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.
@hannasoumaki
Large sample size is not guaranteed to prevent sample problems. Even with a large sample size, the researchers can still find it difficult or impossible to make certain estimates for various reasons. One of those reasons could be that there weren’t enough respondents who answered a particular question a certain way. That certainly is the case for female victims of made-to-penetrate victimization – there are no estimates for that category for female victims because too few reported that kind of victimization. That’s just one example of how sample size doesn’t fix everything.
Also, though the total sample is 16,000, clearly not all of those respondents are victims – that’s just the total sample. The percentage of victims in that sample is probably significantly smaller than 16,000. The only reason there are numbers in the report like “1.3 million victims” is that they are estimates based on raw data (after all, it’s not like 1.3 million people actually reported being victimized in the survey – it’s just a statistical estimate, not a representation of the raw sample). So it’s misleading to say that the sample size is totally okay because it’s large. Of course large sample sizes are valuable, but they’re no perfect solution to sample bias.
He really should be directing his questions to the researchers themselves.
She did not, 7,421 men were surveyed. That works out to about 80 men reporting being made to penetrate in those 12 months, versus about 355 reporting ever being made to penetrate. As a percentage of the survey, versus the percentage of men in the population, is how to numbers in the millions were obtained. So it’s accurate to say that about a fifth of men who ever reported being made to penetrate reported having it happen in those 12 months, but to claim that the difference is in the millions ignores that those 12 months are a snapshot of the overall data (that is, one year only shows a small picture compared to data taken year after year after year)
And the percentage of women who’re raped has been from 1/3? 1/4? Down to 1/6 over time. But a long period of time, long enough to be sure that the couple hundred women who reported being raped on that year’s survey were actually representative of what happens over time.
This is why it’s so important whether that year was an outlier — the actual number of men who were on the phone with the CDC saying they were made to penetrate in the last 12 months is just too small to be sure that it wasn’t a combination of the men asked, what their last year was like, various assorted things like their ages, and what the last year was like in general.
Put it to him this way, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner (I blame my BAC, thanks to pecunium I’m nice and toasty drunk!) — would the MRM, and him in particular, being having this small fit if 80~ women, on one survey asking about one year, reported being raped in that year, but 355~ reported having ever been raped?
Cuz in my experience with this sort, reversing the genders would have them claiming that a few dozen of those 80 women had decided to make false reports (note, I am not, remotely, claiming that those men were lying, just saying that the MRM has a fetish for yelling about false rape reports and would thus claim that year is an outlier because of lying…not because of the particular people asked, not because that year was, for whatever reason, an outlier in general, but if it were women being discussed, I’m recalling dozens, maybe hundreds, of threads and comments about how much women just love making false rape reports)
In short, I stand by my original stance that they need to repeat the survey over time and see if the weirdness of a fifth of total reports being in the last year holds, or if it was a one time outlier. But in any case, without any other data backing it up, and showing a trend, it’s fishy to say that five million men reported being made to penetrate and one million said it was in the year surveyed. Cuz they didn’t, 80~ men said it was in the last year! and! while consistent with how all the data is presentated, treating it as the holy grail of male rape! without any proof, at all, that this is a trend is disingenuous at best.
[don’t quote this sentence] but being shitty at math, and completely ignoring all evidence of your lack of math skills…well, that seems to be a required “asset” to join the MRM.
Well, I wrote my response already, but Argenti’s is much better than mine. Don’t bother quoting what I said. =P
Well, I guess part of my response is relevant – particularly my argument that large sample size doesn’t guarantee the absence of estimation errors.
Ack, please change all exclamation points to commas, autocorrect fucking hates me big time.
I totally missed this whole conversation folks, sorry. Now that I’m back taking a class (!) I can get around some paywalls if that’s useful for anyone.
Thank you Ally, it was a good overview of what I didn’t understand and Argenti’s details are always helpful but it can still be confusing (I was never a maths person).
I’ll try not to bring up siryouarebeingmocked again since he exasperates you (he doesn’t have an ask box, so I can’t ask him many questions anyway), but his main issue here http://siryouarebeingmocked.tumblr.com/post/72723605478/the-rape-nobody-talks-about * is still about the outlier isn’t it?
Argenti, I’m hesitant about including the part about false rape? I don’t think he calls himself MRA but false rape/accusations seem to be another topic of contention between these movements. If I brought it up, he might go on a tangent about that and I don’t think I can bring it up here since I’m already haunting a 3-month-old thread.
