#not to mention no one ever said women never commit violence

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

in a spiral of looking up statistics and analysis of men's experiences of ipv and sexual violence and it is legitimately amazing the sheer amount of impact that the pair of studies that found female perpetration was more common back in like 2016 (the first was talked about in hannah rosin's slate piece "when men are raped" and then both were talked about in 'how often do women rape men?' in the atlantic). and i think that this is pretty par for the course, but it cannot be removed from what we also know about the media’s tendency to sensationalize female perpetrators of violence and greater media bias regarding women as perpetrators of violence, in which female perpetrators are given an outsized focus compared to male perpetrators. also in which the femaleness of a perpetrator of violence is treated as notable, while the sex of male perpetrators is treated as incidental.

but beyond that, the narrative here does represent one in which many people are seeking out information in search of a problem. these came out right before #MeToo, but in the midst of the 2016 presidential election in which sexual violence against women became a flashpoint after the release of the access hollywood tape and the general knowledge of donald trump's several accusations of sexual assault or impropriety (as well as hillary clinton's husband, former president bill clinton's own accusations of sexual violence and impropriety against him, which were weaponized by donald trump in at least one debate explicity, where he brought some of clinton's 'alleged' victims and had them sit in the front row). and since the decline of 2010s consent feminism and its focus on rape culture (which imo peaked in the mainstream with the obama presidency initiative "it's on us," somewhat ironically helmed by joe biden, to address on campus sexual assault, there has been a pivot in discourse on sexual violence, with an explicit and repeated desire to abandon the gendered framework in which we understand sexual and domestic violence.

some of this is good. i think it is worthwhile to talk about men's experienced of sexual and domestic violence, as well as the intersections between homophobia, biphobia, and sexual and domestic violence. this impulse, for example, has produced greater scrutiny on sexual assault of men in the military, as well as a more nuanced understanding of how men and boys are victimized in armed conflict. but even as reports on studies that find a greater prevalence of female perpetration of sexual (and domestic) violence acknowledge that such results rely on redefining and vastly broadening the definition of sexual assault, in particular, they do not consider the implications of this on how we understand women's victimization. if "nagging or begging" someone into having sex with you can constitute sexual assault - as it does in one particular study cited in semple's work - then women's experience of sexual assault is like even more vastly underreported than we understand it to be currently. but regarding this specifically, it is strange to see this posited as a uniquely male experience of sexual violence and a uniquely female form of perpetration when such cultural concepts such as "blue balls" and the "tease" exist. also in the light of the increased prevalence of the idea of heterosexual dating as inherently transactional - that women who allow men to pay for a date then owe them sex or sexual favors in kind. there is also the popular discourse on male loneliness, adult virginity, and sexual inactivity, which portray men not having sex as a societal crisis stemming, in part, from women's refusal to have sex with them, or from women's own sexual and romantic preferences. then there is also the fact that rape within a relationship, overwhelmingly male on female, is rarely prosecuted, and the history of marital rape, which was only recently regarded as a crime in most countries. there are still many in which is still not considered as such.

this post is already way longer than i intended but the ironic thing about this discourse and this academic impulse, which in many ways has come to dominate popular research on sexual and domestic violence, is that the vast majority of data we do have suggests that de-gendering our understanding of sexual and domestic violence is of little use to male victims anyway. for one, though popular discourse suggests that it is some nebulous feminist bias that prevents men from seeing themselves as and reporting themselves as victims of sexual violence, most significant studies on male victims of violence illustrate that men's own attitudes about masculinity and about male victimhood are the largest predictors of their likelihood to see themselves as victims. one study found that men with lower levels of empathy for male victims of sexual violence are less likely to come forward about their own experiences of sexual violence (don't have the link on hand, i'll add it later). study after study also shows that men are far more likely than women to disbelieve male victims, even those that claim feminists are biased against men (though we may question why crisis centers run by women for women are accosted over wanting to prioritize their very limited resources for female victims, and also why the understanding of rape as a tool of male domination is treated as a bias against men rather than a political analysis of violence - which it is). homophobic men are also likely to believe gay men are not as affected by sexual assault as straight men.

lastly, even efforts to redefine sexual assault to include more male victims can fail to gain traction specifically among these men - namely, the idea of "made to penetrate" sexual assault (or MTP) (i think this is included in the slate piece by hannah rosin; i can't remember where i saw it). personally, i think this issue here may be that such terminology is just....not relevant to majority of self-identified male victims of sexual violence, and that many men who may have experienced MTP assault simply do not consider themselves victims of sexual violence. in the studies we do have about sexual violence experienced by men, the overwhelming majority of men report forced penetration or forced touching, or having oral sex forcibly performed on them (see also the intercept piece of sexual assault in the military). expanded understanding of sexual violence against men that has seen traction is the inclusion of being made to rape others - usually during armed conflict - as a form of sexual violence against men and boys (see above link about armed conflict and sexual violence). like, this is definitely a complicated issue, but approaching men’s sexual victimization with the purpose of rejecting feminist theories of violence, of gender neutralizing sexual and domestic violence, and of trying to prove “women are just as bad as men,” is not going to benefit men or women because violence against men occurs in the same larger social context as violence against women - it largely exists as a form of domination, humiliation, and a representation of male sexual entitlement. men make up the vast majority of people who empathize with perpetrators over victims, who don’t believe victims, or believe victims have invited sexual violence - whether the victims are male or female. because men’s attitudes about sexual violence, including against men, have been developed in a society in which sexual violence is cornerstone of patriarchal political violence, as well as homophobic and racial violence. you can’t focus on trying to fit a round peg into a square hole because it’s trendy of convenient. and if you are going to meaningfully challenge feminist theories of violence, you are going to actually have to do that. you can’t just keep pretending the existence of feminist hegemony