Thanks, Caroline, for this thoughtful response. Certainly, men and trans people and non-binary people, like women, have been victimized by rapists from all identities. My focus in this piece is on misogynist (woman-hating) language in the history of rape prosecutions, so I felt okay about using the old school rape gender binary. I’m glad you brought this up, though, since it seems likely that sexual assault victims who aren’t identifying as women have probably been subjected to this demeaning accuser language, too.

Sometimes I revise my Medium posts for publication in other magazines and journals. If I do that with this one, I’ll be returning to your comment and doing more research about how the media represents rape victims who don’t identify as women. Thanks again!