The notion of teenage boys as sexual aggressors
is so engrained, the results of a new study, which
reveal that they are being coerced into sex by
girls and young women, will surprise many.
There was nothing outwardly headline-grabbing
about Bryana H. French’s latest study, published
in the august and largely unread pages of
Psychology of Men and Masculinity , an academic
journal that typically reaches an audience of
dozens. While her findings were depressing, they
were depressingly banal: according to French and
her team of researchers at the University of
Missouri, “sexual victimization continues to be a
pervasive problem in the United States.” Well, we
know that.
Jonathan Cavendish/Corbis
So why the media scrum? Because the authors
concluded that “43 percent of high school boys
and young college men”—yes, boys and young
men—“reported they had an unwanted sexual
experience and of those, 95 percent said a female
acquaintance was the aggressor.”
In a press release, French pointed out that “the
victimization of men is rarely explored” and
concluded hopefully that her team’s findings could
“help lead to better prevention by identifying the
various types of coercion that men face and by
acknowledging women as perpetrators against
men.”
The idea that boys (those sex-obsessed little
monsters) could be victims of “sexual coercion,”
while young girls (so often on the receiving end of
clumsy and aggressive sexual advances of the
sex-obsessed little monsters) could be
perpetrators is, to many, both counterintuitive and
unlikely.
“This is such an under-discussed topic,” clinical
psychologist Dr. Barbara Greenberg told The Daily
Beast. “We’ve been grossly negligent when it
comes to talking to teenage boys about sex
because society makes the assumption that young
adult men are sex-crazed maniacs. But men and
teenage boys have tender feelings too, and we
often neglect them when it comes to sexuality.”
That females can be sexually aggressive—and
young men and teenage boys can sheepishly
submit to sexual aggression—is considered
peculiar because “coerced sex” is narrowly
imagined as violent or forced sex. But according
to French’s research, only “18 percent [of
respondents] reported sexual coercion by physical
force” while 31 percent said “they were verbally
coerced [and] 26 percent described unwanted
seduction by sexual behaviors.”
According to French, “unwanted seduction” of
young men by women is largely overlooked in
existing academic research but “was a particularly
pervasive form of sexual coercion in this study, as
well as peer pressure and a victim’s own sense of
an obligation.”
Indeed, 95 percent of those surveyed said they
were sexually coerced by girls or women. French
told The Daily Beast that a “broadening of the
definition” partially explains the rise in sexual
victimization amongst young men and boys. “I
think that’s a large reason why we’re seeing
numbers come up more [and] I think we need to
have more conversations about what consent
looks like across both genders.”
But it’s not a redefining of terms alone that
explains the increase, says Dr. Greenberg. “I really
do believe that girls are more aggressive sexually
today than they were ten years ago, and I haven’t
seen the same trend in boys. I think it has a lot to
do with the hook-up culture where there’s this
permission to get involved physically without
getting involved emotionally. Boys were always
expected to be the sexual initiators, and now girls
are doing the initiating.”
One familiar trope in the news cycle is the female
high school and middle school teacher preying on
a male student. These sexual relationships are
consensual—and rarely deemed “rape”—but the
large age differential is a type of coercion.
“I was a 15 year old who lost his virginity to a
woman twice his age, who rather abruptly decided
that consistent sexual activity with a local
sophomore was probably ill-advised,” says Martin,
40, who declined to give his second name.
The relationship, a year-long affair with a family
acquaintance, was “consensual,” he says, but with
the benefit of maturity and hindsight Martin
acknowledges that it was coercive. “Had this been
known—and some people indeed knew—it would
have been (and sometimes was) met with
incredulity or the more common ‘attaboy!’ But at
15, one doesn’t make a ‘decision’ to embark on a
‘relationship’ with a 30-year-old woman.”
Statutory limits on age of consent aren’t uniform
in the United States, but they exist (without gender
specificity) for good reason. “The psychological
complexity of sex with an adult is almost by its
nature coercive, considering that a 15-year-old
boy is rarely, if ever, equipped to deal with the
complicated fallout of such a relationship.”
“It’s usually a girl that’s a little bit older and the
boys feel embarrassed to say no because they feel
their friends will make fun of them,” says Dr.
Greenberg. “And they have a lot of shame about it
because they weren’t ready for it and they feel
cultural pressure that they should have been ready
for it.”
The University of Missouri researchers were vague
on the long-term effects of female “sexual
coercion,” though French was careful to suggest
that “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.”
While there are wildly divergent perceptions as to
what constitutes “coerced sex” when genders are
reversed, if one were to substitute genders in this
study, it wouldn’t have captured a minute of
media attention, likely consigned to the pile of
“but of course” sociological studies regularly
produced by academic researchers.
“This study should be a wake-up call to parents
and educators everywhere,” says Greenberg. “We
attend much more to the feelings of our
daughters. But we also need to attend to the
feelings of our boys and their sexuality.”
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