https://www.cdc.gov/nisvs/documentation/nisvsReportonSexualViolence.pdf
Here's the PDF. My primary focus will be on pages 1, 3, and 32 respectively (I'm referring to the page numbers listed on the top of each page, not the pdf's page numbers - as there are a few cover pages and such that cause a discrepancy between the two numbers)
Rape, as it pertains to this study, is defined on pdf page 1 as "completed or attempted unwanted vaginal, oral, or anal penetration through the use of physical force or drug facilitation" - they also included being too drunk to consent, passed out, threatened with violence, etc.
They differentiate this from "being made to penetrate someone else" - which they define as when a (male) victim was "made to, or an attempt was made to make them, sexually penetrate someone without the victim's consent" - they use the same reasoning - violence, drugs, threats.
Strangely, they again separate both of these things from sexual coercion, which is being "pressured in a nonphysical way" - such as blackmail, gaslighting, lying, pressuring, and "influence or authority" - it's not specifically mentioned, but I believe that Quid-Pro-Quo sexual harassment would fall under this category.
There are a few other definitions (unwanted sexual contact, sexual harassment) that are of course important but are not the subject of this particular post.
On page 3, they publish their overall findings, stating (emphasis mine):
- 1 in 4 women reported completed or attempted rape during her lifetime
- 1 in 9 men reported being made to penetrate someone during his lifetime.
Of course, notably - neither of these numbers include sexual coercion.
Personally, I consider rape, sexual coercion, and 'a man being forced to penetrate someone without his consent' as simply being different forms of the same thing, rape - and while the level of depravity, trauma and violence varies from instance to instance, each fall under the category of rape, and should be treated as such.
The specific numbers for rape, SC, and MTP against women are on page 31, and the same for men is on page 32.
If you only count what they consider rape - the overwhelming majority of perpetrators are men, even rapes against other men. But when you consider all three at once, 31% of instances of completed or attempted nonconsensual heterosexual sex have male victims and female perpetrators in the 12 months prior to the study. (3,218,000 male victims of women as opposed to 7,264,000 female victims of men in the year of 2016) - one every 9.8 seconds as opposed to one every 4.3 seconds. Both are staggering metrics.
The reason why I chose to only include heterosexual nonconsensual sex is because the number for female-on-female rape and male-on-male MTP rape that the CDC found were too low to produce population statistics with a confidence interval of 95%, so I find that it would be disingenuous to include both. If you're like me and want to know anyways, the number of male-on-male rapes in 2016 was 244,000 and the number of the same for sexual coercion was 311,000 - still staggering but of course these two combined still only account for 14.7% of male victims.
As you could probably guess, I have a lot of thoughts about the CDC's decision to not count "a man being violently forced to have sex with someone" as rape. I believe that if this level of euphemism was used to define sexual assault against women, it would rightfully be called out as rape culture.
My questions are as follows:
- Do you believe that "a man being made to penetrate someone" should be treated as rape?
- Why do you believe the CDC chose not to do so?
- If your answer to 1 was yes, do you believe that this fits the definition of rape culture?
- What are your overall thoughts on how the CDC treats male victims, particularly in the case of male victims of women?
