The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a study suggesting that rates of sexual violence in the United States are comparable to those in the war-stricken Congo. How is that possible?
The CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that, in the United States in 2010, approximately 1.3 million women were raped and an additional 12.6 million women and men were victims of sexual violence. It reported, “More than 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.”
Begins Christina Hoff Sommers (resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Her books include “Who Stole Feminism?” and “The War Against Boys”) in today’s Washington Post.
She goes onto site the vast difference between CDC numbers and those by other government sources:
The agency’s figures are wildly at odds with official crime statistics. The FBI found that 84,767 rapes were reported to law enforcement authorities in 2010. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, the gold standard in crime research, reports 188,380 rapes and sexual assaults on females and males in 2010. Granted, not all assaults are reported to authorities. But where did the CDC find 13.7 million victims of sexual crimes that the professional criminologists had overlooked?
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
She goes on to question the very methodology of the survey questions and the resulting data, by making sexual violence a definition that is hopelessly “elastic.” According to Sommers things like sex while drunk are, according to CDC, sexual assaults when in everyday practice most married couples have sex while drunk on a pretty regular basis.
Many, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, have hailed the CDC data as making clear for the first time the magnitude of the impact sexual violence on millions of Americans. Sommers offers up a different motivation for the CDC data, government funding of programs to address an overstated problem.
I’m not here to minimize the impact of sexual violence–on women nor on men. But if Sommers is correct in her analysis of the CDC methology, as well as the seemingly incredible gap between the CDC and the actual crimes reported from other sources, there does seem to be something fishy going on here.
It would sure be nice to get real data on sexual violence outside the political motivations of all involved. And while we are at it we might want to look a lot more closely at the violence in which men are victims not the perpetrators. That doesn’t mean minimize female rape, just give a full and accurate picture. Something that apparently the CDC report failed to do.
Photo: What Makes a Man?
We should wipe out the statistics of rape and start off fresh without comparing gender and without gender all together. A person raped another person. That’s it! We are over thinking on this issue where no fair statistics could be made.
Is it just me or do the words “ESTIMATE” and “SCIENCE” not belong in the same sentence.
I have seen so many people say that RAPE is vastly underreported then go on to ‘show’ that this is true because of estimates. Just doesn’t right true with me.
It’s an oddly brief article which makes me wonder if Sommers really knows much about the history and purpose of these different surveys. When she says, “[the] National Crime Victimization Survey, the gold standard in crime research” does she not know that the NVAWS and NISVS surveys were designed specifically to overcome the perceived shortcomings of all crime surveys? I mean I get it that she has this whole conservative thing going on where they like to complain about how the definition of these crimes becomes too broad, but it’s as if she isn’t recognising the whole purpose — and… Read more »
@David Ede Byron: I’m not entirely sure what you are arguing against. She claimed ” “[the] National Crime Victimization Survey, the gold standard in crime research”, you point that two others studies are also valid as non “crime” research (not measuring crime statistics, but rather victimization statistics). At no point does she attempt to invalidate the studies you mention, she is simply pointing to a few other studies to show just how big a gap the is in the numbers the CDC provides in comparison. “Sure crime surveys trigger people to report the most serious offenses and maybe ignore the… Read more »
I agree assman, repress it and quit dwelling upon it.It’s not a problem when I go into the world at all.
We all know men are the first to want to stomp an accused rapist just upon accusation.
That is how much NOT a “rape culture” there is..
My Gosh, I find myself knee-jerk willing to do terrible things to alleged perps.
That’s when I need to step back and ask myself how did my emotional structure become so badly programmed?
Yes, programmed.
Freebird, just because you were okay with being sexually assaulted(I assume that’s what this conversation is about) doesn’t mean _every other person in the world is going to respond like you._
My husband was subject to two attempted gang rapes and it did bother him. I was raped and it bothered me.
This is a bit difficult. I want sexual violence against men to be counted in the same degree and manner as sexual violence against women. An exclusionary definition of rape and several other factors have made that very uncommon earlier. The NISVS 2010 is a report which earlier iterations have been considered reliable by many working with rape prevention programs as well as many feminists. When the 12 months prevalency numbers showed near gender parity for to directly comparable categories (rape and being made to penetrate someone else) – both is unconsensual penetrative sex – finally the prevalence of male… Read more »
“I want sexual violence against men to be counted in the same degree and manner as sexual violence against women” “I want” is how you get bad science. “I worry that a push by arguments like that of Ms. Hoff Summers may reset that process. Many will find it too easy to conflate those two separate issues and say; ok let’s not count drunk sex at all and let’s not count men as well (as we previously didn’t).” I think that is a great tradeoff. Lets not count drunk sex AT ALL and in exchange we don’t count men. While… Read more »
“I think that is a great tradeoff. Lets not count drunk sex AT ALL and in exchange we don’t count men.”
I’m sorry? What kind of benefit is this?
“Becoming a victim does not help you to deal with a problem.”
If a man is forced into sex by another person, he is victimized by the _action_ not by recognizing it as rape.
In case there was any misunderstanding. I have no want’s as to what the result should be, but I want equality in how it’s counted and which methodology is used.
Assman argued that one shouldn’t count male victims at all and implied that everything can be fixed by defining it away. “Not talking about things makes things disappear” is the kind of wishful thinking which unfortunately fails more often than not and when it fails it tend to fail badly.
