Sexual assault is a widely discussed and hotly debated subject today, as it has been for many years. It’s not surprising that the conversation is often centered around college campuses where sexual assault is particularly rampant with anywhere from 28.5% (Krebs, Lindquist, Warner, Fisher, & Martin 2009) to 54% (Koss, Gidycz & Wisniewski, 1987) of women experiencing sexual assault during their time at college. Due to its high prevalence sexual assault on college campuses is the focus of a great amount of literature on the topic of sexual assault. Even though sexual assault on college campuses are definitely worth paying particular attention to they are not the only places that sexual assault occurs. The term sexual assault can have a broad meaning, denoting anything from a coerced, forced, or incapacitated touch, kiss, or penetration of any sort. Sexual assault can happen to any person male or female, of any age, any race, social-standing, religion, etc. The common script of sexual violence is one of a woman being assaulted by a male stranger at night. This is particularly salient in the average person’s mind when the phrase sexual assault comes to mind. This is rarely the case. According to Bureau of Justice Statistics (2009) only 32% of women and 0% of men reported being sexually assaulted by strangers. But sexual assault can be perpetrated by anyone, often times an acquaintance. Sexual assault is a particularly gendered issue with focus being primarily on women as victims and men as perpetrators. The issue does deserve to be looked at from the perceptive of women, but it is also important to analyze the psychology behind both women and men as victims and perpetrators of sexual violence.
There are many theories and explanations in existence that attempt to explain the prevalence of men’s sexual assault and violence against women. A study done by McDermott et al. (2015) analyzes these different theories. The study reviewed sexual assault literature and its research and ideological trends with relation to masculinities. In the study they examined 121 peer-reviewed articles that were yielded from a search of keywords like sexual assault, rape, men, masculinity, etc. The results of the study show that men’s attitudes towards women and violence are strong predictors of sexual assault perpetration and there is little literature and research focusing on sexual assault and men’s masculinities.
In research done by Krahé and Berger (2016), they examined the longitudinal associations between sexual victimizations, depression, and sexual self-esteem among male and female students attending college in Germany. The study was conducted in three-waves, one for each year of college studied. The Sexual Aggression and Victimization Scale (SAV-S) was used to collect report of sexual assault in the study. The Beck Depression Inventory for use with nonclinical samples by Schmitt, Altstötter-Gleich, Hinz, Maes and Brähler (2006) was used to measure depression and 12 items from the short form of the Sexual Self-Esteem Scale by Zeanah and Schwarz (1996) were used to measure sexual self-esteem. The results of the study indicate that sexual assault is a predictor of increased depression and lowered sexual self-esteem. They also show that depression and low sexual self-esteem may be vulnerability factors for experiencing sexual assault. These findings hold true for both male and female participants. This supports previous research (Elliott, Mok, & Briere, 2004) that found that victims of sexual assault report higher rates of depression and sexual concern. In that study it was shown that male participants actually reported higher rates of depression and sexual concern than female participants.
Judson, Johnson, and Perez (2013) aimed to understand public perception of men who have been psychologically coerced into unwanted sexual activity as well as to have an understanding of what resources are viewed as appropriate for these men. In their study, after reading a vignette with either a male victim or female victim. The measures used were the Homophobia Scale, the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, the Attitude Toward the Victim Scale, the General Help-Seeking Questionnaire, and a manipulation check. Participants received all measures corresponding to the gender of the victim in their assigned vignette. The results of the study are in line with previous research indicating that male victims are viewed by society as suffering less, experiencing more pleasure during the encounter, are less traumatized, incur less adverse effects and are overall more responsible for the sexually coercive episode than female victims. Additionally, when the perpetrator was female higher leniency was paired with a greater anti-victim attitude. Interestingly, participants with higher homophobic and sexist attitudes expressed greater anti-victim attitudes toward male and female victims.
