A Quarter of Men in Parts of Asia Admit To Being Rapists

A massive new UN survey has found that in some parts of Asia, more than half of the men admit to forcing a woman to have sex. Throughout the countries involved in the research, one in four men admitted to rape. Congratulations, UN Rape Survey. You found a thing to make even 9/11 seem worse.

The survey questioned 10,000 men from six different Asian countries. In order to foster honest responses, participants were able to register their answers on hand held computers after researchers left them alone in a room. And of course, the survey didn’t just come out and ask men “Hey, do any cool rapes lately?”; it asked questions about whether the men had ever had sex with a woman even though they knew she didn’t want to because she was their wife or girlfriend and therefore obligated to. The survey asked if men had ever had sex with a woman when she was too drunk or drugged to say no. Aaaaaaand a depressing number of them had.

It gets more awful when we get into the reasons men who responded to the UN’s survey raped. Most of them did so because of what researchers call “sexual entitlement;” that is, the felt it was their right as men to have sex with a woman regardless of whether she wanted it. The second most common reason for committing rape: boredom. Or, “for fun.”

(Builds rocket ship, blasts off into space. Rocket explodes into giant middle finger shaped firework directed toward Earth.)

Rape prevalence wasn’t uniform throughout Asia; in places like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, only (ONLY- ugh) one in ten men said they’d raped someone. But in Papua New Guinea, six in ten men had. In China, it was almost half.

Researchers sampled men who were “demographically representative” of their respective countries, so they didn’t just happen to light on the world’s most rape-friendly cities to conduct their research. They also found a correlation between commission of rape and childhood sexual abuse, or of war-related post traumatic stress.