Feminists have done a powerful job of making the sexual assault of women by men a public issue. Male victims, though, have remained largely invisible. In fact, one in ten victims of sexual assault is male. Most of these men are raped by other men.
The Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network is attempting to raise awareness of this issue. As part of their campaign, they are sponsoring this really interesting two-minute video made by my colleague, Dr. Broderick Fox, professor of Art History and Visual Arts at Occidental College:
UPDATE: In the comment thread, Umlud posted a provocative paragraph from an article by Christopher Glazek at N+1 that I thought was worth including:
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.In January, prodded in part by outrage over a series of articles in the New York Review of Books, the Justice Department finally released an estimate of the prevalence of sexual abuse in penitentiaries. The reliance on filed complaints appeared to understate the problem. For 2008, for example, the government had previously tallied 935 confirmed instances of sexual abuse. After asking around, and performing some calculations, the Justice Department came up with a new number: 216,000. That’s 216,000 victims, not instances. These victims are often assaulted multiple times over the course of the year. The Justice Department now seems to be saying that prison rape accounted for the majority of all rapes committed in the US in 2008, likely making the United States the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women.
Comments 62
Umlud — February 4, 2012
(words in bold added by me.)
If we include the rates of prison rape, then (thanks to our system of "corrections") the rate is likely reversed. From Glazek (quoted in Sullivan's the Dish):
This is not to say that the rape of women isn't important, but merely shows another way in which male rape has - as Lisa put it - "remained largely invisible".
Block quote taken from here: http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/02/fight-or-fuck.html
If you want to reach Glazek's full story, it can be found here: http://nplusonemag.com/raise-the-crime-rate
The Visibility of Sexual Abuse Survivors « Media Watch — February 4, 2012
[...] Male Victims of Sexual Assault [Sociological Images] [...]
Nunya — February 4, 2012
http://radicalhub.com/2012/01/27/rape-is-worse-when-it-happens-to-men-reports-the-new-york-times/
Thebewilderness — February 4, 2012
The assumption is that if you include incarcerated criminals in the statistics it will skew them, because they are incarcerated criminals, yanno.
I wish that the matter was not always framed as a competition of who suffers the most at the hands of the perps, men or women, and a little more on yo! could we stop with the rape jokes already and take this seriously.
anonymous — February 4, 2012
For more evidence of this phenomenon, look at the gender representation on Project Unbreakable: http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/
I wasn't sure I wanted to send in a submission until I saw that there were no males. I think it's going to take a lot more men coming forward to break this trend. The male pressure and shame to remain silent is overwhelming.
Erik B. Anderson — February 4, 2012
Thanks for making the point that "Most of these men are raped by other men" before you even got started with the point of the blog. God forbid you actually say women are capable of raping men. That's right, thanks for nothing.
$ocraTTTe$ — February 4, 2012
WOMEN RAPE MEN AT THE SAME RATE THAT MEN RAPE WOMEN
I know this sounds shocking but recent statistical information collected by the CDC suggests that most male victims of sexual assault are attacked by women rather than men.
More surprising, the CDC report suggests that, in the last 12 months, men and women have been victims of sexual assault at roughly equal rates. I know this is shocking, but let's get into the meat of the data and see what the CDC has uncovered.
Take a look at table 2.2 on page 19 of the CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (2010).
While less than 1% of men are "raped," rape is defined in the report as forced penetration. If we look at the "other sexual violence" section of the table, we find that about 5% of men have been "forced to penetrate" another human being at some point in their lifetime.
On page 24 of the report, it states that men who were "forced to penetrate," stated that the perpetrator who victimized them was female in 80% of cases.
"Forced to penetrate" was defined as being forced to place their penis in the orifice of another person against their will. So for example, a man who was drunk and passed out while a woman performed oral sex on him would be included in this statistic, or a man who was forced to place his penis in a woman who was pointing a gun at him and demanding sex, or simply pinned down underneath a larger stronger person who then forced the victim's penis into him/herself.
Male victims of these types of assaults were not counted as "raped," which seems a bit absurd to me. I think if someone has sex with you while you are unconscious they have raped you, whether they penetrate you or they make you penetrate them.
But the rabbit hole goes deeper.
If we return to table 2.2 on page 19, we see that in the last 12 months 1.1% of men were "forced to penetrate" another person (with an 80% likelihood that that person who forced them was female).
