Chilling but also a little reassuring. If you are a victim, knowing that a large percentage of the population has also been abused can help recovery. It says that it is very possible to be a victim and go on to a normal life.

Want something very chilling? First year criminal law lecture on rape. Professor says "We have about a hundred people in this room. None of you future lawyers have criminal records. Statistically speaking, about fifteen of the fifty or so women here are victims. And probably fifteen of the men are rapists." Also see the opening sequence of the movie Copycat (1995) where Sigourney Weaver's character does a similar trick regarding serial killers.

While that story might be intimidating I can't help but think it's statistical nonsense and discredits the professors integrity.

Starting from the assumption that general population numbers apply to a group of law students (I assume that he doesn't have statistics about rape among law students) on to the assumption that there is a 1 to 1 relationship between rape victims and rapists. I would assume there to be more victims than offenders.

Just seems a rather weird move to tell your first year students a significant number of their fellows and friends are either victims or rapists just to make a point about unsolved rape.

It sounds like the professor made it clear she was speaking in terms of population averages. So unless you can find empirical evidence that those statistics don't apply to that slice of the population, then there's absolutely no problem with what she said. She didn't say "15 of the men in this class are rapists."

Law students aren't learning to be statisticians, epidemiologists, or policy wonks. Emotionally moving people to act upon a collection of documented facts— be it in trial or a contract negotiation— requires persuasive speaking and strategy. She made the breadth and consequences of rape palpable to her students not only by giving it a face, but giving it their faces. Since this poster, years later, immediately recalled that story when prompted, I reckon it was thoroughly compelling.

The odds that a group of 100 law students would perfectly represent the overall population are astronomical.

You cannot extend population-level averages to a group of people without first proving that group is representative of the population.

Perhaps everyone in the room knew that. Perhaps it was even said. Were you there?

You essentially restated the criticism I responded to.

>> I would assume there to be more victims than offenders.

Why? Women who have been abused are often abused by more than one person.

>>just to make a point about unsolved rape.

She was making multiple points, several of which had nothing to do with rape. It was about criminality. Why we punish crimes the way we do. The strain on police/judicial resources. Diversionary programs. The prevalence of plea bargaining. and and and. A first year law lecture is a very nuanced thing.

What's her point other than that our system is ineffective and incredibly wasteful?

There is some evidence that the proportion for the men is a bit different. According to one study, it was about 6% of men. About 2/3rds of those men committed multiple rapes, ~6 each. Details here: https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-pr...

Intuitively, that makes sense. If people figure out how to get away with something, some of them are going to keep doing it. E.g., if I think about the people I knew in high school, most didn't shoplift, but there were a couple who did it a whole bunch.

Alcohol. We can get into the definitions of consent, but suffice to say that there are a large number of rapes committed by drunk highschool kids. Many wake up, regret everything about what happened, and never allow themselves to get into such a situation again.

The out-of-the-blue apologia for rape is always startling to me.

Interesting how she assumed none of the men would be raped. Newer CDC stats (since ~2010 when they started asking men if they've ever been "made to penetrate" by a woman) show that female-on-male rape happens a lot more often than people think.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/the-unde...

I had that discussion with her. She was actually an open lesbian, part of the early gay marriage push in new england. At the time (early 2000s) there were some states with old laws that also made female-on-female rape physically impossible. Canada recently abolished "rape" as a distinct crime, instead placing it on the far end of a sexual assault spectrum. I think this is probably the best way forwards.

That's part of the solution, but we also need to challenge societal gender biases that assume men can't be victims. If you look at the CDC stats something like 1/3rd of people victimized in any year are men, but if you look at crimes reported to police it drops to something like 1% of victims being men. It implies men are much less likely to report being raped to the police.

or male-on-male rape

That too, but the CDC stats suggest that female-on-male is more prevalent than male-on-male, although they call female-on-male "made to penetrate" and only call male-on-male "rape" which confuses people into thinking the opposite.

Are people (and law professors in particular) stupid enough to apply this "1-on-1" logic to other crimes as well (e.g. "n people victims of burglary" => "n thiefs") or only to rape?

Was the aim of the lecturer to teach law or to incite a random lynching? Or to make the co-students distrust each other for no more reason than they would want to distrust any other random person?

Go to a sufficiently large rock concert and the lead singer would be able to say “statistically at least one of you are a murderer!” Which might be “statistically correct” but all that would accomplish is for everyone to question his or her sanity.

I never use the word victim for me anyway. I pretty much overachieved in most ways so I could get the fuck out of my zip code and never seen those people again

> Chilling but also a little reassuring. If you are a victim, knowing that a large percentage of the population has also been abused can help recovery.

"Misery loves company" is indeed a common attitude, but I'm not sure it's especially healthy.

It's not about loving company.

I'm traumatized from childhood abuse (but not sexual abuse), and knowing how many people are neglected/abused by their caregivers lets me know that:

a.) There is nothing about me that caused the situation. Since I'm a very strange human, that's good to know: They weren't abusing me because I was too hard to parent or because I didn't act like a normal child.

b.) "This too shall pass." Trauma has impacts on my life, but, with the example of others, I can move on and make decisions that help address the damage.

I think "misery loves company" is distinct. One of the many harms of sexual abuse is shame. Not coincidentally, shame is a tool of abusers and authoritarian power structures that protect abusers. For victims of abuse, knowing that they're not alone is a path out of shame and self-blame. It can help them put blame in the correct spot: not on what they wore or how they acted, but on the abusers and the abusers' support systems.

"Misery loves company" is the antithesis of The Golden Rule, a formulation of which is "do not believe that it is so that you will find happiness in the misery of others," (I believe Seneca may have said this, but can't find the citation). I believe it is not the sadist notion, "misery loves company," that eases victims' pain, but instead "being in good company." I think "misery loves company" is a cynical twist of "being in good company," which is similar to left-handers learning of famous left-handers, or a depressive learning that Lincoln suffered from depression, reducing or eliminating feeling alone or isolated and disconneted.

The Dutch equivalent of "misery loves company" is "gedeelde smart is halve smart", which roughly translates to "a burden shared is a burden halved". I've never before interpreted that phrase in any other way than an acknowledgement that personal problems are easier to bear if you have someone to confide in. I certainly wouldn't interpret it as a cynical comment on codependency.

But maybe I've always misinterpreted the English phrase. Is there a different English saying that's closer to the Dutch meaning?

Maybe "many hands make light labor?" Though that one seems more specific/literal than the Dutch version.

The phrase "misery loves company" makes me think of this Calvin and Hobbes strip, so I guess it has cynical connotations for me:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Calvinn_Hobbes/status/12171067859...

Though I wouldn't apply this phrase to the situation of victims feeling comforted by the knowledge that they're not the only ones.

That is not at all the point.

It helps to know that you are not the only one who has suffered injustice.

Uhh lawyers and law students can have criminal records. Commonly.

By criminal record she clearly mean the sort of things that would prevent you from being accepted to the bar/law school. Someone with a rape conviction as an adult wouldn't be sitting in a first year law lecture. Is is normal for law schools not to accept candidates that will not be able to become lawyers.

Certain criminal convictions (like rape) prevent you from being accepted by the bar. Most people don't go to law school when they know they are ineligible to actually practice law (even if a law school actually accepted a convicted rapist).

The school they were teaching at probably disqualified anyone with any criminal record from admission.