Graph from The Enliven Project, cached on-site as a bandwidth-saving courtesy.

The gender distribution of sexual violence isn't as black and white as Patriarchal ideology would have us believe.  A post and accompanying graphic by Sarah Beaulieu called "The Super Bowl statistic we aren’t talking about" really puts it in perspective.

We are all talking about the Super Bowl. We are ranting and raving about the Ravens and the 49ers and the fact that their coaches are brothers. Every imaginable statistic about the teams, the players, and the coaches is available on every major news site. We are eagerly anticipating the commercials, planning our menus for the Super Bowl parties, and placing bets on who will win and what the final score might be.

But there is one thing that we aren’t talking about this week.

It’s that 1 out of 6 men on the field next Sunday could be survivors of sexual violence.

That’s right, 1 out of 6.

Source: Sarah Beaulieu's The Enliven Project

While this puts the canonical statistic about 1 out of 4 women in better perspective, what I think is even more important is that it helps unify the methodology: 

Just to be clear, we don’t know whether specific players have had specific experiences. We simply want to you to look at the men in your class, the men in your family, and the men on your favorite sports team with this statistic in mind.

Yes, someone can attempt to deny or dismiss the statistic about men as "fuzzy," but by doing so they inescapably deny or dismiss the corresponding statistic for women.  Similarly, those who dispute how the statistics about female victims are collected and compiled are inextricably throwing male victims under the bus.

Here's a point that really matters to me (emphasis mine.)

Too much shame and stigma exists for all victims of sexual violence.

And a point that's too-often overlooked both by patriarchists and doctrinaire/conservative feminists alike:

But the stigma is even greater for men, many of whom believe they should have been able to protect themselves or fear that friends and family members will think less of them if they come forward.

There have been a handful of brave and courageous men – R.A. Dickey, Tyler Perry, Scott Brown, and Keyon Dooling to name a few – who have stepped forward and are generous in sharing their stories and experiences so that others can be less afraid to break silence. But these men are not the exception. And their stories are more common than you think.

She ends her post with a welcome and heartfelt reminder

When you are watching the Super Bowl next weekend, begin the conversation by sharing this graphic. Ask yourself whether you are open to the truth in your own life and in the lives of the men you love.

 I'll just say again, as I've said in the past, that the closer we get to acknowledging this as a universal issue the further we get from dismissing this large fraction or that, the closer we get to   managing, mitigating, reducing, and (why not aim high?) someday eliminating sexual violence.  All of it.

Image from Mike Ruppecht (cached as a bandwidth courtesy.)

Feminists have noted with considerable annoyance that straight, generally Anglo-American or European men are often assumed to be the default "normal" against which all others (not just women but ethnic, geographic, anatomical, and orientational "minorities") are measured.  We're sort of the default "zero ground" or background noise, which makes everyone else "fascinating" to science, statistics, and of course both men's and women's magazines and talk shows. 

But that assumption has a cost, not only for "others" but for men.  I wrote this in a comment in someone else's blog a few years ago, about what can happen when you uncouple the idea of men as the standard and just start looking at us as one of several focal points on the graph.

Here’s an example of what I think gets missed when you assume men are the neutral ruler everyone else is measured against. It’s economic, not biological, but I think it really drives the point home. You know the notorious statistic that women earn 79 to 85 cents on the dollar compared men? I’ve noticed that even people who don’t think that’s a problem put it in those terms: women earn some percentage different from standard-reference men.

So one day I put my shirt on inside out or something and while I was straightening that out the thought went through my head “men earn $1.21 to $1.15 cents on the dollar compared to women.” And while I was kind of goggling at the novelty of that construction I asked myself a question that as far as I know has never in the world been asked: what are employers buying with that extra 15-21 cents? And then (since at the time I was a stay at home dad in love to my eyebrows with my children, my home, and my daytime friends and activities) I asked myself what are men selling for that extra fifteen to twenty-one cents? And as soon as I did I didn’t really like the answer — what men sacrifice for that small difference in money is large chunks of what could otherwise be well-rounded life.

The point being that moving away from a perspective of assumed-male reference lets you examine your assumptions about the reference as well.

My point here is not to say "but, men have it bad too."  In the world of gross stereotypes everybody has it bad, so it's not even remarkable than men would. 

Instead my point is until we stop making men the default assumption it will continue to be hard to ask questions like "what are employers buying that extra 15 or 25 cents on the dollar?" Or "what are men giving up to get it?" And especially "is it worth it?"

