Nearly 1 In 5 Men Can’t Define One Critical Word — And That’s Deeply Concerning
Eliomar Reis | Pexels Starting when I was about six years old, I was molested by someone I thought I could trust. I didn’t tell a soul until I was well into my 20s.
I stayed quiet for lots of reasons — mostly shame — but also because I couldn’t figure out if it “counted.” If he was significantly older than me, but still a minor, did it count? If there was never any penetration, did it count? If I froze and did nothing the second, third, fourth time it happened, did it count? If I never actually said the word “no” out loud, did it count?
Back then, I couldn’t Google these questions. I also didn’t realize that one-third of child abuse is perpetrated by other minors, and that non-penetrative assault is even more underreported than rape; often because survivors struggle to determine if it counted.
Spoiler: It counted. Sexual assault is defined as any contact that occurs without consent, and since I was a child, I was incapable of consenting. While anyone can experience or commit assault, 91% of victims are girls and women, and men perpetrate nearly 99% of sexual crimes.
But research shows that even the most clear-cut examples of assault are often downplayed, justified, and rationalized — especially in the minds of the perpetrators.
Nearly one in five men can't define the word 'rape,' and that's deeply concerning.
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Perpetrators often twist language to justify rape
A 2014 study in Violence and Gender found that almost a fifth of young men supposedly don’t understand the meaning of the word “rape.”
Researchers asked 86 male college students to complete an anonymous survey. These men were all heterosexual and over 18 years of age with prior intimate experiences. Due to the school’s student demographics, about 90% of the students were white.
When the survey outright asked these men if they would ever “rape a woman,” 86.4% said no. But when asked if they would ever “force a woman to [have] intercourse,” that number jumped down to 68.3%.
First of all, this means that 13.6% of college men admitted they’d rape a woman if they got the chance, which is terrifying in and of itself. But it also means that 18.1% of men don’t realize that forcing a woman to have intercourse is the very definition of rape.
Similarly, a 2025 study in Psychology of Violence found that men were more likely to admit to assault depending on how the question was phrased. When researchers asked, “Have you used some type of physical force with a woman […] without her consent/when she didn’t want to?” men were more likely to say no.
Yet when researchers asked, “Have you used some type of physical force with a woman […] to make her have vaginal sex?” men were more likely to say yes.
Apparently, perpetrators mince words to avoid admitting fault — though they also fail to understand what consent actually means.
Up to 61% of men struggle to understand consent
Another study in the Journal of Public Health (this one published in 2021) surveyed over 950 men between the ages of 14 and 55. It found that a shocking number of men automatically assume consent based on body language, prior history, and the setting they’re in — even in situations that clearly constitute rape.
- 14.9% of men said you can assume consent if you’ve had intercourse with that person before.
- 15.4% of men said you have consent as long as a person doesn’t verbally say “no.”
- 22.6% of men said a “yes” still counts when the other person is very intoxicated.
- 31.1% of men said eye contact indicates consent.
- 47.6% of men said it’s not okay to withdraw consent once you’ve already kissed.
- 51.2% of men said it’s not okay to withdraw consent once you’re in a bedroom.
- 52.1% of men said it’s not okay for someone to withdraw consent after you’ve bought them dinner.
- 61.1% of men said it’s not okay to withdraw consent once you’re naked.
(For the record, according to RAINN’s definition of rape, saying yes once does not equal saying yes forever, a person who is very intoxicated cannot consent, buying someone food does not entitle you to their body, and anyone can withdraw consent for any reason at any point during an encounter.)
Now, keep in mind: These numbers only represent the men who told the truth. People lie on surveys — especially when answering questions about sensitive topics, like behavior, abuse, and illegal actions.
Partially, it’s due to something called social desirability: People want others to view them in a positive light, so they skew reality in their favor. But it’s also because they fear being caught, identified, or prosecuted, especially if a survey isn’t completely anonymous.
So what happens when rapists have full anonymity?
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They reveal all the things they’d probably never reveal in a scientific study. In 2012, an anonymous Reddit user posed a question to other anonymous Reddit users: “Reddit’s had a few threads about assault victims, but are there any redditors from the other side of the story? What were your motivations? Do you regret it?”
This post, famously dubbed the “Ask A Rapist Thread,” generated over 13,000 responses.
