CDC: “Being made to penetrate isn’t rape”

One of the many things that bugged me about The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey was how researchers categorized sexual violence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers divided sexual violence into several categories, and specifically counted “being forced to penetrate” as separate from rape. According to the researchers:

Being made to penetrate is a form of sexual victimization distinct from rape that is particularly unique to males and, to our knowledge, has not been explicitly measured in previous national studies. It is possible that rape questions in prior studies captured the experience of being made to penetrate someone else, resulting in higher prevalence estimates for male rape in those studies.

They did this specifically to reduce the rate of reported rape against males. Some people took issue with that conclusion, suggesting that I placed nefarious intent on the researcher’s part where none existed. I think the part that preceded the above quote proves my case:

As an example of prevalence differences between the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey and other surveys, the lifetime prevalence estimate of rape for men in this report is lower than what has been reported in other surveys (e.g., for forced sex more broadly) (Basile, Chen, Black, & Saltzman, 2007). This could be due in part to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey making a distinction between rape and being made to penetrate someone else.

The researchers clearly wanted to distinguish the two acts, even though being forced to penetrate (or more accurately being forced to have sex) counts as rape or sexual assault in all 50 states in the United States.

But if that is not convincing, there is something else. Frequent commenter Tamen emailed the CDC shortly after they released their findings. Here is their response:

Mr. Yyyyyy,

Thank you for your interest in the NISVS Survey. The NISVS subject matters experts have provided the following information in response to your inquiry:

We understand your concern that the 12 month prevalence for Made to Penetrate was not included in the press release. Unfortunately, due to space limitation in a press release, we were not able to highlight many of the important findings. This information, however, was included in main summary report. In addition, we are currently working on preparing a number of more in-depth reports to follow our first summary report, including one that focuses specifically on sexual violence.

With regards to the definitional issues you mentioned, Made to Penetrate is a form of sexual violence that is distinguished from rape. Being made to penetrate represents times when the victim was made to, or there was an attempt to make them, sexually penetrate someone else (i.e., the perpetrator) without the victim’s consent. In contrast, rape represents times when the victim, herself or himself, was sexually penetrated or there was an attempt to do so. In both rape and made to penetrate situations, this may have happened through the use of physical force (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threats to physically harm; it also includes times when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent.

In summary, rape victimization constitutes times when the victim is penetrated. Made to penetrate are incidents where the victim is forced to penetrate their perpetrator, so does not meet the definition of rape.

Appendix C on page 106 of the report lists the victimization questions. As you will see, the questions were asked in such a way that the perpetrator was the one being penetrated by the victim in made to penetrate cases, not a third party. For example, “how many people have ever used physical force or threats of physical harm to make you have vaginal sex with them?” Or “how many people have ever used physical force or threats of physical harm to make you perform anal sex, meaning they made you put your penis into their anus?” Or “when you were drunk, high, drugged or passed out and unable to consent, how many people ever made you receive oral sex, meaning that they put their mouth on your {if male: penis}?”

The FBI definition of rape does not apply here – made to penetrate as we have defined it is distinct from rape and should not be included in a definition of rape.

Until the special reports are available and/or the data set is ready for public use, if there are additional specific questions we can answer, we would be happy to do so. We appreciate your interest in these data.

Sincerely, CDC NISVS Team

Let us start from the top. If you look at the initial press release, they would only need to add an extra line in both sections to note the 12-month findings. Cutting out two other sentences would provide the space.

When the team tries to explain why they did not count being forced to penetrate as rape, they cannot give clear answer other than saying that rape is only when the abuser does the penetrating. However, when they describe how the acts can occur, they describe the exact same scenarios. The only difference is who is doing the penetrating.

The researchers freely admit that they are not using the FBI or any state’s definition of rape. They give no reason for this, either in the study itself or in their response to Tamen. Perhaps that is contained in the special reports, however, I looked for them and only found portions linked by to the initial study.

I do, however, have a guess as to why the researchers do not want to included being forced to penetrate as rape:

For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (93.3%) reported only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims reported only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (79.2%), sexual coercion (83.6%), and unwanted sexual contact (53.1%). For non-contact unwanted sexual experiences, approximately half of male victims (49.0%) reported only male perpetrators and more than one-third (37.7%) reported only female perpetrators (data not shown).

That bolded portion is why they do not include it. If they counted it, the rate of rape against males rises from 1 in 71 (1.4%) to 1 in 16 (6.2%). While I still believe that is a low estimate, it is much higher than anyone expects to see. Likewise, the majority of the rapists of males would be female. If you are part of a group invested in painting sexual violence as a women’s issue and a crime only men commit, those results would severely hurt your argument.

Here is another guess: the CDC researchers likely made their decision about categorizing sexual violence after they saw the results. They likely did not expect such high rates of reported sexual violence from males, especially given the victim-oriented wording of their questions. They could not deny the data or withhold it, however, they could present in such a way as to significantly lower rate of sexual violence against males than their numbers actually show. Since the researchers had to know that a report about rape would garner more attention than anything about sexual assault, I think they chose to play semantics in order to protect the above political agenda.

I could be wrong. The researchers could be completely neutral and innocently chose to separate the acts based on some perception about penetration being a requisite for rape. However, I do not think that is likely given the team’s response to Tamen.