Feminists often complain, with considerable justification, that Men’s Rights Activists try to turn every conversation about women’s issues into a game of “what about the men?” You’re talking about female rape victims — well, what about the male rape victims?
The trouble with this strategy, from the point of view of the Men’s Rights Activists anyway, is that this little “gotcha” is much less of a “gotcha” then they’d like it to be.
In the case of rape, for example, feminists are well aware that men are raped as well: the “Don’t Be That Guy” ad campaign, which sent so many MRAs into hysterics, focused on male victims as well as female ones. The emergency room rape advocate organization that a friend of mine volunteers for provides advocacy for victims regardless of gender.
So many MRAs have started playing another game: trying to twist the conversation around in order to cast women as the villains. Rape is a bit tough for them here, since the overwhelming majority of rapists are male. So MRAs talk about the alleged epidemic of female false accusers instead. Or they change the topic entirely and make dead baby jokes (see my post yesterday).
Recently, MRAs have tried a new strategy, seizing on data from The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, a massive study conducted in 2010 under the aegis of the Centers for Disease Control, to claim that “40% of rapists are women.”
This is a claim repeated by numerous MRAs on numerous websites; see, for example, this post by A Voice for Men’s Typhonblue on the blog GendErratic. Here’s the same claim made into an “infographic” for the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Trouble is, this claim is flat-out false, based on an incorrect understanding of the NISVS data. But you don’t have to take my word for it: the NISVS researchers themselves say the MRA “interpretation” of their data is based on bad math. It’s not just a question of different definitions of rape: the MRA claims are untenable even if you include men who were “made to penetrate” women as victims of rape (as the MRAs do) rather than as victims of “sexual violence other than rape” (as the NISVS does).
I wrote to the NISVS for clarification of this matter recently, and got back a detailed analysis, straight from the horse’s mouth, of where the MRA arguments went wrong. This is long, and a bit technical, but it’s also pretty definitive, so it’s worth quoting in detail. (I’ve bolded some of the text below for emphasis, and broken some of the larger walls of text into shorter paragraphs.)
It appears that the math used to derive an estimated percentage of female rapists … is flawed. First, we will summarize the assertion and what we perceive to be the basis for the assertion.
According to the web links, the “40% of rapists were women” was derived from these two steps:
1) Combining the estimated number of female rape victims with the estimated number of being-made-to-penetrate male victims in the 12 months prior to the survey to conclude that about 50% of the rape or being-made-to-penetrate victims were males;
2) Multiplying the estimated percentage (79%) of male being-made-to-penetrate victims who reported having had female perpetrators in these victims’ lifetime with the 50% obtained in step 1 to claim that 40% of perpetrators of rape or being-made-to-penetrate were women.
None of these calculations should be used nor can these conclusions be correctly drawn from these calculations.
First the researchers clarify the issue of definition:
To explain, in NISVS we define rape as “any completed or attempted unwanted vaginal (for women), oral, or anal penetration through the use of physical force (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threats to physically harm and includes times when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent.”
We defined sexual violence other than rape to include being made to penetrate someone else, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences. Made to penetrate is defined as including “times when the victim was made to, or there was an attempt to make them, sexually penetrate someone without the victim’s consent because the victim was physically forced (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threatened with physical harm, or when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent.”
The difference between “rape” and “being made to penetrate” is that in the definition of rape the victim is penetrated; “made to penetrate” by definition refers to cases where the victim penetrated someone else.
While there are multiple definitions of rape and sexual violence used in the field, CDC, with the help of experts in the field, has developed these specific definitions of rape and other forms of sexual violence (such as made to penetrate, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences). We use these definitions to help guide our analytical decisions.
Now the researchers get into the details of the math:
Regarding the specific assertion in question, several aspects of mistreatments of the data and the published estimates occurred in the above derivation:
A. While the percentage of female rape victims and the percentage of male being-made-to-penetrate victims were inferred from the past 12-month estimates by combining two forms of violence, the percentage of perpetrator by sex was taken from reported estimates for males for lifetime (a misuse of the percentage of male victims who reported only female perpetrators in their lifetime being made to penetrate victimization). This mismatch of timeframes is incorrect because the past 12-month victimization cannot be stretched to equate with lifetime victimization. In fact, Table 2.1 and 2.2 of the NISVS 2010 Summary Report clearly report that lifetime rape victimization of females (estimated at 21,840,000) is about 4 times the number of lifetime being made-to-penetrate of males (estimated at 5,451,000).
