In a letter to the editor dated March 31, published in the Queens University Paper, Andrew Howard argues that men should not create their own spaces to address their issues outside of feminist oversight, I replied with an extensive list of statistics that feminists choose to ignore when creating their campaigns that present men as more likely to be rapists than rape victims.
One of those statistics was this:
95% of abused boys in juvenile facilities reported being attacked/coerced by female staff.
— Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth, 2012
Adèle Mercier, Associate Professor. B.A., M.A. at Queens Univeristy(or someone posing as her), offers the following rebuttal to my presentation of that statistic.
Dear Alison,
I know that statistics can be hard to interpret, but you need to learn to read before you spread misinformation into the stratosphere.
You said: “95% of abused boys in juvenile facilities reported being attacked/coerced by female staff”. This is FALSE.
Re-read Google “Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth, 2012”
“Sexual victimization” is there defined as ALL SEXUAL ACTIVITY with facility staff.
And the numbers are that, among males in juvenile facilities:
5.2% of MALE YOUTH engage in unauthorized sexual activity with MALE STAFF;
89.1% of MALE YOUTH engage in unauthorized sexual activity with FEMALE STAFF;
3% of MALE YOUTH engage in unauthorized sexual activity with both male and female staff.
This merely reflects THE PROPORTIONS OF GAY AND STRAIGHT MALES in juvenile detention centers, (and the fact that even people in detention centers like to have sex.)
Also noteworthy:
“As a result of the high rate of staff sexual misconduct reported in the NSYC-1 (10.3%), new items were added to the NSYC-2 questionnaire to better understand the circumstances surrounding incidents. Youth were asked a series of questions related to their relationship with the facility staff prior to sexual contact. Among victims of staff
sexual misconduct:Nearly two-thirds said that staff told them about their personal life outside of work (69.1%), treated them like a favorite or better than other youth (63.6%), or gave them a special gift that the staff would not have given to most other youth (62.3%). Almost half (49.2%) said the staff member gave them pictures or wrote them letters. Nearly a third (29.8%) said that the staff member contacted them in other ways when the staff member was not at the facility. More than a third (36.7%) said youth gave the staff member pictures of themselves, and more than a quarter (28.1%) said youth gave the staff member a special gift.
When youth were asked who initiated the sexual contact, 36.4% said that the facility staff always made the first move, 17.4% reported that the youth always made the first move, and 46.3% said that sometimes the facility staff made the first move and sometimes the youth did.
Youth were also asked to describe the sexual relationship with staff. Nearly half (46.3%) said the incident was usually just sexual. An estimated 40.1% said the sexual contact was
more like friends with benefits, and 13.6% said that they really cared about each other.Among the 840 youth who experienced staff sexual misconduct WITHOUT FORCE, 5.1% reported the involvement of a male staff member (2.7% involved male staff only and 2.4% involved both male and female staff).
So the 95% that you cite is of MALE YOUTH who experience sexual misconduct involving FEMALE STAFF WITHOUT FORCE.
Of course ~90% of sexually abused boys in juvenile facilities reported a female attacker who used force. That means female staff physically attacked 90% of the boys abused by staff in juvenile detention facilities.
However I just want to highlight the fact that Professor Mercier’s–a feminist’s–defence of the female predators abusing underage boys in juvenile seems to comprise of the following rationale:
“He wanted it.” “He seduced her.” “He touched her first.”
Where have we heard these excuses before?
And all this on an article that argues feminists should have control over the discourse over men’s issues. Control over how these boys talk about their abuse when they grow up.
Well, according to one prominent feminist at Queens, it’s not really abuse at all!
(If Adèle Mercier is being impersonated, we invite her to contact us and we will issue a retraction.)
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by 
Comment for Jim.
“89.1% of MALE YOUTH engage in unauthorized sexual activity with FEMALE STAFF;”
Engaged in unauthorized sexual activity? He did it? So Adele Mercier is sexualizing these boys. She is saying they wanted this, they initiated this, when in fact it was forced on them.
The victim narrative she clings to precludes the possibility of males – even minors! boys! – can be victims of sexual violence. There is a name for this worldview – female hypoagency. It is at the core of the traditional female gender role, and Adele Mercier, supposed progressive, transgressive feminist, is dripping with it. She is so wound up in her traditionalism that she cannot see raped boys as rape victims. This is seriousy, seriously sick
“So the 95% that you cite is of MALE YOUTH who experience sexual misconduct involving FEMALE STAFF WITHOUT FORCE.”
