For a long time, our paradigm of sexual assault has been of a male perpetrator and female victim, and for good reason, because historically rape has been a tool of female subjugation. Statistically, women are likelier to be raped by a male perpetrator.
That paradigm also leaves out some important nuance. As I am reminded pretty much any time I talk about, on Stuff Mom Never Told You, women, consent, and sexual assault, someone raises their hand to say, “Hey! It happens to men, too.” You know what? They’re right.
Fact number one: Male sexual victimization happens more often than you might think. Lara Stemple, with UCLA’s Health and Human Law Project, analyzed five federal surveys in the United States, and the high rate of sexual victimization among men in that data directly challenges our assumption that men are only the perpetrators.
Fact two: Certain groups of men are at higher risk of sexual assault. Male prisoners are particularly vulnerable to rape as well as coerced sex. When that happens, it’s not counted in data of sexual assault among the general population, which not only diminishes the personhood of prisoners, but also would more accurately reflect how often this happens.
Fact three: Sometimes women are the perpetrators. According to the CDC’s 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 93.9 percent of men who reported being raped also reported male perpetrators. However, when the CDC also asked about men who were made to penetrate, 1 in 21 men reported that, yes, that had happened to them, and 79.2 percent of those perpetrators were female. Similarly, among men who reported being sexually coerced, over 83 percent of those perpetrators were also female.
Remember, friends, consent is a two-way street, which leads us to fact number four, that researchers have found men are hesitant to report instances of of sexual victimization because they are ashamed. They’re scared they won’t be taken seriously. They’re scared that it will threaten their very masculinity and manhood.
Talking about paradigms, our prevailing paradigm of sex and gender is that men are insatiable and they never wouldn’t want it. When it comes to the realm of consent, we’re in very dicey territory at that point. As much as we absolutely need to dismantle the slut shaming and victim blaming and sexual double standard that also leaves women often in a double bind in terms of reporting sexual assault, we also need to make sure that men, too, have the ability to report and have their victimizations taken seriously.
Finally, fact number five: We probably need new or broader language to talk about sexual assault. It wasn’t even until 2012 when the FBI updated its official definition of forcible rape to remove the word “female,” and effectively de-gender it. Statistics will change and experiences will be illuminated when we focus on more penis-specific questions and scenarios.
Bonus fact: Addressing the issue of male sexual victimization and yes, the existence of female perpetrators, does not in any way, not one iota, diminish the need for our continued conversation and focus and resources for female victims of sexual assault, and conversations about male perpetrators, and ending that whole cycle as well. Our resources and our compassion in general should be neither finite nor gender-segregated. No one deserves to be assaulted. No one deserves to be coerced. No one deserves harassment or unwanted sexual contact.
Everyone, everyone, should have access to resources, and a pathway to healing.
