Mary P. Koss is a widely-quoted writer on the incidence of rape. Her methods and her claims have been controversial. In 2009 a controversy developed around a paper of hers – articles and threads here, here, and here.
She is an influential writer on the subject and her methods and results deserve scrutiny. Commenter Tamen has contributed an item of interest in this connection:
I did know that the often quoted study by Mary P. Koss didn’t count male victims of female perpetrators, but I always assumed this was incidental by her focusing on female victims or by the authors inability to conceptualize that men can be forced to penetrate a women without his consent.
However, Victory_Disease on Reddit made me aware of this paper by Mary P Koss: Detecting the Scope of Rape : A Review of Prevalence Research Methods which show that it’s not simply a matter of focusing on female victims, but rather a conscious effort to exclude male victims of rape from the term rape.
I’ll quote some pertinent sections:
Although consideration of male victims is within the scope of the legal statutes, it is important to restrict the term rape to instances where male victims were penetrated by offenders. It is inappropriate to consider as a rape victim a man who engages in unwanted sexual intercourse with a woman.
p. 206
Note how she uses the word “engage”. A man being made to penetrate a woman either by force, threats or coercion is engaging in sex with her? He is the actor.
On screening for rape using adopted colloquial or euphemistic language (like “Has anyone ever tried to make you have sexual relations with them against your will”):
Among men, the terms “sex” and “sexual relations” may activate schemas for situations where they penetrated women. Clarification is necessary to ensure that male respondents realize that the situations of interest are those in which they were penetrated forcibly and against their will by another person, and not situations where they felt pressure or coercion to have sexual relations with a woman partner.
p. 208
Note how she uses terms like “forcibly” and “against their will” when talking about the men being penetrated while when she talks about men penetrating women she uses terms like “felt pressure” and “coercion”.
She concludes with a set of recommendations, here is one of them:
2. If men and boys are to be included, care must be taken to ensure that their data are accurate counterparts of rape prevalence among women. This means that men must be reporting instances where they experienced penetration of their own bodies (or attempts).
p. 218
I see.
I seem to rememeber this kind of denialism being called rape apology elsewhere. What is the consensus here, is Mary P. Koss a rape apologist?
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
As I understand the Social Justice theory of feminism, if Ms Mary is cis female and a feminist, then she cannot be a rape apologist.
If Ms Mary is cis female and a gender-traitor MRA, then she is 25% a rape apologist and 25% a rape denialist.
If Ms Mary is a trans woman, then she is 100% a rapist.
If Mr Mary is a trans man, then he is 50% a rape apologist and 50% a rapist.
If Mr Mary is a cis man, then he is 100% a rapist, 100% a Schrödinger’s rapist, 100% a rape apologist, and 100% a rape denialist.
In no case do Mary’s actual views on rape count, because Patriarchy, Misogeny, Victim-blamer, and PIV.
Speaking of victims and violence against them:
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/578461_441056085966116_1075013547_n.jpg
^ Image currently making the rounds on Facebook.
The tantalisingly soft and vulnerable underbelly of her argument is how it hides female victims of female rape… but I’m bloody sick of tricking people into supporting men by showing how their current position harms women. Something that harms men does not need to also harm women to be bad and in need of changing!
I thought about these rationalizationz from every possible angle and there is only one plausible explanation. Mary Koss would rather stick a finger in someone’s ass than touch a man’s penis. Which would make perfect sense for a 2nd Wave radfem lesbian separatist. After all, they believed that heterosexual women were merely brainwashed by the Patriarchy.
Yes, yes she is. Also she’s erasing female victims too.
It’s more than rape apology, it’s perpetuating rape culture.
But how could a dirty man ever get raped. Men have to get erections and we all know that men have complete control over their penises and can never ever get erections involuntarily!
Heh, it’s funny how even that sarcastic line of reasoning makes more sense than “Scary” Mary’s.
At least that one poses a reason for why men can’t be raped whereas she just say that men can’t be raped because they can’t, as if this was some tautology.
And it also helped to bury results like this:
Men’s Self Reports of Unwanted Sexual Activity (1988)
It is also not like Koss is the sole feminist academic/researcher holding this view and it’s not like it’s not something happening now. Just look at how the vast majority of male rape by women were defined as not rape in the NISVS 2010 Report from CDC, look at how the new FBI definition of rape is very unclear on whether female-one-male rape should be included when the woman is making the man penetrate her. Look at how one feminist I had a discussion with on Reddit framed it when she explained why she personally thinks “being made to penetrate someone” else is rape while simultaneously thinking that rape research shouldn’t count it as rape:
OMG, I messed up the blockquotes big time on my previous comment.
