THE CDC COUNTED IT. THE HEADLINE DIDN’T.
A post went around this week. “Men get raped too.” The reply underneath it: “Yes, they do. And in 99.9% of cases, it’s by other men.”
That number has no source. The CDC has one.
The CDC’s own survey — the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 2010 — asked men about the last 12 months. 1,267,000 men said they were made to penetrate someone. In the same 12 months, 1,270,000 women said they were raped. The rate was identical: 1.1% and 1.1%.
Same number. Different word. The CDC does not call being made to penetrate “rape.” It files it under “other sexual violence.” The definition decides the headline.
Now page 24. Of the men who were made to penetrate, 79.2% reported only female perpetrators. Sexual coercion: 83.6% female. Unwanted sexual contact: 53.1% female. The newer survey, 2016/2017, found the same pattern: 69.6% of men made to penetrate named only female perpetrators — 83.8% in the 12 months before that survey.
TIME did the math back in 2014. Cathy Young wrote that if being made to penetrate counted as rape, the headline could have been that women rape men as often as men rape women. That was twelve years ago. The post going around this week says 99.9%.
Now keep it straight, because the numbers cut both ways. Over a lifetime, the gap is real: nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) have been raped; 1 in 21 men (4.8%) have been made to penetrate. And Young herself warned against equating a drunken act with violent rape — most of the men in the survey wouldn’t call themselves rape victims, and with good reason. The 12-month parity is real. The lifetime gap is real. Both can be true.
What is not true is 99.9%.
THE NUMBER THAT WENT VIRAL WAS MADE UP. THE REAL ONE WAS IN A GOVERNMENT REPORT SINCE 2011.
A post with no source got shared. A survey with 1.267 million men in it got buried under a definition. The definition is the whole trick. Call it what it is, and the headline writes itself.
[MATTHEW’S TAKE — his words to add]
-SSM
Sources:
CDC NISVS 2010 Summary Report: https://www.nsvrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
CDC NISVS 2016/2017 Report on Sexual Violence: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/124625/cdc_124625_DS1.pdf
TIME, “The CDC’s Rape Numbers Are Misleading,” Cathy Young, Sep 17, 2014: https://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/