*Could someone please teach me how to insert links inside other words (excuse my oh-so-sophisticated wording), it looks very clunky when I don’t.
@hannasoumaki
SYABM is just bringing up the same point over and over again – just like his other anti-feminist buddies. There isn’t anything to address that hasn’t been addressed before. Tumblr anti-feminists really aren’t worth anyone’s time for the most part.
Anyway, to embed links in text, use the HTML anchor tags:
<a href=[insert link surrounded by double quotes (") here]>[insert text here]</a>
Here’s an example: google
noted, sorry for the bother.
Oh, no you didn’t bother me. I admit that I think it’s odd that you’re still paying attention to the arguments of Tumblr anti-feminists, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with asking questions here. :>
Thank you. I have been paying attention to both feminist and anti-feminist arguments on tumblr before I found this site. Since you’re clearly more knowledgeable and have more experience dealing with people of different ideology, I can see how you think it’s weird. I just want to educate myself more about issues in gender equality and want to hear out the two sides. I hope I haven’t offended anyone on this site so far, as you’ve been very receptive to me.
Would it still be bothersome if I inform syabm about your and Argenti’s clarifications of the CDC outlier? He seems to have a good understanding of statistics as well, I think he’ll be open to your arguments and he might shed hid view of limited information regarding the survey.
@hannasoumaki
If you want to give equal attention to anti-feminist arguments, that’s fine. But one thing I recommend is that you avoid falling into the trap of believing that both sides have equally well-supported arguments. Some arguments are simply better than others, regardless of how convincing they seem on the surface. It’s not impossible for both sides to be right or both sides to be wrong, but generally that’s not the case.
Douglas Adams said this way better than I can: “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”
As for your question, I ask that you don’t mention my clarifications of the CDC outlier to SYABM. I’m not interested in starting arguments with him even if he doesn’t know the person he’s arguing with. Maybe Argenti will let you mention zir arguments, though. In any case, you certainly haven’t offended me or anyone else as far as I can tell.
I understand what you mean. I won’t mention your arguments, thank you.
We actually are okay with small sample sizes for women, just not bad data, or obvious research bias (like made to penetrate being a thing)
the full quote is:
“In 2010, a total of 18,049
interviews were conducted (9,970
women and 8,079 men) in the U.S.
general population.”
Though obviously it would be nice if they bothered to get as many men as women.
and they determined relevance though a pretty strict standard error:
” *Estimate is not reported; relative standard error >30% or cell size ≤ 20″
So yes, we are looking at the exact same degree of relevance.
It would be nice if the CDC showed all it’s data though, instead of not showing the perpetration against men. (see their report on significant others in IPV, where men are plain ole’ missing tables.)
It’s shocking really. Feminists believe that there’s a large unknown amount of rape happening for women, but get pseudo-skeptic about that idea being extended to men.
PS: we are in contact with the CDC, It’s why their next report hasn’t come out yet.
I have to get to work, so I really don’t have time to give this the mocking it so richly deserves, so instead I’m just going to point and laugh.
Sure buddy. Sure. You’re personally holding up the CDC from releasing its next report. ::snort::
FFS, from the report itself:
Doing some basic math, if “18,049 interviews were conducted” then 22,200 eligibles were contacted, the difference in the numbers being eligibles who declined to participate. That’s over 4000 people declining. If males were more likely to decline than females, then that explains at least part of the difference in the gender rates for completed interviews. Another reason for a higher number of female participants would that females comprised a higher percentage of the eligible population.
But dude, go ahead and whine about a survey where you don’t understand survey methodology.
“Feminists believe that there’s a large unknown amount of rape happening for women, but get pseudo-skeptic about that idea being extended to men.”
Uh, no? Please see previous about how there are many studies showing the same general range of numbers for women, and no other’s showing this for men. And my repeated desire for MOAR STUDIES.
Seriously, find me 3 or 4 more studies showing that 1 in 6 men, or more, or made to penetrate. Cuz I could pull up easily that many showing that at least 1 in 6 women are raped.
Hannasoumaki — I’d also rather you didn’t quote me, I’m happy to answer your questions, you seem interested in actually learning stats and sorting what’s going on, etc. Syabm seems to have zero interest in anything that may not fall squarely into his preconceived notions and I’m running out of patience for arguing with someone who seems to be intentionally twisting statistical methods.