B. An arithmetic confusion appears when multiplying the two percentages together to conclude that the product is a percentage of all the “rapists”, an undefined perpetrator population. Multiplying the percentage of male victims (as derived in step 1) above) to the percentage of male victims who had female perpetrators cannot give a percentage of perpetrators mathematically because to get a percentage of female rape perpetrators, one must have the total rape perpetrators (the denominator), and the number of female perpetrators of this specific violence (the numerator). Here, neither the numerator nor the denominator was available.
C. Data collected and analyzed for the NISVS 2010 have a “one-to-multiple” structure (where the “one” refers to one victim and the “multiple” refers to multiple perpetrators). While not collected, it is conceivable that any perpetrator could have multiple victims. These multiplicities hinder any attempt to get a percentage of perpetrators such as the one described in steps 1) and 2), and nullify the reverse calculation for obtaining a percent of perpetrators.
For example, consider an example in which a girl has eight red apples while a boy has two green apples. Here, 50% of the children are boys and another 50% are girls. It is not valid to multiply 50% (boy) with 100% (boy’s green apples) to conclude that “50% of all the apples combined are green”. It is clear that only 20% of all the apples are green (two out of 10 apples) when one combines the red and green apples together. Part of the mistake in the deriving of the “50%” stems from a negligence to take into account the inherent multiplicity: a child can have multiple apples (just as a victim can have multiple perpetrators).
D. As the study population is U.S. adults in non-institutional settings, the sample was designed to be representative of the study population, not the perpetrator population (therefore no sampling or weighting is done for the undefined universe of perpetrators). Hence, while the data can be analyzed to make statistical inferences about the victimization of U.S. adults residing in non-institutional settings, the NISVS data are incapable of lending support to any national estimates of the perpetrator population, let alone estimates of perpetrators of a specific form of violence (say, rape or being-made-to-penetrate).
E. Combining the estimated past 12-month female rape victims with the estimated past 12-month being-made-to-penetrate male victims cannot give an accurate number of all victims who were either raped or being-made-to-penetrate, even if this combination is consistent with CDC’s definition.
Besides a disagreement with the definitions of the various forms of violence given in the NISVS 2010 Summary Report, this approach of combining the 12-month estimated number of female rape victims with the 12-month estimated number of male victims misses victims in the cells where reliable estimates were not reported due to small cell counts failing to meet statistical reliability criteria. For any combined form of violence, the correct analytical approach for obtaining a national estimate is to start at the raw data level of analysis, if such a creation of a combined construct is established.
So you’re going to need to go back to the drawing board, MRAs.
What is especially distressing here is that the NISVS data could have been the starting point for a serious discussion of male victims of sexual assault by women, which is a real and often overlooked issue. Unfortunately, MRAs have once again poisoned the well by misusing data in an attempt to exaggerate the purported villainy of women and score cheap rhetorical points.
NOTE: A regular in the AgainstMensRights subreddit approached the NISVS researchers with this same question some months back. Unfortunately, the statement they got back from the NISVS contained an incorrect number. The statement I’m quoting here corrects this number and adds more context.
I can provide contact info for the NISVS representative who got back to me on this to any serious (non-troll) person who requests it.
So, why exactly are you excluding a huge chunk of female-on-male rape while including comparable incidents for male-on-female rape? That’s not a very fair comparison David and it shouldn’t take a genius to see that you can easily reduce the number of female-on-male rapes when you just exclude them from your numbers.
@PsyConomics
Is it disrespectful to, or dismissive of someone who was attacked with a knife to say that they were not shot? Does it minimise what happened to them, or deny them access to the relevant support?
Is it me, or are some folks reading things into Mr. Futrelle’s words that weren’t actually said?
It seems like nowhere did David state that “made to penetrate” victims (which include both men and women, by the way) should be treated differently, should not be taken serious, should not be able to define their own experience, or should not have access to resources and supports.
@Athywren
I think you cracked the code, now have to figure out the cookie delivery logistics.
@Cassandra
I directed an earlier post at you and, after rereading it, I realize it has fuck all to do with anything you wrote. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then ignore this, but if you read my bit about statutory rape and thought ‘well that doesn’t really have anything to do with the straightforward argument I’m making’, then I apologize.
Yes, I’m this awkward and self-conscious in real life too. *sigh*
sparky: it’s not just you.
