No More Excuses! campaign {featured resource}

At least 1 in 6 women in the U.S. will be raped in their lifetime. An estimated 1 in 10 rape victims are male, and studies have suggested that 1 in 2 transgender people will be sexually assaulted. But unless a rape fits the FBI’s 82-year-old definition, “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will,” it will never be counted in the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report (UCR).*

Ms. Magazine has launched a No More Excuses! campaign to update the definition of rape used by the FBI, which still uses "an impossibly narrow and outmoded definition of 'forcible' rape to gather its statistics."

The FBI needs a modern definition of rape that reflects a popular understanding of the crime and doesn't exclude the vast majority of rapes. Rape is rape. Period.

Without an accurate definition we won't have accurate statistics about rape, and without accurate statistics we will never have adequate funding for law enforcement to solve these crimes and stop violence against women.

The campaign also demands that city police departments must test every rape kit in their backlog and make sure untested kits don't accumulate again:

The backlog of untested kits around the country is outrageous, as it leaves serial rapists—and the vast majority of rapes are committed by serial rapists—free to rape again.

Read more at Ms. Magazine or go directly to the online campaign headquarters.