Mother dispatch · A card series
What Men Reported, Anonymously
A graphic went viral: 95.1%. The numbers are real, and the framing is not. One anonymous survey of 2,689 young men, read in full, with every figure checked against the paper and its limits put back.
The receipts
- 95.1%Of 2,689 men ages 18 to 34 in one anonymous survey reported using at least one of 36 strategies to get sex from a woman who did not want it, or acted like she did not. That is 2,557 men. It is not all men.
- 78.1%Reported the most common strategy, telling her whatever she wanted to hear. The viral graphic left it out.
- 37.4%Reported at least one of the 12 strategies the authors class as most forceful. 62.6% reported none of them.
- 64.6%Of the occasions men used a strategy, they said it got them the sex they wanted. Their rating, not hers.
- 70%Said nothing bad came of it. Three of 2,254 mentioned rape accusations or charges. One mentioned that someone stepped in.
Why I made cards out of one study
I saw the graphic the way most people did, in a feed, with a number on it that is hard to look at. Before sharing it I wanted to know whether it was true. So I read the paper.
The numbers are real. What the graphic could not hold is everything around them: who was asked, what the question was, how wide the list is, and what the authors themselves say the study cannot show. Leave those out and the number becomes “95% of men,” which the study never claims and which is easy to wave away. Put them back and you are left with something harder to dismiss: in one large anonymous survey, most young men said yes to pressuring a woman they knew was reluctant, more than a third said yes to something the researchers class as forceful, and almost none of them reported that anything happened to them afterward.
I am raising boys. The part I cannot stop reading is the top of the table. Telling her what she wants to hear. Asking again. Having a friend help. None of that looks like violence to a seventeen-year-old. It looks like what he has been told works. That is where the conversation at home has to start, long before the bottom of the table.
Information accuracy is ridiculously important when talking about serious issues. Don’t be the dumbass sharing inaccurate stats.
The cards
Nine cards and a closer
Every research card carries the finding, three lines to say to your boys or the numbers as a chart, a scope line in gold, the citation, and a QR to the study below. Tap a card to open it full size.
One online panel of sexually active men ages 18 to 34 in the U.S. and Canada, surveyed in 2023. Not a random sample. O’Sullivan and Ronis, 2026.
Men 18 to 34 who had sex with a woman in the past two years; 85.9% U.S., 14.1% Canada; 10.2% students. A paid Qualtrics panel, promised anonymity. 3,011 recruited, 322 removed for incomplete, patterned, or inattentive answers.
2,557 of 2,689 men. The 36 items run from verbal pressure to force and drugs; 62.6% reported none of the 12 the authors class as most forceful. Self-reported and unverifiable.
Percent of the 2,689 men who reported using each at least once in four years, with a woman who did not want sex or acted like she did not. Table 2.
Same scale as the last card. 62.6% reported none of the 12-item forceful subscale; not every item shown here is in it. 10.0% of this sample is 270 men.
Men’s own ratings, strategy by strategy. They were asked to recall a recent or vivid occasion, which the authors say may favor the ones that ended in sex. Women were not surveyed.
Standard deviation 7.98, so the spread is wide. 76.2% called their efforts unplanned; 15.5% a deliberate plan. Self-rating and forceful strategies were correlated (r = .247), not shown as cause.
Open-ended answers about a recent or vivid occasion: 1,903 men wrote only “no” when asked if anything bad resulted; 3 of 2,254 cited rape accusations or charges. Men were not asked directly whether anyone intervened.
What to say to your boys
The lines, in full
03 95.1% is not 95.1% reporting rape. It is 95.1% reporting at least one of 36 things, from telling her what she wanted to hear to holding her down.
- “If she is making excuses, she is saying no. That was the most common way these men said they knew, and they kept going.”
- “Reluctant is not a starting position. It is the answer.”
- “Talking someone into sex she does not want is not romance. Researchers call it coercion, and so do I.”
06 Men said it worked. They reported getting the sex they wanted on 64.6% of the occasions they used one of these strategies.
- “If you had to wear her down, you did not get a yes. You got her to stop saying no.”
- “Sex she did not want is not a win. It is harm, and you are the one who did it.”
- “The only yes that counts is one she is still glad she gave the next morning.”
07 It was rarely one thing. The average number of different strategies reported was 8.94. The paper’s title is the pattern: isolate, inebriate, intimidate, repeat.
- “Getting her alone, getting her drunk, and not letting it go is not flirting. It is a method, and people can see you doing it.”
- “In this survey, the men who rated themselves best at getting sex also reported more force. Do not admire that guy.”
- “If a friend asks you to help get a girl alone, the answer is no. Then you go find her friends.”
08 Other people were around 80.4% of the time. About 70% of the men said nothing bad came of it. One said someone stepped in.
- “Someone is almost always there. Be the someone.”
- “Nothing happening to him afterward does not mean nothing happened to her.”
- “Seven men mentioned that she was traumatized. When a guy tells the story, notice who is missing from it.”
