This is the second thread I'm writing for the Men's Issues DIR here (yeah, writing, not copying and pasting, silly staff :beach:!) and it deals with Male rape. This is second in a series I am making for this DIR of the core issues men face. The current other one is False Rape Allegations.
How many times have you heard that men cannot rape a woman because 'he has to get an erection'? Or how many times have you heard that a man 'must have enjoyed it anyway'? Probably not very often since frankly, rape isn't a topic many talk about. But I, who frequently engage with the topic a lot hear this all too often, luckily there are some who still recognize it as an issue. But ignoring the radical statements, comments like 'The vast majority of rape is male-on-female' or 'Rape is a gendered crime' happen too often.
MRA consider this to generally be false, and see problems with the perceived prevalence of male rape (women on male and male on male), the response by people (the knee-jerk reactions mentioned above) and also the law.
So how common is it?
MRAs use this study by the CDC in 2010 to show what they consider to be blatant wordplay to lower the amount of male rape victims. Consider page 18, table 2.1. For women over a 12 month period there is an estimated 1,270,000 victims, with a weighted percentage of 1.1%. Now observed table 2.2 one page down for men. There's a new row just for men called 'made to penetrate'. This has an estimated victims in a 12 month period of 1,267,000 - and a weighted percentage of 1.1%. Here is an image describing it for the visual learner.
This 'made to penetrate' is what MRA consider to be wordplay to downplay the amount of male rape. Consider if there was a female option 'made to open legs' or 'made to allow penetration' I think everyone, myself included would count this as rape. This is a common theme among statistics to lower how many men are raped. There also seems to be an effort to inflate the women rape stats, as evident by the obviously false '1 in 4' stat. All this contributes to the erroneous perception of male rape.
A more shocking discovery was that once you accept this, if you also accept the estimates for prison male on male rape which is notoriously hard to find out, then it turns out that men are raped more than women in the USA. I will probably be updating this bit as the sources are escaping me at the moment.
Male Rape and 'Gender Roles'
When a male is raped by an attractive woman (say, he wakes up to a girl riding him) - he is considered by many to be a 'lucky guy' by both sexes alike. When he is raped by an ugly woman, it's considered by many to be 'comedy' and 'funny'. Anyone active in MRA will see that this is far more common than they would believe (and another reason MRA acts as a support group). MRA's consider this to be false and damaging to the awareness of the seriousness of male rape.
'He had an erection, so he wanted it' - this statement is as redundant as saying 'She orgasmed, so she must have enjoyed it' or 'she was wet, so she must have wanted it'. Like the involuntary lubrication which can happen when a women is raped, involuntary erections also can happen.
And in general, even when people accept male rape, it is often considered not to be as bad as female rape, as if there is some score-board out there. In my other thread False Rape Allegations you can see vigilante mobs beat men just because they think that they raped someone. I have never heard of vigilante justice happening when a male accuses a female of rape. (NB: Vigilante justice should not happen either way, I am just pointing out the double standard)
The Law
MRA's oppose gendered law where only a man can commit an act of rape. Some examples...
How many times have you heard that men cannot rape a woman because 'he has to get an erection'? Or how many times have you heard that a man 'must have enjoyed it anyway'? Probably not very often since frankly, rape isn't a topic many talk about. But I, who frequently engage with the topic a lot hear this all too often, luckily there are some who still recognize it as an issue. But ignoring the radical statements, comments like 'The vast majority of rape is male-on-female' or 'Rape is a gendered crime' happen too often.
MRA consider this to generally be false, and see problems with the perceived prevalence of male rape (women on male and male on male), the response by people (the knee-jerk reactions mentioned above) and also the law.
So how common is it?
MRAs use this study by the CDC in 2010 to show what they consider to be blatant wordplay to lower the amount of male rape victims. Consider page 18, table 2.1. For women over a 12 month period there is an estimated 1,270,000 victims, with a weighted percentage of 1.1%. Now observed table 2.2 one page down for men. There's a new row just for men called 'made to penetrate'. This has an estimated victims in a 12 month period of 1,267,000 - and a weighted percentage of 1.1%. Here is an image describing it for the visual learner.
This 'made to penetrate' is what MRA consider to be wordplay to downplay the amount of male rape. Consider if there was a female option 'made to open legs' or 'made to allow penetration' I think everyone, myself included would count this as rape. This is a common theme among statistics to lower how many men are raped. There also seems to be an effort to inflate the women rape stats, as evident by the obviously false '1 in 4' stat. All this contributes to the erroneous perception of male rape.
A more shocking discovery was that once you accept this, if you also accept the estimates for prison male on male rape which is notoriously hard to find out, then it turns out that men are raped more than women in the USA. I will probably be updating this bit as the sources are escaping me at the moment.
Male Rape and 'Gender Roles'
When a male is raped by an attractive woman (say, he wakes up to a girl riding him) - he is considered by many to be a 'lucky guy' by both sexes alike. When he is raped by an ugly woman, it's considered by many to be 'comedy' and 'funny'. Anyone active in MRA will see that this is far more common than they would believe (and another reason MRA acts as a support group). MRA's consider this to be false and damaging to the awareness of the seriousness of male rape.
'He had an erection, so he wanted it' - this statement is as redundant as saying 'She orgasmed, so she must have enjoyed it' or 'she was wet, so she must have wanted it'. Like the involuntary lubrication which can happen when a women is raped, involuntary erections also can happen.
And in general, even when people accept male rape, it is often considered not to be as bad as female rape, as if there is some score-board out there. In my other thread False Rape Allegations you can see vigilante mobs beat men just because they think that they raped someone. I have never heard of vigilante justice happening when a male accuses a female of rape. (NB: Vigilante justice should not happen either way, I am just pointing out the double standard)
The Law
MRA's oppose gendered law where only a man can commit an act of rape. Some examples...
- United Kingdom MRA consider (1)a to be sexist.
- Northern Ireland Same as above.
- Scotland (1) to be sexist.
- Isreal No inclination regarding the possibility of it being the other way around.
- New Zealand
- There are several USA states which hold the same issues as the above, however it is difficult to hunt down each states individual law, nevertheless, I shall update this.
- There are also comments regarding that despite the laws saying 'he' a women can still be charged. This is fair enough, although MRA argues the wording does not help public perception.
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