Essay Series 5.5: Sexual violence, rape, and femicide are part of our culture.

Misogyny underlies the continuum of sexual violence against girls and women. This violence ranges from such things as sharing nude photos and videos of girls and women online and sending unwanted “dick pics” to the violence of voyeurism, flashing, groping, rape, and murder.

Boys and men can be victims of sexual violence too, although at much lower rates than women and girls. Boys and men are almost always the rapists.

Victims and Perpetrators of Sexual Violence

Statistics show that girls and women are the primary victims of sexual violence and the vast majority of the perpetrators are boys or men. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show that 45 percent of women in the United States experienced some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetimes, with 21 percent reporting rape or attempted rape, 20 percent reporting sexual coercion, and 39 percent reporting unwanted sexual contact.³⁹¹

In contrast, 17 percent of men in the United States experienced some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetimes, with 3 percent reporting completed or attempted rape, 4 percent reporting being made to sexually penetrate someone else, 6 percent reporting sexual coercion, and 14 percent reporting unwanted sexual contact.³⁹²

The CDC’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 13 percent of high school girls had been forced into having sex compared to four percent of boys.³⁹³

Boys and men are overwhelmingly the ones who rape women and girls and other males. Girls and women are most likely to be the perpetrators forcing males to penetrate others. Ninety-four percent of female rape victims reported having only male rapists. About 77 percent of male rape victims reported having only male rapists.³⁹⁴

When it’s males being forced to penetrate others, girls and women are the majority of perpetrators. Seventy percent of males made to penetrate others reported only female perpetrators and 18 percent reported only male perpetrators.³⁹⁵

The data clearly show that women and girls are the majority of victims of sexual violence and that men are the vast majority of perpetrators. There is no factual basis for the manosphere’s claims that women and girls are as sexually violent as men.

Rape Culture

Rape culture refers to the beliefs and behaviors that normalize rape and sexual violence, or make them permissible. In rape culture, society:

1. Doesn’t believe the girls and women who say they have been raped.

1. Shames them when they report rapes.³⁹⁶

1. Makes many women feel unsafe and vulnerable to rape so they restrict their activities.³⁹⁷

There is a long history of society protecting the rapist in the United States.

1. In the 1800s, rape was seldom punished. The police focused their suspicions on the victims.

1. Rape of enslaved women wasn’t illegal in slave states.³⁹⁸

1. Before the 1970s “rape shield laws,” lawyers could bring up a woman’s sexual history in trials with few, if any, limits.³⁹⁹

1. Marital rape wasn’t illegal across the United States until the 1990s.⁴⁰⁰

Powerful men started experiencing some consequences for rape via the #MeToo movement, which became prominent in 2017.⁴⁰¹ People told stories identifying film directors, professors, media giants, politicians, and others who victimized women. Powerful men lost their jobs including Harvey Weinstein, a movie producer (also convicted); Charlie Rose, a talk-show host; Matt Lauer, a journalist; Mario Batali, a restaurateur (acquitted); and Senator Al Franken, who resigned. Some of these men hadn’t suffered any consequences for their actions for decades. The women who survived their abuse suffered the shame, humiliation, and derailment of careers that the perpetrators should have experienced.⁴⁰²

Femicide

Men associated with the manosphere have murdered or injured at least 100 people in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. For example, Elliot Rodger, who incels consider a hero and a martyr, uploaded a video on YouTube that listed his grievances against women and plans to punish them before he went out and killed young sorority women in California. He ultimately killed six people and injured 14. Rodger also emailed lengthy manifestos with his ideas to family and acquaintances. He believed he was a gentleman and a superior alpha male. He complained that women never were attracted to him and that he was a virgin. Rodger posted extensively on incel sites.⁴⁰³

Other such terrorists, who considered women to be the source of their troubles, include the following:

1. In 2009, George Sodini killed three women and injured nine at an aerobics class in Pennsylvania. He was a member of the pickup artist community.

1. In 2015, Chris Harper-Mercer, who idolized Elliot Rodger, killed or injured 18 college students in Oregon. He complained about being a virgin, about girls dating Black men, and appeared to be part of an online group of “beta boys” (men who are submissive to dominant men).

1. In 2017, William Atchison pretended to be a student and entered a New Mexico high school where he killed two students and himself. He idolized Elliot Rodger.

1. In 2018, Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people and injured 17 more in Florida. In the same year and state, Scott Beierle killed two women and injured four more before killing himself in a hot yoga studio. Both people referred to Elliot Rodger’s example.

1. In 2021, Robert Long killed seven women and one man when he attacked three spas in Atlanta, Georgia. He targeted them because he believed the workers who gave massages were tempting him into sexual addiction. Racism against women with Asian heritage caused him to target these places.

More incels have killed women in Canada and the United Kingdom.^404,405

Most media accounts of the terrorist Rodger’s murders didn’t emphasize the fact that his targets were women and men based on extreme misogyny. The media seem reluctant to label White men who are mass murderers as the terrorists that they are. Rather, the media tend to explain away their behavior by portraying these terrorists in a sympathetic light. For example, the New York Times described Elliot Rodger as troubled, introverted, and bullied and so presented him as a victim.⁴⁰⁶

Reflections

Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violence against women and their own sex. One has to ask why men. One answer is that there is a link between gender stereotypes and sexual violence.⁴⁰⁷ Men who tend to support the idea that women and children should obey them often use violence to control their families. The manosphere also encourages men to use violence to keep women submissive.

Other answers to the question of “why men?” are that they get away with it, as most rapists do, and many men view girls and women as sexual objects, as our culture has taught them.

Media, political, and business leaders need to take sexual harassment of anyone seriously and devise ways to lead our society out of the violence. We all need to learn about the violence men direct toward women and each other. We need to stand up to it when it’s safe to do so and never vote or lend our political support to an abuser, regardless of sex or political party. When we do, we are supporting that abuse.

What are you willing to do about the long-running epidemic of men’s violence directed at women and other men?