Gathering statistics on human violence in America (as with violence around the world) is a perilous enterprise for a number of obvious and non-obvious reasons. Two being:

1. Aside from categories that tend to result in medical treatment or death, it's not always clear to either victims or perpetrators what constitutes "violence." (To the extent that some perpetrators will confess to behavior their victims will decline to recognize or acknowledge violent!)
2. Under-reporting of violence of all kinds, by perpetrators of all kinds, as recorded by law-enforcement and social scientists, is a giant, frustrating black hole of insufficient information. Oh, and a giant informational Rorschach Test on which people can project all their own personal agendas, biases, blind spots, and legitimate but difficult-to-support-because-the-data's-crap issues.

Today, with the House Republican engineered expiration of the not-entirely-well-named Violence Against Women Act, refining that evidence has just become a lot more difficult.

I say not entirely well-named because despite it having been written and passed (by mostly male legislators) with baked-in assumptions that only hetero women are victims of violence and that only hetero men are perpetrators in recent years it was becoming more inclusive.

But that was then. Until Jan 1, 2013, this was now: studies included information gathered about most intimate partner violence, about most intimate partner coercion, about most intimate partner sexual assault. About most intimate partner stalking. Not just women victims. Not just perpetrating men. Not just white people. Not enough, nearly, about trans people... but again until Jan. 1, it was starting to look like they were starting to get interested in that group as well.

Now! How do I know this? Well, I know it in part from a much-trumpeted but evidently poorly read executive summary of the CDC's The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Summary Report (pdf). Which, among other things, provided hard evidence that based on available information, see statistics-gathering problem #1, above the reservoir of probable victims of intimate partner violence is at least half again as large as prior studies assuming only female victims would lead us to believe. That there's a reservoir of at least 10% more perpetrators of sexual assault as prior studies assuming only male perpetrators would lead us to believe.

And in absolute terms those reservoirs of present and future violence, coercion, stalking, and assault problematic in terms of perpetuating further perpetration and victimization.

And in absolute terms those reservoirs are also a source of a critical and often more, well, violent violence: reciprocal violence. (John Bobbet was only the most lurid example of reciprocal violence -- there are plenty of instances where men or women badly injure or even kill partners who previously had physically, sexually, or psychologically assaulted. These instances are so routine they're rarely picked up at all by news outlets.)

But worse, in relative terms the failure to recognize those reservoirs actually keeps them even larger by making it difficult for an unknown but probably far larger number of victims and perpetrators to even recognize themselves, let alone to report themselves to law enforcement, let alone researchers. And thus the real number of victims and perpetrators will remain unreported. And large. And therefore perpetuated. And therefore more people are going to be coerced, stalked, assaulted, and all-round hurt.

Anyway, thanks to a bunch of snit-picking, feather-bedding, incompetence, and pure gender-bound vindictiveness House Republicans have made sure it'll be a heck of a lot harder to gather, compile, or disseminate the information that had heretofore begun to be made public, and made part of policy.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from that stereotype-challenging, gender-determinist-subverting, more-inclusive NISVS 2010 Report. Read it and, literally, weep. There might not be updates for a while.

Key Findings Sexual Violence by Any Perpetrator

• Nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) and 1 in 71 men (1.4%) in the United States have been raped at some time in their lives, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.
• More than half (51.1%) of female victims of rape reported being raped by an intimate partner and 40.8% by an acquaintance; for male victims, more than half (52.4%) reported being raped by an acquaintance and 15.1% by a stranger.
• Approximately 1 in 21 men (4.8%) reported that they were made to penetrate someone else during their lifetime; most men who were made to penetrate someone else reported that the perpetrator was either an intimate partner (44.8%) or an acquaintance (44.7%).
• An estimated 13% of women and 6% of men have experienced sexual coercion in their lifetime (i.e., unwanted sexual penetration after being pressured in a nonphysical way); and 27.2% of women and 11.7% of men have experienced unwanted sexual contact.
• Most female victims of completed rape (79.6%) experienced their first rape before the age of 25; 42.2% experienced their first completed rape before the age of 18 years.
• More than one-quarter of male victims of completed rape (27.8%) experienced their first rape when they were

Stalking Victimization by Any Perpetrator

• One in 6 women (16.2%) and 1 in 19 men (5.2%) in the United States have experienced stalking victimization at some point during their lifetime in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.
• Two-thirds (66.2%) of female victims of stalking were stalked by a current or former intimate partner; men were primarily stalked by an intimate partner or an acquaintance, 41.4% and 40.0%, respectively.
• Repeatedly receiving unwanted telephone calls, voice, or text messages was the most commonly experienced stalking tactic for both female and male victims of stalking (78.8% for women and 75.9% for men).
• More than half of female victims and more than one-third of male victims of stalking indicated that they were stalked before the age of 25; about 1 in 5 female victims and 1 in 14 male victims experienced stalking between the ages of 11 and 17.

