Men are rape victims in college too, but you don’t hear about it because it’s rarely reported.

WFSB News reports.

College women rape college men but few men tell

College women rape college men far less often than they are victims, but it does happen, experts say.

Female-on-male rape survivors are a hidden, understudied minority. Less often than female rape survivors, the men tell college authorities or police about their experiences. Most research excludes or minimizes the male victims, a fact noted by a scholar who studies college student sexual cultures.

“I think it is an important topic, one that needs much more conversation,” said Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and a co-author of Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality.

Men often have difficulty accepting themselves as victims because the idea of their being sexually assaulted by women goes against the standard cultural assumptions about masculinity, such as aggression, strength and power.

Men, for that and other reasons, delay or avoid seeking help legally, medically and psychologically.

Forced and pressured sex for men, experts say, can result from women applying psychological force – threats to end relationships or spread rumors – or physical force, which usually happens to men too drunk or drugged to give consent.

Some male rape survivors maintained erections during the assault, a purely biological response, despite feelings of shame, fear, anger or terror. That’s another reason so few men report the incidents – for fear of being perceived as consenting, pleasured participants.

“It definitely occurs, given the amount of alcohol students consume and the fallacious assumption that is made by men and women both that all men want sex all the time,” Armstrong said.