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Rape myths are one way in which sexual violence has been sustained and justified through history and modern times. However, there has been a dearth of scholarship about rape myths concerning male victims. This paper reviews the historical origins, development, and current manifestations of male rape myths prevalent in Western society. Specifically, we review male rape myths and their origins in the areas of medicine, law, media, the military, and incarcerated settings. The paper also delineates possible means for eradicating male rape myths at the individual, institutional, and societal levels.

This article provides a review of the literature on dating violence (DV) perpetration, specifically sex similarities and differences in the correlates and predictors of DV perpetration and the utility of current theories to explain young men's and women's DV perpetration. Overall, many of the correlates and predictors of DV perpetration are similar among young men and women (e.g., witnessing interparental violence, experiencing child abuse, alcohol abuse, traditional gender roles, relationship power dynamics). However, young women's perpetration of DV is more strongly related to internalizing symptoms (e.g., depression), trait anger and hostility, and experiencing DV victimization than young men's perpetration, whereas young men's perpetration of DV is more consistently related to lower socioeconomic status and educational attainment, antisocial personality characteristics, and increased relationship length than young women's perpetration. Each theory offers insights into but does not fully account for the correlates and predictors of DV perpetration. Sociocultural theories may be useful in explaining the use of coercive control in relationships, and learning/intergenerational transmission of violence theories may be useful in explaining bidirectional couple violence. Future research should focus on integrative theories, such as in the social-ecological theory, in order to explain various forms of DV. Our understanding of young men's and young women's DV perpetration is limited by cross-sectional research designs, methodological inconsistencies, a lack of sex-specific analytic approaches, and a lack of focus on contextual factors; more multivariate and longitudinal studies are needed. Further, as DV prevention programming is often presented in mixed-sex formats, a critical understanding of sex differences and similarities in DV perpetration could ultimately refine and improve effectiveness of programming efforts aimed at reducing DV.

Current measures of sexual risk taking are either too narrowly focused to be used with college students or do not have adequate psychometric properties. The goal of the current study was to develop a broad and psychometrically sound measure of sexual risk taking. A total of 613 undergraduate students (302 men, 311 women) at a mid-sized Midwestern university in the U.S. were surveyed to develop and gather reliability and validity information on a new measure of sexual risk, the Sexual Risk Survey (SRS). The measure was found to be multifactorial with five factors. The measure was found to have good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The SRS also demonstrated evidence of convergent and concurrent validity by its relationships with reported number of sexual partners and history of infidelity as well as measures of sensation seeking, sexual desire, substance use, sexual excitation and inhibition, and sexual health consequences. Social desirability was not found to be related to sexual risk taking scores and threat of sexual disclosure was only weakly related. An investigation of sex differences revealed that men reported greater intentions to engage in sexual risk behaviors and greater overall sexual risk taking behavior compared to women. The SRS provides researchers with a valid and comprehensive measure of sexual risk taking that can be used to clarify inconsistent findings in the literature and to assess outcome in programs designed to prevent and reduce sexual risk behaviors among college students.