Western Massachusetts

Lazy use of statistics doesn't advance feminist revolution

On November 6, the Daily Collegian, the student newspaper at UMass, published an article by the editor of the Women's Issues Page that asked "How safe are women on campus?" In the first paragraph, it answered: "According to statistics compiled by the Everywoman's Center Counselor/Advocate Program, not very."

The article summarized statistics from the Everywoman's Center report. However, the facts did not support the position of the editorial. This article served to fan the flames of fear on the predominantly white campus while misrepresenting the reality of crime. The end result of such pseudo-feminism is a call for greater police presence to protect supposedly helpless white wimmin. This means increased national chauvinism which is not an advance for feminism.

First, crime reports to the police and social service agencies are highly subjective and therefore not necessarily indicative of what is actually happening. All that can be generalized from this report is what things students report. For example rape is reported ten times more than attempted rape, while it would seem likely that rape -- by the bourgeois definition -- is attempted more often that completed. But statistics on rape are also subjective because they are based on the individual's definition of rape. Most wimmin do not report incidents of coerced sex because that does not fit the patriarchal definition.

According to the Collegian, there were 241 reports of gender crime against wimmin reported in response to a survey. Of these, 197 were "first time reports" (meaning that they were not reported to UMass before). But the article fails to explain that almost half (47%) of these first time reports were about incidents that occurred before the previous year.

Assuming that the 17 year olds were not in college and that all 18 year olds were, at least 25% of these previous reports are from before the wimmin students arrived at UMass. Even that number is too low, as it assumes that all older students, faculty, and staff who reported previous incidents were reporting things that happened while they were affiliated with the University or doing things that the school had any control over anyway. Of assaults in the last year, 27% were not on UMass property. Only 3% of past assaults occurred on UMass property, although 16% didn't answer the question. It is very irresponsible to use these statistics to generalize about the state of crime on campus.

There are almost 12,000 wimmin students at UMass, plus thousands of wimmin on the faculty and staff. Such reports are highly subjective, meaning that they represent only what people want to report, not what actually happens.The Collegian article ended with a lot of questions: "What do these statistics mean? ... What must be done? ... What is UMass doing? ... What can women do to protect themselves from attacks on campus?" It is important for activists to look at what statistics mean before using them. At least 50% of these assaults occurred where UMass had no jurisdiction.

The most common types of assault reported were obscene phone calls (28%), rape (20%), and voyeurism (15%). The patriarchy wants college women to think of themselves as residents of the Warsaw Ghetto, and so equating an obscene phone call with rape helps to generate scarier statistics.

Even if all this crime actually occurred on campus, there is little the police could do about it anyway, since the great majority of the most dangerous violence--physical violence--occurs between people who know each other. The authors of this report, and the Collegian writer who followed their lead, are trying to whip up fear amongst the predominately privileged students. This fear is useful to the patriarchy because it keeps wimmin from taking control of their own lives by giving that power to the police--who have no interest in ending sexual assault.

The Collegian wrote of assaults committed in the last year: "more than half (57 percent) occurred in residence halls. Alarmingly 36 percent of reported assaults occurred in the Southwest residence area alone." Actually, there is nothing alarming about this as Southwest is the largest residence area and houses 47% of the students. If this survey was 100% accurate measure of sexual assault, we could expect 47% of the 57% that occurred in residence halls, or 27% to be in Southwest. For such a small unscientific survey, that's statistically the same as 36%.

What MIM suspects is behind the Collegian's "alarmingly" is the pseudo-feminist idea that some social cultures in Amerika are patriarchal while their own sexual relations are coercion-free. Southwest is generally considered to be the "party" residence area with a lot of drinking.

MIM concludes from the statistics in the survey conducted by the Everywoman's Center that the patriarchy is alive and well in Amerikan society. Wimmin on college campuses are relatively safe compared to the majority of the world's wimmin who fight against the violence of starvation, violence at the hands of employers, and lack of health care.

But wimmin everywhere will always face the danger of patriarchal assault until we eliminate the patriarchy. This assault takes the form of billboards telling wimmin to starve themselves to be beautiful, unwanted sex, and murder at the hands of jealous partners. All of these forms of gender oppression make the world unsafe. The most important question is how to fight it.

First world women must recognize the ways in which they benefit from imperialism and patriarchy, and not make the mistake of confusing their position with that of Third World women living under the constant threat of death.

The only solution that can liberate the wimmin of the world is overthrowing the patriarchy. In this struggle we take inspiration from our wimmin comrades in the world's greatest feminist revolutions, including the Chinese Revolution, in which women went from foot-binding and suffering under the open ownership by their parents and spouse's family to being 23% of the highest governing body in the country.The fight against the patriarchy will not be won overnight but by educating people and building a revolutionary movement eventually the people will succeed.

Notes: Massachusetts Daily Collegian 6 December 1997, p. 9. Total student population from Office of Institutional Research. Housing capacity by residential area from Housing Assignment Office.

Return to WMass RAIL page