I originally posted this as a reply to another post, but I think it's important enough to deserve its own self-post.

I was reading the infamous CDC study on sexual violence, when I noticed something about the numbers. Of course, the study has been criticized on here a lot, for not classifying 'Made to Penetrate' as rape, thus hiding a whole lot of male rape victims.

But apart from the whole rape/made to penetrate business, I also noticed a weird discrepancy in the factor between the lifetime numbers and the 12-months statistics between men and women.

Let's look at the lifetime vs 12-month numbers per category.

For women:

  • Completed forced penetration: 14,617,000 vs 620,000, a factor 23.5
  • Attempted forced penetration: 6,199,000 vs 519,000, a factor 11.9
  • Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration: 9,524,000 vs 781,000, a factor 12.2
  • Sexual coercion: 15,492,000 vs 2,410,000, a factor 6.4
  • Unwanted sexual contact: 32,447,000 vs 2,600,000, a factor 12.5
  • Non-contact unwanted sexual experiences: 40,193,000 vs 3,532,000, a factor 11.4

So the mean factor between lifetime and 12-month numbers is 12.98, with a (suspiciously) huge outlier in the Completed Forced Penetration category.

For men:

Unfortunately there are no 12-month figures in the Rape category, so we can only look at the statistics for Other Sexual Violence.

  • Made to penetrate: 5,451,000 vs 1,267,000, a factor 4.3
  • Sexual coercion: 6,806,000 vs 1,669,000, a factor 4.1
  • Unwanted sexual contact: 13,296,000 vs 2,565,000, a factor 5.2
  • Non-contact unwanted sexual experiences: 14,450,000 vs 3,037,000, a factor 4.8

So the mean factor between lifetime numbers and 12-month numbers for men is 4.6

I don't understand why it is that for men the lifetime numbers are only 4.6 times as much as the 12-month numbers, while for women that number is 12.98, almost three times as much! It honestly makes me doubt the reliability of the entire study.

Again, here is a link to the study