Premise 1: Some men are rapists.
Premise 2: It is impossible to tell from looking at a man with certainty whether or not he is a rapist.
Premise 3: X is a man.
Conclusion: X could be a rapist.
Where's the fallacy?
"X could be a rapist" isn't really the conclusion the writer comes to. "I am justified in treating X as a potential rapist" is the conclusion. I read it as a non-sequitur, but inference fallacy is probably more apt.
According to the writers statistics and the additional data from GreNME, both of which are more than 10 years old, a women is
not justified in believing an unknown male will sexually assault them. Based on the data they've provided I see three problems with the conclusion:
1) Statistically most women will not be raped.
87.5% of women, according to the writer's figure. How is this data skewed by women who are taking unnecessary risks? eg. Getting hammered then going home with a complete stranger. This type of behaviour no doubt increases the occurrence of rape compared to an society of sensible women.
Lest I be accused of being a rape apologist, I'm not even remotely insinuating that women deserve to get raped for getting drunk and going home with a stranger, or that any guy who takes advantage of such a situation is anything other than a morally bankrupt scumbag. It's deplorable that rape
ever happens. I'm simply saying that such behaviour has been known to increase the chance of rape and in a society where no one engaged in said behaviour, the statistical occurrence of rape would likely be lower.
2) Statistically, the vast majority of men do not commit rape.
Treating all men as potential rapists can't necessarily be justified, seeing as the assumption will be wrong most of the time.
3) According to the source provided by GreNME, "Historically, females have been most often victimized by someone they knew."
This further invalidates using a blanket statistic against unknown men. Using a
similar source as the blog author, this means 97% (give or take) of women won't be sexually assaulted by a stranger.
Given that the odds of dying from
cancer are 1 in 7, I have to wonder if the author is just as thorough in screening herself from every potential carcinogenic substance she comes in contact with. I point this out because the whole blog entry seemed a bit paranoid to me. If it were on a different subject, like cancer prevention, it strikes me that it would seem a bit hysterical.
I'd also like to present the following adaptation to the syllogism above:
Premise 1: Some Muslims are terrorists.
Premise 2: It is impossible to tell from looking at a Muslims with certainty whether or not he/she is a terrorist.
Premise 3: X is a Muslim.
Conclusion: X could be a terrorist.
Is this argument sound? Is a person justified is taking the conclusion as the default stance? If not, what changes the validity? (These aren't rhetorical, I have an opinion and am interested in what others think.)
One final beef, which is really nitpicky. I'm sure there was some amount of jest when selecting the title of "Schrödinger's Rapist," but it was used so verbosely throughout the article, it kind of got on my nerves. Making the Schrödinger reference, whether intentional or not, alludes to the involvement of random probability; that all women are equally likely to get raped and all men are equally likely to rape them. This is not the case.
[/criticism]
I do think there's some good advice in the article and would likely impart some similar points to my children before sending them off to college.
