One data set can have multiple truths

I don't think this changes my thinking but it is an interesting additional insight. From Sexual Assault as a Crime Against Young People by Richard B. Felson and Patrick R. Cundif. From the abstract:

Evidence based on almost 300,000 sexual assaults from the National Incident-Based Reporting System showed that the modal age of victims was 15 years, regardless of the age of the offender, the gender of the offender, or the gender of the victim. We suggest that adolescents have the highest risk of victimization because of their sexual attractiveness, vulnerability, and exposure to motivated offenders. As a result of these factors, sexual assault is as much an offense against young people as it is against women. The sexual attractiveness of young people also has implications for the age of offenders. Older men have much higher rates of offending than one would expect, given the age–desistance relationship. Thus, we found that older men have much higher rates of sexual assault than physical assault. Finally, evidence suggested that homosexual men were at least as likely as heterosexual men to commit sexual assault. The pattern suggests that the tendency for sexual assaults to involve male offenders and female victims reflects male sexuality rather than attitudes toward women.

Matches the finding in Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) by one of the founders of OK Cupid, Christian Rudder. What they found was that men are interested in women in their young twenties whereas women tend to be interested in men +/- 5 years of the woman's age.

Women, when looking at pictures of men as candidates for a date, choose men of approximately their own age.

Click to enlarge.

Men, on the other hand, are much more predictable. They like looking at young women.

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The OK Cupid data is entirely consistent with the Felson/Cundif finding that there is a pattern to age preference from the male perspective. It makes perfect biological sense from an evolutionary angle.

So the Felson/Cundif is not a particular surprise. What is interesting is their nudge to look at the same data from a different perspective. We correctly tend to look at sexual assault as a gendered issue; and it is. Males tend to attack females to a much greater degree than the reverse, though the reverse does happen.

Felson/Cundif use the same data to reach a conclusion which is just as true, sexual assault is an issue of older people attacking younger people.