MALE RAPE INFORMATION SHEET: CONTRASTING DOMINANT STEREOTYPES

Tabulated by
T. Hasan Johnson, Ph.D.

Information on male rape is fairly recent because rape has always been defined as something only women experience. Now
that the definition of rape encapsulates males, the findings have severely challenged the prevailing feminist notion that rape
is a product of a rape culture that only focuses on females, but rather highlights that men and women merely have different
methods for sexually violating each other and themselves.
1.

2.78 million men in the U.S. have been victims of sexual assault or rape. (1998)1

2.

From 1930-2012, the FBI defined forcible rape, for data collecting purposes, as the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and
against her will. Eventually localities began to rebel against that limited gender-bound definition; in 2010 Chicago reported
86,767 cases of rape but used its own broader definition, so the FBI left out the Chicago stats. Finally, in 2012, the FBI
revised its definition and focused on penetration, with no mention of female (or force).2 (Although helpful, this definition
still ignores made to penetrate situations for males see below).

3.

A recent analysis of BJS [Bureau of Justice Statistics] data, for example, turned up that 46 percent of male victims reported
a female perpetrator. (Ibid.)

4.

1 out of every 4 Black men and Black women have experienced rape, physical violence, and stalking by an intimate partner in
a lifetime (2010).3

5.

In a survey by Stemple and Meyer, Women were more likely to be abused by fellow female inmates, and men by
guards, and many of those guards were female (Ibid.).

6.

For example, of juveniles reporting staff sexual misconduct, 89 percent were boys reporting abuse by a female staff
member. In total, inmates reported an astronomical 900,000 incidents of sexual abuse. (Ibid.)

7.

Centers for Disease Control invented a category of sexual violence called being made to penetrate. This definition
includes victims [male & female] who were forced to penetrate someone else with their own body parts [or foreign item], either
by physical force or coercion, or when the victim was drunk or high or otherwise unable to consent. When those cases were
taken into account, the rates of nonconsensual sexual contact basically equalized, with 1.270 million women and 1.267
million men claiming to be victims of sexual violence.4 both 1.1 percent in 2010, and 1.7 and 1.6 respectively in 2011.5

8.

CDC finding: that women rape men as often as men rape women. (Ibid.)

9.

The CDC also reports that men account for over a third of those experiencing another form of sexual violencesexual
coercion. That was defined as being pressured into sexual activity by psychological means: lies or false promises, threats to
end a relationship or spread negative gossip, or making repeated requests for sex and expressing unhappiness at being
turned down. (Ibid.)

10.

as criminologists Richard Felson and Patrick Cundiff report in a fascinating recent analysis, a 15-year-old male is
considerably more likely to be sexually assaulted than a woman over 40. (Ibid.)

11.

The CDC reports that 12.3 percent of female victims were 10 or younger at the time of their first completed rape
victimization; for male victims, that number is 27.8 percent. (Ibid.)

When you add up made to penetrate cases, rape by the newer FBI definition, and prison sexual
assault/rape statistics, men (statistically Black men especially) experience rape at much higher rates than
women annually.

<https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims>.
<http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html>
3 <http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf>; p. 3.
4 <http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html>.
5 <http://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/>.
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