Elsevier

Aggression and Violent Behavior

Volume 11, Issue 4, July–August 2006, Pages 367-377
Aggression and Violent Behavior

Perceptions of male victims in depicted sexual assaults: A review of the literature

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2006.01.002Get rights and content

Abstract

In recent years there has been a steady increase in the amount of literature on perceptions of male victim of sexual assault. Much of this research focuses around the concept of victim blame. This paper reviews the research on perceptions of male victims of sexual assault, with particular reference to victim blame for male rape. The paper considers the conceptual differences in types of blame in relation to male rape. It also offers to extend the traditional feminist interpretation of victim blame to explain blame toward male as well as female victims. Perceptions of male victims of male and female perpetrators are considered, as are both adult and child victims. The paper concludes by outlining some suggestions for future work and implications for treatment of male victims of sexual assault.

Section snippets

Types of blame and victim resistance in male rape

Howard, 1984a, Howard, 1984b was the first to apply theoretical aspects of the victim blame literature to perceptions of male rape. Howard used the conceptual differences between behavioral and characterological blame to explain differences in judgments between male and female rape victims. According to Janoff-Bulman (1979) behavioral blame is attributed when something the victim did, i.e. their behavior, could be seen as a causal influence on the event. Characterological blame occurs when

Feminism, gender, and male victims

Feminist explanations for blame for rape focus around societal hatred of women and the existence of a rape supportive, patriarchal culture (Brownmiller, 1975, Burt, 1980). Burt (1980) asserted that rape myths – prejudicial and false beliefs about rape, rape victims and rapists – were prevalent in society. Rape myths are related empirically to victim blame (Krahé, 1988), with traditional negative views about women and heterosexual relationships (Burt, 1980), and with hostile aggression in men (

Homophobia and victim blame

All of the most recent studies on judgments towards male rape have used sexual orientation manipulations within their designs. Several studies (Anderson, 2004, Burt and DeMello, 2002, Davies et al., submitted for publication, Davies and McCartney, 2003, Davies et al., 2001, Davies et al., submitted for publication, Ford et al., 1998, Kassing and Prieto, 2003, Mitchell et al., 1999, Wakelin and Long, 2003, White and Robinson Kurpius, 2002) have investigated the effects of sexual orientation on

Male victims of female perpetrators

Most people, including many psychologists, view the sexual assault of men by women as somewhat implausible. Indeed, it is commonly believed that a woman cannot force a man to have sex (Sarrel & Masters, 1982). Because people are socialised to believe that women are sexually passive and men are sexual initiators, it is difficult to imagine a dominant woman coercing an unwilling man to have sex (Smith et al., 1988, Struckman-Johnson, 1988, Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson, 1994), or for

Child victims

There have been a number of studies since the 1980s that have assessed perceptions of child sexual abuse when male victims are concerned. In some studies, similar results to those of adult sexual assault have been found. The first study to investigate attributions of fault to male child victims of sexual abuse was that of Waterman and Foss-Goodman (1984). Waterman and Foss-Goodman manipulated both the gender and the age of the child, who was portrayed as being 7, 11 or 15 years of age, and

Discussion and summary

This paper has highlighted consistent findings within the experimental study of judgments toward male sexual assault victims, which can be summarized as follows. First, male rape victims tend to be blamed more than female victims on behavioral blame measures, due to societal stereotypes that a man should be able to escape or fight his way out of a confrontational situation (Davies et al., 2001, Howard, 1984a, Howard, 1984b, Perrott and Webber, 1996).

Second, sex role expectations of gendered

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