Without force? Without force? So this wasn’t “rape rape” because this 12 year old couldn’t fight off a 40 fucking year old adult. Where do we hear this kind of shit? Run go find some utterly rancid manosphere site that spouts this kind of filth, because Adele Mercier would be right at home there.
Adele Munson very likely isn’t a pedophile, but she sure talks like a pedophile.
Adele’s stats on military rape were amusing as well. It’s a bit of statistical sleight of hand that completely obscures the fact that the proportion of women in the military is tiny compared to men.
@Paul…
I don’t believe it’s a deliberate “sleight of hand”. I truly believe she is a complete arithmetic ignoramus who doesn’t even understand what a percentage actually represents.
When you consider all the power a prison official has over an inmate, force becomes virtually unnecessary.
Special gifts; AKA grooming.
Contacting when not at work–a romantic gesture to remind the kid that they are always close by, even when they aren’t so keep quiet.
@ Paul
Actually the proportion of female staff in prison and juvenile facilities are also smaller than the proportion of male staff.
It appears to be both a combination of large a population you have to draw rapists from (six times more men means six times more potential rapists) and how attractive the opposite sex is in that institution to predators.
Boys in boxes? Very attractive to female predators -> boys are being raped at epidemic levels by female staff. Men in boxes? Also fairly attractive to female predators -> male prisoners are being raped at epidemic levels by female staff. Military men, somewhat less vulnerable, but still attractive due to the long history of expandability and expectation of complete subservience to the hierarchy –> male military are being raped by women at rates higher than one would expect due to the population of women in the military but not at the same rates as female staff are abusing male inmates.
Have feminists ever considered that if they switched their focus from women to men they’d have all the evidence they need of “rape culture”. After all, all this is happening at a huge scale, it’s institutionalized and it’s tacitly condoned by society by ignoring it where they can and minimizing it where they can’t.
gwallan, yes and she’s not only an ignoramus, but a condescending one as well that lectures other people on learning to read things she herself clearly cannot understand.
It’s true that statistics can be difficult to read – for some more than for others. I have looked at the report and for those who are interested and maybe not entirely sure how to read the report, maybe this might help to explain the numbers:
The important table is Table 14 on page 23. From there we read:
1390 youth (male and female) reported sexual activity with staff – including use of force and no use of force.
It is the first column of numbers and also the numbers Mercier mentioned.
But right after that we see of those 1390, 630 reported the use of force, the other 840 reported no use force during those incidences of sexual activity with staff.
Of those 630 who reported use of force, there are 5,3% female victims or approx. 33 in absolute numbers, of which approx. 1 reported us of force by female staff (0,2% of 630), approx. 32 reported force by male staff (5,3% of 630).
The other 597 are male victims, of which approx. 500 (79,3% of 630 (male + female)) reported use of force and female staff, 9,9% of the 630 or 63 males reported use of force by male staff. The remaining 34 males or 5,5% of 630 (males + females) who reported use of force, reported male & female staff.
So, therefore, there are approx. 534 male victims who reported use of force and the involvement of female staff (34 of 534 also involved male staff in addition to female staff).
Here the important part, which Mercier has somehow managed to ignore: This translates to 90% of male victims (534 of 597) reporting use of force and sexual activity involving at least one woman (which is the number used in the blog post above).
Now, I want to comment on some of the other numbers in the report which are also mentioned by Mercier:
Keep in mind we have so far looked at 630 male and female victims who reported use of force. There are still 840 who reported sexual activity with staff without reporting use of force.
“Nearly two-thirds said that staff told them about their personal life outside of work (69.1%), treated them like a favorite or better than other youth (63.6%), or gave them a special gift that the staff would not have given to most other youth (62.3%). Almost half (49.2%) said the staff member gave them pictures or wrote them letters. Nearly a third (29.8%) said that the staff member contacted them in other ways when the staff member was not at the facility. More than a third (36.7%) said youth gave the staff member pictures of themselves, and more than a quarter (28.1%) said youth gave the staff member a special gift.”
(This can be found next to the corresonding Table 16, page 25.)
