As a class, men have long been treated as pariahs in the UK, as in other developed countries. Having delivered that ‘result’, feminists are increasingly focusing their attentions onto boys. We shouldn’t be surprised. All men are rapists, after all, to the warped feminist mind. Why not assume that all boys are rapists, too, until and unless they can prove otherwise?
tracking down the actual research, of 3277 secondary school children from 5 European Nations, one finds some interesting patterns indeed. http://stiritup.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/STIR-Briefing-Paper-2.pdf
It is a short report with tables showing the results for both girls and boys. And here we find that in Cyprus, Italy and Bulgaria there is in fact very similar levels of “victimisation” for both boys and girls across the categories used . Indeed slightly higher for Boys in being victims of actual violence and sexual coercion. For Norway and England there is a more “gendered” pattern with boys reporting much lower levels of victimisation of violence and sexual coercion than their Italian Cypriot and Bulgarian brothers.
The Feminist authors realise they have a problem. First of all that if one takes 5 countries and the 4 categories of abuse there isn’t actually a huge difference in the levels of abuse reported by boys and girls. And the biggest difference is in the two supposedly more gender equal societies ( or it turns out Cyprus Italy and Bulgaria are more gender equal despite the stereotypes of machismo).
The explanation advanced is that because the 3 do not have long standing Violence Against Women campaigns. Then the girls are simply deluded in those countries and underreport.
But this is weak because there is much less variation with the levels reported by girls across the 5 nations, The really big variations are with the boys and the Gendered pattern in Norway and England in other words the Norwegian and English boys report low levels.
This suggests to me that in the countries with VAW and Girls programmes in schools and public information. Boys have learned not to report anything as it falls outside the definition our boys have been taught that whatever happens to them isn’t abuse.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/11/teenage-girls-coerced-sex-survey