Following the Me, Too Movement that gained momentum in 2017, we began hearing feminist cries across the country to “believe all women.” This chant was a reaction to the staggering number of female public figures coming forward to describe their abuse and sexual assault at the hands of powerful men who threatened them into silence. As feminists, we were outraged. We wanted to clear the path for female victims to safely report sexual assault and to trust that they would be believed.
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This call to action was met with criticism. Skeptics asked, “What about innocent men who are falsely accused?” We swept this inconvenient question under the rug, pointing out that such false allegations are astonishingly rare. We were laser-focused on our mission: Believe all women.
Contemporary research may indicate that our impulse to rug-sweep this question was a mistake when it comes to some men’s perceptions of sexual assault. Or, perhaps to put it more gently, a miscalculation.
Many Men’s Perceptions of Research and Statistics on Sexual Assault
There is an abundance of published empirical research and government fact sheets about the prevalence of sexual assault against both cisgender and transgender women (see: Centers for Disease Control, 2022; Fedina et al., 2018, Kantor & Twohey, 2019). However, there are many men who willfully ignore or even reject these findings. They suggest that such claims are outright lies or exaggerations crafted by angry women to retaliate against men who hurt them or to assuage the guilt of “sex regret” (Bonher et al., 2009; Muehlenhard et al., 2017; Triggs, 2018). Sadly, even within the academy, there is a growing sense of distrust toward sexual assault research, with (mostly) male scientific researchers claiming that such research has become too political or biased, championed mainly by feminist zealots with an axe to grind (Levine, 2021).
Of course, this sentiment is not supported by facts, nor is it maintained by all men. Indeed, the majority of men who question the validity of sexual assault claims are those who hold hostile sexist ideologies, which we know is not all men. These are men who perceive women to be power-hungry, manipulative, emasculating, and quick to “cry wolf” to gain some perceived advantage over men (Betz, Deegan, & Gomes, 2024). Although contemporary research suggests that’s only 2-8% of sexual assault allegations are found to be false, these men cling to this tiny statistic to invalidate all sexual assault claims. In essence, they are more concerned about the small sliver of innocent men who might be falsely accused than the one in four women who face sexual assault in their lifetime.
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How Can Feminists Get These Men on Board?
No one wants to be in the business of coddling the egos of sexist men, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to re-evaluate the way we show up to the conversation to foster empathy and compassion from men instead of hostility. As we navigate these difficult conversations, here are a few things we might consider in our approach:
Taking False Allegations Seriously: The difficult reality feminists must face is that, although it is small and difficult to define, there is a non-zero percentage of sexual assault allegations that are false. There will always be men who use that fact to invalidate women’s stories. Although it is tempting to sweep the inconvenient truth of false allegations under the rug, that route only serves to further entrench hostile and anti-feminist men into their rape-denying mindset. Perhaps one way to get men on board is to make it our business as feminists to hold women accountable who make false claims about sexual assault. In cases where women’s claims of sexual assault are found to be wholly and verifiably false (which, are admittedly, quite rare), we should be the first to condemn this behavior. After all, women who pretend to be victims not only make actual victims’ stories less believable but also affirm some men’s already hostile attitudes toward women.
Separating the Individual From the Collective: When we speak in totalities, it is difficult for many men to hear us. No one likes to feel judged based on their inherent and inextricable traits, and this is where we find ourselves in the muck of the “not all men” argument. A compassionate approach to the conversation that creates allies instead of enemies is to show men that although we must speak out against the harms done by many men against women, we recognize that individual men may not be part of that problem.
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Inviting Men to See It as an “Us” Problem: Some men report feeling helpless when it comes to the topic of sexual assault, or seeing it as a women’s issue that doesn’t involve good men like themselves. Effective discourse might include showing men how sexual assault is an “us” problem that erodes opportunities for trust, intimacy, and connection between men and women. Inviting men to see themselves as allies in the fight against sexual assault instead of the presumed perpetrators of such, we can put an end to defensiveness and hostility—equipping men to be with us instead of against us.
Does it feel great to have to tone-police ourselves to get such men to care about sexual assault? Absolutely not. But at the end of the day, we have to contend with the realities at hand, and our mission should be about gaining allies, not enabling enemies.
References
Bohner G., Eyssel F., Pina A., Siebler F., & Viki T. (2009). Rape myth acceptance: Cognitive, affective, and behavioural effects of beliefs that blame the victim and exonerate the perpetrator. In Horvath M., Brown J. (Eds.), Rape: Challenging Contemporary Thinking (pp. 17–45). Willan Publishing.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2022, June 22). Preventing sexual violence fact sheet. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/fastfact.html
Fedina L., Holmes J. L., & Backes B. L. (2018). Campus sexual assault: A systematic review of prevalence research from 2000 to 2015. Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 19(1), 76–93.
Kantor J., Twohey M. (2019). She said: Breaking the sexual harassment story that helped ignite a movement. Penguin Press.
Muehlenhard C. L., Peterson Z. D., Humphreys T. P., & Jozkowski K. N. (2017). Evaluating the one-in-five statistic: Women’s risk of sexual assault while in college. The Journal of Sex Research, 54(4-5), 549–576.
Triggs OBE, C. (2018). False allegations of sexual violence: The reality. Women and the criminal justice system: Failing victims and offenders?, 43-66.
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Publish date : 2024-07-15 20:27:58
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