When we look at table 2.1 on page 18, we find that in the last 12 months 1.1% of women were penetrated against their will (this number includes attempted penetration).
What this means, is that in the last year men and women were raped (I am counting men who were forced to penetrate as raped, though the CDC uses a different definition) at EXACTLY THE SAME RATE. And the majority (80%) of perpetrators of assault against men were female.
This information is frankly, MIND BLOWING.
It is not widely acknowledged that men can even be raped by women, there are almost no instances of women being arrested or prosecuted for sexually assaulting men (convictions for sexual assault are 99% male), and yet this survey seems to show that MEN ARE RAPED BY WOMEN ALL THE TIME, ALMOST AS OFTEN AS WOMEN ARE RAPED BY MEN.
If you think we have a problem with women underreporting sexual assault, this problem absolutely pales in comparison to the issue of male victims underreporting, not to mention under-prosecution of female perpetrators.
According to this survey, assuming it is accurate, women are almost half of all rapists, but they represent less than 1% of the people brought to justice for rape. This is a travesty, and I don't understand why no one is paying any attention to this information.
PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS. MEN ARE SUFFERING AND BEING RAPED ALMOST AS OFTEN AS WOMEN AND NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE OR NOTICE, LET ALONE TAKE ACCOUNT OF THE FACT THAT IT IS MOSTLY WOMEN DOING THE RAPING.
Maybe the survey is flawed, but if it isn't it is deeply disturbing that no one seems to even pay these facts any attention.
IQ — February 4, 2012
I would like to point out that the sexual assault and rape of boys and men are a much bigger problem than most people think. It's an even more ignored problem than prison rape because society sees women as protective and nurturing. The truth that women also commit these acts creates a lot of cognitive dissidence in people, thus why it's largely invisible and ignored.
These threads on reddit point to some of the facts on this subject:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/p7i2c/abuse_by_women_videos/
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/oii5b/the_sexual_assault_and_rape_of_men/
Gilbert Pinfold — February 5, 2012
A simple way to reduce male rape victims would be to liberalize the justice system further, releasing more criminals into the wider population. Another way would be to have 'co-ed' prisons. The 'worst of the worst' (apologies to GWB) will rape whoever or whatever is at hand. It's what they do.
Anonymous — February 5, 2012
This is one of the areas where the men's rights activists get really frustrating. I remember taking up a similar question of domestic violence at a gender studoes class, and being met with suspicion. Of course feminism has to, and does evolve in letting in more intersectionality and with newer generations seeing some of the faults with the old one, but at the same time the current backlash really seems to hamper that evolution. If you're a feminist interested in the question of women raping men, for example, how do you know where t olook for information and to avoid desiniformation and bogus academics and studies that are working on an anti feminist and misogynist foundation, using rape and domestic violence as a weapon? And how do you legitimize yourself if you decide to research the subject?
Ryan — February 6, 2012
While volunteering with a rape crisis center, we had a presentation from a male survivor. He shared with us that a man might not disclose being raped because many people then assume that he has also perpetrated.
Moudou — February 8, 2012
That prison statistic is awful. There is no doubt that this must be taken seriously by society and the authorities. I don't believe in punishment for it's own sake, but if people insist on it, inmates body integrity must be protected or we have to rethink the idea of prison, full stop.
[image] Symbolic Consequences of the New Definition of “Forcible Rape”. « slendermeans — August 23, 2012
[...] January the U.S. government announced a new definition of “forcible rape” to include male victimsand oral or anal penetration in addition to vaginal. This has legal implications, of course, but [...]
I KNEW HIM becomes campaign video for RAINN.org | — September 4, 2012
[...] The video has since been discussed and reposted in a range of online community contexts including the interdisciplinary University of Minnesota-based blog The Society Pages. [...]
Symbolic Consequences of the New Definition of “Forcible Rape”. [image] | feimineach — December 30, 2013
[…] January the U.S. government announced a new definition of “forcible rape” to include male victimsand oral or anal penetration in addition to vaginal. This has legal implications, of course, but […]
feimineach.com — April 25, 2014
[…] January the U.S. government announced a new definition of “forcible rape” to include male victimsand oral or anal penetration in addition to vaginal. This has legal implications, of course, but […]
Foucault's Ghost — December 13, 2014
there is too much focus on "women don't do that" when clearly they do.