Are You in the 43 Percent?

BY CAROL TAVRIS

I HAVE LONG BEEN FASCINATED BY HOW IT happens that some statistics make their way into the public conversation, taken for granted as being as reliable as pi— though if you gently blow on them, they disintegrate like dandelions. For example, Laura Kipnis, in her book Unwanted Advances, reports Edward Greer’s indefatigable investigation (in 2000) into the origins of the claim that that “only 2 percent of rape allegations are false”—a claim taken as undisputed in most Title IX investigations. Greer found that all roads led to Susan Brownmiller’s 1975 book Against Our Will. She got it from a judge’s speech given to the New York Bar Association in 1974; the judge apparently was quoting a newspaper account, written, Greer learned, by a reporter who was a friend and neighbor of Brownmiller’s.1 (In a previous column, I discussed a further complication in the 2 percent claim, namely that an allegation doesn’t have to be false—that is, an intentional lie—to be wrong, a result of honest but incorrect perceptions and memories.)

Once a number enters the public arena and serves ideological, political, or financial interests, you can’t dislodge it with a barge pole. I found one such number in an article by Kim Tingley in the “Studies Show” feature of the New York Times magazine. I was pleased to see at last that “studies show” that when it comes to sexual interest and responsiveness to erotic stimuli (i.e., porn), female brains and male brains are pretty much alike.2 The reporter seemed amazed at this discovery, given that “other studies show” that men have a greater sexual appetite than women and are more “attracted to pornography.” The article reflects the widespread assumptions that (1) women’s and men’s brains are wildly different, (2) women’s and men’s sexual drives are wildly different, and (3) if we can just observe what the brain is doing when it is looking at porn, stiletto heels, or photos of erotic partners we will somehow be able to intervene and fix any sexual problems the possessors 0of those brains might have. “If men’s and women’s brains respond similarly to sexual stimuli,” Tingley asks, “what accounts for the apparent differences in how they approach sexual practices?”