When You Promise Men Anonymity, 95% Admit to Forcing Women Into Sex
A new study surveyed 2,689 men anonymously about sexual coercion. Nearly all of them admitted to forcing or coercing a non-consenting woman into sex, including through persistent verbal pressure.
When researchers promised 2,689 men complete anonymity, 95.1 percent of them admitted to recently using at least one strategy to force or coerce a woman into sex they knew she did not want and to which she had not consented. In 65 percent of those occasions, the strategy worked.
Those are the opening numbers in “Isolate, Inebriate, Intimidate, Repeat,” a new peer-reviewed study by researchers Lucia F. O’Sullivan and Scott T. Ronis, published on Sage Journals ahead of print and available via DOI: 10.1177/08862605261432630. It surveyed U.S. and Canadian men between the ages of 18 and 34 on their own histories of sexual aggression. Not incarcerated offenders, not men in treatment programs. Ordinary men, recruited through an online panel, repeatedly guaranteed that nothing they said could be traced back to them.
That promise, the researchers found, was beyond eye-opening.
The Sexual Aggression Numbers Men Only Share in Private
Prior studies based on identifiable samples typically find that between 8 and 24 percent of men report perpetrating some form of sexual aggression since age 14, according to the study. Women, by contrast, report being forced into sex at approximately five times the rate men admit to forcing it. Researchers have long struggled to explain that gap.
Anonymous surveys go a long way toward closing it.
A landmark meta-analysis cited by the researchers found that 42 percent of sensitive behaviors are not disclosed in surveys without anonymity guarantees. In this study, men were told repeatedly that nothing they reported could be linked back to them, and compensation was redeemed anonymously. The survey itself was framed in deliberately neutral, non-judgmental language. Men were described as having the chance to give “their side of the story.” The researchers wrote explicitly to the participants: “NOTHING you report will be or can be linked back to you. All responses are anonymous.”
And still, 95 percent of them told on themselves.
The 132 men who reported no history of sexual aggression did not differ significantly from those who did in terms of age, race, education, or relationship status. The researchers note this as meaningful: no demographic profile predicted restraint.
This Sexual Coercion Was Not Accidental. It Was Systematic.
The study presented men with 36 strategies for forcing or coercing sex and asked how many they had used in the past four years. At least some men reported every single strategy on the list. The average number of strategies ever used was 8.94.
The most common strategy, reported by 78.1 percent of the men who disclosed any history of forced or coerced sex, was telling the woman “whatever she wanted to hear.” That was followed by repeatedly asking her for sex (48.6%), using a friend, partner, or group of friends to help get what they wanted (46.6%), having a female friend make the woman feel safe and convince her (43.8%), and isolating her. The exact phrasing used in the study: getting her “away from everyone to somewhere private and under your control” (37.5%).
Physical force, while less common, was not uncommon. Nearly 10 percent of the men reported physically overpowering a woman from the start. Another 9.4 percent reported using physical restraint, such as holding her down or tying her hands. Another 9.3 percent reported using physical force to cause pain. And 8.6 percent reported administering drugs, including roofies.
In approximately 80 percent of incidents, peers were present and aware of what was happening.
The women had made their nonconsent clear. They communicated it by making excuses (41.9%), directly stating they were not interested or did not want to (24.1%), physically moving away or trying to be out of reach (15.7%), or, in some cases, being too drunk or high to say or do much of anything (9.7%).
The men proceeded anyway.
Three Men Out of 2,254 Faced Consequences for Sexual Assault
The researchers asked men about the outcomes of their most recent or most vividly remembered experience. Most of them, 70 percent, reported perceiving no negative outcomes. Among the minority who elaborated, responses focused primarily on relationship disruptions: hurt feelings, lost friendships, being ghosted. Just seven men indicated that the woman was traumatized. Only one said that someone intervened to stop them. Just three of the 2,254 men who reported an incident, 0.1 percent, cited having faced rape accusations or charges.
We read that number again so you don’t have to: three men.
The most common positive outcomes reported were relationship-related: friendship, a friends-with-benefits situation, a long-term relationship. Sex itself was the second-most-cited positive outcome. Among the more unsettling entries: personal responses that the researchers coded as learning, self-congratulation, and “winning.”
The men argued they persisted primarily because they were horny (38.2%) or because the opportunity arose (27.9%). Most of them (76.2%) described their efforts as “unplanned.” However, the argument of spontaneity, the researchers suggest, does not make the behavior any less deliberate. Quite the contrary, it reflects instead a readiness to act the moment conditions allowed.
The Male Script Behind Sexual Aggression Has a Name
The researchers frame what these men described as an adaptation of a “traditional male script.” This is a shared social norm for how a sexual encounter unfolds, one that involves identifying a target, isolating her, and overcoming her resistance, typically with the awareness or active involvement of peers. The script, they note, is reinforced by how men have long talked about sex: chasing, scoring, nailing, banging. Adversarial language is still common in what the literature calls “toxic bro culture.”
Men who perceived themselves as better than same-aged male peers at “getting what they want sexually from women” reported using more forceful and more coercive strategies, according to the study. Their self-ratings of sexual effectiveness correlated significantly with the number of strategies they used. For some men, the researchers write, the act of forcing sex confers social status, or at least supports the perception of oneself as superior to male peers.
On the other hand, a 2024 study cited by the researchers found that higher consumption of sexualized media was linked to stronger endorsement of a sexual double standard among young men ages 16 to 20, which was in turn linked to higher odds of perpetrating sexual coercion. Therefore, there is a constant stream of media that feeds this behavior.
But for researchers, there is a new particularity to this phenomenon, including a notable role of female peers. While verbal coercion and male peer involvement appear in other research on sexual aggression, this study documents significant numbers of men reporting that female peers facilitated these encounters, making targets feel safe, bringing them to the men, and vouching for them. The researchers are careful to note they cannot confirm the female peers acted knowingly. But the finding raises questions about social dynamics, hierarchy, and complicity that, they argue, warrant further investigation.
What Decades of Sexual Violence Intervention Have Not Changed
Despite decades of research, public health initiatives, education, media attention, and policy focus, there has been no discernible decrease in rates of sexual aggression since they were first measured in the 1980s and 1990s. A 2024 analysis of global trends in violence between 1990 and 2019, cited in the study, found that sexual violence against women actually increased during that period, even as rates of most other forms of interpersonal violence dropped.
In other words, we have educated, campaigned, reported, litigated… Yet, the numbers have not moved.
And while this study does not tell us why, it does provide evidence that most of what happens is never reported, seldom prosecuted, and, most often, not registered by the perpetrators as wrong behavior.
For those working in prevention, the researchers argue, the focus must shift firmly toward understanding perpetrators. And toward recognizing that many acts of forced sex are, as this data shows, deliberate, goal-oriented, and frequently collaborative. They are strategies, plural, with an average of nearly nine per man.