Thread by @Jessicae13Eaton

A thread

1.
Interesting that when we talk about the prevalence of women and girls being abused, people say they must be lying, over exaggerating the stats etc.

But when we talk about men and boys being abused, people say the prevalence is low because they don’t report.

2. The same thing happens when we talk about rapists and sex offenders.

When we talk about men making up 97% of offenders, people say women lie and the stats are over exaggerated

But the same people will argue that female sex offending is only low because of non-reporting

3. Does this not seem unlikely to anyone? That all over the the world, in every single country in the whole world, that men make up 97-99% of all sex offenders but that it’s just based on low reporting of female sex offenders? And it’s all a sampling error?

4. Same to be said for victimisation. Does it not seem extremely unlikely that millennia of oppression of women and girls that leads to women and girls being abused in society - is simply a sampling error or reporting rate issue?

5. Lets be clear, men and boys do get subjected to abuse, rape and harm. But can we stop deliberately trying to make this a gender neutral issue? Stop pretending that rape and abuse occurs in men and boys at the same rate as women and girls. There’s NO evidence to back that up.

6. What are we achieving by denying the existence of female oppression and abuse? What do we get out of pretending that men and boys are being raped and abused at the same rate as women and girls - but that billions of them just don’t talk about it?

7. Crime stats aren’t perfect. Nor are CSEW. Nor are general population self-report studies. But you gotta be doing some SERIOUS mental gymnastics to ignore patterns in data that have occurred for over 100 years in every country in the whole world.

8. If you need something solid around male violence, look at murder rates. You can’t argue with dead bodies. Majority of all murders of men and women are committed by men. Almost 3 women a week are killed by male partners versus 2-3 men A YEAR killed by female partners.

9. The fact that society, academics, activists, influencers are unable to talk about violence against women and call it what it is, without some idiot yelling, ‘IT HAPPENS TO MEN AT THE SAME RATE BUT THEY JUST DONT REPORT IT!’ just shows how far away we are from tackling misogyny

10. Local authorities, police, training organisations and independent trainers need to be challenged on their proof, if they ever perpetuate the myth that rape, DV, abuse occurs to men and boys at the same rate. They will not be able to provide any evidence of this being true.

11. Men and boys are unlikely to disclose/report rapes and abuse. But so are women and girls. The reporting rate is 13% in the UK for sexual crimes.

You can’t use the ‘they don’t report it’ argument with ONLY men & boys - cos the majority of women & girls don’t report either.

12. With all this in mind, the only reason we would see this huge uprising in people claiming that men and boys are raped and abused at exactly the same rate as women and girls (but just don’t report) - is to deny global female oppression & abuse by neutralising sexual crimes.

13. It seems to me a strange argument to make without any proof. To claim that it is happening at the same rates as women and girls, but no one can produce proof of this on par with the proof we already have for the abuse of women & girls - weird we even entertain this argument.

14. Sometimes I wonder if this current climate is causing groups of men and some activists to try to position men as oppressed and abused in society. Almost like they *want* to be seen as oppressed and abused - but you know, without all the oppression.

15. THIS IS NOT A ZERO SUM GAME.

We can discuss, research, explore & tackle the rape, abuse, murders and oppression of women/girls without conditions. We don’t HAVE to centre men in every conversation. We don’t have to make this a gender neutral issue. We don’t have to comply.