So, I’m off to bed, but I want to clarify my last comment because I’m not going to be able to for at least 8 hours in case somebody takes it the way that it could be taken.
If you’re attacked with a knife or with a gun, the range of injury is more or less the same. It can be just intimidation, or it can be wounding, crippling, killing, and a few things in between – that’s all available to both. They’re both serious issues, and victims of both deserve support, emotionally, legally, and medically. They’re more or less equivalent in severity, but they are different in the details.
If we’re going to use the same label to refer to them, we should say a person was assaulted, rather than that they were stabbed or shot, and I don’t think it’s terrible to say that a victim of a stabbing was not shot.
Granted, the colloquial definition of rape is more or less synonymous with sexual assault, and I have no problem with using that colloquially… but unless there actually is a benefit to doing the same with legal language, it seems, to me, to make as little sense as saying a person was shot when they were stabbed.
“Urgh, fuck. I hate “get over it” at the best of times, but that’s just repulsive. As if people have the right to dictate how others feel about what they’ve been through. Other people have dealt with them in supposedly “better” ways, good for them. Not everyone can do that. Mostly, though, I hate the assumptions behind it – that you know exactly how bad it was, exactly how many other things have happened to that person, that there is a correct reaction, and that other reactions are unacceptable.”
So, you remember my psych making me see their vocational counsellor? She said basically that — she’d been through traumatic things and some people go on to lead perfectly productive lives! >.< (email me if you want the long sordid story, no one here wants to sit through years of things ranging from groping to the topic at hand)
“As far as I am concerned the NISVS study is all but a lost cause. With such biases creeping in to the final report, who is to say what sort of biases infected the researchers actually collecting the data.”
Please learn to math, or read the summary, or something. Good research requires solid research and stats skills to explain to any degree, and if you want hard numbers — he ones that require factoring in multiple variables — you just plain need to math. Look, I am perfectly happy to translate to not-math for anyone who asks, but you not getting it because the math is over your head doesn't automatically invalidate the study. It's a matter of definition, one they explained in the report. There is absolutely no logical reason to assume that over 100+ pages of the report this one category's definition means the data in the entire thing is a lost cause.
🙁 Argenti. If you want to rant about it to someone, you have my email. Otherwise I can only offer hugs.
O_O
Don’t you need some kind of qualification or sensitivity to be a psych or a counsellor? How is that even possible‽
And since when does being perfectly productive have any bearing on your mental health? I’ve had periods of perfect productivity, but I’m still terrified of entering rooms that’re occupied by more than one stranger if they’ll all see me. (I’m also really bad at keeping email conversations going… but I’m sure you haven’t noticed that! :P)
Also, hugs are available if you want them.
What on earth are you talking about? How hard is it to use the term “sexual assault?” Why would using a different term mean treating them “differently” in a bad way, or not advocating for victims of made-to-penetrate? You’ve just tacked a whole set of bizarre assumptions onto a word choice. If you call a truck a lorry, you can still drive it.
I’m not separating the groups. I’m simply using different terminology to describe different forms of sexual assault. Victims of sexual assault are still victims of sexual assault.
If a male survivor of made-to-penetrate calls what happened to him rape rather than sexual assault or sexual violence, I’m not going to tell him to call it anything different. And no one is going to kick him out of a survivor group because of a difference in terminology. .
I find it hard to believe that the people making these arguments about what my stance allegedly means really believe all this and are making these arguments in good faith. I just had a similar discussion with someone on Twitter who clearly wasn’t.
If you were asking in good faith, I apologize, but you certainly jumped to a lot of conclusions about what I meant that were not what I meant at all.
sparky: As one of the folks disagreeing strongly with David on this point… no, you’re absolutely right, a lot of folks ARE reading more into his statements–and, in fact, are selectively ignoring parts of them to continue the attack. I feel there’s a strong case to be made for MtP being included, on a semantic basis, in the ‘rape’ category, and part of that does hinge on how common language use affects the systematic approaches (ie, getting people to think of marital rape as ‘rape’ was key to getting the laws about it changed, and I think the same concept works here–whatever the legal terminology is, the two violations should be discussed with the same vernacular language, outside of cases where there’s a need for distinction).
But at no time is David suggesting, implying or stating a hostility towards the idea of MtP being treated identically to penetrative rape, and claiming he has done so is probably actually HURTING efforts to get him to change his mind on the matter, so I really wish they would STOP already.
