
A new study reveals that men are often the victims of sexual assault - tokenadult
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html
======
chimeracoder
I'm not surprised to read this. Any statistics about rape have to be taken
with a huge helping of salt, because of all the issues surrounding data
collection and self-reporting. However, I have read at least some reasonably
reputable sources citing that in over half of all rapes that occur in the US,
the victim is male[0].

Even if this is an overstatement, it's clear that the classic "man physically
overpowers woman" narrative of rape is false - both because of the gender
assumptions and because rape does not always involve physical dominance.

It's kind of sad that sexual assault and rape are oftentimes viewed through
the lens of gender-based crimes. In reality, sexual assault and rape have
nothing to do with gender, and should be treated as serious problems
regardless of the sex and/or gender of both the victim and perpetrator.

By perpetuating a false image of rape/assault, we end up with a broken matched
filter[1] for what constitutes rape. As a result, people tell themselves that
what they experienced "wasn't really rape" \- because the victim is male, or
because they were under the influence, or because they were married to the
perpetrator, or any other number of reasons. And this is how we end up with
victims who stay silent.

[0] This is not the same thing as saying that over half of all rape victims
are male!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matched_filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matched_filter)

~~~
yebyen
I am not sure how your [0] can be true. The only scenario I can imagine where
it is true, there are a lot of men who are raped repeatedly, but not as many
women raped repeatedly, or more individual women victims.

Please clarify what you meant... citation would also be nice.

~~~
baldeagle
I believe that is the implication. Think of incarcerated populations.

------
simonebrunozzi
Surprised that this one didn't get any comment so far. This is 100% contrary
to popular belief. Another point that often surprises people is that most of
violence occurs in the family, perpetrated by people that the victim knows
extremely well.

~~~
Raphmedia
I guess that depends where you live. Where I come from (near Montréal), the
issue has been talked of a lot and there are posters in colleges and
universities. Probably high schools too, but I wouldn't know.

I didn't comment when I saw this thread because I thought "well, that's common
knowledge..." Interesting article on an important issue nonetheless.

I'm not downplaying the fact that men get raped. This is an important issue
and people should be aware of it. I did upvote the thread.

~~~
marvin
I personally have at least one male friend who was by any sensible definition
raped by a woman, as an adult. There is good reason to believe that this is an
extremely unreported type of crime, and the data appears to back it up. I've
been talking about the NISVS 2010 study for two years now, and no one believes
me when I point out what its surveys show.

[Edit: I see by now a lot of people have commented on this story. What stands
out to me is that still, even in the face of the data mentioned in this story,
much of the discussion revolves around prison rape with a male perpetrator.
One of the points in this story is that even prison rape doesn't tell the most
shocking part of the story of male victims of sexual abuse. Paraphrasing from
the story: One of the studies of the Bureau of Justice data notes that in a
certain subset of the data, 46% of the male victims of sexual assault
_reported a female perpetrator_.

Citation:
[http://jmm.sagepub.com/content/12/3/275.abstract](http://jmm.sagepub.com/content/12/3/275.abstract)

This discussion is so far outside of people's gender norms and assumptions
that it becomes hard to have a proper debate without constantly referencing
the data. These are currently the best firm data sources we have on this
subject, and the narrative should eventually change to reflect the available
information. Women can be and sometimes are sexual offenders, and not only
towards other women and children].

[2nd edit: Aaaaaaand it's flagged off the front page. Glad I was here two
hours ago, or I would have missed this excellent summary of the latest studies
in a very interesting branch of sociology. The large majority of HN users
should really broaden their horizons a little].

~~~
Crake
>Aaaaaaand it's flagged off the front page.

Any discussion of men's issues is usually quickly suppressed by the usual
parties. :/

------
marincounty
I didn't read this study, but when I was younger I read, "You are going to
prison". It pointed out that so many rapes are carried out in prison. Even
twenty years ago, my friends girlfriend said, 'Well, they deserve it!". My
come back was 'but wendy, most are in there for non violent drug offenses.
friends girlfriend, "Well that's not a legitimate book anyways--I was written
by a ex-con". Well the book scared me.

