Warning: This piece contains material about sexual assault that may be upsetting to some readers.
A friend says to me over breakfast: “I was sexually assaulted once, I suppose.”
It sounds like the beginning of a joke.
“I was at a party and had got a little too drunk. I had been sick all over myself. My friends put me to bed and then this person walked in, got into bed and started touching me. All I remember saying is ‘I can’t’ because I was seeing someone. And then they made me touch them.
“Anyway, they became a part of our group. A couple of weeks later, the same thing happened to one of her friends and she was outraged. You know, understandably. But I never knew how to feel.”
The data gap
Men and women give similar reasons for not coming forward about sexual assault. Shame, guilt and denial are common. Others will not seek external help. But separately, there is the issue of not recognising an unfree decision. Today, as many as 60% of female survivors do not acknowledge having been assaulted, filling in with labels such as “bad sex” and “miscommunication”.
With men, quality data is almost absent. If men do come forward, it takes on average three decades, making it hard to draw meaningful conclusions. This, over time, has created a data gap and a culture of reporting far detached from the realities of male-victim sexual assault.
Maintaining the data gap is – in part – a suspicion of peer responses. Men often do not approach researchers or counsellors due to fear of ridicule. There is some evidence to support this: in psychiatric settings, male victims regularly end up labelled “secretive” or “malingering” when opening up. Abuse history is frequently overlooked and data shows treatment decisions are influenced by latent prejudices that undermine the male experience of rape.
Law and order
No wonder the normalcy of silence. When men begin to recognise their situation, the discourse does not exist to do anything with it. No wonder the apprehension towards the police, the belief that a report won’t be taken seriously, when the law still defines sexual assault in decidedly masculine, penetrative terms. The law may have long ensured that gendered terms don’t lead to gendered discrimination but it still allowed male-victim rape to pass through without mention until 1994.
These positions become quickly taken for granted — and longer to change. Data shows a lingering idea that men “cannot get raped”, especially found among older, male individuals. The combination of ambiguous laws and incomplete data has led to the – often correct – belief that self-reporting will not be taken seriously by peers or by the law. Men today often do not recognise sexual assault until many years after, often ending up drunk and in bed with people they do not want to have sex with in fear of otherwise seeming ‘gay’ or ‘ungrateful’ of the attention.
This is changing, but slowly. Each year, 72,000 men come forward about rape in the UK, a steadily increasing figure that correlates with the increased effort to present cases of male-victim rape and support services in UK media. The CPS today recognises that male victims are far less likely to self-report a crime – fearing social repercussions or the unimportance of their experience -, and work with a number of national men’s groups to improve reporting. But until the men’s movement has a respectable face, supported by the media as well as the law, progress will be slow.
Cultural misconceptions
There is, still, something odd about the idea of male-victim sexual violence, especially involving a woman assailant. In the case of male-on-male assault, we are mostly accustomed to the idea of prison rape played for laughs in film and TV. The basic prejudice that men always want sex still plays a role in cultural narrative and analysis. It is this that has also made female-on-male assault seem relatively benign. Assuming women to have – in all cases – a stronger will and a weaker presence, assuming men to be in an unwavering position of power, culture has solidified the idea that women cannot truly rape men.
But this unnuanced position is condescending to both sexes. For one, it paints a fragile picture of women. It also assumes that all men in all states of body and mind, at all levels of intoxication, are defined more by their masculine power than the impotence of anything else. With victimhood an impossibility a priori, coercion becomes an accepted part of the culture: prisoners get raped; victimhood is ‘improper‘; the student who sleeps with his teacher is a ‘hero’, and so on.
One step forward…
The culture will change as stories are documented and properly reported. The sentencing of Reynhard Sinaga and its publicity at the start of the year correlated with a 5,000% increase in calls to sexual assault helplines. This will allow data to be collected, gradually undermining prejudices around how and when men experience violence.
But until now, the lack of good information has alienated those who find their experiences are not accommodated for in research or policy. Data on male victims of sexual assault only started appearing after 1980 and it took another 14 years for its first mention in law.
The resulting research gap is far from closed, and we should be mindful of this when reporting partial truths. The ‘1 in 5 women’ figure cited by the Obama administration has been in constant discussion over its findings — as well as its methodology and reliability (even among its authors). But the aside that 1 in 71 male undergrads have been sexually assaulted has gone largely unexplored.
One problem is that studies today frequently conflate rape with other forms of sexual violence. Sadly, the culture is not yet there for men to recognise the problem, widening the data gap as men under-report experiences more likely to be recognised as problematic among women. This ultimately feeds the narrative that male-victim sexual violence is something exceptional, absurd or that ‘proper’ men do not need the same protection from threats.
When reworded – when men are asked if they have been made to penetrate somebody – prevalence sharply rises to 1 in 21. More complete data estimates 1 in 6 men have experienced sexual assault in some form. And an under-reported meta-analysis of surveys suggests men could account for 40% of sexual assault victims, noting “reliance on traditional gender stereotypes, outdated and inconsistent definitions, and methodological sampling biases that exclude inmates” to have entrenched fallacious assumptions which “harm both women and men.”
Understanding this data gap – driven in large part by stereotypes and semantic ambiguity – will be key to helping direct men affected by sexual violence towards the appropriate help.
An attitude problem
So long as men judge that their experiences aren’t valid, they won’t come forward. This creates a lack of data, which fuels the views that men don’t get sexually assaulted, and so on. Until a clear intervention is made, the cycle can only continue.
It is difficult, as a man, to come to terms with the idea that not feeling a certain way about something does not make it unimportant. At some point, one is forced to consider decisions made that were not primarily their own. One recognises how inappropriate certain situations have been, bent out of shape by greyed power dynamics, social pressure or intoxication. And then there’s the aftermath — talking with friends, laughing about moments of vulnerability and choosing not to think too much into it.
The lack of literature and proper reporting of male-victim crimes has failed to dispel myths that men cannot suffer from sexual violence. Many men, like many women, are not taught how to identify and avoid danger, nor how to confront it. The lack of a respectable movement for men’s issues has not helped. But responsibility for challenging outdated attitudes, laws and media tropes falls with all.
I have taken care not to compare figures between men and women unless relevant. The aim is not to further divisions, to reinforce group boundaries or to build resentment. The next crucial step is to recognise that sexual violence is not limited to one group or identity, but draws on historical shortcomings with implications for all. Until then, the cycle of misrepresentation will continue, perpetuating a tragic and harmful rumour long built into our collective history.
Words by James Reynolds
Image: Joyful Heart Foundation