Koss’s model is clearly an attempt to define rape as something that only men do. (At least, as long as you leave out women with strap-ons.)
Of course she’s a rape apologist.
Thought so too. Thank you all. I suppose we can just leavethe question for later of the sun rising in the east.
Tamen,
“I have reason to believe that male victims, in particular, won’t be helped by this new wording in any significant way, but I feel as if female victims will be disproportionally disadvantaged because of it.”
Female victims? When did we suddenly shift the discussion of female vcitms/ If a woman rapes a man, what female victims is there to discuss? Or am I missing something, some underlying eternal rule…..
Jared,
“The tantalisingly soft and vulnerable underbelly of her argument is how it hides female victims of female rape… but I’m bloody sick of tricking people into supporting men by showing how their current position harms women.”
Yes and yes.
Female victims of female rapists. Because the definition isn’t about getting help to the greatest number of rape victims possible, but about fulfilling a hateful drive to ostracize men. It may also be about sheltering female rapists more directly, if we are willing to explore some of the more ad-hominem possibilities. We are all familiar with the Vagina Monologues’s positive portrayal of female-on-female rape, right? And we know about all of the female pedophilia apologists out there in feminist-land who go so far as to promote it as a positive aspect of female sexuality. To me it’s no surprise that Mary P Koss is so blatantly biased against men, to the point where she distinguishes rape by the type of sexual organ posessed by the attacker, that she views her own gender’s sexual organs as being physically incapable for use on someone against their will. This is some strong cognitive dissonance and it honestly makes me wonder – what awful thing did Mary Koss do that she’s trying to forget? Yes, ad-hom, I know. But it needs to be asked.
“This is some strong cognitive dissonance and it honestly makes me wonder – what awful thing did Mary Koss do that she’s trying to forget? Yes, ad-hom, I know. But it needs to be asked.”
That is not argumentum ad hominem because yoyu are not attacking her argument with it, you are attacking her. And you are right, that is a necessary line of inquiry.
Sorry, I misread that quote because of the whole blockquote mixup. I see the context of it now. I remember that original exchange with that feminist, too, and numerous other ones like it that seemed to have taken place around the same time (it’s like they had all read the same blog post or something). That feminist was using special pleading to say that no matter what the facts are or how dire the need is to get male victims help, it’s perfectly acceptable to lie about and erase male victims because in her opinion female victims of male attackers are the most deserving of help and everyone else can go fuck themselves. I can’t help but think that this is just the natural outcome of feminist thought. You would think that reducto ad absurdum would be something that someone would use to *disprove* Patriarchal theory, rather than using it to prop up that view of the world at all costs. No intellectual honesty whatsoever!
*headdesk*
Even if certain risks are greater for cis female victims of vaginal rape by cis male rapists, I think she’d recognize that’s no reason to ignore cis female victims of other types of rape by cis male rapists. So why does she ignore cis male victims of envelopment by cis female rapists?
Even if she is narrowly focused on one group of survivors, and doesn’t care about any others, there’s a power in consistency, a power that can help those survivors.
“That feminist was using special pleading to say that no matter what the facts are or how dire the need is to get male victims help, it’s perfectly acceptable to lie about and erase male victims because in her opinion female victims of male attackers are the most deserving of help and everyone else can go fuck themselves.”
This is exactly where feminism stops being about gender equality and starts being a women’s advocacy movement, when that happens. There is a need for advocacy, but not for lying and calling it egalitaraianism, and there is no valid need for lying to advance that advocacy. that shouldn’t need saying, but quite a few trueu believers have never heard it.
You all seem to ignore that penetration is inherently violent and other sexual actions like enveloping, kissing or stroking are not.
Also penisses are gross and vaginas are great.
“We are all familiar with the Vagina Monologues’s positive portrayal of female-on-female rape, right? ”
No. Care to elaborate? This sounds like wonderful ammunition which I will spread to other bloggers who will gleefully use it.
“And we know about all of the female pedophilia apologists out there in feminist-land who go so far as to promote it as a positive aspect of female sexuality.”
WTF? Could you provide some links?
Welcome, Juppinis! Oops, did I just de…uh…re-gender you?
This is great:
“You all seem to ignore that penetration is inherently violent and other sexual actions like enveloping, kissing or stroking are not.
Also penisses are gross and vaginas are great.”
Ah! That’s the “something, some underlying eternal rule…..” I was missing!
The parodies, they just write themselves.
“No. Care to elaborate? ”
Wudang, the paly original had a scene, something about the little coochie-snorcher who could, in which a woman has sex with a thirteen year old giirl who calls it rape but a good rape. Now when Whoopi Goldberg tried to distinguish betwen violent and non-violent rape as ‘rape” versus “rape rape”, she was demonized, but when feminist icon Eve ensler calls rape of a minor “good rape” that’s all just tickety-boo.