Now, the numbers above from Table 16, which describe more closely the “nature of relationship” in the report, are referring to the 1390 of youth who reported – the total number of male and female victims who reported sexual activity with staff which includes those who report use of force and those who don’t. See the note below the table: > “Note: Based on an estimated 1,390 youth reporting one or more incidents of staff sexual misconduct in the past 12 months or since admission to the facility, if less than 12 months” <
840 of 1390 is 60,4% – these are the youth who reported sexual activity with staff without use of force.
Now see: 40.1% said it's more like "friends with benefits", and 13,6% said they "really cared for each other".
Let's get away for a second from the topic of how immoral sexual activity, coercive or non-coercive, by staff members and youth is. Independantly of that discussion (which is an important discussion, just suspend it for a sec), these 53,7% (40,1% + 13,6%) could fall entirely into the segment of 60,4% who reported sexual activity with no use of force.
Look at these numbers, also from page 25: "When youth were asked who initiated the sexual contact, 36.4% said that the facility staff always made the first move, 17.4% reported that the youth always made the first move, and 46.3% said that sometimes the facility staff made the first move and sometimes the youth did."
We have 36,4% who report the staff always makes the first move – and we have 39,6% of 1390 in total who report sexual activity, who also report use of force.
Look at those numbers in this context: 69,1% of 1390 reported talks about personal life with staff, 62,3% of 1390 received a gift from staff, 49.2% of 1390 received letters from staff – and 60,4% of 1390 report no use of force during sexual activity with staff.
With the standard errors in mind, there is actually nothing in the report that would allow somebody to sugarcoat the results in the way Mercier is attempting to do it.
Welcome, Guy!
That was very thorough.
“17.4% reported that the youth always made the first move, ”
And even in these cases this could well be at the behest of the staff member, gvien gender role expectations around initiating sex. The staff member could set the situation up to make the kid think it was all his idea and he had made the first move.
BTW, Typhone, there an -i after the -c in Mercer.
As a teacher I am NOT allowed to have a sexual relationship with my highschool students, even though they are legal age here in Sweden. Thats because I have power over their future, their studies, their grades. Just as a doctor is not allowed to have sex with his patients. As a staff in a juvenile detention facility the young inmates are NOT equal. The adult can use her power to get sex, the juveniles are giving sex for favours. Such a relationship is considered illegal here. She would loose her job and probably go to prison herself.
That a professor can diminish the crime when it’s boys, is truly tasteless. If a male coach have a sexual relationship with his young adepts, she would probably talk about how men (as a group) gain axess to young womens bodys, how they all are potential rapists. That’s what men do etc etc.
Hej, Anders. Hjärtligt välkommen hos oss.
That’s a basic principle in all teacher-student relationships. And even if it were not a matter of the teacher’s power over the student, the principle would still apply, Adding a sexual aspect impairs the reationship and the studen’t’s ability to learn.
“Such a relationship is considered illegal here.”
The same is true here in the US. The problem is getting female teachers prosecuted for it. The problem is getting rape in general taken seriously when a woman is the rapist.
Come on, clearly those imprisoned boys were asking for it and dressing provocatively! They wanted it! And stuff. Besides, everybody ‘knows’ that underage males can give consent to sex, whereas underage females cannot.
Copyleft, their male privielge means they actually they were the rapists! Those boys raped those women, they are the real rapitst and this is all an attempt at blaming the real victims! You know how men are, always wanting sex and nothing but sex. Of course those boys wanted it!
Abdsolutely vile.
Mercier’s attitude is quite frankly sociopathic. She sees those boys as violable and expendable, and she will stop at nothing to excuse their rapists.
Apropos:
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/men-a0035915.pdf
A couple of threads back I referenced an Australian report regarding female perpetration…
I have now received a response from the author…
Thank you for your email, we are always happy to respond to questions.
We produced this research summary first and foremost as a resource to draw upon as no one paper has ever brought together the current research on female sex offenders. As evidenced in the paper, victims of female sex offending face some unique challenges in accessing support due to disbelief and other issues. It is a small, however important group of victim/survivors who may be falling through the cracks regarding therapeutic support. Additionally, as most victims of female sex offenders are children and/or adolescents, and a high proportion of female sex offenders have a history of sexual abuse victimization, this summary is relevant to the aims of the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children.
Other issues also motivated the paper, in particular the debate around the equivalence of male and female violence in domestic violence. Australian Bureau of Statistics data clearly demonstrates that equivalence in domestic violence is not the case but debates rage on. Similarly we were interested in the notion that when cases of female sex offenders – particularly teachers – become known there is no resource specifically available to call upon that demonstrates the current research in order to inform.