~~~
thret
For a different perspective of sexuality in a male only environment, I
recommend Surprised By Joy, by C. S. Lewis. It begins with his life in
boarding school.

Lewis could quite easily have been describing life in prison. I found it
astonishing.

------
parennoob
Pretty sure even these statistics are underreported. For example, when in
college, I have been molested by women at least twice without consent, and
have never reported it -- principally for fear of ridicule from the
authorities and fellow students. If you include the question that led to the
famous '1 in 4 women are raped in college' statistic
([http://aspiringeconomist.com/index.php/2009/09/11/rape-
stati...](http://aspiringeconomist.com/index.php/2009/09/11/rape-
statistics-1-in-4/)) -- I have been sexually assaulted around 10-15 times.

Colleges have very few or no policies about sexual assaults against men. This
is unfortunate.

------
mudil
Men issues go beyond that. Men have shorter life expectancy than women. They
have higher morbidity rates. Majority of work-related deaths are men. Unlike
breast cancer, that affects 1 out 8 women, prostate cancer is in 90%+ of
elderly men. ( But it is less aggressive.) Rates of substance abuse are higher
in men. In pretty much every health metrics, men do worse than women.

~~~
adventured
Not to mention the immense college education, high school graduation, and
literacy problems for young men that somehow have managed to not be a national
discussion issue.

------
malandrew
Once you take into account that women usually friend-zone a man before they've
had the chance to have sex and men usually friend-zone a women after they've
had sex (from once to many times). This isn't surprising at all. I've
certainly been in situations where I've been aggressively prompted to
participate in sexual intercourse with a former partner or current partner I
was losing sexual interest in. I was never "made to penetrate" because I was
explicit in my intent not to participate, but I can completely see how other
men put in the same position being pressured to participate in a sexual act in
which they have no interest/desire.

Just because two people have had consensual sex at least once, does not mean
that both are interested in participating in additional sexual acts.

~~~
Pxtl
... what?

See, this is why I really don't like it when this kind of issue appears on HN.

~~~
malandrew
What's confusing about what I wrote? I've had many conversations about that
observation with the sample of the population known as my friends and
acquaintances and they generally agree. There exists the possibility that
there are samples of the population for which this anecdotal information does
not apply. This observation only needs to be valid for some of the general
population to support under-reported figures for this type of sexual coercion.

As it stands, your comment is unsubstantiated as to why my comment is why you
don't like these kinds of issues on HN. Does my observation make you
uncomfortable? Or do you disagree? Or do you consider it to be an overly broad
generalization. I'm been on HN for a while and have earned most of my karma
from comments (not hitting the front page), and based on past experience, my
comment isn't really that out of line. The only thing I see I could have done
differently is to put a disclaimer that its possibly that my observation is
overly broad and based on many instances of anecdotal observations (n > 50 &&
n < 100)

------
rhizome
Begging the question. Who is saying they aren't?

~~~
yebyen
Well, there's the new legal definition of rape, according to justice.gov,
which reads... The new definition of rape is: “The penetration, no matter how
slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral
penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the
victim.” [1]

The headline said sexual assault, not rape, so presumably they are aware of
this definition and chose not to invoke it. But this definition precludes the
possibility of men being raped by women who force themselves onto the men.

[1]:
[http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/January/12-ag-018.html](http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/January/12-ag-018.html)

~~~
msandford
> But this definition precludes the possibility of men being raped by women
> who force themselves onto the men.

I'm not so sure about that. It says "penetration...without the consent of the
victim" and it doesn't specify that the victim must be penetrated. It defines
the act that must happen, and it specifies that it must happen without the
consent of the victim. But it doesn't specify if the victim is penetrating or
being penetrated.

It does take a careful reading to parse correctly though, so your point
largely stands.

~~~
makomk
As written it reads as though the victim is the one being penetrated, but
doesn't explicitly state it. I've always figured that whoever wrote it simply
didn't realise that the victim might be the one doing the penetrating and so
didn't even think about whether that should be included or excluded in the
definition.

