The CDC released a report on the rate of sexual and domestic violence in 2011. Tamen wrote an excellent breakdown of the new findings. I can do no better, and will not attempt to. I suggest reading his post. Tamen created a graphs showing the difference between the 2010 and 2011 findings. As he notes, the press release makes no mention of the increased rate of sexual violence against males. It focuses solely on female victimization.
Tamen also notes that the CDC does not appear to follow its own definition of rape, and the organization continued to exclude “being forced to penetrate” as rape. This is despite the increase in men reporting being forced to penetrate and reporting more female perpetrator.
I mentioned on Feminist Critiics that the CDC’s seeming disinterest in sharing information about male victimization may be a reaction to advocates for male survivors and men’s rights activists.
Toy Soldiers 
“Tamen also notes that the CDC does not appear to follow its own definition of rape, and the organization continued to exclude “being forced to penetrate” as rape.”
Until this stops, male victims of sexual assault and rape will not receive the assistance they need. How are today’s victims going to become tomorrow’s survivors if their experiences aren’t even spoken of seriously, and they are denied a voice by those who are supposed to be unbiased?
Reblogged this on Tarnished Sophia and commented:
Sexual violence against anyone is a cause for concern. At least, it should be…
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be any improvement on the definitional issue in the future. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) finds a much lower prevalence of rape victimization (about 15% compared to the NISVS).
National Research Council were tasked with putting up a panel to analyze the NCVS and produce a set of recommendation to improve it’s accuracy regarding the measurement of rape and sexual assault. The panel released a report with their recommendation earlier this year.
It will surprise no-one that all recommendation focused on female victims and no recommendation were addressed at under-reporting from male victims. And although one of the recommendations was changing the current NCVS definition of rape to also include inability to consent “made to penetrate” weren’t a part of the new suggested definition of rape. In fact “made to penetrate” wasn’t addressed at all in the 266 pages of the report.
Another recommendation were over-sampling women and under-sampling men:
I wrote a blog-post in January this year based on the preliminary report from NRC: http://tamenwrote.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/male-victims-ignored-again-estimating-the-incidence-of-rape-and-sexual-assault-by-the-national-research-council/
Over-sampling groups that are perceived to be at higher risk sounds ridiculous to me. Doesn’t that just reinforce what we already think we know?
I have heard the expression “some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed” .. well I am sure this ain’t one those days …
http://thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/seattle-woman-charged-with-rape-768901
That is the point. The results the researchers receive when asking both groups tends to undermine their assumptions about the victims and perpetrators. By limiting the research to those the researchers perceive as higher-risk victims, the researchers can methodologically dodge male victimization without having to play with the analysis or the findings. If there are no findings at all, they can present this as a female-only problem.
Talk about stackung the deck!
Hate to kill the mood but toysoldier I want to direct your attention to this article endorsed by The Good Men Project:
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/bnr-women-feel-unsafe-and-you-can-change-that/comment-page-1/#comments
Notice that this article is filled the usual claptrap about the onus on men alone for solving women’s issues.
And this statement from the author here:
““On balance, however – individual experiences notwithstanding – what I’m saying is true: men are privileged on planet Earth over women. ON BALANCE (by which I means taking the whole picture into consideration)”
This was basically his go-to response when confronted on his bias by me and many others in that thread.
And as I pointed out to him, one of his critics was an actual male survivor of female sexual abuse. Making this defense of his reprehensible but not altogether surprising.
That’s not all, though. Erin comes in with the whole “You don’t care about women’s issues” admonishing all the critics (which included me, Daran and James (the male survivor) on their lack of empathy for women’s issues. In short making it all about her and women.
It was especially bothersome and you should do a write up on the fall out in that thread because it illustrates another thing we face from opposition: Charges that we don’t care about women, women’s issues and even the women in our lives (example, one commentator hoping the critic doesn’t have a daughter and if he did, she’d look to someone else for her safety).
It’s one thing to disagree and attack our positions. But whether or not we care about the women in our personal lives, expanding it to women as a whole then judging us on it because we dare to question the common narrative of “Something men only do to women”?
That takes a lot of gumption to employ those methods of shaming.
It continues to amaze me that people should be shocked when someone wants to discuss men’s issues at the good MAN project.
“It continues to amaze me that people should be shocked when someone wants to discuss men’s issues at the good MAN project.”
Very true. Me too. It was kind of harsh, but at some point, I realized I had some responsibility toward myself when being abused to recognize it as such, say “no”, resist and get the **** out of there and never go back. Not to tolerate it. The victim mentality won’t let you do that, and the male survivor’s at GMP seem to play out their victimization. Like the kid going back again and again to his abuser… It’s sad to see.
To be clear, that’s an adult perspective however, and one I’m not putting on a child, i.e. to somehow be responsible to defend against sexual abuse.
Pingback: Fact Checking Feminist Claims About False Rape Accusations: Part 3 | Toy Soldiers