OK. Please can we talk about women raping men?

[curlew]

It's a key part of the MRA agenda. Some MRA even say that men are as often victims of rape by women as women are of rape by men.

I absolutely agree that sex should always be consensual,and if a man has been forced, by either physical or psychological means into sex, then he has been raped and deserved of course to be taken seriously, and for the perpetrator to be charged and ,nif found guilty, convicted. And I know that an erection is a physiological response, and does not necessarily mean that a man actually wants to have sex.

But the MRA are full of stories of men waking up after falling asleep drunk at parties to find women on top of them. And vqriations on th them of being forced to penetrate against their will. And, it might just be my misandry showing, but really? Does this happen a lot? Is it a really serious problem that needs to be addressed, and have equivilant resources given to it?

Are there many cases of men being forced to penetrate other men?

That's true WhentheRed, the lifetime figure for prevalence of sexual violence is 4.4 times the yearly figure for men, and 17 times the yearly figure for women. I've seen various attempts at explanation for why the lifetime ratio differs so widely from the yearly ratio, such as:
? Participants in the survey are 18+, so when getting the data for the 12 month figures, only rapes from 17+ are counted. Whereas the lifetime figures count rapes from any age. So perhaps women are being raped far, far more often at 16 or under than men (I don't have the stats on this, but it certainly seems possible)
? Related to the above; women aren't being raped more often, they are just more likely to reveal it. Men are unlikely to report child sexual abuse, so it wouldn't show up in lifetime figures, but they are more willing to report it as an adult (I know that only 1 in 6 male abuse victims will 'admit' to being abused, but I don't know the rate for women, so can't say whether there is a gender difference in under-reporting child sexual abuse)
? A larger number of women are being raped less frequently, whereas a smaller number of men are being raped multiple times (can't see the reason why this would be true)
? Rape rates for women have dropped to a comparable level with men, and this is now being reflected in the up-to-date 12-month statistics, but the lifetime figures include women who lived during a time when more women were raped than men. (Wishful thinking, I suspect)

SinisterSal reversing the 79.2% figure, that leaves 20.8% of male victims who were forced to penetrate male perpetrators, or 263,536 cases per year.

Sue, thank you for summarising some of the information in your link.

You're welcome! It's a well-organised report, very readable.

Whenthered- to use a very macho term, you really took one for the team, thanks for summarising that.

Side note - were I an "MRA" things that would really concern me would be things like combating the male suicide rate, prison reform - particularly of Young Offenders Institutions, male health problems like ED and particular cancers. These are all problems which disproportionately affect men.

Yet actual MRAs seem to be more concerned with demonising women.

I've been thinking about this when I find myself unable to sleep, and what occurs to me is:

Men are assumed to be always 'up for it'
Men wouldn't report a woman doing this, because it undermines their manliness (ie. that they should always be 'up for it')

Ie. it's yet another case of the patriarchy/macho culture harming men as much as women. The attitude that men are always a glimpse of a woman's legs away from having sex means that women get blamed if they are raped, but also means that if men are assaulted by a woman they don't get taken seriously.

In both cases, the person doing the assaulting is clearly wrong, but the same macho society attitude in each case condemns/ridicules the victim rather than placing the blame where it should be - on the one perpetrating the assault.

Of course blame the individual women for committing the crime, but it's not women as a group causing the harm, it's the patriarchy (again), and yet again the MRA's anger is mis-directed.

It often seems to me that MRA anger is really disappointment in the patriarchy for not delivering what it seems to promise men.

Feminists aren't making men kill themselves through shame, rape and mutilate one another in prison, shoulder disproportionate financial burdens, ignore male-specific diseases, etc. Patriarchal values do all that to them. But they daren't reject patriarchy, so they blame its enemies.

I thought I'd swing by here as I'm a man currently working through the various emotional and psychological issues that may or may not have been caused by my being "sexually assaulted" around 8 years ago. In my case I was 20 years old and my assaulter was a older co-worker in her thirties who took advantage of me being extremely drunk to have sex with me.

Before the event I could see where things were going but did not have the experience or sobriety or social skills to remove myself from the situation without causing a scene. I'm sure there are plenty of things that I could have done, including using force, but I didn't, I can't explain why. The situation was disturbing and distressing, the woman was very insistent and pushy, and I couldn't handle it.

Afterwards, I didn't think of the event as an assault (even though I would have been furious if a similar thing had happened to one of my female friends). I didn't tell anyone about it then or since (bar my therapist), because of shame I felt. The two people who worked out what happened (both female co-workers) thought it was hilarious and mocked me quite relentlessly about it for a short while. I'm still not fully able to consider myself a victim, even as I understand the long term damage that it has done to my life.

---

I'm not an MRA, but I'm familiar with the works of most of the thought leaders in the movement. I believe the MRA take on this is largely based upon the CDC report, which is contentious in the fact that specific measures were taken to reduce the statistics for male rape victims, through use of semantics. This, to anyone who is sensitive to the issue, feels a lot like an attempt to marginalise the male victims. By doing so you also get the cheeky bonus of almost 100% of rapists being men.

Whether or not this is a deliberate aim, the result is the same - the regular media discussion that makes headlines is about "rape", and how that is something men do. The 1,000,000 or so men who are non-raped by women in the USA in a year are politically inconvenient for some and uncomfortable to think about for most. That discomfort is expressed in this thread by various people discussing "power dynamics" and how that somehow makes it "different" (but we're not sure how), which is truly dehumanising.

It is reassuring that when people are presented with an individual case they can understand that there is a human being and can muster empathy, but it's also disturbing that in the abstract very few people care. Or indeed that a female poster can come on here and admit that she used to act in sexually aggressive ways towards men and few people bat an eyelid. I understand she regrets it and I really don't want to point fingers at her, but just imagine a male poster coming on here talking about being sexually aggressive towards women, and what your reaction would be.

