You know,
quite often I get YouTube comments, messages, AskFMs and singing telegrams
telling me the main reason I haven't accepted the rationals as my true lords and saviors is because I'm only looking at idiots.
Apparently, it's my fault that the stupidest neo-reactionaries and anti-feminists on YouTube
are also the most popular, rising to the top like
THE WHITEST CREAM.
But I'm sure that's my anti-free speech pro-censorship virtue signal regressive leftist white-hating pro-Spengler bias talking.
There must be *some* really, actually smart thinkers out there
with the real evidence on their side to back up their beliefs, right?
So let's look at some studies done into supposedly feminist issues,
and see what the best and brightest of the internet badass ultra-rationals have to offer.
[Trigger Warning: This video is going to cover statistics regarding sexual assault, which is let's be honest, pretty heavy. If you don't like looking at that stuff, please take this opportunity to stop watching.]
Oh, and if, for some reason, you're upset by trigger warnings, I invite you to
GROW UP, YOU BIG FUCKING BABY!
♪♪
One term antifeminism simply cannot abide is "1 in 5",
a term referring to a study released in 2007 with data gathered from two American universities.
The data implies that as many as 1 in 5 women on this campus
experienced something that would fall under the legal, criminal definition of sexual assault through their years on campus.
The study does have methodological caveats that are worth keeping in mind
if you're using it to draw a conclusion about the general state of campus society nationwide,
being over a short period and only conducted on two campuses, for example.
Two of the people who worked on the study published an article in Time,
saying that using "1 in 5" as representative of campuses nationwide is inappropriate.
However, they do point out that the data is not inconsistent with other, similar studies performed before and after,
and that learning what happens on campuses, and perhaps trying to figure out how to deal with it,
is obviously an issue worth looking at.
This study is most likely the source for Joe Biden and Barack Obama's use of the 1 in 5 claim in various speeches.
FORMER US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:
"Right now, nearly 1 in 5 women in America has been a victim of rape or attempted rape."
FORMER US VICE-PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN:
"We know the numbers.
1 in 5 of every one of those young women who's dropped off that first day of school,
before they finish school, will be assaulted."
If you're going to claim that Biden and Obama's use of these figures is reductionist, I would agree with you.
But that is what the data implies, and it's also what the rest of the data implies.
While 1 in 5 is obviously an estimate based on incomplete data,
debunking this study is immensely important to reactionaries,
because given how colleges do often take steps to try and prevent this behavior—
For example, by telling students that it's not okay to continue fucking someone if they want you to stop—
if they can shoot one of the central studies full of holes, they can create a narrative in which
feminism is using bad science to tell all men they're rapists,
and take over campus to push an agenda, and they're a cult, and
something something George Orwell?
Because *that's* the real problem here, right? That's the thing that needs to be corrected!
There are no other social issues that we could be discussing.
The real issue is, I think people are pretending there's more rape than there is,
and should I really have to stop if someone asks me to?!
The real problem is, the feminists want me to ask for consent!
Many different totally rational free thinkers have stepped up to the plate to debunk this study,
but to avoid accidentally picking an idiot again,
I picked someone vetted by Reddit and Twitter and YouTube comment sections to be a true rationalist:
Sargon of Akkad.
You can tell he's smart, because his
scream name [sic] is taken from a historical figure.
That basically makes him right already,
at least according to his fans
(AND ALSO TO THE EDL).
I'm going to call him Carl, because that's his name.
Carl debunks "1 in 5" by citing the study, and explaining the problem he has with it.
I'll just let the video play, and stop when I see a problem.
CARL: "Our feminist activist will be quoting from sources like this."
Wait, that isn't the study.
That's not the "1 in 5" study.
The one he does cite even specifically references the "1 in 5" study in shots he uses in the video!
He didn't even get the study right!
The description of this video literally says "explaining where the claim originated"
while citing the study that didn't originate the claim!
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Heck, let's see how he debunks this one.
CARL: "A report on the Association of American Universities Campus Climate
[EXTREMELY SNIDELY]
Survey
On Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct."