Assman, I think I understand where you’re coming from, even if your statement sounds callous and cruel. While you state you are sick of diseases, what *I* am sick of is the tendency of the powers-that-be to psycho-analyze away sh1tty behavior. It’s not the diseases that are the problem, but the tendency of “experts” to see them where they are not. It seems nobody can be locked up in prison anymore (particularly women) because some expert is likely to come in and state the person is afflicted–not evil. Mary Winkler is a great poster child of this tendency. What we… Read more »
Rape is vastly underreported…Many young victims of sexual assault do not recognize it as rape….I was way too young when my mentor took advantage of his position of trust and power 3 decades ago….I called it “love” then…It is way too clear to me now that it was, in truth, statutory rape and that he should have gone to jail for many years for what he did (When I read about Jerry Sandusky, I feel nauseated)…His tactics to manipulate and coerce are strangely similar to what pimps/sex traffickers do to young girls as described in Rachel Lloyd’s book, “Girls Like… Read more »
With the % of rape reported and you still think rape is vastly underreported? I think you won’t be happy until you see every man goes to jail!
I disagree with Ms. Hoff Sommers when she says that we should expect victims to classify what happened to them as ‘rape’ before counting it as such.
Due to socialization a lot of victims who were raped don’t see what happened to them as rape.
However I do agree with her that those questions were very ambiguously worded and too elastic. The surveyors should have done better nailing down what they were looking for.
Well the questions being asked (Appendix C of the Report) and the way they were constructed did leave a lot to be desired.
I’m still struck by that odd correlation by the CDC questions – with the FBI re-definition of rape – and yet the CDC questions predate any FBI activity on change by a year.
It’s a can of worms I’ll agree. I suppose I don’t have an issue with the survey taker defining things as a sexual assault or rape provided that they do some kind of due diligence in their questionnaire to make sure the experience(s) adhere to the definition of sex assault or rape. If you’re just going to have a person answer a question about whether or not they were intoxicated without finding out if they were coerced, cajoled, or forced into something uncomfortable or that the other person progressed past a “NO” then you would have a problem. Also, I… Read more »
I found the closing of Christina Hoff Sommer’s Op-ed the most interesting. Perhaps they felt the study would draw needed attention to the genuine problem of sexual violence. That is an understandable but recklessly misguided conclusion. Faulty studies send scarce resources in the wrong directions; more programs on sexism, stereotypes and social structures, for example, are unlikely to help victims of violence. Defining sexual violence down obscures the gradations in culpability that are essential to effective criminal law, and it holds up a false mirror on our society. The CDC should recall this study. Rather powerful – and unprecedented! And,… Read more »
Always, always look for the motivation behind numbers. Grants. Power. Laws. Regulations. Restrictions.
Going on twenty years ago, two docs from the CDC admitted they’d lied about the threat to heteros of AIDS. For political purposes, they said. Presumably they figured that if the rest of us thought of AIDS as a disease of druggies and gays, the necessary support wouldn’t have been forthcoming, absent mass hysteria.
See Michael Fumento on the subject, as well.
But, anyway, suspect activists’ numbers.
See Koss. Needed lots of rapes so….we got lots of rapes.
I thought we had a number of GMP commenters quite happy about the CDC data which showed a very broad picture on male victims. “It would sure be nice to get real data on sexual violence outside the political motivations of all involved. ” Wouldn’t that be nice? Conservatives will say one thing and liberals another. I think what I’ve learned from my time here, the stats listed by the CDC and the new FBI definition, is that human beings are messy, inventive in the ways they abuse each other, creative in the way they justify facts and fallacies to… Read more »
“I thought we had a number of GMP commenters quite happy about the CDC data which showed a very broad picture on male victims.”
Not happy, just pointing out the numbers between female and male victims (over a 1 year period) are very similar. But such complaints that CHS points out, as well as the refusal to acknowledge “forced to penetrate” as rape are amongst the complaints against it. But even despite such “elastic” definitions, the fact it can show parity says a great deal.
“I thought we had a number of GMP commenters quite happy about the CDC data which showed a very broad picture on male victims.” I was always quite uncomfortable with the CDC data. I was especially uncomfortable with what it showed about male rape and abuse because I still believe that women are sexually assaulted and raped in far greater numbers than men. The reason I was uncomfortable was because I have never really trusted surveys of this nature and when they show highly unexpected results it makes me more uncomfortable. I think the whole field of sexual violence studies… Read more »
“I was always quite uncomfortable with the CDC data. ” And yet you say below: ““I want” is how you get bad science.” Because you’re uncomfortable about something doesn’t make it _not true_. In point of fact a lot of surveys on sexual assault have been finding parity between male and female victimization in the last year numbers for a while now. Having actually followed the field and done some research the CDC’s numbers surprise me not one whit. “I have never been sexually assaulted or raped by anyone and I don’t know any man who has.” Maybe they don’t… Read more »
I wondered if the CDC asked their questions the way they did to get the stats based on behavior not belief. Because two people could have the exact same physical experience and have completely different mental experiences of the experience That is correct. Minorities (including men) tend to not see attacks against them as seriously as more privileged groups like white women do. This is especially true for men. In fact a lot of people still think it is impossible to rape men so what are the chances that if you just come out and ask, “Were you raped?” that… Read more »