Please allow me to openly and sincerely apologize. The statistics I’ve been working and quoting from for the past two years showed undeniably that 99% of sexual violence was perpetrated by men onto other men, women, transgender people, and children. New studies show that number might be as low as 60%, still the majority, but low enough to make a huge difference about the way we talk about sexual violence. Little did I know that the definition for rape previous studies used only counted anal and oral penetration as rape when discussing male victims of assault. They didn’t count forced vaginal penetration by a female perpetrator.
“Made to penetrate,” as they clumsily call it, didn’t count as “rape,” and I must wholeheartedly disagree.
In my mind, I have defined rape as when the genitals, anus, or mouth was penetrated by or comes into contact with another’s genitals, anus, mouth, or object. I saw it as going both ways, as this would included female perpetrated rape onto a male and forced cunnilingus as rape.
Although I’ve already changed much of the language on this site to reflect gender neutrality when discussing both victims and perpetrators, please be patient while I update the rest and accept my apology for being misinformed.
I still, however, hold that squabbling over gender pronouns when discussing the overall epidemic of rape is highly derailing to the topic at hand. Please show patience and compassion when people are catching up with the new information and trying to alter the way they speak to incorporate gender neutrality. If someone defaults to “he” as perpetrator and “she” as victim, allow the conversation to continue about rape and sexual assault without forcing the conversation to be about gender binary pronouns. When you contribute to the conversation, use the pronouns relevant to your experience or gender neutral. By shouting “women rape, too,” does no one any good. However, if you say, “Amy raped my friend Sam, and he had a difficult time because of cultural misunderstandings about how a man can be raped on top of all this rape culture stuff,” you gently remind those engaged in the discussion that women also rape, obviously more than previously thought, and you don’t derail the conversation from the subject at hand.
Here are a few articles that I’ve recently come across:
The Word You Are Searching for Is Rape
The Hard Truth About Girl-on-Guy Rape
The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions
-_Q
Olivia M. Grey lives in the cobwebbed corners of her mind writing paranormal romance with a Steampunk twist, like the Amazon Gothic Romance bestseller Avalon Revisited and it’s sequel, of sorts, Avalon Revamped. Her short stories and poetry have been published in various magazines and anthologies, like SNM Horror Magazine and How the West Was Wicked. Ms. Grey also blogs and podcasts relationship essays covering such topics as alternative lifestyles, deepening intimacy, ending a relationship with love and respect, and other deliciously dark and decadent matters of the heart and soul.
Read more by O. M. Grey on her blog Caught in the Cogs, http://omgrey.wordpress.com
The Order of the White Feather 
Thank you for this and for making updates. Sadly though, many people have used stats to intentionally harm and silence those of attacked by women. In social justice circles, it seems to be a sport practiced by the arrogant and those lacking any sense of humanity or empathy. I lived it and I’ve been silenced for 20 years by statistical lies and intentional, calculated erasure. Thank you for updating your resources. No survivor should be treated the way so many of us have been – as an aside, unimportant or a distraction. It is inexcusable and unforgiveable when done so with malice – as happens often.
I’m so sorry to hear that. To my knowledge, I’ve never dismissed a survivor of any rape, and I know more than a few male survivors of female assaults & abuse.
I have become impatient with people saying “women rape, too!!!” in the middle of a discussion on rape and have quoted those statistics after acknowledging that women, indeed, do rape, too. In the future, I will try to remember how silenced and diminished that makes survivors like you feel. As I know all too well what it feels like to be silenced and dismissed.
I’m so sorry…first that someone hurt you in that way, and secondly that you’ve been silenced and dismissed. Honestly, I’ve yet to meet a survivor who hasn’t been silenced and dismissed, shamed and retraumatized by such cultural behaviors.
May you find peace.