I see the parallel between the argument that poor reporting is evidence and the argument that the greatest accomplishment of Satan, or dick Cheney, etc, is convincing the world they are not real. But your argument that I am wrong relies on the slippery slope fallacy. My point is still valid and the dynamic of under reporting is recognized, the object of scholarly study, and real. So no there too.

However you may be on to something in that other areas of violent crime are addressed in a biased way, like gun crimes. “Gun Culture” seems to be a thing.

In other words, the problem is so big that it has succeeded at suppressing evidence of its own existence, thus proving it exists and is big? Haven’t you faced down that exact same line of reasoning from a hundred different branches of conspiracy theorists (especially the 9/11Truthers)? Monocausalism is equally dangerous even when invoked by the goodguys, I do hope you can see that.

Serious question: what is there about the term and concept of “rape culture” that would not apply to a term and concept of “crime culture”? Because it looks to me like all of the factors cited as evidence for rape culture (victim blaming, minimizing the damage, normalizing that people should live in fear, lax investigations, and morally inappropriate defenses of the accused perpetrators) really apply to nearly every other category of violence you can think of. Violence is a constant in human society and it takes conscious effort to stop normalizing it when done by one’s own “side.”

Society glorifies criminals and hates victims. We love strong winners and hate weak losers; we make celebrity entertainment out of criminals and leave their victims unnamed asterisks. “The Godfather,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “Grand Theft Auto.” Victims of mugging, of identity theft, of home invasion, assault and battery, are just as humiliated and can just as likely be grilled with “Why didn’t you know better, fight back harder?”

And need I even mention the dozens of mass shootings, including school shootings, which our entire government and many in our media have treated as nothing worth special intervention? Encouraging schools to prepare for armed assault with armed guards, bulletproof backpacks, and shaming the students at Virginia Tech who hid under desks instead of rushing the gunman (the perspective of more than one syndicated pundit) are all symptoms of “crime culture.”

It is a basic, ugly part of human psychology – we want to see ourselves as strong, not as weak, and when society sees someone who has been victimized they are mistreated and disregarded. Why not call it a “crime culture” or a “violence culture”? Why suggest that rape and rape alone is less illegal or more enabled by craven human emotional biases against victims of all stripes?

Actually, I’ve never had any of my fellow feminists harass me. When I have written about rape, negatively, I’ve been extensively harassed by Men’s Rights Movement activists. Even when I moved on to focus on other topics they continued to harass me. Speaking out against rape is apparently unforgivable. That is something one might expect in a “rape culture”.

The validity of the term “rape culture” needs to be understood in relation to what is meant by it. As discussed in the post. Your argument that I am only say what I say in the post out of fear of feminists is incorrect, and not a very convincing point. The methodological problems are potentially important but citing that rape is poorly measured is actually supportive of the rape culture idea because those measurement difficulties stem largely from rape culture. Also, I’m not sure how you can dismiss the statistics and then cite uncritically statistics indicating a change in rates.

So, no, not really.

I found the source of the “One in five” statistic: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf