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.
Let me break it down for you:
You came in here to make a claim about the correlation between women’s status and the prevalence of female-on-male rape.
To support your claim, you cited the Hines study.
I pointed out that the study is unreliable for several reasons, and Hines herself admits that the victimization survey suffered from major methodological flaws.
I concluded that your claim about the correlation between women’s status and the prevalence of female-on-male rape is unfounded.
You have failed to respond to anything I have said about the Hines study even though my counterarguments are not only relevant but also backed by actual evidence – the study that you yourself cited.
Go ahead and leave if you want. All you have proven is not that you are right, but that you are willing to ignore people’s counter arguments because you think one study is enough to make your arguments correct regardless of how reliable it is.
It’s funny that he can’t tell the difference between commenting on a months-old thread, and replying to the absurd things claimed by someone who has revived a months-old thread; but it’s even funnier that he doesn’t seem to understand that there were several different people commenting in this thread. Making up 10% of the total comments is a heck of a lot.
Well, thank goodness! Random asshole on the Internet is allowing this thread to end!
One Hershey’s kiss says he’ll be back.
I love how he claims I agree with him, I explain I don’t, why, and what I meant, and he says he’s already countered everything. Which is funny for two reasons, one, he hasn’t and couldn’t have, two, we’ve actually honest to goodness already countered all these claims. About fifteen times!
To whomever started it…
This is the thread that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends…
I stopped to do a drive-by comment that troll does not understand quantum mechanics either. It’s not correct to posit an effect at the macro level based on quantum mechanics, which is sub-atomic.
So this is just so much fail as well:
No, just fucking no.
RE: Kiwi Girl
Man, if trolly comes back claiming some Secret bullshit about how quantum mechanics says our universe is created by human thought, I am going to laugh and laugh.
Is there any subject that MRAs are okay at? So far, they fail at maths, statistics, English, history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, biology, physics. Did I miss anything out?
Come on auggz, your expectations are too high! That’s undergrad level, they never completed high school.
I’d add Political Science
Advertising. And Graphic Design too! Those damn MSpaint posters make me cry… and I made some decently popular MSpaint art not that long ago!
Songwriting and poetry.
Home ec, probably. The way they complain about women not cooking anymore and having to do their laundry and clean and whatnot, I can only assume they lack these skills.
They’ve got “being an asshole” in the bag, though.
h5n6q And after Ally critiqued that study, I asserted this conclusion was obvious, since people who aren’t empowered enough to believe they can rape, won’t rape.
Which means the expected rates of male on female rape in the past should be… higher than now. It also means the rate of male on female rape should be lower.
Unless you are asserting that in the past men felt powerless of over women because… Women couldn’t vote, own property, were seen as the property of the men in her life, etc.?
You know, all those things in the past which kept men in positions of inferiority to the women of the world.
Added to the inanity of your assertions and your dogged inability to read the facts laid out above, married to a flat out refusal to apply the principles of logic to the things you claim are arguments, there really isn’t any reason (other than piñata value) to respond to you.
Nope. A single data point is inadequate to extrapolate a trend. Since this allall the 12 month study is; one slice of analysed time, with one group of people, and it’s one which restricts the available pool of data points it polls to a degree which skews the data in other ways, it can’t be used the way you are trying to use it.
This is why the CDC says your interpretation of the facts is wrong
And even while I was typing I see more comments sniping at things I NEVER said. Did I ever say we know the 12 month figure exactly equals the lifetime figure? NO!! I said it mostly likely is AT LEAST the lifetime figure,
Let me get this straight, you are whining that people were more generous in their description of your position than the facts merit? The modifier, “at least” means you are arguing the 12 month figure is the lower bound for lifetime, and that you think it is probably less than the actual rate.
And you wonder why we say you don’t understand the stats. Me, I wonder if you logic.
And if you think your arguments are going to convince people that women raping men is not something to be concerned about, well, good luck with that. Go ahead, assert those million men were all made to penetrate by other men.
Now who’s strawmanning? Go ahead, read the thread and cite the people making that argument.
Oh, I see, I misunderstood this. Still baffling. There are two reasons men are generally seen to rape.
One, a sense of frustrated entitlement (stranger rape often has this component).
Two a sense of general entitlement. This is the basis for most other rapes. Both intimate partner rape, and acquaintance rape.
I’d argue there are two different sets of entitlement at work. I’d even hypothesise more of the “made to penetrate” perpetrated by women was in the intimate partner form. I am tired, and may phrase this less than perfectly, but my thinking goes like this.
Intimate partner rape is more likely to be (for want of a better term) the sort of thing which can be considered rape by misadventure. A person who is persistent enough in pursuing their desire to have sex with a person they already have a sexual relationship with. That persistence can induce a resignation to “just go along”. If it’s a woman doing the pushing it is likely to end up in a “male, made to penetrate”.
This is just me, thinking out loud (thought it is, in part, based on my personal experience). It would need (drumroll please) some studies to find out if this is the case. It’s also possible that such studies would imply an increase in the rate; because people have come to different understandings about the nature of such interactions. As more men come to the conclusion that such acts are wrong, they are more likely to report them. This is the sort of thing which leads to confirmation bias of such things as the “as women feel more powerful they commit more rape” nonsense.
1: We like Piñtas.
2: We’ve gone over this in detail, more than once (you aren’t the first fool to necro this topic).
3: You are of the sort who seems to think “the last word” = proof the other side has conceded.
4: See one.
If (from my mouth to God’s ear) you were willing to read the 12 pages of comments made before you decided to grace us with drollery of your wit, you would see your questions have been asked and answered.
If you were paying attention to the nature of response you are getting, you would see that what you take for defensiveness is merely being weary.
If you were a more reasonable human being you would admit you had gone off like a teenaged boy with poor sex ed: inconsiderate, half-cocked, and too soon.
I know you’re just thinking aloud, here but this worries me. Intimate partner rape can be as aggressive, as violent, as gaslight-y and as deliberate as any other rape. I am not aware of any evidence that the majority of it is of the form you describe where the rapist is either unaware of their partner’s non-consent or regards it as something zie can persuade their partner to change to consent via pestering. Dangerously close to rape apologiy.
I think it’s as likely that most intimate partner rape has the rapist regarding the consent of their partner as either irrelevant or even obligatory (“We’re partners so you owe me sex!”), as something which can be forced. And so one of the problems (which surfaces in studies of rape) is that all too frequently neither the rapist or victim regards it as a “real” rape.
Lends a certain irony to the term “intimate partner”, too, doesn’t it?
I’m with titianblue here. The NISVS (the survey that this whole thread is about) reveals that, for female victims raped by current or former intimate partners over a lifetime, 43% were raped when they were passed out, too intoxicated or high to consent. And 52.5% were raped by physical force or threat of physical force. It also seems that victims are as likely to be raped while passed out, too intoxicated or high to consent by acquaintances as they are by current or former intimate partners, further suggesting that many current or former intimate partners deliberately prey on their victims when they are helpless and vulnerable.
*does a quick review of those studies the last troll dropped*
Can’t say either way. Looks like about an even split between physical and verbal coercion, but there isn’t nearly enough here to conclude anything from that. Either way, “respect by misadventure”? No, just no.
But hi pecunium!
*rape by misadventure
I shouldn’t post without my glasses on
I have nothing to add to this thread other than to note that h5n6 is chicken flu. Not sure what we can do with the added q, but I’m going to hear sneezing chickens every time I see that Sir CAPS LOCK has “graced us” with a post again.
I’m not trying to minimise rape (and I’m sorry I seemed to be doing that). I’m trying to say that the ways we look at coercive sex are changing, and that things which weren’t seen as problematic (much less rape) aren’t seen that way now, so that the reportage of things which might not be seen as unreasonable (much less rape) by the wider society, are more likely to be reported on surveys such as this; which will skew the rates of report.
Rape by misadventure was me trying to show that there is rape which doesn’t require intent; because rape is a crime which takes place because the victim doesn’t consent, not because the rapist doesn’t need to mens rea to be guilty of rape.
I get that. And I know that 50 years ago, your scenario wouldn’t have been considered rape. But …
And what I’m trying to say is that although this is possible, this is also exactly the sort of “grey area” that rapists use to have “plausible deniability”. And that might include being able to deny to themselves that they are rapists, just like rapists will talk about “taking advantage of a drunk girl” or the victim “being fair game” to persuade us and them that what they were doing wasn’t rape or that they hadn’t realised that it was. Which is why your use of the term “misadventure” and your assumption of innocence in such a scenario is worrying me so.
Yes, there is the possibility that the rapist in your scenario didn’t set out deliberately to rape their victim but at best they didn’t care enough to ensure that they didn’t. And that’s not the equivalent of misadventure – that’s the equivalent of me running someone over whilst driving recklessly. I might not have set out to kill someone but I didn’t care enough to ensure that I didn’t. and their death wouldn’t be ruled misadventure, it would at best be manslaughter. Am I making sense?
Pecunium: MRAs already think most rapes are the “misadventure” variety. They won’t be able to parse any nuance out of what you’ve typed.
I disagree with this. You know men don’t just fall into vaginas, right?
Yes, I do know (personally, intimately, because it happened to me) that forced to penetrate isn’t “men just falling into vaginas.
Which was the primary type of rape being discussed (since the pretense of it being as common as men forcing penetration on women is lie the necroing troll is reprising).