Rescue cats to the rescue! (We need something cute, this is getting a little in-group heated, I think.)
Ash, I simply do not believe that by calling MTP by a different term than rape that I am inherently declaring it less serious/important than rape. Obviously you disagree. We’ve both made our arguments. There is really no point in continuing this particular discussion.
If you wish to discuss the CDC study I suggest you do that instead.
hellkell: Oh good. I was starting to doubt myself.
freemage: I agree with everything you said. In case I caused confusion, my previous comment was directed at Ash and PsyConomics, not anyone else. I’m sorry, I should be more clear when I post 🙂
freemage, that is a good point about marital rape.
@David Futrelle & Athywren
Ah, ok. I see it a little more clearly now, though I still can’t say I agree with your position.
Reading your previous comments it sounded more like you wanted to try and draw more of a concrete philosophical line between the two than you seem to be doing. That is why I was so ardent about the motivation. Referencing Athywren’s knife and gun wound analogy, I wanted to hear what convinced us that the two acts were as essentially different as a knife and a gun wound are. But you weren’t even arguing that they are all that different, you were just organizing them in a specific way.
I don’t need different tools, I don’t need different advocacy, I don’t need different philosophies because I am not looking at different things, just at things with – what I would call oddly – differing labels.
As I said above I still find this odd, and I would never use such differences anywhere in my own life, philosophy, or philosophy I would teach/present/advocate to someone, but I now see that you weren’t trying to silence an entire group of survivors like it looked like you were.
Brooked: I’d say the last sentence (It’s also nakedly hypocritical coming from a website that’s openly about mockery.) is the most coherent.
It’s stupid, but comprehensible: The writer thinks that one can’t do both mockery, and serious commentary.
Which is funny as hell, because that’s what the writer is pretending to do.
Ally: He said his argument is a semantic one, not a legal one. Why are you talking about legal differences?
Because what Ash wants is an abject surrender on Dave’s part (probably with profuse apology and the admission that Ash was right all along).
The tone tells me there is a deeper agenda, and I’m betting on humiliating Dave being his desired end state. Were I to be completely cynical I’d say the protestations about our lack of reaction were meant to highlight our disagreement in an effort to get peer pressure brought on Dave to bring about those ends.
@Argenti
The issue of MTP comes up when the authors are discussing their methodology on page 84:
I get why people are infuriated over the the decision to limit rape to forced penetration, but this is the first national study of sexual violence to actually measure MTP. That’s straight up a good thing.
Brooked: OOoh, that’s a very helpful quote. I can see the point of separating it in the course of a study if part of your goal is to highlight the very existence of the sub-category. In my mental Venn diagrams, I’m putting the entirety of the MtP circle inside the Rape circle. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a worthless distinction to make at times.
Well, one thing I think I know about David is that he will change his mind or not based on whether or not he’s convinced, not based on peer pressure. I say that at the same time as I hope that he will give serious consideration to the arguments his peers here are making, and change his mind to agree that MTP is a form of rape because it’s a traumatic & intimate violation of personal autonomy.
cloudiah: Yes, but one of the things trolls, and trollish people, do is play, “let’s you and them fight”. Groups like the MRM are fond of using intra-group debates as proof of incoherence.
Since I have been of the opinion, from the first post, that Ash is a dishonest actor, with an agenda, I can see that trope being used; “look, even your supporters say you are wrong, how can you continue to have this opinion and still call yourself a feminist, etc.”.
Brooked — I missed that (I admit, I haven’t read all 100+ pages), that is indeed an important and good thing.
Athywren — “I’m also really bad at keeping email conversations going… but I’m sure you haven’t noticed that!”…I really hadn’t. But, as you know, I’ve been writing a WP theme from scratch and mmm PHP. It’ serving to keep me distracted (and I have yet to get the white page of death! [bad PHP all too often results in a white page, no errors like HTML or JS, no way to color code your way to finding your fuck up like CSS, nada, nothing, white page of death])
Pecunium — you see that one of your African violets has little leaves? You’re definitely getting at least one!
@pecunium, Let’s leave the trolls aside, since they will always be there. David is a feminist, and other feminists disagree & agree with him. Ash can be ignored. I get the sense that David is (rightly) ignoring Internet comments from asshats, but I hope and expect he’s not ignoring the rest of it. (Intra-group debates are actually a healthy thing, IMO.)
I’m not going to not make an argument just because asshats agree with me. Their agreement is, frankly, accidental.