Even I would be more disgusted by a man saying that than a woman, because that is how strongly we, as a society, are conditioned to never, ever acknowledge or respect male victimhood and male vulnerability.

I should add that in no way do I support highlighting the existance of female-on-male rape and the detriment to any other forms of rape, but it would be nice it it was even acknowledge as a thing occasionally, rather than always hearing the dogmatic rhetoric that often surrounds sexual assault. Rape overall is an incredibly complex issue, and far to many people want to lock it down to black and white for the sake of simplicity (or something, I don't know why really).

I haven't participated in this thread and I know it's less active now, however I have an interesting link.

Over on Manboobz manboobz.com/2013/09/18/for-a-voice-for-men-and-its-edmonton-offshoot-terrifying-women-is-a-form-of-human-rights-activism/comment-page-1/ in the comments they linked to an official response from the CDC regarding the much misused NISVS report.

It is presently on Reddit unfortunately, but it does a great job of refuting the MRA bollocks surrounding the report.
www.reddit.com/r/againstmensrights/comments/1lq3n3/cdc_responds_are_40_of_rapists_women/

WRT to the NISVS response, there is basically no refutation that female-on-male sexual aggression is not an issue, it just takes a very long time to explain (quite rightly) that a specific attempt to quantify it is flawwed.

Note in particular the apples argument. This is theoretically true and adds significant noise to the calculation. However, this would only give a significant difference if we assumed that all the men were forced to penetrate by a small number of women, but the report does state:

"Across all types of violence, the majority of both female and male victims reported experiencing violence from one perpetrator"

It goes on later to give more figures for this later on.

For those of you desperate to believe that this can't possibly be an issue, I will link to the following, which lists a number of empirical studies going back to the 80s that all corroborate the very real existence of female sexual aggression.

freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/2013/09/04/the-startling-facts-on-female-sexual-aggression/

Remember that it wasn't that long ago that everyone believed that rape barely happened at all, try stepping back from what you think you know and asking if there is just maybe a chance that there is more going on than you are regularly made aware of.

ritamin I said that the response refuted the MRA bollocks surrounding the report, I did not say it refuted female on male sexual assault.

Indeed the CDC make it clear that this report solely focuses on the victims and not the 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).

You have linked to a blog that regurgitates the figures that my link, by the people who wrote the report, refuted.

This sentence within your 'source' sums it up:

This huge victim survey made a surprising finding. It suggested that the rates of men being forced to penetrate women over the past year was identical to the rates of women reporting being raped, each 1.1%

Why just repeat what I just refuted?

If you had a terrible experience I am sorry for you, that was not what I was referring to.

These statistics have been routinely misused by MRAs (yourself included). All I am saying is that the report can in no way help you prove any point about the prevalence of female on male sexual aggression.

That is all.

By all means, commission a study, but with this particular source you are out of luck.

With regards to your original post:

I'm not an MRA, but I'm familiar with the works of most of the thought leaders in the movement.

MRA ' thought leaders' . Really?

Paul Elam - manboobz.com/2010/11/14/paul-elams-vanishing-post-blaming-and-mocking-rape-victims/

Warren Farrell - manboobz.com/2013/05/03/putting-warren-farrells-notorious-comments-on-exciting-date-rape-in-context/

If this is what constitutes thought, the mind, it boggles.

Stop playing 'reasonable mens human rights activist'. I see you.

WhentheRed
Also totally agree with everything you said :)

Ah, Manboobz. What an authority on all things feminist he is. Such depth.

^But are these women asking to get raped?

In the most severe and emphatic terms possible the answer is NO, THEY ARE NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED.

They are freaking begging for it.

Damn near demanding it.

And all the outraged PC demands to get huffy and point out how nothing justifies or excuses rape won’t change the fact that there are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.^ source Paul Elam, AVfM Blog

It is important that a woman’s “noes” be respected and her “yeses” be respected. And it is also important when her nonverbal “yeses” (tongues still touching) conflict with those verbal “noes” that the man not be put in jail for choosing the “yes” over the “no.” He might just be trying to become her fantasy. source Warren Farrell, The Myth of Male Power

These are both revolting views of women victims of rape, but they also lead me to wonder whether they believe these things about men who are raped by other men or (as the law in the UK stands at the moment) sexually assaulted by women? Because, if they do, then they aren't men's rights activists at all, they are rapists rights activists and should be recognised as such.

At no point has anyone denied that women can and do sexually assault men, ritamin. We believe you.

It makes me sad that so-called MRAs take such a victim blaming approach to rape and sexual assault, it must make their male readers who have also been victims of those crimes feel really awful

CaptChaos wrote - "It makes me sad that so-called MRAs take such a victim blaming approach to rape and sexual assault, it must make their male readers who have also been victims of those crimes feel really awful"

I've seen many examples of MRAs blaming female victims of rape and sexual assault, but I've never seen MRAs blame male victims.

'SigmundFraude, the link posted by OpheliaMonarch contained a link to the Paul Elam blog - the words actually written by Paul Elam. The Paul Elam words were and are written on the Voice for Men site. Those are the words that are shocking and hateful.'

Yes I know. Paul Elam's words are very often distorted and twisted, given sinister meanings etc by Manboobz, amongst others. I have been in contact with a couple of people who write for AVFM, and they are most definitely not hateful, nor is Paul Elam.

Twisted? those were verbatim, no?

I've never heard of Paul Elam but I don't see how anyone could read those words and not think that he is a hateful misogynist of the highest order. Only another hateful misogynist could think otherwise.