The scene has since been dropped in most productions.
Sure, for starters there’s Germaine Greer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautiful_Boy Of course the Vagina Monologues as well. Also, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nCpr3hr0K30#at=19
“And it also helped to bury results like this:
more men (62.7%) than women (46.3%) had experienced unwanted intercourse.
Men’s Self Reports of Unwanted Sexual Activity (1988)”
Muehlenhard and Cook’s work is a little hard to read, but the category of sex which fits the legal definition (“physical coercion,” comprised of violence, threat of violence, holding down, threatening with a weapon, physically detaining) saw equal victimization among men and women (6.5% versus 5.8%, not even close to statistical significance). The one which included but was not limited to a form of rape (“intoxication,” comprised of being drunk/stoned and unaware/unable to resist, being drunk/stoned and being “taken advantage of,” and regretting it the next morning) saw men beat out women (30.8% versus 21.0%, p < .001). Ofc, there are some problems with this ("sex" should not be used, we should prefer explicit definitions of the sex acts involved because some don't consider oral/anal sex to be "real" sex), but, yeah. It's part of the reason I think nondisclosure is a big part of the apparent dissonance between historical and present values.
PS: this is Victory_Disease here (switching my name up for no reason), long-time reader, first time commenter.
Thanks a lot guys! I really liked the woman in the youtube clip. I got a lot of respect for her.
Germain Greer I actually knew about but had forgotten.
Was Whopi talking about consensual play rape vs rape?
“historical and present values.”
Sorry, this should be “lifetime and 12-month values.”
“Was Whopi talking about consensual play rape vs rape?”
No, she was distinguishing between getting raped with a knife to your throat as opposed to having a guy disregard a women telling him to stop or having sex with ehr when she is too drunk to know what’s going on. So she was wrong, in my book at least, but my point was that she was less wrong than creepy-ass Eve Ensler and denounced more harshly. Par for the course for white feminists, BTW.
Ginkgo:
You are somewhat mistaken.
It was a scene or “monologue” called “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could”.
Asfar as I know that scene has not been dropped in most production, but it has been changed. The age of the girl has been changed from 13 to 16. And the line “Now people say it was a kind of rape … Well, I say if it was rape, it was a good rape…” has been removed in later versions. I think the changes occurred around 2001 when Eve Ensler’s V-Day organization began to demand that people setting up the play use the manuscript supplied by te V-Day organization and not use any other manuscripts including the original book by Eve Ensler.
“PS: this is Victory_Disease here (switching my name up for no reason), long-time reader, first time commenter.”
Welcome under whatever name, and that was a very interesting bit of informration you dug out there.
Crimson Wool: I’ve tried to obtain a complete version of that Muehlenhard and Cook article, but haven’t been able to find the full version anywhere. Do you know where I could find it?
“Crimson Wool: I’ve tried to obtain a complete version of that Muehlenhard and Cook article, but haven’t been able to find the full version anywhere. Do you know where I could find it?”
I’ve got institutional access through my university straight to JSTOR, so I can’t be of help there, sorry.
“I’ve got institutional access through my university straight to JSTOR, so I can’t be of help there, sorry.”
No shit. The state of the law is in flux on that one at the moment. To say the least.
Yeah, I tried to access it through JSTOR’s Register & Read program (where one can register and access 3 articles every two weeks from a subset of their article database), but apparently it wasn’t a part of the subset available to the general public.
Again, sorry for stealing your thunder Crimson Wool.
@Ginkgo:
Actually, I guess the parody was written by Juppina, who maybe, possibly might also be known as Jupp … Poe’s law and such, you know 🙂
Also, the “rape but not rape rape” Goldberg referred to was the Polanski case, i.e. drugging a minor with alcohol and drugs and penetrating her anally despite her cries to stop it. If we want to rank indefensibleness, which is as useful a mental exercise as discussing the amount of angels able to balance on a tip of a needle, I still guess Goldberg’s remarks score higher than Ensler’s.
EW, I’d forgotten all that. Eeewwwww. Looking at it that way, you’re quite right.
There are more differences between male-on-woman and woman-on-male rape.
When a man rapes a woman it is an instance of male entitlement to women’s bodies, by raping her he says: “I am entitled to your body, because I am a man and you are a woman.” (Similarly male on male rape often starts with viewing the victim as female, “make you my bitch”). When a woman “sexually assaults” a man, she commits an individual “violation” and she might well be confused by societies massages and believe the man wants to have sex with her.
