A DEFINITION OF RAPE & 10 Questions About Rapists and Truth-telling

image/anti-rape slogan is from here

Revised on 17 Oct. 2010 ECD

1. What percent of men who are rapists admit to those they've violated and abused that they committed rape?

2. What percent of men who are rapists, when appropriately charged with rape, deny the rape charge?

3. What percent of men who are rapists, when accused of rape, claim the accuser is a liar?

4. What percent of married men who are rapists, when they rape their own child, admit to doing so to their spouse?

5. What percent of child molesters confess to the police that they are raping and sexually assaulting children?

6. What percent of men who rape women in systems of prostitution believe they have committed rape?

7. What percent of men who are married to a woman and believe that married men are entitled to sex from their spouses, believe that a husband coercing or forcing his wife to have sex is rapist behavior?

8. What percent of men who publicly accuse women of falsely accusing men of rape have also committed rape against a woman, or a child of any gender, at least once in their lifetime?

9. What percent of men who are falsely accused of rape by someone, have, in fact, raped someone else in their lifetime who never accused them of rape?

10. What percent of men rape over the course of their lifetime?


The definition of a man or male committing rape, here, is this: 
penetrative sexual contact with another person that is unwelcomed, unwanted, or undesired; 
that is forced or coerced in ways that the man knows will enable him to have penetrative sex without her/him giving expressed permission; 
penetrative sex that happens when s/he has never indicated, verbally or not, "yes" to it happening; that is obtained while the raped person is drugged, drunk, or dissociated sufficiently for her/him to not be able to give meaningful consent;  
that occurs while the person penetrated is unconscious or dead; that is accomplished by waiting for the raped person to be drunk enough to be coerced into having sexual intercourse that he knows s/he wouldn't consent to while sober; 
penetrative sex that happens when a man or male assumes he is socially or personally entitled to have sexual intercourse, doesn't obtain explicit permission to do so when he initiates it, and doesn't bother to find out if she welcomes and wants it; 
penetrative sex that happens when a man is economically or socially empowered to obtain sexual intercourse when he wants it and acts out those privileges and that power when s/he doesn't have exactly the same level of social, personal, cognitive, economic, or political power, privilege, and sense of entitlement; 
penetrative sex that happens after s/he has said yes to kissing and fondling, but no to penetrative sex of any kind, and he proceeds to have sexual intercourse with her/him; 
penetrative sex obtained in a context where s/he fears he (or more than one man) may kill or injure her if s/he resists it or protests in any way; 
penetrative sex that happens while or soon after he (or any man present) is holding a knife or gun or other weapon, such as a fist or a threat, that instills fear and/or terror in her/him; 
penetrative sex that occurs while s/he is being beaten up; 
penetrative sex that occurs between a man and a child; penetrative sex that occurs between a free man and a slave and/or anyone being sexually trafficked.

Rape, or abusive penetrative sex is first and foremost defined and determined through description of the experience by the one harmed. Penetrative sex, abusive or not abusive, doesn't necessarily involve a male/man's penis. If it is abusive, it might involve his hands or any other part of his body or any object he uses to invasively breach the trust and the physical boundary of another human being. The invaded person decides what is invasion, not the invader. How the invaded and/or violated and betrayed person feels is one part of what may determine whether rape has occurred. If the person assaulted is so dissociated prior to the assault or during the assault, so as to not feel anything at all, to not be present, then how s/he feels at a later time maybe be necessary information. It may take years to know this. Therefore a male/man who has invaded or violated another human being who doesn't state this happened right way ought not conclude no assault or rape occurred.


If you are a male/man and read that definition and feel like there's no way for you to have sexual intercourse or penetrative sex that isn't rape, and you've had penetrative sex, you ought to assess how many times you've committed rape and report yourself to the police as a sex offender. You also ought to not have sex again until you know how to have sex in a context of mutuality, concern, regard, respect, and overt consent being present.

To those who accuse "radical feminists" (or, in this case here, a radical profeminist) of stating that "all men are rapists", please note that the questions posed her make no such assumption, and, in fact, assume that not all men are rapists. I know not all men are rapists. I don't know what percentage of men commit rape or sexual assault at some point in their lives or many times throughout their lives, but I know, based on every bit of evidence out there that it's not the percentage that anti-feminist/anti-"misandrist"/pro-patriarchal/male supremacist men claim. Across the web at pro-rape websites and rape apologist websites, men claim that only 1% are rapists. I know that most men who rape don't admit to having raped and/or don't consider what they did to be rape. And I know most women and children who have been incest, molested, sexually assaulted, and/or raped, do not report it to any authority figure empowered to take action against the assaulter. When rape-apologist, patriarchy-denying men proclaim that a high number of rape charges by women against men are "false" they ought to factor in two main thing:

--most men who are rapists don't know when they've raped or choose to deny they have raped
--the rapes committed by men against women who subsequently don't speak out about being raped must count as experiences of rape that were not falsely reported--no report means no false report; no pro-rapism activists I know consider unreported rape to exist-as-real-rape or be relevant to any statistics on rape and false or true accusations of it. This is but one self-serving manipulation and denial of truth and reality male supremacists frequently engage in. They don't believe in ending rape as a practice of subordination, violation, and terrorism. They don't believe men are responsible for one another's behavior. They don't believe they do anything at all to promote rape.

In a society where rape is, among other things, a means of abusively dominating and harming individuals who are part of a larger group of oppressed people (women) oppressed by men, to argue individualistic non-responsibility is to render oneself ethically, morally, socially, and politically responsible for perpetuating rape, just as anyone who knows bullying exists and is not bullied and does nothing to stop it is partly responsible for the maintenance of bullying culture.

If you are a man and do not speak out against rape, and do not make sure you know how to prevent yourself from raping someone, you are either passively maintaining and actively perpetuating rape culture, and may also be perpetrating rape.

Please do not assume you or any man is incapable of committing rape, assault, or sexual violation of another person. Believing you and  any other man, or men generally, are "good, decent people" doesn't mean any man or men are not capable of committing sexual assault including rape. I have known very good men who have committed rape. Some of the best (most humane) het men I know, in fact, have committed rape and admit to having done so.