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Friday, December 24, 2010

Feminism Works. « Student Activism

Feminism Works. « Student Activism

Feminism Works.

One of the great weird open secrets of American society is how much safer we are than we used to be. Serious crime has fallen dramatically in just about every category since the early seventies — robbery is down 69%, assault by 62%, theft by 74%.

But even in the context of this overall decline in crime, one statistic stands out:

Rape is down 88%.

Yep. Eighty-eight percent. For every ten Americans raped in 2009, eighty-three would have been raped in 1973. And this isn’t a shift in reporting to police — the figures come from the Bureau of Justice National Crime Victimization Survey, which interviews Americans directly about their experience of crime each year.

Now, there are a lot of reasons for the overall decline in crime, from advances in police work to simple