It's a SURVEY.
CARL, SNIDELY: "Survey."
That makes it bad. You know it's bad, because he says it like that.
He seems to have a problem with the fact that the only real way to find out about this stuff is to ask people.
Regardless, the idea that surveys are inherently unscientific is interesting, though.
Keep that in mind for later. Tuck that away in your...
[Stuttering]
B - brain
pockets
He then goes on to claim that this
[Snidely] SURVEY
stretched the definition of sexual assault.
CARL: "The first two tactics generally meet legal definitions of rape and sexual battery;
the other two tactics are violation of student codes of conduct.
And it is, unsurprisingly, this massive inflation of what is and is not sexual assault
that accounts for the 1 in 5 figure.
Like they said, half of their categories don't even fall under the legal definition of sexual assault or rape.
Therefore, including that in any results is going to be inherently misleading."
Well, obviously, if you redefine sexual assault to be anything mean you don't like, of course it happens a lot!
Pack your bags, feminists!
Except, if you actually read the study it measures all of these things separately.
I let Carl off for accidentally picking the wrong study, but he could at least read the one he picked.
The study carefully takes pains to point out that it measured all of these things separately,
and sorts the data into appropriate tables.
So, if you're looking at women whose report showed
they had experienced something deemed a criminal act, and none of the extra stuff,
this table shows it:
27.2%.
Which, by the way, is more than 1 in 5.
In fact, it's slightly more than 1 in 4, without expanding the definition.
Now let's be clear.
Maybe some of these women misremembered,
or actively lied for some reason, because that's something to worry about.
And as mentioned already, there are clear methodological reasons
why it would be inappropriate to claim these statistics are accurate to all universities,
or to the places the survey was conducted as a whole.
But even accounting for all of this, 27.2 is quite an alarming percentage.
And it's also quite important to point out that the two separate studies, conducted by separate groups, both yielded rather similar results.
But Calgon didn't notice this.
Instead, he concludes that clearly the study is biased claptrap that should be ignored, and paid no heed whatsoever.
After all, it's a SURVEY.
CALGON: "And finally, these surveys are not facts."
So what alternative evidence does he offer to show what's really happening on campuses, in reality, because I'm rational?
Simple: he cites a report by the Department of Justice showing that the numbers are actually lower.
And you can trust this one, because Carl's sure it's factual.
Because as we've just seen, he's so good at reading studies!
CALGON: "...Rape and sexual assault victimization rates among college aged females between 1995 and 2013.
For young women enrolled in college, this went down to 6.1 per thousand students.
This is less than 1%.
These are facts we can be certain of."
Yeah, these are the facts, unlike the sur—
Wait, this one was a survey as well!
It literally says the findings are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey!
It shows it just beneath the section he shows in his video!
Did he not read any more than the first paragraph of the first page of the study he claims is the factual one?!
What the fuck?!
He backs up his claim with studies using the same methods he previously decried as not worth looking at,
because this time the data shows what he wants it to show.
Just to double-check, let's see how many times this 20 page document uses the word "survey".
[TYPING NOISES]
94!
The word "survey" is used an average of 4.7 times a page.
You would have to not read the entire study to miss this.
But alongside being literally, factually wrong,
there are factors that lead me to believe that Carl didn't even read the first page of this study.
CARL: "The only thing that is left out of these facts are the number of unreported sexual assaults and rapes."
[LAUGHS]
What...?
No, the report did document what percentage of victims never reported the incident...
on the first page!
You can even see it in Carl's video. It's right there!
It takes up so much of the first page that missing it is practically impossible.
You'd have to be either illiterate or lying to make that claim.
Carl is literally showcasing how little he reads of these studies!
It would almost be a relief to discover that
Splavid Aroony was the only idiot pretending to use sources to back up his pseudoscientific ideas.
But surprise, surprise, the guy who hung out with him for almost a year
before finally picking up on how he's a fucking crazy person does it, too.