These days, roughly 40% of Redditors are women, but back then, it was a male-dominated forum. It’s also widely considered one of the most anonymous social media sites, granted that users have pseudonyms, and you don’t have to verify your identity when creating an account.
As a result, men felt comfortable sharing their unfiltered admissions of rape and assault.
Reddit moderators have since deleted the comments, but for the purpose of this article, I retrieved them using web archives. Due to their disturbing nature, I’ve opted to summarize them instead of quoting them directly, though I linked a few non-redacted comments below.
Some perpetrators expressed extreme guilt or remorse, and two perpetrators were women, but those were the outliers. Over and over again, men in this thread admitted to:
- Coercing or forcing women into intimacy after they’d verbally refused.
- Assaulting intoxicated or unconscious women.
- Taking advantage of underage girls as young as seven.
- Ignoring distress responses like freezing, withdrawing, struggling, or crying.
- Treating consent as transactional, especially after dates or drinks.
- Blaming their hormones or their biology for their actions.
- Distancing themselves from the word “rape,” even after describing behavior that clearly meets its definition.
- Seeming indignant or blindsided when they faced legal consequences.
The post was so revealing that it prompted a research study
Six days after the Reddit thread went live, researchers at Georgia State University downloaded all of the responses and got to work.
First, the researchers excluded comments that contained secondhand accounts, incoherent narratives, or clearly fictionalized stories. Then they analyzed the remaining comments to determine how and why men justified these assaults:
- 37% of men used scripts: Culturally learned narratives that men have strong sex drives and should pursue, while women have weak drives and should decline. A commonly referenced belief was that when women say “no,” they actually mean “yes.”
- 29% of men used victim-blaming: Holding the victim partially or fully responsible — in this case, when women drank too much, flirted beforehand, had intercourse with the perpetrator prior, didn’t say no loud enough, or didn’t physically resist.
- 24% of men used hostile sexism: Overtly contemptuous, degrading, or aggressive attitudes towards women, often insinuating they deserved it. This included joking about rape or assault while relaying their accounts.
- 18% of men used biological essentialism: The belief that gender norms are innate and uncontrollable, and men can’t help their strength, hormones, and urges.
- 18% of men used objectification: Reducing women to objects or specific body parts designed for gratification.
- 18% of men used sociosexuality: The belief that men have a high desire to have multiple partners, have intercourse outside of relationships, or solely for personal pleasure instead of intimacy.
(The above numbers add up to 144% because many narratives used more than one justification.)
Why men in particular need to know what rape means
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I cannot tell you how many articles I’ve written about assault, and how many times men comment, “Not all men.” I know it’s not all men. Most women know that it’s not all men. But it’s more men than you realize, and that’s why one in three women will experience assault.
According to one study, 35% of men admitted to committing at least one assault since the age of 14. If the average American knows 600 people (split equally by gender), statistically, that means you know 105 men who have assaulted a woman.
And those are just the men who admitted it—to others, and to themselves. People who hurt other people rarely walk, talk, look, act, and think like supervillains. Everyone is the hero of their own story, and the human brain is extremely good at justifying its behavior. It minces words. It ignores proof. It blames everyone and everything else.
But while assault may feel like one giant gray area, the definitions are black and white. Women cannot singlehandedly hold these men accountable, especially when they clearly don’t respect our words, boundaries, or bodily autonomy.
We need other men to help us. Usually, I’m not in the business of citing comedians in my journalistic articles, but I’ve already listed a lot of percentages, and comedian Daniel Sloss sums it up pretty well:
“I knew this man for eight years, and he did it. There are monsters amongst us, and they look like us. If you’re sick of the narrative that’s currently going on about men, feel free to change it, but you have to get involved. Don’t make the same mistake I did for years, which was sitting back and being like, ‘Well, I’m not part of the problem, so I must be part of the solution.’ […] Were there signs in my friend’s behavior over the years towards women that I ignored? The answer is yes, and that’s on me until the day I die. Talk to yourboys.”
Until all men understand the definition of rape, know how consent works, and hold other men accountable, the girls and women you supposedly love will keep paying the price.
Maria Cassano is a writer, editor, and journalist whose work has appeared on NBC, Bustle, CNN, The Daily Beast, Food & Wine, and Allure, among others.