What they leave out when they share it
What this study cannot tell you
The full table
All 36 strategies
From Table 2 of the paper: the percent of the 2,689 men who reported using each strategy at least once in the past four years, most common first. Wording is the survey’s own. The subscale labels are the authors’.
| Ever used | Strategy | Authors’ subscale |
|---|---|---|
| 78.1% | Told her whatever she wanted to hear | |
| 58.3% | Kept touching and kissing her | |
| 48.6% | Asked her repeatedly to have sex | |
| 46.6% | Had a friend, partner, or group of friends help you get what you want | Socially coercive subscale |
| 43.8% | Had a female friend around to make the woman feel safe and convince her | Socially coercive subscale |
| 39.3% | Told her you knew she wanted it | |
| 37.9% | Focused on a stranger to have sex with (or someone who did not know you) | |
| 37.6% | Had a female friend bring her to you | Socially coercive subscale |
| 37.5% | Got her away from everyone to somewhere private and under your control | |
| 32.9% | Used your money, age, status to convince her | Socially coercive subscale |
| 32.1% | Gradually pushed verbally or physically until you got what you wanted | |
| 30.4% | Stopped her friends from getting in the way or interfering | |
| 24.5% | Started undressing before she was ready | |
| 21.2% | Kept her drunk/high if she already was drunk/high | |
| 20.9% | Focused on a woman who you figured was unlikely to stop you | |
| 20.7% | Got her drunk/high when she was not drunk/high | |
| 19.1% | Demanded she stop conning you (faking a lack of interest in sex) | |
| 19.1% | Corner her in some way so she could only focus on you | |
| 18.6% | Started undressing her before she was ready | |
| 18.1% | Stopped her (or tried to) if she tried to leave | |
| 15.2% | Focused on a woman who you figured was unlikely to tell anyone if you kept going | |
| 14.5% | Showed her that she was making you angry | Forceful subscale |
| 14.5% | Had her come to your house or apartment when she did not want to | Forceful subscale |
| 14.0% | Questioned her sexuality | Forceful subscale |
| 12.7% | Yelled at her or gave her hell for leading you on | Forceful subscale |
| 11.9% | Let her know she would regret it in some way | Forceful subscale |
| 11.2% | Take advantage of her being asleep or sleepy | Forceful subscale |
| 10.0% | Just overpowered her physically from the start | Forceful subscale |
| 9.4% | Used physical restraint (such as holding her down, or tying her hands) | Forceful subscale |
| 9.3% | Used some physical force to create some pain | Forceful subscale |
| 9.2% | Forced her to enjoy it | |
| 8.6% | Used drugs to help (e.g., GHB or roofies) | Forceful subscale |
| 8.1% | Let her know you would embarrass or shame her in some way if she did not | Forceful subscale |
| 6.8% | Threatened to hurt yourself | |
| 5.5% | Used something (even a weapon) to frighten her | |
| 5.2% | Threatened to hurt her | Forceful subscale |
Every claim leads to a source
The study
One study carries the series. Three more are context, each cited by the 2026 authors themselves. A scope line follows every one. Figures verified against the open-access paper and the Crossref registry on October 3, 2026.
On every card · Reference 1
Isolate, Inebriate, Intimidate, Repeat: High Rates of Sexual Force Against Women Are Reported When Young Men Given Anonymous Surveys
O'Sullivan and Ronis, 2026 · Journal of Interpersonal Violence, published online April 2, 2026
The researchers asked men how many times in the past four years they had used any of 36 strategies to get, or try to get, a woman to have sex when she did not want to or acted like she did not want to, counting only women they had recently met. 2,557 of the 2,689 men (95.1%) reported at least one. The average number of different strategies reported was 8.94 (standard deviation 7.98), and 36 men reported all 36. The most common were verbal and social: telling her whatever she wanted to hear (78.1%), continuing to touch and kiss her (58.3%), asking repeatedly (48.6%), and enlisting friends (46.6%). On the 12 items the authors class as most overtly forceful, 62.6% of men reported none, 15.7% reported one, and 21.7% reported two or more. Men rated the strategies as getting them the sex they wanted on 64.6% of the occasions they used them. Asked about a recent or vivid occasion, they said others were around 80.4% of the time; 1,903 wrote only “no” when asked whether anything bad came of it, 7 mentioned that the woman was traumatized, 1 mentioned that someone intervened, and 3 of 2,254 cited rape accusations or charges. The authors describe these as occasions of forced or coerced sex and argue that anonymity is why the rate is so much higher than in earlier work.
https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605261432630
Open access (CC BY 4.0). PubMed ID 41928571.
On card 9 · Reference 2
The Frequency of Sexual Perpetration in College Men: A Systematic Review of Reported Prevalence Rates From 2000 to 2017
Anderson, Silver, Ciampaglia, Vitale and Delahanty, 2019 · Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, 22(3), 481 to 495
The 2026 paper says that in identifiable convenience samples, self-reported perpetration since age 14 generally ranges from 8 to 24 percent depending on the kind of sexual aggression measured. That is the comparison behind card 9. The two figures are not apples to apples: the earlier studies used standard instruments, and the 2026 survey used a broader list of 36 behaviors with neutral wording.
On card 9 · Reference 3
An Experimental Comparison of Three Phrases Used to Convey Lack of Consent: How Does Language Affect Men's Self-Reports of Sexual Aggression Against Women?
Abbey, McDaniel, VanParis and Helmers, 2025 · Psychology of Violence, 15(2), 235 to 246
The 2026 authors cite this study to make the point that different phrasings of the same question produce different rates of self-reported coercion. It is the reason card 9 says wording moves the number.
https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000550
Paywalled
Background · Reference 4
Meta-Analysis of Randomized Response Research: Thirty-Five Years of Validation
Lensvelt-Mulders, Hox, van der Heijden and Maas, 2005 · Sociological Methods and Research, 33(3), 319 to 348
The 2026 authors cite this meta-analysis for an estimate that 42 percent of sensitive behaviors go unreported in surveys that do not guarantee anonymity. It is the methodological case for running an anonymous survey at all.
This series also lives, in Emily Adams Creative branding, at emilyadams.net/what-men-reported.