Post #1200343

So this article about a recent study is floating around my feed at the moment: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08862605261432630 Basically, the gist is that "95.1% [of surveyed men] reported having recently used at least one of the strategies to [force] a woman to have sex who they knew did not want sex and had not consented." Which is fucked. Extra fucked that the study only asks about the last 4 years. So these are all recent occurrences. But there are some things I would like to note: - The study is not, and does not claim to be, representative. That "95.1% [of surveyed men]" should not and cannot be extrapolated to all men. The rate for men in general is probably still staggeringly high, but I seriously doubt it is that high. - Before the survey, "The consent form indicated that the survey was men’s opportunity “to provide their side of the story given that we have heard so much from women”" which would presumably make the demographic that does not force women to have sex, run the fuck away from the survey. - There is an error in one of the tables, probably because the data was at some point written out by hand, instead of being copy-pasted from an automatically generated table. This doesn't directly mean anything about the quality of the data, but it is a bit odd that this happened. I've contacted the authors to clarify what happened here. To be clear, I still think this study is valuable. As the article says: "This is one of the first studies to our knowledge to directly survey men anonymously about recent attempts to force an unwilling and nonconsenting woman to have sex." That's incredibly, incredibly valuable. The scientific community needs to start focusing on the perpetrators of sexual violence - because those are the people who need to change, to help ensure the safety of everyone. And this study, despite its flaws, takes us all one step closer to that. Disclaimer: I'm an amateur sexologist, which is a fancy way of saying that I find sex and sexual relationships very interesting, but I have zero formal qualifications. I'm also not an expert in interpreting academic writings. I may have missed or misinterpreted something important.