We also have to look at the ramifications for society. When a man rapes a woman, he perpetuates rape culture and hence harms all women, because it forces them to adjust their behaviour to avoid rape. When a woman rapes a man, other men don’t adjust their behaviour.
Yes, I have written the comments as Juppina and while they don’t reflect my views, you can hardly call them parody, as they reflect views I have seen from some feminists. Obviously my language is different, I tried to be upfront and clear. And I admit that the sentence “Also penisses are gross and vaginas are great.” is an overstatement. Though even the heterosexual female sexpositive feminists, seem to have an ambivalent attitude towards male sexuality, like they would be saying:
“I know male sexuality is toxic and creepy, but sometimes I like to be ravished by real man.”
“Yes, I have written the comments as Juppina and while they don’t reflect my views, you can hardly call them parody, as they reflect views I have seen from some feminists. ”
Jupp, this really is Poe’s Law in effect. They felt like parody at first glance, but you are right, they are really just paraphrases of real comments. We have all seen enough of that kind of crap.
By the way, keep it up. I love your new Juppenis persona.
Tamen, that makes it all worse. So they left that scene in. Disgusting. Thank you for that, I guess.
@ Jupp
“Though even the heterosexual female sexpositive feminists, seem to have an ambivalent attitude towards male sexuality, like they would be saying:
“I know male sexuality is toxic and creepy, but sometimes I like to be ravished by real man.””
A while back I read something from, I believe, a second waver talking about men’s ambivalence towards women’s sexuality. One the one hand they desired it and on the other they feared it’s power.
I think that might be another example of projection.
@ Ginko
You’re damn right it’s disgusting.
Am I ever going to attend a play that celebrates woman-on-girl rape?
Somehow I don’t think it’ll speak to me.
“Somehow I don’t think it’ll speak to me.”
Somehow I think you would speak to it, and they’re not worth going to jail over.
Gingko
One thing is the focus-shifting, another is the underlying assumption which is revealed by this argument. You see the fear is that if male and female rape is compared then the ludicrousness of male rape will be taken to apply to female rape as well. In order to make that argument one must either agree with the premise that male rape is ludicrous – belying any former assurance made that they take male rape serious – or the just as evil alternative: they are perfectly willing to throw male (and female) victims of female perpetrators under the bus in order to uphold monopoly on victimhood for women.
Doing the right thing and acknowledge that male rape is just as morally reprehensible as female rape and not in any way arguing for minimizing male victimization seem not be an option for them.
Typhonblue:
Well there are some ideas in western culture like succubi who seem to support this view, but currently I don’t see them to be that common.
Or wishful thinking. As many feminist women seem to see themselves as marginalised, vulnerable and weak, it might be a soothing phantasy, to be thought of as desired and feared.
“Doing the right thing and acknowledge that male rape is just as morally reprehensible as female rape and not in any way arguing for minimizing male victimization seem not be an option for them.”
It is not na option for them, tamen, because it collapses the whole hyperagency/hypoagency model that is the ofundation of their entire theoretical structure. And it’s not just theoretical for them. Hyperagnecy/hypoagnecy is the core of their gender identity. No. It is not going to hapen.
As Jupp so right on time points out:
“Or wishful thinking. As many feminist women seem to see themselves as marginalised, vulnerable and weak, it might be a soothing phantasy, to be thought of as desired and feared.”
It’s the feminist double standard: male aggressor/female victim has multiple qualifiers, female aggressor/male victim only qualifies if *physical force* is used (IME, according to feminists, even a woman with a weapon doesn’t count as a female rapist. It only counts if/when the woman has enough mass and/or strength to bend her target to her will.)
This, of course, leads into the male paedophile w/female targets becoming a monster, while the female paedophile w/male targets receiving the “What, what? Nothing wrong here, just look away”, treatment. It’s always been funny to me, that an underage, but 15+ years old girl is a victim (even if her victimiser is within her age group), whereas an <13 year old boy receives "agency" when a woman expresses interest.
And, in the end, it's all about the idea that all female sexuality is "legitimate" and all male sexuality is "perverse". When men (who, for the most part are under the drinking age) make internet "jailbait clocks", they're daemons. When women (regardless of age) scream and throw panties at Taylor Lautner or Justin Bieber, it's "okay". If a man wants to suck a woman's toes, he's a despicable pervert. If a woman wants her male partner to (personal example) urinate on her post-coitus, *he* becomes the pervert for *not* doing so. If he wants to give oral sex and she doesn't want to receive, he's a "patriarchal arsehole". If she wants him to receive anal sex and he doesn't want anything to do with the act, he's a "patriarchal arsehole". It's not about legality, it's all about *morality* (and mens' desires are de facto "immoral" in the eyes of feminists if they don't toe the line.)
