J. D. Stembal Posted July 30, 2014 Posted July 30, 2014 I ran across this editorial on the Women Media Center's Women Under Siege Project, and was very dissatisfied with its dismissal of men's assertions that male rape is a relevant topic of discussion by accusing men's advocates of entering into a rape statistics competition to downplay the importance of the female suffering. I signed up to share the simple fact that more men are raped then women every year, and that I am one of the many victims of female on male rape and I have no recourse. My comment was moderated. Here is a quote from Kerry K. Patterson's article, which features the sinister silhouette of a man wearing a ball cap, presumably stalking his next helpless female victim. WMC’s Women Under Siege was created to examine a typically underreported and misunderstood aspect of rape and sexualized violence—its systemic use as a weapon of war against women. There is nothing to be gained by portraying victimhood as a zero-sum game between genders, but the victimization of men and women in this way does not happen in equal measure. Nor does the perpetration of these crimes, with men carrying out the majority of sexualized violence in war—as soldiers, militia members, rebel forces, whatever. To pretend otherwise is to deny not only the statistics but, for the women themselves, the significance of context. http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/a-competition-of-suffering-male-vs.-female-rape I am inviting all of the men's equality advocates here to descend on the blog's comment section and make the moderation workload a bit more challenging for them.
Pepin Posted July 31, 2014 Posted July 31, 2014 The measurement being made is not valid. What I mean by this is that the hypothesis that rape is a male problem relies only on the measurement of gender, which does not include other differentiating factors within that class. Even if it were true that 99% of rapes were committed by men, it would not be at all valid to extrapolate this behavior to the majority of men, as 99% of men have nothing to do with rape. It is the same reasoning used by racists when claiming that a particular race commits more crime. They use data to support that there is a higher percentage of this race committing a crime, then they extrapolate the measurement to the majority of people of that race, when the statistic only applies to a small minority of that race. The language is very similar with the same rhetorical strategies being employed. This reasoning would be valid if the majority of that group behaved in such a way. If 99% of rapes were committed by men, and 50% of men had committed rape at some point in their life, then this could be considered a men's issue. Being accused of being a rapist or supporting rape because of sex really puts me off. Thunderfoot has some good videos on this topic. 1
Slashragequit Posted August 12, 2014 Posted August 12, 2014 I recently wrote a post on this issue. Propaganda, biased statistics and definitions, and bigoted ideas that women can't rape men (because erection = consent) result in the rape of men being seen as a non-issue. http://pandarchist.tumblr.com/post/94052575328/women-cant-rape-men-at-least-not-with-their-vaginas
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