How attitudes relating to sexual assault, gender, and race all factor together is an interesting question that needs much more focus and research. Jimenez and Abreu (2002) explored this topic in their study on 165 Latino men and women and 171 white men and women. Participants were assigned one of four written scenarios featuring either a same-race white couple, same-race Latino couple, a Latino man and a white woman, or a white man and a Latina woman. The measures utilized were the Rape Empathy Scale, Attitudes Toward Rape Victims Scale, and The Rape Myth Acceptance Scale. The results of this study are line with previous research showing that female participants had higher levels of empathy for the victim, gave more credibility to the victim, and were less likely to accept rape myths than their male counterparts in the study. When participant race and sex are both taken into account, white women are more likely to have positive attitudes towards rape victims and were less likely to support rape myths than Latina women. Jimenez and Abreu (2002) offer the explanation that Latinas having a more traditional set of values especially with relation to gender roles and sex. Even though white women held more sympathy for rape victims than Latinas, this sympathy did not extend over to when the victim of the assault was Latina, not white. This suggests that not only do the white female participants hold racial stereotypes that are influencing the way they perceive Latina women when they are victims (Jimenez and Abreu, 2002), but these participants’ sympathy may not extend past a situation where they cannot experience the situation from the point of view of the victim as presumably they are able to when the victim is also white.
Originally studied in returning soldiers after the Vietnam war, posttraumatic stress disorder was formally thought of as a combat related illness. This is incorrect because any traumatic event can lead to posttraumatic stress disorder and in this case sexual assault is no exception. Everyone who experiences trauma reacts in different ways, including in the development of PTSD following the event(s). In a quantitative review of 25 years of research on the topic of PTSD and trauma with relation to sex differences, Tolin and Foa (2006) analyzed who develops PTSD following the occurrence of what they refer to as a potentially traumatic event (PTE). In selecting the articles utilized for their review Tolin and Foa looked at articles relating to PTEs, PTSD among male and female participants. Many articles that were yielded in the search were excluded on such basis’s as the sample consisted of individuals seeking mental health treatment, the study did not provide sex specific data, the article was a review that presented no new data, the sample in the study was composed solely of those with PTSD or trauma survivors, the sample was either all male or all female, etc. The results of the review allow several interesting conclusions to be drawn. The review found that regardless of other variables such as type of study, population, type of assessment, etc. women and girls were more likely than men and boys to meet the criteria for PTSD. The authors of this article conclude that this supports previous research showing that both women and girls are more likely to develop fear and anxiety-based disorders than their male counterparts. The authors wondered if these high rates were because of female participants simply being more likely to be at a higher risk for traumatic experiences relative to male participants. They did not find this to be true given that in fact male participants were more likely to report being in potentially traumatic events. But the results showed a difference in the type of trauma experienced by male and female participants. Male participants were more likely to experience nonsexual assault related PTEs such as accidents, combat, witnessing death or injury, etc. while female participants reported experiencing more sexual violence. But the authors also found that even when the type of traumatic event was held constant between sex that women were still more likely to develop PTSD than men. These results do not extend to sexual assault as it was found that among both adults and children there was not a significant sex difference found in the development rates of PTSD.
Sexual assault is intractably linked to gender in numerous ways within society. Part of this is because it is more common for women to be victims of sexual assault and for men to be perpetrators. Men’s attitudes towards violence and women was found to be perhaps the best theory for why men assault women (McDermott et al. 2015). Men also are much more likely to accept rape myths as truth than women (Jimenez and Abreu, 2002). But just because this is the more likely scenario does not mean this is true for many victims of sexual assault. Many victims of sexual assault are men and many perpetrators of sexual assault are women. It is nearly impossible to tell how much of the low rates of men reporting sexual assault are because of the shame and silence that surrounds it especially for men. Judson, Johnson, and Prez’s 2013 study exhibit how society feels about male victims of sexual assault which is quite negative in comparison to female victims especially if the perpetrator is female. Both male and female victims exhibit high rates of depression and low sexual esteem but evidence suggest that male victims can be particularly vulnerable to these conditions. All of this evidence shows that women deserve to have a great amount of research and resources spent in order to help decrease their high rates of sexual assault but just because men have a lower rate of sexual violence perpetrated against them does not mean that they should be silenced or forgotten as victims.
...(download the rest of the essay above)