The case for yes

Should women be afraid of men?

This clock has been running since Monday, October 26, 3:30 PM Central. Each count is one woman's share of a yearly total, spread evenly across the clock. Watch how often it moves.

Averaged from yearly totals. These are not live reports of individual incidents. The "today" row resets at your local midnight.

1980 to now

Every year since 1980

FBI-reported rapes and murders for the whole country, January 1980 to December 2025. Press play to watch the years and the running totals climb together.

2025

Rapes reported
0
Murders
0
Rapes reported per year
Murders per year
198020002016: rape definition widened2025
Year-by-year table

1980 to 2019 from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 2020 to 2025 from FBI releases. Dashed bars are estimates where no single published figure was found (murder 2022 to 2024, rape 2021 to 2024). Rape was counted under a narrower definition through 2015, so part of the 2016 jump is a change in counting. "Reported" means reported to police; the true number is higher.

Our words

What we mean

Raped

Sex forced on a woman without her consent. The most serious category in the CDC's survey.

Stalked

Being followed, watched, or contacted again and again, until she fears for her safety.

Murdered by a man

A woman killed by a man. The count covers cases with one victim and one offender.

Afraid

The Oxford Learner's Dictionaries give one sense as "worried about what might happen."

Ask it in the dictionary's own words. Should women be frightened of men? Worried about what a man might do? Nervous around him? Each one asks the same thing.

Who it is

It is rarely the stranger in the alley.

The share of women harmed, by who was responsible. The two sets come from different data, so compare the pattern, not the exact numbers.

Stalked

CDC national survey, 2016/2017, prior 12 months

Raped

Police-recorded incidents, Virginia, 2019 (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

Most of the time he is a partner, a relative, a friend, or someone she works with. That is the point: she cannot sort them in advance.

Not only physical

Three kinds of fear

Physical

  • Being followed or watched
  • Being raped
  • A partner's anger escalating
  • What he might do when she leaves

Emotional

  • Being belittled or talked down to
  • Being intimidated into silence
  • Walking on eggshells
  • The silent treatment as punishment

Social

  • Being judged when she disagrees
  • Being labeled for saying no
  • A double standard on how she acts
  • Being blamed for what was done to her

Social fear is the worry that a man will judge, label, or turn on a woman when she disagrees with him, says no, or doesn't follow his lead.

A look can be intimidating. So can the sound of a voice, the way someone drives, clenched teeth, or silence. Women learn to read those signs. The trouble is that the safe man and the dangerous man can look exactly alike.

Go further

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Fair is fair

What this clock is, and isn't

What the numbers can and can't tell you
  • Each count is a yearly total divided evenly across the seconds in a year. Real incidents don't arrive on a schedule.
  • The CDC survey behind the first two clocks had a response rate of about 7.6%.
  • The who-was-responsible split for women raped comes from police records in three states, not a national count.
  • The murder count (1,615 women in 2013) is the most recent single-year figure in our sources, so it is older data.
  • Men are victims too. This page argues that women face more severe, repeated, and partner-driven harm, and that she cannot know in advance which man is which.
Sources
  • CDC, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), 2016/2017 report on being followed and watched: 8.6 million women in the prior 12 months.
  • CDC, NISVS summary: about 1.9 million women raped in the year before the survey.
  • Bureau of Justice Statistics: police-recorded incidents by relationship to the victim, Virginia, Colorado, and Oregon, 2019.
  • CDC study of women's deaths in 18 states, 2003 to 2014 (MMWR, 2017): 55.3% tied to partner violence; 93% of those by a current or former partner.
  • Violence Policy Center, annual report on women and homicide (2013 data): 1,615 women murdered by men in single-victim, single-offender cases.
  • UNLV, Civil Protection Orders; ACLU, Protective Orders and Police Enforcement: about one million orders a year (estimate).
  • Stop Street Harassment national survey, GfK, 2014: 65% of women reported street harassment.
  • Stanford Pathways, workplace harassment study: one in three women by age 25 to 26.
  • CDC, multiple perpetrator types per victim: 49% of women who were victims had more than one type of perpetrator, versus 27% of men.
  • Oxford Learner's Dictionaries: afraid, worried, anxiety.

Need help now? National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233. RAINN sexual assault hotline: 1-800-656-4673. In danger right now: call 911.