Violence by an Intimate Partner

• More than 1 in 3 women (35.6%) and more than 1 in 4 men (28.5%) in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
• Among victims of intimate partner violence, more than 1 in 3 women experienced multiple forms of rape, stalking, or physical violence; 92.1% of male victims experienced physical violence alone, and 6.3% experienced physical violence and stalking.
• Nearly 1 in 10 women in the United States (9.4%) has been raped by an intimate partner in her lifetime, and an estimated 16.9% of women and 8.0% of men have experienced sexual violence other than rape by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime.
• About 1 in 4 women (24.3%) and 1 in 7 men (13.8%) have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner (e.g., hit with a fist or something hard, beaten, slammed against something) at some point in their lifetime.
• An estimated 10.7% of women and 2.1% of men have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime.
• Nearly half of all women and men in the United States have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime (48.4% and 48.8%, respectively).
• Most female and male victims of rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner (69% of female victims; 53% of male victims) experienced some form of intimate partner violence for the first time before 25 years of age.

Impact of Violence by an Intimate Partner

Nearly 3 in 10 women and 1 in 10 men in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner and reported at least one impact related to experiencing these or other forms of violent behavior in the relationship (e.g., being fearful, concerned for safety, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, need for health care, injury, contacting a crisis hotline, need for housing services, need for victim’s advocate services, need for legal services, missed at least one day of work or school).

Violence Experienced by Race/ Ethnicity

• Approximately 1 in 5 Black (22.0%) and White (18.8%) non-Hispanic women, and 1 in 7 Hispanic women (14.6%) in the United States have experienced rape at some point in their lives. More than one-quarter of women (26.9%) who identified as American Indian or as Alaska Native and 1 in 3 women (33.5%) who identified as multiracial non-Hispanic reported rape victimization in their lifetime.
• One out of 59 White non-Hispanic men (1.7%) has experienced rape at some point in his life. Nearly one-third of multiracial non-Hispanic men (31.6%) and over one-quarter of Hispanic men (26.2%) reported sexual violence other than rape in their lifetimes.
• Approximately 1 in 3 multiracial non-Hispanic women (30.6%) and 1 in 4 American Indian or Alaska Native women (22.7%) reported being stalked during their lifetimes. One in 5 Black non-Hispanic women (19.6%), 1 in 6 White non-Hispanic women (16.0%), and 1 in 7 Hispanic women (15.2%) experienced stalking in their lifetimes.
• Approximately 1 in 17 Black non-Hispanic men (6.0%), and 1 in 20 White non-Hispanic men (5.1%) and Hispanic men (5.1%) in the United States experienced stalking in their lifetime.
• Approximately 4 out of every 10 women of non-Hispanic Black or American Indian or Alaska Native race/ethnicity (43.7% and 46.0%, respectively), and 1 in 2 multiracial non-Hispanic women (53.8%) have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
• Nearly half (45.3%) of American Indian or Alaska Native men and almost 4 out of every 10 Black and multiracial men (38.6% and 39.3%, respectively) experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime.

Number and Sex of Perpetrators

• Across all types of violence, the majority of both female and male victims reported experiencing violence from one perpetrator.
• Across all types of violence, the majority of female victims reported that their perpetrators were male.
• Male rape victims and male victims of non-contact unwanted sexual experiences reported predominantly male perpetrators. Nearly half of stalking victimizations against males were also perpetrated by males. Perpetrators of other forms of violence against males were mostly female.

Bummer.

Head's up: This post discusses violent disregard for sexual consent.

You know, I really, really want to spend a lot of time talking about hetero situations where men's or boy's sexual autonomy is violated and their consent disregarded.

In fact, I'm actually going to talk about those things, because it's happened to me, it's happened to a lot of other men and boys, and it's a problem that if left unaddressed will leave a reservoir of contempt for consent no matter how effectively we put a lid on men and boys disregarding women's and girl's consent.

And in fact I'm going to talk about how the very idea that women can never transgress men's sexual consent or that men are always and almost by-definition always "game" is a pernicious, patriarchal myth.

But you know what? Shit like this (i.e. beatings, murder, ganging up, or "just" proudly Instagramming victims) makes it really hard to get that other issue taken seriously.

So.

If you really care about male victims of sexual assault then you'd better care about female victims too. And I don't mean lip-service "caring." I mean take positive action.

Oh, and I don't mean demand (vigilante) justice after the fact -- that's what "good men" do. I mean stop it before it happens. And I don't mean stop it by "guarding" or "protecting" women or warning them that they'll get what's coming to them if they drink too much or somehow dress the "wrong" way. "Good men" are taught to do that crap too. Instead I mean stop it by stopping your fellow man from going there in the first place. By stepping in when you see someone crossing the line. By shutting down the humor when someone makes light of a crime. Oh, and by challenging each and every case where someone tries to find some way to blame the victim or, worse, tries absolve their abusers and assailants.

You do that? Take female victims and male perpetrators seriously? You do that and people will take you seriously when you talk about female on male violation.