Yeah, MaMu, and if a woman demands cunnilingus and her man refuses, he’s a misogynist according to Jill Filipovic – despite the fact that cunnilingus carries a threat of transmitting HPV that fellatio does not.
It is about demonizing male sexuality, heter or homo or celibate. Celibates come in for their share of shaming language too.
You are right Ginkgo, celibates get shamed as much (possibly more) than other choices. Even a lack of sexual desire is displaying a sexuality. And alllllll male sexuality is evil. Straight men are evil because they rape women all the time. Gay men are evil because they don’t fuck women, so clearly they are misogynists.* And asexuals or celibates are creepy/neckbeards/gross/ whatever
* I don’t think I need to tell you that this was (still is?) actually an argument put forth by feminists. That is for the benefit of any lurkers.
To be fair to Jill Filipovic, she did publish a critique of female entitlement to sex by Rachel Hills: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/02/24/but-women-dont-rape/
There the attitude in her article “Dealbreaker indeed” is predicted
Rachel Hill:
To be fair to Jill Filipovic, we should treat her like an adult and hold her acconunable for what she writes. When she labels boyfriends who refuse cunniligus misogynist, she is engaging in just this kind of behavior. A nice wannabe-exculatory sop doesn’t wipe that out.
ES
“Even a lack of sexual desire is displaying a sexuality. And alllllll male sexuality is evil. ”
This type of double bind is a classic tactic of abusers. In this case it’s not just individual abusers, but systemic culture-based abuse.
I don’t know if anyone know who Erin Gloria Ryan is, but she’s a a journalist at Jezebel. In an article on 7 abuses we don’t take seriously on TGMP I came across a link to an article from 2009 on Jezebel about whether there is a rise in female-on-male statutory rape written by Sadie Stein. I won’t dvell into the article, although it has several instances of victim blaming and posits that female-on-male statutory rape is less harmful and less dangerous than male-on-female statutory rape:
No, the part I’ll point to is the first comment to this story by Erin Gloria Ryan. She wrote a lot of articles about Slut Walks and decried the police officer who said that women should wear less skimpy outfit. I am probably at odds with several here when I agree in general with that criticism. But I must say I did a double take when I read her comment:
I see, blame shifting is acceptable when it’s shifted to the male gender. No, the problem would go away if teachers would stop having sex with underaged students! But I guess that is too much to expect from female teachers according to her.
Jupp:
While it’s not the subject of my thesis per se, one of the interesting threads that has come through in my interviews is how very poorly many women take it when their male partners don’t want to have sex with them. They don’t like it at all. For these women, being turned down for sex – even if only occasionally, even if only once – is read as communicating a whole lot of nasty things about them and their relationship.
Now here’s my question. Is it nasty because of a lack of communication on both sides or did that observation just funnel right into the usual “because she is seen as a sex object”?
Well, people can hate on me all they want, but I think the statutory rape laws are too broad, it’s despicable that they don’t have a ‘mens rea’ component, and I’ll never take statutory rape between adults/older teens and teens 15 and up anywhere near as seriously as statutory rape of young teens or of children or regular forcible rape. I think all we doing is taken biologically normal and consensual sex, criminalizing it, and misusing the word “rape” by applying it to it. And no, I do not support teachers in elementary or HS being able to have sex with their students but I wouldn’t treat them all like Jerry Sandusky either.
“Well, people can hate on me all they want, but I think the statutory rape laws are too broad, it’s despicable that they don’t have a ‘mens rea’ component, and I’ll never take statutory rape between adults/older teens and teens 15 and up anywhere near as seriously as statutory rape of young teens or of children or regular forcible rape.”
I can sign on to all of that, with the provision that actual predation – abuse of trust, abuse of authority, deception, exploitation of inexperience – all be identified and sanctioned heavily. And one more thing – absolute gender-blindness and equlaity in statute and enforcement.
Danny:
Who are you asking? As the quote is from Rachel Hill, it might be best if she answered. In my opinion, there are two main reasons for women to respond nastily to being sexually rejected: entitlement to sexual pleasure and the fear of being unlovable. The second is of course connected to the idea of women as sex objects, or to put it differently, that a woman’s worth is mostly in her physical attractivity.
And while we’re discussing feminists minimizing and erasing male victims we have those who thinks feminists are too lenient towards male victims: http://www.thelesbianmafia.com/home/thank-god-for-feminism-lgbtq-trans-actvism-and-the-extremist-left-how-else-would-we-know-women-are-rapists/
I am sure most have heard about James Landrith and his story. TheLesbianMafia’s utterly vile article about his segment about male rape on HuffPost a while back really made my blood boil: http://www.thelesbianmafia.com/home/woman-raping-men-a-survivor-tells-his-story-on-none-other-than-huffpo-video/
There can’t be much humanity left in them.