And of course, like his fellow true smarty rational,
Sargon also managed to talk for 25 minutes about what he thinks of a film
he'd seen at most two and a half minutes of in a trailer.
So he'd seen about as large a portion of the actual Ghostbusters film as he seems to have read of this fucking study.
It's a survey, unlike this survey, which was regular.
You can trust surveys, but you can't trust "SURVEYS"!
- [BABY CRYING]
- So, so far the best anti-feminist the YouTube baby man landscape has to offer
has cited the wrong study,
got the facts about the data in the study wrong,
decried that it's a survey,
cited another survey as fact while not noticing it's a survey,
and then failed to understand why the data's actually different from the previous one.
Anyone out there convinced yet?
I leave now is the time to abandon feminism, in the face of these superior reasoning skills.
Now's the time to be clear I'm not being very original here.
Someone else, a guy called Garrett, already pointed out a lot of these issues far more comprehensively in a video of his own.
GARRETT: "Dude, if you're going to attempt to misrepresent studies, at least try to not be so sloppy about it.
People claim that such studies are broadening the definition of rape or sexual assault, when they actually aren't.
I personally think that Sargon wouldn't be lazy enough to not even read the first page of a study,
but then again, there is, of course, a chance I'm wrong about that.
So, either he is intentionally misrepresenting the information he's using in his video, or he is being mind-blowingly sloppy."
CALGON: "These are facts we can be certain of."
GARRETT: "Nope. They're estimates.
Maybe you didn't realize that, but again, it is mentioned in the very image you used in your video. Oops!"
He covers everything I covered here, and more, and explains how to read studies in a really useful way.
I would highly recommend you watch it.
[NOTE: Garrett's original video is no longer available.]
So clearly, Sargon has had the chance to defend his argument and argue his case,
and explain how actually we're missing something, or even realize his errors
and admit his reading of studies could do with some improvemen—
[MOCKINGLY READING COMMENT]
"Oh fucking hell, can you not summarize this in under five minutes?
- ♪ ["Advent: One-Winged Angel"]
I don't have the patience to sit through over half an hour of this!"
Well, that sounds reasonable!
[CANNED LAUGHTER]
When I started working on this video, looking at the statistics touted by anti-feminists,
I was expecting to finally see the proof, evidence, reasoning, and love of critical discussion
antifeminists always say they totally want to have, and finally understand their point of view.
I would actually really like to be shown all the sexual assault statistics I've seen are false.
It would be comforting to know it doesn't happen nearly as much as is implied.
But instead, all I've been shown is that to be an antifeminist, you have to have no understanding of how to read studies,
or what words mean, and insist on remaining that way by ignoring criticism.
Ironically, while he doesn't have the time to watch and respond to a genuine good-faith attempt to explain the issue with his reasoning,
Sargon does have the time to watch my comedy video where I laugh at skull men
and insist I take them more seriously and give proper rebuttals.
So there's plenty of time to find criticism you don't deem thoughtful enough to complain about—
In fact, he does this every fucking week—
but he somehow couldn't find the time to respond to actual, real criticism and raise the discussion.
Hmm, I wonder if this is where the bias Sargon keeps complaining about is coming from?
At the very least, he's right about one thing:
it is very easy to laugh at Davis Aurini.
I agree with that one. It takes a lot of effort to take his ideas seriously for long stretches of time I won't watch,
because I don't look for ideas that challenge me, 'cos that's how being rational works.
He also complains that the video he hasn't watched should have talked about a video someone else made,
which is a pretty weird fucking tactic to use to defend *your* claims.
Also, he did touch on it. So, you know,
maybe watch the video before responding to it!
I have to point this out now, apparently!
"Didn't dig deeply enough" is, I can only assume, code for "was objectively wrong".
You know, I still don't get why he arrived at the wrong study like this.
How did he miss the actual CSA study and arrive at this one?
Even PragerU, a fake YouTube university set up by the craziest man in the fucking world,
correctly cites the study.
Heck, even a cursory Google search of the times Joe Biden or Barack Obama have used the number
links to the correct study as the source.