------
booruguru
The problem is we can't talk this "men issues" without being called "anti-
feminist." In fact, any attempt to talk about the struggles of being a man is
invariable associated with anti-woman rhetoric. It's as if feminists want to
have a monopoly on victimhood.

It's an incredibly bizarre situation.

EDIT: The downvotes only further illustrate my point.

~~~
matthewmacleod
_The downvotes only further illustrate my point._

They don't - the downvotes (none of them mine) are because this is a somewhat
dismissive mischaracterisation of the issue.

No reasonable person or group objects to discussion about issues that affect
men. What they do object to—quite reasonably—is the often-associated attitude
which runs along the lines of "Men suffer from <any problem> too, it's not a
feminist thing!", which isn't really helpful.

The idea suggested by this article is that men are actually approximately as
likely to suffer from sexual assault as women are. That's a perfectly valid
possibility, and it's likely true.

But what's the general goal of a "feminist," if you can use such a broad term?
Let's keep it simple, and say that "a feminist's goal is to further the cause
of equal rights for women." Given that, why would we expect feminists to be
talking about the effect of sexual assault on males? It's not their
responsibility to do so, and I'm absolutely certain that most feminists would
not object to male campaign groups which highlight the problem of male sexual
assault. The problems which affect both genders, even in this area, are
actually quite different!

The problem with these discussions is the ease with which one can focus on
outspoken minority groups. The vast, VAST majority of feminists are not "anti-
male"; that vast majority of men are not anti-feminism. It's easy to get
carried away by overemphasising the views of minority groups.

Your comment is ultimately a meta version of that - in truth, there's very
little opposition to discussing men's issues, but instead a fair bit of
opposition to discarding womens' issues because "men have it bad too."

~~~
makomk
The trouble is that in a way, feminists talk about the effect of sexual
assault on men all the time. Much of the feminist campaigning on sexual
assault and rape is based around the claim that they're gendered forms of
violence against women that don't generally affect men. Indeed, quite a lot of
feminists use the exact 2010 CDC report mentioned in the article as evidence
that men don't get raped (usually by not counting men who are "forced to
penetrate" despite saying they consider this rape). Yet because feminism is
supposedly not about men, anyone who challenges these claims is accused of
making everything about men and derailing the discussion away from women's
suffering, because "it's not about the men".

Quite a lot of the feminists who do this don't even realise that they're not
including many men who meet their definition of rape, simply because the issue
was never mentioned by anyone with a wide audience until a few months ago.

Also, despite men's issues not being a part of feminism, quite a few feminists
loudly insist that feminism is the real movement helping men, that anyone who
disputes this is obviously just out to disparage feminism and not really
trying to help men, and that because all men's problems are caused by
patriarchy it's unfair to call feminists out for supporting those supposedly
patriarchal ideas. So the net result of all this is that most feminists are
helping perpetuate the shitty status quo for men whilst having convinced the
world that they're actually challenging it. Needless to say this pisses people
off.

------
ffn
Man, I come to HN expecting articles about the latest javascript MVVCVCCMCCV
framework, the release log of some marginally different overhyped product, yet
another person flaming DHH for expressing his opinion on anything, etc... but
always wind up staying for these gender politics articles. This place is like
4chan/g/ without the anime.

------
Pxtl
... can we please keep this kind of gender politicking off of Hacker News? I
mean, I get the cases where it's directly relevant to the software development
industry, like the Github debacle, but this sort of thing is purely the domain
of MRAs and SJWs and women's studies departments and the like.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The loudest voices in the debate may at times be at the extremes, but the
issue is still enormously relevant.

I would say it's especially relevant here, though not necessarily this
particular story. The way women are treated online is still very, very much
different from the way men are treated. And this has widespread and
significant effects on damned near everything. Whether it's the structure and
makeup of online communities (like this one) or the acceptance of women's
voices in online gaming and tech journalism to the participation of women in
hacking/development activities and the encouragement/discouragement they
receive to do so, and so on.

~~~
Pxtl
> The way women are treated online is still very, very much different from the
> way men are treated.

But the article is not about that. The article is about male rape. Which is a
subject that produces nothing but endless, meaningless flamewars.