James Landrith is aware of that post and have written a post about it here: http://jameslandrith.com/content/view/3921/1/
Wow on that last, Tamen. Something that comes up in MensRights subreddit or in any other shared space where mRAs and feminists both post is feminists’ denial of, or at least repudiation now, of feminists’ bigoted treatment of male rape victims, of their rape apology. Well here it is in full view. This leaves these feminists with one option – denounce and expel the rape apologists from feminism, call them anti-feminist – or else the accusation is true of feminism as a whole.
I went and looked at James’ response also. These feminists are vicitmizing him yet again.
Tamen, if oyu post over here that comment you posted at Feminist Critics on January 5, 2013 at 4:44 pm on their “Can Women Rape Men? (NoH)” thread, I will publish it here as a commenter post and then with your permission submit it to MensRights. It is a good analysis of a clear case of widespread, institutional erasure of male rape victims, and everyone will benefit by reading it.
Tamen, Gingko, etc. Thank you for having my back. Many of you have had my back before and it is greatly appreciated.
I haven’t been this pissed off in a long time. I guess those freaks of nature were expecting me to shrink away and hide. Wrong. They’ve got a new, permanent enemy with friends in many circles now. Good job with that whole silencing thing…
I should point out that FeministMafia does explicitly not identify as feminist (see their manifesto page for confirmation). Whatever they identofy as this post is vile and should be called out as such.
Ginkgo, here it is (please preseerve my blockquotes this time 🙂 :
I sometimes have experience that sometimes when the number of male victims in the US can’t be dismissed the scope/goalpost is shifted to a global level: “But women are the vast majority of rape victims gobally” or alternatively in thirld world countries. Afghanistan, South Africa and recently India are examples used. Other examples are conflict-rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo (which by Eve Ensler is described as a gendercide) and Sierra Leone.
It apparently doesn’t occur to them that the same mechanism that erases male victims in the US is at play elsewhere in the world and in how information and news from elsewhere is filtered and presented.
So one perhaps point out the practice of bacha bazi (boys held in sexual slavery) in Afghanistan. Then the goalposts often are shifted a bit further: “But the overwhelming majority of rapists are men”.
Studies like the one’s referenced in this post at FeministCritics and it’s comments about rape prevalency in DRC and Sierra Leone show that a significant number of perpetrators of conflict rape are women and that a significant number of victims are male.
South Africa has a bad reputation for being a rape culture as it’s own section on Wikipedia’s article on Rape Culture attests to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture#South_Africa
Prior to 2007 South Africe classified forced sex with male children as “indecent assault”. It is now classified as rape. A study called 13,915 reasons for equity in sexual offences legislation: A national school-based survey in South Africa was made to look at how prevalent male sexual violence (as victims) is among school-going youths using data gathered in 2002. The study was published in 2008.
It had 269,705 respondents aged 10-19. Of these, 126,696 were male.
44% of male respondents reported forced sex in their lifetime (9% in the last year).
41% of male victims reported a female perpetator.
32% reported a male perpetrator
27% reported both female and male perpetrators.
The issue of rape in India has been heavily featured in the media a while now. One would think based on what the media presents that victims of sexual abuse in India are overwhelmingly female.
In 2007 the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development did a comprehensive study on child abuse called Study on Child Abuse: INDIA 2007.
Again we have an example of the executive summary (Major Findings) being misleading or at best incomplete. The gender ratio for physical abuse is listed (56.48% were boys) while the gender distribution of victims of sexual abuse is not listed. Strange how that omission made me correctly guess what I would find on page 75:
Gender-wise percentage of children reporting sexual abuse:
Boys: 52.94%
Girls: 47.06%
In fact, in the Delhi a boy below the age of 18 is almost twice as likely to have been sexually abused than a girl (65.54% vs. 34.36%). A stark contrast to the narrative coming out of Delhi in the main stream media these days.
Well, sexual abuse is not necessarily rape as some surely will say, let’s look further in the report on page 80 where “sexual assault” is defines:
It’s hard to tell if that includes envelopment so I looked at the questions listed in Annexure-8 and Annexure-9 from page 158 and onwards. It does not include envelopment and to say that the questions are biased towards male perpetrators are a massive understatement.
So what is the gender distribution here:
So what does the report say about the gender of the perpetrators? Well, not that much since they have used the most bizzarre categorization I’ve ever seen:
It is regardless skewed towards male perpetrators since envelopment is not considered sexual assault/rape in this survey.