Why did he get the study wrong? This made me curious, so I tried to figure out why.
My long and arduous search brought me to the Wikipedia page for campus sexual assault.
The first study listed on that page is the one he cited.
I'm not saying this is what happened,
but imagine for a moment Googling "campus sexual assault" and looking at the first source on a page,
and just assuming it's the source of the "1 in 5" statistic,
and just ignoring the parts in that study that cited "1 in 5" numerous times,
and even links to it.
If he had scrolled down, just slightly, to the third entry on the fucking page,
he would have seen the actual CSA study,
and also that it's ascribed as the source of the "1 in 5" statistic.
Between these two is the study he cited as facts.
Note how it's described numerous times to also be a fucking survey.
I really don't know how he missed that, so maybe he didn't even read the Wikipedia page!
Who knows what he actually read?
Trying to find something he has read is quite difficult; in that comment before,
he quotes books that he claimed in live streams later that he hadn't read.
So he, like, Googles quotes or something to find his evidence?
I could find the quote of him saying this, but these videos are sometimes several hours long,
AND THAT'S TOO LONG FOR MY LIKING!
[BLOWS RASPBERRY]
Speaking of "curse-ory" research that fucking anyone can do,
for a long time this picture of a statue was Carl's avatar, and the logo he used in his videos when he pauses to talk over them.
I mean, his internet handle is Sargon of Akkad, and he puts the words "Sargon of Akkad" next to pictures of the statue,
so obviously, he thinks it's a statue of Sargon, right?
But is it?
Spoilers, it's not! It's fucking not! Even his fucking logo is of the wrong perso—
The Museum of Iraq, which currently holds the artifact,
simply refers to it as "Head of King",
and points out that it's not known who this represents.
It could be a statue of his son, or his grandson, or another descendant,
or even a statue representing the Akkadian lineage itself in a metaphysical way,
the same way, for example, Moai statues represent Polynesian ancestry without being a literal portrait of anyone.
So why did he assume this is Sargon?
Well, Wikipedia says it "probably" might be.
Well, I mean, if Wikipedia says it!
Interestingly enough, the folks on the talk page of Sargon of Akkad—
the actual historical figure, not the manbaby who doesn't read studies before claiming they prove he's right—
discussed how it's impossible to verify, but that the little evidence we do have implies
it's far more likely to be a statue of Narim-Sin, Sargon's grandson,
and cite a pretty impressive source showing that this is more likely to be the case than it being Sargon,
because a sculpture that we know to be of Narim-Sin because its inscription is still intact has a very strong resemblance with the other statue.
They only decided to keep the statue on the Sargon page because there isn't really any other surviving iconography of the Akkadian royalty,
and because people— also known as idiots— for some reason like to assume it's Sargon.
So, by "probably", the article means "probably not".
But "probably not" is good enough for Carl.
And it was good enough for a long time, until he apparently noticed this, finally, and changed it.
In conclusion, if you don't look very well for studies, misread the data,
ignore the words and pictures surrounding the data,
and ignore people's attempts to correct you,
sexual assault isn't a problem on college campuses! Take that, feminism!
It's no surprise that so few people's minds have been changed in the face of this sterling logic,
Carl's only recourse was to attempt to have everyone who disagrees with him erased from academia.
Just kidding, not even Carl would be stupid enough to think that would be a good ide—
[OMINOUS MUSIC]
OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
♪♪
I'd also like to say a special thanks to:
[READING NAMES]
Thank you all very much for watching. My patrons seem interested in me doing a video about the EU referendum,
so that'll be out soon, hopefully before the referendum, I mean? That would be nice.
The video about Sargon's petition will be out as soon as some new audio equipment arrives
and I've found the exact Commodore 64 tape I want to steal music from for a thing I'm doing at the end.
See you all next time.
Oh, and for those of you that have already left an angry comment and downvoted this video because it's critical of Sargon,
thanks for helping prove the point I'm going to be making in a future video.
Seriously. I knew I could count on you.
