we’re all potential perpetrators. I want to live in a world where each person who was involved in a violent episode receives the type of support that actually helps them. A modest goal, I believe. But it won’t happen until we’re willing to evolve as a culture.
Rebuttal 9 – Supporting women
“It’s our duty as feminists to support women no matter what they’ve done.”
Response
No one wants to be an abuser. My goal isn’t to condemn female abusers. It’s to acknowledge that we all have darkness in our hearts. We’re all potential victims and
Is the survivor of a violent oral rape more deserving of support than a survivor of a less violent anal rape? Why would we even ask that question?
Rebuttal 8 – The trauma of rape
“Being penetrated against your will is more traumatic than being made to penetrate.”
Response
It’s certainly possible, but as far as I know there’s been no research on the topic. But isn’t it disrespectful to survivors for us to compare types of rape by their trauma?
One of the studies found that “the percent of inmate-on-inmate rape [in women’s prisons] is over ten times higher than rape rates of adult women in the general population.”
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
but the biggest danger to female prisoners are the other female prisoners (very few of which are trans). A meta-analysis from 2023 examined over 15,000 cases of sexual victimization in U.S. prisons. It broke those cases down by perpetrator and victim:
doi.org/10.1177/1524...
Rebuttal 7 – Female violence is reactive
“When women become violent, it’s usually a direct response to male violence.”
Response
Women are violent even in situations where there are very few men – maybe especially then. In US prisoners, the biggest danger to male prisoners are the guards,
consent because they don’t know what it’s like to have their own consent respected. That point has been neglected for a very long time. Not to mention that there are many female victims of female perpetrators.
of a burning building. Even if you want to prioritize the “female” part of the building, you still need to put out the whole fire. Survivors of trauma often pass it on to others, especially if it goes untreated.
Also, there are many men who aren’t necessarily violent, but they don’t understand
Rebuttal 6 – The needs of female victims
“If we pay attention to male victims, it will pull support away from female victims, who need it the most.”
Response
If we try to address sexual violence by focusing only on male perpetrators, it would be like trying to put out a fire in only half
Rebuttal 5 – Testosterone
“Men are more likely to commit acts of sexual violence because testosterone makes people more aggressive.”
Response
The link between testosterone and aggression has been greatly exaggerated.
doi.org/10.1016/j.yh...
Rebuttal 4 – Erections
“Men can’t get erections if they’re frightened.”
Response
Studies have shown that fear often results in sexual arousal regardless of a person’s gender.
ebrary.net/174554/law/f...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Rebuttal 3 – Physical strength
“Women aren’t physically strong enough to rape men.”
Response
Many rapes don’t take the form of one person overpowering another. Victims often can’t or won’t fight back, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve consented.
ebrary.net/174554/law/f...
Response
A study found that women were much more capable of intentionally recalling traumatic events than men (p < .001). So, the 12-month reports would likely provide more accurate data for men without decreasing the accuracy of data for women.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
In other words, why focus on the numbers in the red circles and not the numbers in the gold circles, which seem to tell a much different story?
Rebuttal 2 – Lifetime rates
“The CDC survey included both lifetime rates and 12-month rates. It reported that women’s lifetime rates for rape/made-to-penetrate were around 18% while men’s were only 6%. The lifetime rates should be used because they’re more valuable.”
alcohol or drugs…” That survey found that 35% of rape survivors were men and 30% of rapists were women. So, even when using wording that Ms. Young would approve of, a large percentage of rapists were still women.
her views. I contacted her about the article in May 2023 but did not receive a response.
In 2016/17, the CDC ran a revised version of the survey that used this wording: “When you were unable to consent to sex because you were too drunk, high, drugged, or passed out from www.cdc.gov/nisvs/docume...
people might interpret the question as “(drunk), (high), (drugged), or (passed out and unable to consent).”
The article was written by Cathy Young, a journalist with no known experience in professional survey design. The article doesn’t include any survey theories or empirical evidence to support
[various types of sexual assaults]?”
It says, “This seems to imply that ‘unable to consent’ is only one of the variables and to include situations in which a person is intoxicated—perhaps enough to have impaired judgment—but not incapacitated as the legal definition of rape requires.” In other words
Rebuttal 1 – The Time Magazine article
“The CDC survey was debunked by a 2014 Time Magazine article.”
Response
The article focuses on this survey question: “When you were drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent, how many people ever…
time.com/3393442/cdc-...
Some people have made a variety of rebuttals to this argument. My responses are below.
Furthermore, 78.5% of the men who said that they had been made to penetrate identified their attacker as being a woman. So, we should either tell people that forced sex isn't necessarily rape, or we should strongly consider the possibility that 45% of rapists are women.
After conducting the survey for three years (2010–2012), they found that there were more men who claimed to have been “made to penetrate” in the last 12 months than women who claimed to have been raped (1,715,000 men and 1,473,000 women).
(NCSVS 2010-2012. stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/46305)
A survey by the CDC created separate categories for rape and “made to penetrate.” The act is the same – non consensual intercourse. When the penetrator is the offender, it’s classified as rape. When they're the victim, it’s “made to penetrate.”
Even in a more recent study, it says that an attack only counts as rape when the penetration is done by the offender, not when it’s done by the victim.
(Morgan, R., & Oudekerk, B. (2019). Criminal victimization, 2018. U.S. Dept. of Justice, BJS. bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/...)
However, the study didn’t consider it to be an act of rape in cases where the perpetrator forced the victim to penetrate them.
(Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey, 1998. www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/172...)
Many surveys and studies about rape assume that the person being penetrated is the victim, not the perpetrator. For example, this NVAW survey found that vast majority of rape perpetrators were men, regardless of whether the victim was male or female.
Rape has long been considered to be a predominantly male crime. However, recent research has found that there are many more female rapists than we realized. Somehow, the research into gender and violence consistently overlooked them. This is how I think it happened.
The nuke paper?