations, but we’ll make sure those approximations favor the feminist position.
1. There are no false rape allegations. We will work under the assumption that 0% of rape complaints are false.
2. 90% of rapes go unreported. Unless specified otherwise by a feminist source, we’ll work under the assumption that 90% of rapes are unreported, so we will multiply the numbers by 10.
3. All victims of rape are women. Some countries don’t share the data by the sex of the victim, so we’ll assume that all victims are women.
4. Half of a country’s population is female. The reality is that the proportion is more like 52.5% in most countries, but for the sake of easy calculus and for the sake of advantaging the feminist position, we’ll assume it’s 50%. If fewer women are assumed, the number of rapes per total population (the soundbite number) will appear larger.
5. Each new rape is a new victim. We’ll use this assumption because if we are to include the fact that many victims are repeated victims of the same offender, we really lower our chances of reaching the magical 1 in 20 number. So we’ll assume that each rape instance has a different victim.
Since the EU report uses the wording has been raped and over the age of 15—and considering that the gross of female victims of rape are between 15 and 45 years of age—this means that we’ll need data across many years. Since data across the past 30 years is hardly available and since most feminists consider data from the late 1980s as unreliable, we’ll take the highest number available in the past 10 years and multiply it by 10 (see assumption no. 2). Then that number will be multiplied by 30 (the age window). The reason we’ll do just this multiplication is assumption no. 5, which comes from the belief that all women are under threat, not just a few who happen to be in an unfortunate circumstance.
The calculus
Having clarified that, let’s dive into the numbers. We chose Greece, France, Spain, and Russia as countries to consider. Russia will be our control country as a non-EU nation. Greece was chosen in order to have an image on the countries with a lower population.
1. Greece
The highest number of rapes reported to the police in Greece between 2003 and 2013 was in 2008, with 232 instances, and the lowest number was in 2013, with 149 instances [1]. So we’ll take the highest number and consider it as the default for Greece. Since we don’t have results divided by the sex of the victim, we’ll apply assumption no. 3.
Applying assumption no. 2, the “real” rate is 2,320—which is to be multiplied by 30 since we put all on a continuum, as feminists like to say.
Greece has a population of 10.8 million people, so the female population is 5.4 million. Thus, the calculus is:
5.4 million (the total number of females) / (2,320*30) = 77.58
In other words, even when using the entire feminist ideology to cook the numbers, we’re still getting 1 in 77 women over the age of 15 raped in Greece. Okay, maybe Greece is not such a great example. Let’s try another one.
2. Spain
The highest number of rapes reported to police in Spain was in 2011 (in the middle of the Gender Stalinism), when 1,513 complaints were filed [2]. Again—we’ll assume all complaints are legit, all victims are women, this number as the default for the whole period, and 90% of rapes being unreported—which means that the “real” rate is 15,130 per year.
Spain has a population of 46.7 million, so the female population is 23.35 million. Thus, the calculus goes like this:
23.35 million / (15,130*30) = 51.44
Again, even when using all the feminist assumptions, and considering a country that has been under a de facto feminist dictatorship, we still end up with 1 in 51 women over the age of 15 raped in Spain—which is very far from the number claimed by the European Union.
Let’s try again.
3. France
According to the feminist source SOS Femmes, of the total number of rape victims, 30.2% are women over the age of 15 [3], the rest being girls and others (i.e., men and boys). Since the EU study focuses on women over the age of 15, we’ll take only 30.2% of the highest number and then repeat the process.
The highest number of rapes reported to the police in France was last year, with 8,458 instances.[4] Thus, 30.2% of 8,458 is 2,554.316 (let’s say 2,555). Again, we’ll use the feminist assumption that 90% of all rape goes unreported and conclude that the “real” annual rate is 25,550.
France’s population is 66.61 million, so the female population is 33.3 million. Now let’s get the numbers in:
33.3 million / (25,550*30) = 43.44
So even using the feminist data, gathered by Collectif Féministe contre le Viol (Feminist Collective against Rape), and all the feminist assumptions in the book—we still end up with 1 in 43 women over the age of 15 raped in France—more than twice the EU claim.
4. Russia
The highest number of rapes reported to the police in Russia is 6,978 [5]. Since we have no data based on the sex of the victim, we’ll assume they’re all women and they’re all legit. And, using assumption no. 2, we conclude that the “real” rate is 69,780 per year.
Russia has a population of 143.7 million, so the number of females is 71.85 million. Let’s get the numbers using the feminist narrative:
71.85 million / (69,780*30) = 34.3
So even using all the feminist assumptions in the book, we end up with 1 in 34 women over the age of 15 raped in Russia, which is still quite far from the so-called “EU average” purported by its latest report.
Conclusions
A healthy principle in evaluating ideas is to take that idea to its limits and see if it still holds water. That’s what we tried here. We also discounted the fact that the rates of violence overall (including rape) have steadily declined over the last 30 years. In other words, our numbers were more than inflated.
And we see that even if we take all the feminist assumptions at face value and spin the data accordingly, the numbers still utterly refuse to tell the feminist story that 1 in 20 women over the age 15 have been raped in the EU.
In other words, even by feminist standards, that claim simply is a lie. And it’s lies like these that fuel rape hysterias, that fuel terribly misguided EU policy, that unjustly increase the power of the state upon the lives of all of us and eventually negatively affect the lives of all citizens—by making women fear men and by making men fear false allegations from women.
Yes, rape (of anybody, not just adult women) is a terrible crime, and genuine victims ought to be helped. But it’s also one of the rarest forms of violence to occur in Europe, and statistically, being a woman in Europe is by far the safest bet, as women are the least likely demographic to ever suffer any form of violence (from mugging to rape or murder) anywhere in the European Union [6].
We can not kid ourselves that the EU takes gender equality or violence seriously as long as the numbers are cooked in such an obvious manner that simply cannot be true by any stretch of the imagination. The sooner these kinds of lies get thrown into the dustbin of history, the better.
References:
[3] http://www.sosfemmes.com/violences/viol_chiffres.htm
[4] http://www.planetoscope.com/Criminalite/1202-nombre-de-viols-commis-dans-le-monde.html
[5] Ibid.
