The Sex Myth: Why Everything We're Told Is Wrong (15 page)

Interestingly enough, though, there are other places where the opening of lap-dancing clubs does seem also to correspond with a reduction in rape and assaults. One of these is Newquay, in
Cornwall.

In 2010, the paper
Newquay Voice
obtained Devon and Cornwall Constabulary’s figures of sexual assaults.
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They found that the total number
of recorded sexual assaults (including rapes) in and around
Newquay peaked at 71 in 2005, the year before Newquay’s first lap-dance club opened. In 2006, the year
following its opening, the number fell to 51.

In 2007, when the town’s second lap-dancing venue opened, the total number of recorded sexual assaults fell again to 41, then dropped to 27 in 2008 when a third lap-dancing club opened. In
2009, the number rose slightly but the total of 33 offences is still less than half the 2005 total.

Here are the incidence rate calculations (using mid-year population levels for the council of Restormel, where Newquay is located):

Again, this is only a single example. To conclusively demonstrate that an increase in lap-dancing clubs corresponds with a decrease in rape and sexual assault, there would have
to be many more such results, over longer time periods, from many places. However, it does reinforce the same thing the statistics from Camden show: that lap dancing definitely does not correlate
with a higher occurrence of rape. And if there is no rise in rape, then it is impossible to claim that lap dancing ‘causes’ rape.

In fact, the question of what effect adult services have on local crime has been studied so thoroughly that there can now be studies of the studies, or what statisticians call
‘meta-analysis’. A meta-analysis, or pooled analysis, combines the results of published studies by many different groups in order to arrive at an overall conclusion.

A meta-analysis examined 110 papers that claimed adult businesses increased crime rates.
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What they found was a hotchpotch of cargo cultism. In fact,
73 per cent of the papers were records of political discussions, not actual studies. Removing these and anecdotal reports
about only one crime incident, the authors were left
with twenty-nine studies. In the papers that did not contain flaws, there was no correlation between any adult-oriented business and any negative effect. Of the ten most frequently cited papers,
not one met the minimum standards for good research – comparable controls, sufficient time, and valid data collection. Other detailed ethnographic work also supports the conclusion that there
is no direct relationship between adult entertainment and crime shown in such papers.
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It’s because rape is such a serious crime that researchers must be at least as rigorous in their analysis as they would with other serious events. Otherwise, it’s not real analysis.
It’s throwing numbers around without context. It’s producing reports that look and feel like real research without the methodology to back them up. It is cargo cult science.

To avoid becoming cargo cult scientists, Richard Feynman said researchers must be willing to question their results, and investigate possible flaws in a theory. Researchers should pursue a level
of honesty that is rare in everyday life. ‘We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out,’ Feynman said. ‘Although you may gain some temporary fame and
excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work.’

To a layperson, cargo cult science and real science look similar on the outside in that they contain numbers and try to come to some sort of conclusion. Even if the Lilith report had managed to
get its calculations correct in the first place, there still would have been plenty of clues that the look and feel of real research was only being imitated, and the content wasn’t up to
scratch.

When looking closely, it’s pretty easy to pick out cargo cult research, because usually:

A pervasive feature of poor research is that it often starts from an assumed position, and any data falling outside of that position are ignored. The writers come to the study
with a bias and look to find ways for the numbers to fit with their preconceived notions of what the truth should be rather than what it actually is.

We can see this on the very first page of the Lilith report with statements like ‘This “fast fantasy” approach is demeaning and insulting to women . . . Lap dance [is] not
going away without a fight.’

It’s clear from the outset that the writers of the report have a particular agenda – prohibiting adult entertainment. Which is fine, since everyone’s entitled to a say in what
happens in their communities.

I don’t object to opinions. Think lap dancing is a sin? Great, that’s fine for you. Think it’s oppressing women? Great, I look forward to your paper. What
gets my goat is invoking a semblance of statistical analysis. I’m a (former) statistician, yo. You’re on my turf now. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and also entitled to express it.
But if the writer of any scientific research were so openly biased from the beginning, there is no chance the report would be accepted by a reputable journal.

Claiming the methods of science, without buying in to the philosophy of how and why they work, is unethical.
If you don’t play by the same rules, you can’t use the same
tools.

The tone of the report is so attached to its assumptions that it does not address several other theoretical problems.

One of its assumptions is that exposure to adult entertainment makes rape more likely. Even if there were evidence for this, why would the rapes necessarily occur in Camden? The area containing
the clubs is a small corner of a much larger borough bordering other parts of London. In addition, you might expect such a well-known entertainment venue to have customers travelling in from
elsewhere in the country. There is no evidence that the crimes would necessarily be committed in Camden. Such possible confounding factors are not addressed in the study.

