@hoshin1600 I'm surprised that you are so strongly challenging the idea that sexual assault victims know their attackers. It's not an unreasonable idea, nor is it new. I'm not really interested in doing much research here since 1) I'm not the only who brought up the stats, and 2) people tend to dig their heels deeper into their beliefs when presented with conflicting information (not saying this will apply to you, but it's a common trend). However, the Bureau of Justice Statistics has lots of data related to sexual assault:
BJS - Rape and Sexual Assault
Of particular interest is the report on assault of college-aged females (this is the age group which gets assaulted the most), which meets your first two conditions. It states a slightly lower figure of 80%, which is further broken down into intimate partners (including current and former), relatives, and friends/acquaintances. They also distinguish students vs. non-students in the report. For the non-students, there's an almost 50/50 ratio of assaults by partners and friends. For students, the figure for friends and acquaintances is much higher. It's a little odd that they chose to report friends and acquaintances as one figure when their methods show that they asked these as separate questions.
I have some other questions for you. From your last post, you seem to only be concerned with rape itself and not other forms of sexual assault. Does that really matter? There is most definitely a difference between someone pinching a butt and rape. Technically, a butt pinch can be called sexual assault, but it's on a whole different level than rape. However, there are plenty of awful sexual things you can do to someone that are just as wrong and psychologically damaging as rape. So I don't think it's really that important to distinguish between assault vs. rape, especially when rape reporting rates are so low. How many people are really going to report something like a smack on the behind as an assault?
I'm also wondering why you think that a woman needs to have a very close relationship with someone to not resist? There are plenty of reasons why someone might not claw the eyes out of their attacker, even if it's just a casual acquaintance like the guy who makes your coffee. The average male is stronger than the average female - it's not hard to imagine a girl starting to resist and quickly being overpowered and then giving up because she would rather be raped than have her face smashed in. Even if she didn't give up, it's still not that hard to overpower someone who is smaller and physically weaker than you, especially if they're already in a disadvantaged position. Looking at that report, in a lot of of the cases, alcohol is involved. You can't exactly fight off someone effectively when you're completely trashed, and certainly not if you're passed out. And you know what else? Sometimes things happen faster than you can react to.
One thing I do agree with you on is that women definitely should be trained in some self-defense, as many have discussed in previous posts. There are plenty of simple things that can be taught to women that will help them inflict some damage on an attacker who is overpowering them and give them the chance to get away. Probably not useful if they are extremely intoxicated and not useful in situations where a relationship could lead to coercion and a desire to not harm your attacker (such as being raped by a boyfriend), but better than nothing.