@argenti: *cough* you really haven’t done basic research into this have you? and you defintely read the post I made
but since you all have a hard on for survey analysis, here’s the authors and years, and findings:
Aizeman & Kelley, 1988 – 14% of men (and 29% of women) reported they had been forced to have intercourse against their will
Anderson 1998 – Survey of 461 women (general population) 43% secured sexual acts by verbal coercion; 36.5% by getting a man intoxicated; threat of force – 27.8%, use of force – 20%; By threatening a man with a weapon – 8.9%.
Anderson, 1999 – 43% of college women admitted to using verbal or physical pressure to obtain sex
Anderson and Aymami (1993) 28.5% of women reported the use of verbal coercion, 14.7% had coerced a man into sexual activity by getting him intoxicated and 7.1% had threatened or used physical force.
Fiebert & Tucci (1998) – 70% of male college students reported experiencing some type of harassment, pressuring, or coercion by a female
Hannon, Kunetz, Van Laar, & Williams (1996) – 10% of surveyed male college students reported experiencing a completed sexual assault perpetrated by a female intimate partner
Hogben, Byrne & Hamburger (1996) Lifetime prevalence of 24% for women having made a man engage in sexual activity against his will.
Krahe, Waizenhofer & Moller (2003) – 9.3% of women reported having used aggressive strategies to coerce a man into sexual activities. Exploitation of the man’s incapacitated state: 5.6% Verbal pressure: 3.2%. Physical force: 2%. An additional 5.4% reported attempted acts of sexual aggression
Larimer, Lydum, Anderson and Turner (1999) 20.7% of male respondents had been the recipients of unwanted sexual contact in the year prior to the survey. Verbal pressure was experienced by 7.9%, physical force by 0.6% and intoxication through alcohol or drugs by 3.6%.
Muehlenhard and Cook (1988) 23.8% of male respondents had engaged in unwanted sexual activity as a result of threat or physical force, and 26.8% reported unwanted sexual contact as a result of verbal pressure. For unwanted intercourse, the prevalence rates were 6.5% for physical force and 13.4% for verbal pressure.
O’Sullivan, Byers and Finkelman (1998) Overall incidence of 8% of women reporting sexual aggression for the academic year preceding the survey. Intercourse due to use of threat or physical force 0.5%, by use of alcohol or drugs 0.5% and attempted intercourse due to threat or use of physical force also 0.5%. Of male respondents, 18.5% reported having experienced sexual aggression. Specifically, 3.8% reported experiencing unwanted sexual intercourse due to use of alcohol or drugs, and 2.3% reported attempted intercourse due to threat or use of physical force.
Poppen and Segal (1988) 14% of women reported lifetime incident(s) of perpetration (including both verbal coercion and physical assault)
Russell and Oswald (2001) – 18% of women in a college sample reported engaging in sexually coercive behaviors, ranging from verbal threats and pressure to use of physically aggressive tactics.
Russell and Oswald (2002) 44% of college men in their sample reported being subjected to a sexually coercive tactic.
Shea (1988) Women’s reported lifetime prevalence – 19% for verbal coercion; 1.2% reported having physically assaulted a man.
Sisco, Becker, Figueredo, & Sales (2005) – A third of women reported that they had verbally harassed a person or pressured the person into performing a sexual act that the person felt uncomfortable with while roughly one in ten performed a coercive sexual act that would be considered illegal (e.g., sexual acts that involved a person who was unable or unwilling to consent)
Sorensen, Stein, Siegel, Golding and Burnam (1987) Lifetime prevalence rate of 9.4% and an adult prevalence rate of 7.2% for men’s sexual victimization (male self-reports).
Struckman-Johnson (1988) – 2% of 355 female college students reported they had forced sex on a dating partner at least once in their lifetime.
Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson (1998) – 43% of college men reported experiencing a coercive incident, of which 36% reported unwanted touch and 27% reported being coerced into sexual intercourse.
Have Fun!
So you managed to copy and paste that text from this webpage: http://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/2013/09/04/the-startling-facts-on-female-sexual-aggression/
It seems to be word for word. Simply copying and pasting someone else’s summaries isn’t “doing basic research”.
