Forty three percent of American teenage boys and young men have had coerced sex and 95 percent of these individuals said it was a woman that seduced them into having unwanted intercourse.
Ever so often, reports of sexual abuse of women and how they're forced to get intimate with men make headlines. However, a new study finds that men are also forced into having unwanted sex at times. Surprisingly, a new study found that 43 percent of high school and college-aged men say they've had "unwanted sexual contact," and 95 percent of them said a female acquaintance was the aggressor.
"Sexual victimization continues to be a pervasive problem in the United States, but the victimization of men is rarely explored," said lead author Bryana H. French, PhD, University of Missouri, according to Science Codex. "Our findings can help lead to better prevention by identifying the various types of coercion that men face and by acknowledging women as perpetrators against men."
The study surveyed 284 U.S. high school and college students and asked questions about unwanted sexual encounters. Eighteen percent said that they experienced sexual coercion by physical force. Another 31 percent said they were verbally coerced while 26 percent said they were victims of unwanted seduction by sexual behaviors. Seven percent of the participants also said that they were compelled after being given alcohol or drugs. Half of the students said they ended up having intercourse, 10 percent reported an attempt to have intercourse and 40 percent said the result was kissing or fondling.
According to the written descriptions submitted by study participants, an estimated 40 percent of Latinos reported sexual coercion compared to 22 percent of African Americans, 19 percent of whites and 8 percent of Asian American students, The Guardian reports.
French, who teaches counseling psychology and black studies at University of Missouri, said that when it comes to coerced sex men are less outspoken than women in giving out details about the incident.
"But when asked if it happened, they say it happened," she said.
The study found a link between being coerced into having sexual intercourse and other types of risky sexual behaviors as well as greater consumption of alcohol by the victims themselves. Students who were sexually coerced while drunk or drugged demonstrated notable distress. However, the incident didn't affect their self-esteem.
"It may be the case that sexual coercion by women doesn't affect males' self-perceptions in the same way that it does when women are coerced. Instead it may inadvertently be consistent with expectations of masculinity and sexual desire, though more research is needed to better understand this relationship," French said.
Explaining the erectile aspect of sex, French said that sex can be defined in three ways - oral, vaginal, and anal. Hence, sex doesn't always involve an erection. She also said that it is possible for men to have an erection even when they don't want to have sex.
"Sometimes when women are experiencing sexual violence, their bodies respond in ways that don't correspond to how they feel," she said, according to TIME. "They can not want the experience to happen, even if their bodies said otherwise."
The study was funded by the University of Missouri Research Council Grant and published online in the American Psychological Association journal, Psychology of Men and Masculinity.