The survey also included young adults aged 18-24 (see page 98). Here “sexual assault” is defined differently:
Which as far as I can parse excludes envelopement although I am not 100% sure of that, nevertheless:
I’ll repeat that: Gender-wise percentage of young adults 18-24 y.o. reporting sexual assault (rape) while they were children:
Men: 58.33%
women: 41.67%
This report was mentioned in the media at the time, here is The Times Of India’s take on it.
Notice anything missing?
I noticed one thing missing, and that was the closing a tag after The Times Of India :/
I’d love a preview or edit functionality 😉
Holy crap that manifesto is in serious need of an editor. There was only like four periods in the entire thing.
“I haven’t been this pissed off in a long time. I guess those freaks of nature were expecting me to shrink away and hide. Wrong.”
James,
They certainly projected their own weakness and cowardice instead of looking into your actual record when they expected. bad mistake.
Believe me I am going to do what I can to publicize this as widely as I know how. I will at least post your article to MensRights subredit. I will see who else will blog about this and then post their artcles there.
Because even beyond this very important issue of rape apology and re-victimization there is a larger issue – the refusal of feminists to admit that feminists do this, the issue of their sleazyfalse-flagging and thier tolerance and even celebration of this most vile kind of misandry.
Tamen,
“I should point out that FeministMafia does explicitly not identify as feminist .”
Unh hnh. I’d say thiier name is explicit identification enough that they are feminist. They are going to have to try harder if they want to lie about something like that.
“Tamen, Gingko, etc. Thank you for having my back. Many of you have had my back before and it is greatly appreciated.”
Get used to it, James. It’s not the first time the Marines have needed the Army to come to the rescue 🙂 Glad to do it.
Tamen, Ginkgo
“I should point out that FeministMafia does explicitly not identify as feminist .”
“Unh hnh. I’d say thiier name is explicit identification enough that they are feminist. They are going to have to try harder if they want to lie about something like that.”
Except they aren’t the “feminist mafia” they’re the “lesbian mafia”
“Except they aren’t the “feminist mafia” they’re the “lesbian mafia”
Yeah but, yeah but… “feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice.”
Point taken, Paul. I can’t get to the site frorm here.
Sounds like a rape apologist to me. Sounds like she’s a radical feminist too, giving a bad name to liberal feminists as they get tarred with the same brush. Vile.
Ginkgo: I re-posted my comment from FC here as you requested, but it’s being held up in moderation. Since you have commented here afterwards I assume that you are not aware of this, perhaps it got trapped in the spam-trap.
Okay, thanks, Tamen. I’m going to go retrieve it.
Welcome, PJ, or welcome back.
“Sounds like she’s a radical feminist too, giving a bad name to liberal feminists as they get tarred with the same brush. Vile.”
There is a simple solution for liberal feminists who do not want to egt tarred with this brsuh – denounce these people for their misandry and gender bigotry as *anti-feminist*. Deny, explicitly and publicly, that they are real feminists. Invent some dismissive exclusionary term for them and their views, they way they attempt to do the same to liberal feminists with terms like “fun feminist.”
Then and only then will Not All Feminists Are Like That be true.
Ginkgo:
You are somewhat mistaken.
It was a scene or “monologue” called “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could”.
Asfar as I know that scene has not been dropped in most production, but it has been changed. The age of the girl has been changed from 13 to 16. And the line “Now people say it was a kind of rape … Well, I say if it was rape, it was a good rape…” has been removed in later versions. I think the changes occurred around 2001 when Eve Ensler’s V-Day organization began to demand that people setting up the play use the manuscript supplied by te V-Day organization and not use any other manuscripts including the original book by Eve Ensler.
Okay, I hate to admit I know so much about this, but there are three versions in different editions of the book. I’ve actually seen all three on the shelf. The first version the girl is twelve and it has the “good rape” line. The second she’s thirteen and the line is removed. The third has her be sixteen.
Incidentally, my closest (male) friend once told my abuse story in a class devoted to the psychology of sex, when the topic of abuse and rape came up. He later told me that the entire class seemed to think he was covering up some rape he had committed, despite the fact the story was about a female (me) being abused by another female. I think the idea of this was so unnerving/out of their experience they BSOD’ed it. It’s one of the reasons I remain so cynical of abuse survivor groups. And that’s also a very real reason why we don’t talk about it.
Here is another reason: http://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/the-only-one/#comment-29692
I was flabbergasted.
Well, Tamen, that’s you. It was no surprise to a lot of us. It’s simple self-serving denialism that’s at the root of all of it.
Anonymous, welcome!
One of the co-bloggers here has a similar story of abuse and denaila dn erasure of her abuse. and that’s interesting about that scene and how it has progresively been sanitaized. Very interesting.
