Reclaiming Rape and Men Stats

Can good come from a horrible crime? Yes, yes it can.

In a new article When Men Are Raped, by Hanna Rosin, the National Crime Victimization Survey discovered 38% of rape and sexual violence were against men. The only explanation officials could over was the “publicity surrounding former football coach Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State sex abuse scandal.”

In 2010 the Centers for Disease Control invented a category of sexual violence called “being made to penetrate.” This definition includes victims who were forced to penetrate someone else with their own body parts, either by physical force or coercion, or when the victim was drunk or high or otherwise unable to consent. When those cases were taken into account, the rates of nonconsensual sexual contact basically equalized, with 1.270 million women and 1.267 million men claiming to be victims of sexual violence.

Millions guys. MILLIONS. Think on that a second. It’s not 5 people, 10 people in your local neighborhood, it’s M-I-L-L-I-O-N-S.

Let’s look at some more stats to blow your mind.

• Recent analysis of BJS data, for example, turned up that 46 percent of male victims reported a female perpetrator.   
• 2010 Chicago reported 86,767 cases of rape but used its own broader definition, so the FBI left out the Chicago stats. 
• Of juveniles reporting staff sexual misconduct, 89 percent were boys reporting abuse by a female staff member. 
• Inmates aren’t counted in the general statistics at all. In total, inmates reported an astronomical 900,000 incidents of sexual abuse.
• Women were more likely to be abused by fellow female inmates, and men by guards, and many of those guards were female. 

900,000 in prisons alone? And it doesn’t even count towards the 1.267 million reported in survey by the CDC?

As Stemple sees it, feminism has fought long and hard to fight rape myths—that if a woman gets raped it’s somehow her fault, that she welcomed it in some way. But the same conversation needs to happen for men. By portraying sexual violence against men as aberrant, we prevent justice and compound the shame.

One of the most powerful points in the article though for both men and women was about the terminology of rape.

Feminists claimed the more legalistic term of sexual assault to put it squarely in the camp of violent crime. Bazelon argues in her story for reclaiming the term rape because of its harsh unflinching sound and its nonlegalistic shock value. But she also allows that rape does not help us grasp crimes outside our limited imagination, particularly crimes against men. She quotes a painful passage from screenwriter and novelist Rafael Yglesias, which is precisely the kind of crime Stemple worries is too foreign and uncomfortable to contemplate. 

I used to say, when some part of me was still ashamed of what had been done to me, that I was “molested” because the man who played skillfully with my 8-year-old penis, who put it in his mouth, who put his lips on mine and tried to push his tongue in as deep as it would go, did not anally rape me. … Instead of delineating what he had done, I chose “molestation” hoping that would convey what had happened to me. 

Of course it doesn’t. For listeners to appreciate and understand what I had endured, I needed to risk that they will gag or rush out of the room. I needed to be particular and clear as to the details so that when I say I was raped people will understand what I truly mean.

I think this can be very, very powerful. I know when I was first dealing with consuelors I would say I was touched, or molested and it filled me with shame and I would shy away from facing it. When I got to the point I could say rape, my attitude changed. I grew more angry and I could face it more unflinchingly. It finally helped me heal faster because I no longer was sugarcoating it for myself. Words can make all the difference to people, but mostly to one’s self.

It’s a very interesting article I total suggest you read the whole story here and broaden your mind: 
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html

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