/r/femradebates discusses rape statistics, noting major studies that indicate near gender parity of victims & perps among heterosexual encounters

I_am_Norwegian · 2013-11-29T14:41:02+00:00

Here's what you came for:

I have two studies that I'd like to cite. The first is (I would argue) but for one minor flaw the best research ever done on on the subject, and the second, although well done is included mostly to back up the first.

The CDC National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Study(NISVS)

This is a huge (sample size 18,049) telephone survey covering domestic violence, stalking, and sexual violence. I haven't read the entire thing yet, but I did read the part

Pros

Definition of rape closely* mirrors this sub's and the law. Aside from one point, they appear to be identical.
Theoretically gender neutral* methodology. They administered the same survey to both genders.
Didn't fall into the trap of confusing "when you didn't want to" with "against your will".

Cons

Tended to use exaggerated language. For example, they call flashing "sexual violence".
The question that was used in to measure rape by intoxication or incapacitation was arguably ambiguous.
Since the audience of the report was politicians and the general public, the style is a bit "off". For example, reading through it again I discovered that the authors had apparently decided to ignore sig figs.
The gender neutrality was only theoretical. In particular, their definition of rape excludes most male victims.

That last point is almost a fatal flaw. The NISVS's definition of rape only includes incidents where the victim was penetrated, and excludes incidences where the victim was made to penetrate someone else. What this means is that if a man forced a woman to have penis in vagina sex with him, the NISVS would count that as rape, but if a woman forced a man to have penis in vagina sex with her, the NISVS wouldn't count that as rape. They did measure the prevalence of made to penetrate though, so compensating for the fact that the CDC refuses to call it rape is fairly easy.

The findings on sexual violence start on page 17 (page 27 of the PDF). In brief:

18.3% of female and 6.2% of males have been raped in their lifetimes.
1.1% of females and 1.1% of males were raped in the 12 months prior to taking the survey
98.1% of female victims where raped by a man, while 79.2% of male victims were raped by a woman.

Or, in short, there is gender symmetry in rape victimization (~50% of victims are men) and near gender symmetry in perpetration (~40% of perpetrators are women).

When this is brought up, there are typically two responses by the studies defenders.

"The CDC's [biased] definition of rape was the right one". The only thing I can say to this is that they appear to be the "only" one to think so. Every dictionary I've seen defines rape as being forced to have sex, not being penetrated against ones will. Out of the 50 US states, only one use anything like the CDC's definition. The remainder either use this subs definition or simply define it as a male-on-female crime. The only people who appear to like the CDC's definition are those that have a vested interest in rape being primarily a male-on-female crime. It appears that to these people, the definition of rape is "whatever is needs to be to insure most of the victims are female and most perpetrators male."
"You used the 'previous 12 months' data to assert gender symmetry while ignoring the lifetime data. Also, you took the data from 'lifetime' perpetration and applied it to the 'previous 12 months' data on victimization. This isn't valid methodology." Is it the most rigorous methodology? No. Did it produce accurate results? Let's see. Let's think of the implications of these hypotheses and compare them to other research to see whether they make prediction that match reality. (Science!).

There are two competing hypotheses:

The 2010 ratio of the prevalence of being made to penetrate vs forcible penetration was abnormally high.
The 2010 ratio of the prevalence of being made to penetrate vs forcible penetration was typical and representative of the same ratio during other years.

(Note that testing these hypotheses are sufficient to determine whether my claims of near gender symmetry in perpetration are accurate, since if 2010 was a typical year as far as the prevalence of being made to penetrate goes, if follow that the lifetime statistics on perpetration wouldn't be effected much by the exact perpetration ratio that year.)

These hypotheses make prediction:

If a study was done in a different time or a different place that also measured the "previous 12 months" prevalence of rape, it would find far fewer male victims than female victims. Specifically 4.1 times as many female victims as male victims.
If a study was done in a different time or a different place that also measured the "previous 12 months" prevalence of rape, it would find roughly as many male victims as female victims.

This is where my study comes in.

The International Dating Violence Study (IDVS) (as reported in Predictors of Sexual Coercion Against Women and Men)

This was an international pencil and paper survey conducted in the early 2000s. I have read the paper I'm citing, as well as the questionnaire used to collect the data, and found no crippling flaws.

Pros

An abundance of data. The study didn't just cover rape, but virtually everything that could conceivably be related or correlated with it.
International/cross-cultural. The study covers 32 countries, not just the US.
True gender neutral methodology. Not only where the same questions asked to both genders, but their answers were interpreted the same way.

Cons

No clear analog to this subs definition of rape. In fact, the paper didn't use the word rape, preferring more descriptive and less emotionally charged language like "forced sexual coercion," which meant being physically forced to have sex, and "verbal sexual coercion", which covered everything from being threatened into having sex (almost certainly rape, assuming the threat was non-trivial) to being pestered into sex (not rape as long as we assume both partners were even a little mature). The good news is that the study did record how the prevalence of being threatened into sex as a sub category of verbal coercion, at least for the international totals. The bad news is that they didn't indicate how much overlap there was between those who reported being threatened into sex and those who reported being physically forced into sex. I'll have to give two estimates, one which assumes there was no overlap, and one which assumes their was complete overlap.
The study doesn't record rape by incapacitation. This is a big deal, because rape by incapacitation (often through alcohol) represents a significant fraction of rapes.
The paper is limited to date rape in heterosexual couples.

Those cons are why the IDVS isn't my primary citation. On the other hand, none of them should seriously effect our ability to acquire the data we need from this: the gender ratio among rape victims.

Onto the results. They are reported in tables 1 and 2, which can be found on pages 6 and 8. They are also summarized in the Results section, which begins on page 10. In brief:

2.8%-6.6% of men and 2.3%-5.8% of women were raped by a heterosexual intimate partner in the last 12 months.
Logically, 100% of those crimes were committed by someone of the opposite gender.

That's gender parity, which means my earlier assertion that the NISVS's previous 12 months data was more accurate was probably correct. The reason the reverences are higher for both genders is that college students have a higher risk of victimization.

Barring some pretty convincing evidence, it appears that rape isn't a gendered crime. It isn't a feminist issue or a mens rights issue, it's a human rights issue. Anyone who claims otherwise is likely either ignorant of the evidence or putting the conclusion ahead of it.

Made by: /u/antimatter_beam_core

Personally, I doubt this is going to change anything. Feminists are feminists, and they will lie, and falsify, and ignore and misdirect, and the public will eat it up like usual.

I_am_Norwegian · 2013-11-29T19:05:46+00:00

Sadly few amount of Feminists in that forum.

Title	/r/femradebates discusses rape statistics, noting major studies that indicate near gender parity of victims & perps among heterosexual encounters
Author	notnotnotfred
Upvotes	30
Comments	9
Date	November 29, 2013 1:33 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1rpiqk/rfemradebates_discusses_rape_statistics_noting/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/rfemradebates-discusses-rape-statistics-noting.1157488 https://theredarchive.com/post/1157488

Comments

The CDC National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Study(NISVS)

The International Dating Violence Study (IDVS) (as reported in Predictors of Sexual Coercion Against Women and Men)