Yeah, I’ve grown to expect that sort of thing by now.
I tried to post a longer commenta few minutes ago, but it doesn’t appear – not even with messag saying it’s in moderation. Can any moderators please see if it’s spam-trapped or in moderation please. Had the same issue when I tried to post the same comment at FC…
I’ll go check, certainly. I cannot see why a comment of yours would go into moderation.
I don’t see it. Try again and if that fails, email it to me. I may not see it until Monday, but I’ll make sure it gets posted.
Hi Gingko,
I have in the meantime posted it on /r/MensRights: http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1btu0n/cdcs_response_to_whether_they_will_categorize/
When I tries to post it here, on FC or on TS the page just reloads without any error message and without my comment (goddamn lucky I made copy of it before I pushed Send) so I suspect the wordpress really doesn’t like something in my comment.
[…] a post earlier this year commenter Tamen noted a tendency in Koss to minimize the scope and incidence of rape of males, […]
[…] a post earlier this year commenter Tamen noted a tendency in Koss to minimize the scope and incidence of rape of males, […]
Congrats on getting this published on A Voice for Men, Jim.
I attempted to congratulate you there, but apparently the “Mens Human Rights Movement” believes in censorship for expressing disagreement on just about anything.
What a joke.
This post now shows up at spot #3 when one search for “Mary P Koss” on Google.
Tamen:
YAY!
Tmane, this is all your work and every time someone syas something nice to me about ti I tell them that.
Clarence, AVfM – that’s the platform where this will get seen. That’s the point.
Jim:
We just had a whole big brouhaha about ANOTHER post that was also on A Voice For Men.
I have never had a single bad word to say about this piece, and yes, I saw you REPEATEDLY give credit to Tamen for the research. Because that’s the type of man you are.
Nor, for your knowledge have I been blasting A Voice for Men all to hell. It has problems -clearly there is more there going on than banning “misogynists” – but it still gets some good work done and is clearly the best place for this.
So far Feminists responses to the CDC study have ranged from selective quoting to ignoring it.
Here’s one of the BEST ones: http://mellowness.dreamwidth.org/14991.html?mode=reply
And they still have to downplay the “made to penetrate” omission.
Of course I feel the study is just flawed anyway since the lifetime prevalence and twelve month rates are totally out of whack, and because (as Tamen’s research shows) Mary P. Koss had entirely too much influence on it anyway.
“We just had a whole big brouhaha about ANOTHER post that was also on A Voice For Men.”
Yeah, that’s the one that’s off-topic.
AVfM is a specific instrument. Its project at the moment seems to be to reset the terms of the discussion away from privileging women’s feelings and away from an expectation that men walk on eggshells around women and their feelings. That’s a big item for me on the gender equality agenda. That’s going to look liek misogyny for women who mistake that form of privielge for a right or think it is something that everyone gets treated to.
i am a little worried about the bitchfights breaking out in the MRM, but then I rmember that this is the second round of them. the first round was with the tradcons, and I have my own reaosns to view them as enemies as bad a radfems. Ah, wait, there was the second round, with the hissing between MRAs and PUAs. now this. You covered most of this in that good comment at femdelusion.
Clarence:
Thanks for making me aware of that Mellowness blog post.
The author states (my emphasis):
The bolded sentence is only correct as long as the victimization rate is stable and doesn’t increase/decrease/fluctuate. The difference between lifetime and last 12 months numbers for “being made to penetrate” clearly implies that the victimization rate for men at least is increasing or fluctuating. The author should have used “have been” rather than “to be”.
I also noticed the last paragraph where the author states that rape is a gendered crime and that rape culture is caused by kyriarchy does not make any mention of female-on-male rape (although it does mention male-on-male rape).
The premise seems to be as long as there is a majority (no matter how small/large) between the genders of the victims/perpetrators it can be labelled a gendered crime.
Then violence is gendered (predominately male victims).
Then enfranchisement/disenfranchisment is gendered (more female voters than male voters, more men (convicts) are disenfranchised than women)
Then parenthood are gendered (more women than men become parents)
Education is gendered (more women than men are graduating)
[…] as more violent, and women as more helpless. This is contradicted by evidence presented in Ginko’s Genderratic post, Male Disposability – Mary P. Koss, Rape Apologist, Defines Male Ra… (and his followup […]
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[…] of rape advocated by well-known academic and feminist Mary P. Koss. Ginkgo made it into a post which was also submitted to […]
[…] Feminist Mary Koss denies male rape victims. […]
[…] 3 women… ok sure. This false statistic originated from a study by feminist Mary Kross, and has been discredited countless times, BUT is still cited! Mary Kross is a proud feminist misandrist that denies that women can be […]