Ok, this formatting is going to suck cuz I just put my laptop away and am not getting it back out for this, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out
Aizeman & Kelley, 1988 – 14% of men (and 29% of women) reported they had been forced to have intercourse against their will
25 years old, but otherwise relevant, will have to check the methodology on that one
Anderson 1998 – Survey of 461 women (general population) 43% secured sexual acts by verbal coercion; 36.5% by getting a man intoxicated; threat of force – 27.8%, use of force – 20%; By threatening a man with a weapon – 8.9%.
Seeing how that adds to over 100%, either LOTS of those women used more than one method, or it’s only counting women who did one or more of those things. Also, not about rape, the topic at hand, so irrelevant, not looking it up.
Anderson, 1999 – 43% of college women admitted to using verbal or physical pressure to obtain sex
Also not relevant to the number of men made to penetrate.
Anderson and Aymami (1993) 28.5% of women reported the use of verbal coercion, 14.7% had coerced a man into sexual activity by getting him intoxicated and 7.1% had threatened or used physical force.
See above
Fiebert & Tucci (1998) – 70% of male college students reported experiencing some type of harassment, pressuring, or coercion by a female
Well could that be more vague? Come back with the abstract on that one and I’ll consider digging up full text.
Hannon, Kunetz, Van Laar, & Williams (1996) – 10% of surveyed male college students reported experiencing a completed sexual assault perpetrated by a female intimate partner
At least this one’s only 20 years old. And while relevant, disproves your argument that men are raped at the same rate as women (who’re raped at twice that rate)
Hogben, Byrne & Hamburger (1996) Lifetime prevalence of 24% for women having made a man engage in sexual activity against his will.
Also not relevant to the number of men made to penetrate
Krahe, Waizenhofer & Moller (2003) – 9.3% of women reported having used aggressive strategies to coerce a man into sexual activities. Exploitation of the man’s incapacitated state: 5.6% Verbal pressure: 3.2%. Physical force: 2%. An additional 5.4% reported attempted acts of sexual aggression
You really have trouble with the idea that you can’t just go swapping around data on perpetrators and victims don’t you?
Larimer, Lydum, Anderson and Turner (1999) 20.7% of male respondents had been the recipients of unwanted sexual contact in the year prior to the survey. Verbal pressure was experienced by 7.9%, physical force by 0.6% and intoxication through alcohol or drugs by 3.6%.
Hey, you’ve managed a second one that’s actually relevant! Maybe. I’ll have to see what they mean with “sexual contact” (the rate of non-rape sexual assault among women is higher than 20%)
Muehlenhard and Cook (1988) 23.8% of male respondents had engaged in unwanted sexual activity as a result of threat or physical force, and 26.8% reported unwanted sexual contact as a result of verbal pressure. For unwanted intercourse, the prevalence rates were 6.5% for physical force and 13.4% for verbal pressure.
Well, again, 25 years old, but relevant. I should’ve specified that you needed data new enough to be used in a college report, but hey, I have three to look up now.
O’Sullivan, Byers and Finkelman (1998) Overall incidence of 8% of women reporting sexual aggression for the academic year preceding the survey. Intercourse due to use of threat or physical force 0.5%, by use of alcohol or drugs 0.5% and attempted intercourse due to threat or use of physical force also 0.5%. Of male respondents, 18.5% reported having experienced sexual aggression. Specifically, 3.8% reported experiencing unwanted sexual intercourse due to use of alcohol or drugs, and 2.3% reported attempted intercourse due to threat or use of physical force.
So just under 4% of men were raped? Kinda disproves your point eh?
Poppen and Segal (1988) 14% of women reported lifetime incident(s) of perpetration (including both verbal coercion and physical assault)
25 years old AND isn’t talking about victims. You really like those two features.
Russell and Oswald (2001) – 18% of women in a college sample reported engaging in sexually coercive behaviors, ranging from verbal threats and pressure to use of physically aggressive tactics.
Still not about victims
Russell and Oswald (2002) 44% of college men in their sample reported being subjected to a sexually coercive tactic.
I am amaze. It’s recent and relevant! I’ll have to see what percent of those men were forced to penetrate, since that wording is, again, rather vague.
Shea (1988) Women’s reported lifetime prevalence – 19% for verbal coercion; 1.2% reported having physically assaulted a man.
Still not about victims
Sisco, Becker, Figueredo, & Sales (2005) – A third of women reported that they had verbally harassed a person or pressured the person into performing a sexual act that the person felt uncomfortable with while roughly one in ten performed a coercive sexual act that would be considered illegal (e.g., sexual acts that involved a person who was unable or unwilling to consent)
Ditto
Sorensen, Stein, Siegel, Golding and Burnam (1987) Lifetime prevalence rate of 9.4% and an adult prevalence rate of 7.2% for men’s sexual victimization (male self-reports).
