Sign the We the People petition here: http://wh.gov/hOrG

We demand the definition of rape defined by the CDC must be changed to include male victims of female rapists. The definition of rape must immediately be expanded to include all instances in which males are forced to penetrate a woman. A majority of Americans believe this is rape. It must also consider every time a man feels he is forced into unwanted sex with physical force and threat of violence to be rape. A majority of Americans believe this to be rape.

The NISVS 2010 Report from CDC states on page 84: "Being made to penetrate is a form of sexual victimization distinct from rape that is particularly unique to males[...]"

The exact wording of the CDC's definition of rape and "being made to penetrate someone else" are very similar and can be found on page 17 in the report.

The same report finds that 1.1% of men report being made to penetrate someone else in the last 12 months while 4.8% of men report being made to penetrate someone else in their lifetime - of those 79.2% report a single female perpetrator.

This type of sexual violence does happen to many men and we disagree strongly with CDC's stance that it is distinct from rape, nor do we think it's necessarily unique to male perpetrators.



If the CDC was forced to recognize “being made to penetrate someone else” as rape, of which it is widely recognized as, the number of rape victims change from 1 in 71 men having been raped at some point in their lives to 1 in 16* men having been raped at some point in their lives. This is a huge number of victims who are not being represented by our government. This is over 5.5 million Americans told they were not raped, but were merely victims of “Other Sexual Violence.” We the people demand our government give these people a voice.

This means roughly every 4th victim of rape is a male victim. Nearly 1/4th of the victims of rape are unrecognized.

These documents are cited widely in legal debates and used for justification for legislature across the country. This document was released in 2010 – it should not take our government and our society three years to recognize rape victims as victims of rape.

http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/

*Number represents for the higher end estimate of rape victims; It assumes no overlap between “rape” and “made to penetrate.” Between 4.8% and 6.2% of men have been raped.