As with all our papers, this research summary is designed to synthesise the findings and trends of an area of research. The purpose is to assist policy and practice communities access the evidence base and make choices about which evidence should inform decision-making and policy development.
I hope I have addressed your queries, however if you have further questions please don’t hesitate to let me know.
I am considering my response.
Inspired by Professor Mercier, someone on reddit has made the following!
http://nawbla.org
Thanks TB. In the past I’ve needed to refer to the womens’ auxiliary of NAMBLA. Now I can just link them.
re Greer and The Beautiful Boy when asked about her motivation in an ABC radio interview she responded that it was to “position young boys as legitimate objects of womens’ lust”.
gwallan,
It would take a cartoon to respond to that from Grweer – a picture of her as Shelob hovering over a trembling boy in the darkness of a cave in the Ephel Duath.
Ginkgo on 2014-04-02 at 7:59 am said:
“gwallan, yes and she’s not only an ignoramus, but a condescending one as well that lectures other people on learning to read things she herself clearly cannot understand.”
I wondered whether to comment on that. I still have enough memories of a different time and place that hearing comments like hers is like seeing someone’s dog drag it’s butt on their carpet–amusing and unpleasant at the same time. But such disreputable manner has become so common among the academic world and political elite that it almost becomes noteworthy when civility and maturity is encountered.
Is there a way of confirming that this is indeed Professor Mercier? I see no reason to doubt it, but I’d like to be sure. If it is, those words need to be thrown into the face of anyone who says “men don’t need their own groups at X College, they should work with feminists,” every single time they say it. They should follow her name, and that of the entire Queens feminist community if they defend her, from now until the end of time.
If that’s really her, she should become the poster girl for the movement to create men’s groups on campus. Big Red is just another loud-mouthed sociopath; Mercier is the 2012-13 president of the Canadian Philosophical Association.
We at NAWbla appreciate your efforts. Please email us at the.real.nawbla@gmail.com with stories matching our goals. We’ll update the membership page often!
Gwallan, that ACSSA looks dreadful, judging from the page you linked to and their response you posted above. Another study to add to the library of ones downplaying female perpetrators and male victimisation.
I’d also be interested in the Greer interview you mentioned.
Beyond that, I saw Mercier’s comments via reddit already but well, there’s not much else to say about them I think.
Regarding Greer’s “The Boy” it is available from the library serving my region…
The Boy
I’ve complained about it’s presence on several occasions after which they have moved it from their touring collection to the shelves of the outlet in my town and subsequently to another branch some thirty miles away. Asked if the library would stock similar but less graphic work featuring girls as produced by photographer David Hamilton the CEO replied with a resounding, almost angry “NO”.
The book itself is a coffee table style publication of over two hundred pages. It has glossy images on every page and includes close up insets of the genitalia in each instance. The text focuses primarily on boys’ sexuality. The authors motivation clearly relates to inspiring sexual thoughts. It IS a work of pornography.
@SensitiveThug…I heard the ABC interview at the time but as far as I’m aware no record of it is available.
As a complete irrelevance, “stratosphere”? I know it can be tossed away as an off the cuff metaphorical turn of phrase but when insulting someone, word choice is important enough to think twice about.
Makes me wonder if Lovecraft was thinking of universities when he penned:
Dull, furtive windows in old tottering brick
Peered at me oddly as I hastened by,
And thinking what they sheltered, I grew sick
For a redeeming glimpse of clear blue sky.
John Markley:
Queens Journal published a letter to the editor authored by her (it’s the second letter) where she again denies the existence of female rapists:
So, I’d say that those comments Typhonblue cites are in character with her statement elsewhere. I assume Queens Journal do some due dilligence whether the letter writer is who they claim to be before they publish the letter.
The rest of the letter isn’t any better with plenty of statements indicating a callous attitude towards men and their suffering:
Gwallan, thanks for the extra info. I agree that Greer’s book is pornographic. Does she ever say what age-range of boys she’s talking about?
S.O.B.:
Thanks for the poem – I like that a lot! Also, hope you don’t mind the acronym – I mean it as a joke of course. 😀
@SensitiveThug…
I’ve seen the book. It’s all ages from prepubescent to late teens.
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