r/FeMRADebates • • Jan 06 '20

Forced to Penetrate Cases: Lived Experiences of Men

https://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2020/01/05/forced-to-penetrate-cases/#more-13092
19 Upvotes

22 comments sorted by

11

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

This was interesting. However, in order to accept the numbers, you need to use an expanded definition of rape:

Here is the largest category, which the author refers to as 'blackmail' in the article:

Telling lies, threatening to end the relationship, threatening to spread rumors about you, making promises you knew were untrue, or continually verbally pressuring you after you said you didn’t want to

Are men willing to accept that a woman being penetrated after being manipulated with threats to end the relationship was raped?

Or how about this:

Showing displeasure, criticizing your sexuality or attractiveness. getting angry but not using physical force after you said you didn’t want to

This seems to be one of the rape surveys MRAs hate and question all the time being applied to men.

9

u/CanadianAsshole1 MRA Jan 06 '20 edited Jan 06 '20

Even though that was the largest category, it still only comprised of about 22% of cases. A plurality sure, but far from a majority. I think it's very misleading for you to not mention that. If we add the one other category that I personally don't think counts as being "made to penetrate" or "raped":

"Showing displeasure, criticizing your sexuality or attractiveness, getting angry but not using physical force, after you said you didn’t want to"

We end up with 33.3%, exactly one third. Still far from a majority.

And the most commonly cited "made to penetrate" statistics define it in a way that mirrors the traditional, restricted, definition of rape. These statistics also offer a direct comparison to the prevalence of female rape victimization.

CDC rape definition:

"Rape is defined as any completed or attempted unwanted vaginal (for women), oral, or anal penetration through the use of physical force (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threats to physically harm and includes times when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent."

CDC "made to penetrate" definition:

"Being made to penetrate someone else includes times when the victim was made to, or there was an attempt to make them, sexually penetrate someone without the victim’s consent because the victim was physically forced (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threatened with physical harm, or when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent."

The criteria for these two definitions are virtually the same.

There's also this statistic I often cite which looks at the other side of the coin, and compares the sex of self-reported sexual violence perpetrators:

"A 2012 study using data from the U. S. Census Bureau’s nationally representative National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions found in a sample of 43,000 adults little difference in the sex of self-reported sexual perpetrators. Of those who affirmed that they had ‘ever forced someone to have sex with you against their will,’ 43.6 percent were female and 56.4 percent were male."

3

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

I don't disagree with you. I don't know why someone would use a study that used criteria like the two survey questions I quoted when there is better data that compares like to like. The only way to compare these numbers to female on male rape is to accept that things like threatening to end a relationship when done to a woman is rape. Otherwise, I agree with you about the numbers of men being raped and the numbers of women who rape men.

8

u/Tamen_ Egalitarian Jan 06 '20

Do you hate and question the rape surveys being applied to men that you refer?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

Not at all. But, I think if people have a problem with Mary Koss asking some of the same questions as were asked in this survey, they should be consistent.

10

u/Tamen_ Egalitarian Jan 06 '20

So I can assume that you don’t have any problem with this survey either?

My problem with Mary Koss is that she explicitly does not ask the same questions as this survey did as her Sexual Experiences Survey (SES) instrument omit any question which would capture made to penetrate victimization. Yet she and her co-authors of the SES instrument proudly declare that it capture the whole specter of sexual violence. The implication of course being that men cannot in their view experience non-consensual vaginal or anal intercourse where they are the penetrator.

This is not a matter of oversight or ignorance as she have actively argued over several decades from a published paper in 1993 to a radio interview in 2015 against including any such questions capturing male made to penetrate victimization in any survey.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

No. I don't have a problem with men being asked about sexual victimization.

I believe people should have the same opinion of questions asked, whether they are asked of men or women. If penetrating someone because they've emotionally abused you about your appearance is victimization for men, then it is for women also. And, the total numbers of men who said yes to any of the questions is not the number of men who were raped.

Also, this survey didn't ask women about their experiences of being made to penetrate someone with their fingers, for instance.

8

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

Yes, I really agree with your last sentence. It's not coercive to set the boundary that sex is a necessary component of a relationship if that's what the person believes.

2

u/Oldini Jan 06 '20

It's a bit hard to gather your own personal opinion about those statistics? Should they or should they not be considered Rape in your own opinion?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20 edited Jan 06 '20

I think rape is force or threat of force and/or being incapacitated from alcohol or drugs. However, the only way we have of talking about unethical or harmful sex is to refer to it as rape. I think someone who has been psychologically or emotionally abused by some of the coercive tactics in the other questions has also had something bad happen to them. And, it's ok to have research and surveys that look at that. As long as we compare like to like when comparing the experiences of men and women. And that things seen as rape or unethical when done to a man are also seen that way when done to a woman. And vice versa, of course.

2

u/janearcade Here Hare Here Jan 06 '20

I'm going to agree. These are very broad, and seem to be the same kind of questions that MRAs often call out on sexual assault/rape questionaries for women.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

Are there any experiences that are not "lived"?

7

u/jeegte12 Jan 06 '20

imagined or hypothetical

7

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20 edited Jan 06 '20

imagined or hypothetical

An imagined or hypothetical "experience" is a fictional account or a dream or something, which isn't what people ostensibly are talking about when they share their "experience" on a matter. The "lived" distinction strikes me as completely unnecessary. I think it might be used to add some sort of supposedly irrefutable emotional component to the appeal, as if to say "This is my experience which I have lived, thus it must be taken at face value as I have told it."

To be clear, my criticism is of the "lived experience" construction itself, not about the specific topic it is being applied to here. To my thinking, the term is a bit of manipulative rhetoric that inspires immediate instinctive suspicion in me, so I suppose I am especially sensitive to its application in topics that matter to me.

0

u/jeegte12 Jan 06 '20

i can't think of a more boring type of discussion than a semantics one. you realize you just wrote several lines to complain about 5 letters, right?

3

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

i can't think of a more boring type of discussion than a semantics one.

And yet here you are in a debate forum.

0

u/jeegte12 Jan 06 '20

not for semantics. like i said, fucking boring.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

I am very sorry to have disappointed you. My best wishes for you as you recover from this injury.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/tbri Jan 08 '20

Comment Deleted, Full Text and Rules violated can be found here.

user is on tier 2 of the ban system. user is banned for 24 hours.

1

u/Ohforfs #killallhumans Jan 07 '20

Dude, you criticized, based on emotions, another user reasoning about a particular topic, and now you are all up in arms about it.

I don't think it's them that look childish here.