Old and disproving your point, but I’m curious and will add it to my list.
Struckman-Johnson (1988) – 2% of 355 female college students reported they had forced sex on a dating partner at least once in their lifetime.
Dear gods man, got enough that aren’t about the victims?
Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson (1998) – 43% of college men reported experiencing a coercive incident, of which 36% reported unwanted touch and 27% reported being coerced into sexual intercourse.
Hey, I finally found one that may actually support your point. Wonder what the methodology and sample size and such were.
So, I need to track down…
Aizeman & Kelley, 1988 – 14% of men (and 29% of women) reported they had been forced to have intercourse against their will
Larimer, Lydum, Anderson and Turner (1999) 20.7% of male respondents had been the recipients of unwanted sexual contact in the year prior to the survey. Verbal pressure was experienced by 7.9%, physical force by 0.6% and intoxication through alcohol or drugs by 3.6%.
Muehlenhard and Cook (1988) 23.8% of male respondents had engaged in unwanted sexual activity as a result of threat or physical force, and 26.8% reported unwanted sexual contact as a result of verbal pressure. For unwanted intercourse, the prevalence rates were 6.5% for physical force and 13.4% for verbal pressure.
Russell and Oswald (2002) 44% of college men in their sample reported being subjected to a sexually coercive tactic.
Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson (1998) – 43% of college men reported experiencing a coercive incident, of which 36% reported unwanted touch and 27% reported being coerced into sexual intercourse.
Congrats, you managed five. And the one that disproves your point but piques my interest —
Sorensen, Stein, Siegel, Golding and Burnam (1987) Lifetime prevalence rate of 9.4% and an adult prevalence rate of 7.2% for men’s sexual victimization (male self-reports).
Of course, of those five only two specificly mention forced sex rates, with one more implying I’ll find that in the full text. While I take a nap and see if my pharm student has time to find those today (things like study titles and journal names would be incredibly helpful you know), why don’t you PLEASE sort out why you can’t determine things about victims from the perpetrators and vice versa.
Kiwi Girl — not only am I not surprised, I’m not sure the short citations, meant for in text reference to things cited in long form at the end, will be enough to find the articles.
@Argenti: I also think that running only univariate comparisons of male and female rates isn’t helpful given that more than simply gender contributes towards the probability of being sexually assaulted. I would be more interested in a comparison based on age-, SES-, and urban/rural location-standardised male and female populations. I would also want to see separate analyses by type of perpetrator:
– male perpetrator (non-prison)
– female perpetrator (non-prison)
– multiple perpetrators (non-prison)
Unwanted touch and coercion would need to be defined very specifically as well, so all like instances were included.
This isn’t a criticism of what you are doing; it’s a comment that perhaps the studies in this area could improve their statistical analysis of their results.
Auggz — you’re more proving my point about MAOR STUDIES PLZ than criticing me 🙂
Cuz I totally agree, just off the top of my head, are male victims as likely as female victims to be assaulted by someone they know? I’d actual guess it’s higher for men, simply because groping men isn’t seen as “boys will be boys” — which would also factor into what “unwanted touching” means and the role of gender in that.
This is part of my issue with the one saying that 70% of men experienced [stuff] or harassment. How exactly are men who’re harrassed relevant to men being raped? You know if a feminist compared sexual harassment to rape they’d be screaming about how we call everything rape.
And in the case of coercion and the like, how often, for both genders, did that result in a sex act versus attempted coercion? Cuz attempted coercion is asshole and may well be emotionally abusive, but it isn’t what most people mean by attempted rape, and certainly isn’t the same as coerced sexual acts (aka rape). What is compable here is the rate of attempted coercion versus sex acts resulting from coercion for either gender.
“I’m still wondering how he knows the CDC is holding their reports only because of him.”
Me fucking too.
Well now that only other contribute to the thread is interested: I never made the claim that I’m personally holding up the CDC, That was Sparky’s comments, have them explain their thought process.
The people on this tread do realize that the article it’s attracted to is about how researchers avoiding describing men as rape victims AND women as perpetrators?
But of course ignore the evidence of great female perpetration.
Never change manboobers, never change.