I have a question about rape statistics. Someone I know has been quoting a NCV survey saying that close to half of all rape victims are male, and half the perpetrators are female. I know men underreport, but the numbers seem weird to me; for example, in spousal abuse or murder the majority of victims are female, and that violence is allowed in the same culture that rape is (and we aren't miscounting corpses). I haven't been able to find anyone discussing it. Do you have any insight? Thank you

That ‘half-of-all-rape-victims are men/half of all rapists are women’ claims are really off.  In order to get that result, they basically changed the definition of rape for women but not for men. Remember when feminists and other activists fought for the federal definition of rape to be changed to be more inclusive?  That NCV survey you’re referring to basically surmises that if you use the old definition for women and the new definition for men, yes, the numbers are closer (warning, gross anti-feminist article full of incomplete claims).  But that is essentially ignoring a massive number of female rape survivors by excluding any woman who reported experiencing ‘forced or unwanted sexual acts’ without specifically using the word ‘rape’ to describe the incident. You can’t compare two different groups’s experiences while using entirely different criteria and language to describe that experience.  Of course, the actual number of rapes is impossible to determine, as rape is the most underreported crime (63-88% of all rapes go unreported, depending on the age of the victim).  But even when accounting for gendered factors like male prison rape, women are still more likely to experience sexualized violence.