The paper also strongly implies that the rapes are stranger rapes. A Home Office report analysing relationships between victims and offenders notes that for rapes, strangers are the perpetrators
in only 17 per cent of UK cases, and that 75 per cent of reported rapes occur either in the victim’s home or in the perpetrator’s. Even if lap-dancing businesses were shown to
contribute to stranger rape, this alone could not explain large changes in the statistics of reported rapes overall.

In past decades, the people who have fought to raise awareness of the issues surrounding the crime of rape have held, correctly, that victim-blaming is repugnant. A person’s dress and
actions should in no way be considered permission for one human being to rape another.

And, indeed, this sound conclusion is the foundation of the Slut-Walk movement, a series of protests that occurred after a university police officer in Toronto suggested that to remain safe,
female
students should ‘avoid dressing like sluts.’ Connecting sexual assault directly and solely to visual stimulation is erroneous. Rape still exists even in
countries where women cannot appear in public without a male family member present, or must go around covered from head to toe. It’s worth repeating: seeing saucy images is not the cause of
rape. There has been a long and difficult fight – a fight that continues in the name of wronged victims – to make sure everyone understands this.

So why is a group like Eaves/Lilith so keen to revive this tired, wrong stereotype? A stereotype that displaces blame for a crime away from the rapist? It’s puzzling.

Such rape apologies feed off the myth that rapists have no control over temptation and are only responding to stimuli. Most people who make such arguments are not intending to defend rapists,
but simply repeating things they’ve heard before and not fully examined. We should expect better than this from a women’s charity.

Rape is widely thought to be a vastly under-reported crime. The calculations in the report don’t tell us whether rapes were under-reported for the area in any particular year, nor what
might cause that. What it does tell us is that the original claim made in the Lilith report – that the number of reported rapes is rising – is not true. It was not true in 2003, it
continues not to be true, yet the myth that rapes rise 50 per cent after lap-dancing clubs opened in Camden is still reported, even as recently as August 2009.

The causes of rape are not well understood. If they were, it would be easier to fight them, since we would know how to apply resources. The fact that rape is such a difficult, under-reported,
under-investigated, and under-prosecuted problem indicates that we really don’t know all that much about its causes.

Because the numbers involved are relatively small, the fluctuations in rate could be influenced by any number of things not actually to do with rape per se. After all, the number of reports
could change even when the rate of rape stays the same. There could be subtle reasons why. A sympathetic and approachable officer in a particular area, for instance. Availability of crisis support
and hotlines. Changes in, or absence of, these things. It’s not only hard to say – it’s impossible. But one thing we can do is to try to eliminate confounders, to sieve out
what does not cause rape, so as better to focus on the real job at hand.

And, of course, when you are dealing with small numbers . . . sometimes a fluctuation is just a fluctuation.

Better evidence collection and better prosecution might help. But we also need to think hard about preventing rape, not just punishing it. When someone claims a cause that is not a real cause,
this can derail the real struggle against violence. If the focus is on lap dancing, in spite of the fact that it has no connection with rape, it is potentially diverting resources from preventing
and investigating the real causes of crime.

In addition, while the statistics used in both my calculations and the Lilith report pertain to rapes committed by anyone against anyone, the reporting when the Lilith numbers were released
strictly focused on men raping women. Male-male rape is ignored in the analysis even though it does comprise a piece of the data. This is indicative of a larger set of beliefs about rape; that it
is necessarily a crime of men against women. In many parts of the world, sexual assault that is not vaginal is not classified as rape, insertion of objects other than the penis don’t count as
rape. It’s a highly gendered, highly heterosexed view. It also discounts the experiences of a significant subset of victims. If we accept that rape is a crime about power, not sex per se,
then we must also expect that a member of any sex or any gender could be a victim . . . or a perpetrator.

In much writing on sexual assault there seems to be a belief that rape stems from an inability of men to understand communication that is indirect; that they are unable to parse any rejection
other than a firmly stated ‘no’. Not only has this idea led to defendants in rape cases claiming they didn’t know someone said no, it is also not supported by research.

Men and women may weigh the value of verbal and nonverbal cues differently, but show little difference in the end when categorising situations as rape.
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For all the firmly held stereotypes, men know that no means no. Men who rape don’t do so by accident; ordinary men without tendencies to rape do not do so inadvertently or
because they went to a lap-dancing club.