Sexual Violence and Politics in Taiwan and the US: The Problem of Under Reporting

In the wake of a renewed #MeToo movement in the US centering around Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, perhaps it is timely to reflect on Taiwan’s own situation regarding politics and sexual aggression and violence.

In Taiwan, it is almost unheard-of for a Taiwanese politician to weather a sexual assault scandal and continue as a public servant. In recent years, the more infamous examples has been the spectacular rise and fall of former Sunflower Movement leader Chen Wei-ting, whose political career was over before it began due to a documented history of sexual misconduct.

However, it is too simplistic to conclude that Taiwan as a whole is tougher on sexual assault allegations against its public officials than the United States.

More accurately, only in recent decades are people in the US beginning to fully grasp the importance of serious public conversations regarding sexual assault, and are slowly gaining the courage to speak up against  the assailants, who are predominantly powerful men. In Taiwan, however, it is simply less likely that sexual assault are reported.

Looking at data for 2015, the latest year that sexual assault statistics are readily available for both nations, there seems to be a darker reason behind the low number of sexual assault scandals among the Taiwanese elite. Breaking down the numbers to see per capita how many sexual assaults are reported in the US as compared to Taiwan, this is what we find:

The US population in 2015 was 321 million, and reports of sexual assault in the US in 2015 totaled 431,837 (male and female). That indicates a per capita reported assault rate of 0.00134. Taiwan’s population in 2015 was 23,485,755, with 10,454 reports of sexual assault in Taiwan 2015 (gender not specified), for a per capita rate of 0.00044.

This is a massive disparity: even considering differences in population, the US still has a far higher report rate of sexual assault than Taiwan, by a factor of three.

Does it make sense that people in Taiwan are three times less likely to be sexually assaulted than in the US? It is unlikely that there is simply less sexual assault in Taiwan overall (although crime in general is on a down swing and Taiwan remains a very safe country). The picture for comparison is clearer when we look at the gap between estimated sexual assaults and the number reported for the two countries: in the US it’s estimated that about 2/3 of sexual assaults are not reported, or around 70 percent. In Taiwan, it is estimated that the number of actual sexual assaults compared to those reported is seven to ten times higher.

Estimating the actual number of cases, Taiwan’s number of actual assaults per capita is somewhere between 78% to 111% of America’s.

We also know that domestic abuse is an entrenched problem in Taiwan, and toxic masculinity in a traditionally patriarchal society is common. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in the United States is clear that there is a link between domestic violence and sexual assault. It’s not difficult to see that these two types of gender-based violence share enough characteristics: they are both about power and control, they both disproportionately affect women, and they both generally stem from misogyny or a sense of entitlement over women’s bodies.

In fact, low report rates of both likely have some connection to the way the Taiwanese judicial system is likely to treat women who report by judges often applying an outdated, overly strict legal standard for victims to prove, not to mention cultural stigma surrounding reporting gender-based violence and “cultural” excuses for ignoring it, as well as the defamation lawsuits women who make allegations but don’t wish to press charges may face.

Taking this idea further, it’s hard to imagine that Taiwanese politicians somehow commit sexual assault at a lower rate than the general population, especially given the relationship between violence, including sexual assault, and power.

Rather, I suspect that it is more likely that sexual assault by Taiwanese public officials before or after they take office go unreported, or are shut down before the victims can come forward publicly with allegations and evidence. Perhaps women feel internal or cultural pressures not to report. Some may worry about their own future if they do, or may not want to become the focus of public gossip in the worst possible way within Taiwan’s vicious court of public opinion. Some may face other, possibly more dire, consequences.

Consider the rumors surrounding former Vice President and former KMT chairman Lien Chan: he is widely believed to have committed domestic abuse, an allegation which prompted him and his wife, Lien Fang Yu, to appear on national television in 2004 to tearfully blame the opposition for “smearing her good name.” While the allegations have not been tried in a court of law, if they are true, it is conceivable that Mrs. Lien would hesitate to come forward, and speak out for fear for her safety against a very powerful man, or of losing her, and the Lien family’s, political position.

What this means is that Taiwan may not, in fact, be much better than the United States in this regard. In the US, due to the #metoo movement, women feel increasingly willing to hold powerful men to account, publicly, for their misdeeds. Research shows that, to the best of our knowledge, only 2-6% of sexual violence accusations are false. Culture is changing in the US, in ways that can be felt, in ways that can be researched, and in ways that can be documented. Even looking at the Wikipedia entry for sex scandals of federal elected politicians, there has been an uptick through the years – almost certainly because women are more likely to step forward now.

Taiwan doesn’t seem to have gone through the same degree of  transformation yet. It’s not that sexual assault is considered acceptable here, it’s that ideas of what constitutes sexual assault in Taiwan sometimes feel like they’re straight out of the 1980s, and the stigma surrounding reporting seeming more like what my mother and grandmother might have faced, rather than myself. I mean, this is a country where raping a domestic employee once doesn’t bar you from hiring another one after a period of time.

Having spent twelve years in Taiwan, I have encountered “cultural” excuses for gender-based violence here, generally along the same refrain of “it’s Taiwan’s traditional culture” or an appeal to outdated views of gender which are common across both Asia and the world (one need only look at many American conservative views to see how such sexism plays out in the West). There is no truth to these “cultural” excuses: Taiwan has undergone a seismic shift in how society views gender for several generations, yet culture and traditions in Taiwan, regardless of changing attitudes towards gender and sexual power relations, remains robust. The United States has been evolving in its views on gender since the 19th century, and yet I would argue culture in America remains identifiably “American.”  Cultures can embrace gender egalitarianism and still retain their essence.

In the United States, that evolution may be a little farther along, but there’s an entrenched sense that those in power still just don’t care. In the US, Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony against a screaming, weeping Brett Kavanaugh is considered by experts, and many women who has had something like this happen to them, to be credible. Yet, he was still confirmed by the US Senate as a justice of the Supreme Court. In 1991, the same drama played out with Anita Hill, who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of assault. There are currently 22 sexual assault allegations against US President Donald Trump. Yet, he is not only still president, but his supporters either defend him, or are willing to believe that that many women are simply lying.

In the US in 2018, women may be heard when they step forward, but it still has ruinous effects on those who do—hurting careers, exposing them to more trauma and harassment—and despite all the progress #metoo has made, they apparently have not made much of an impact on the political machine, or sexual assault rates in general.

In Taiwan, if you manage to publicly accuse a political figure of sexual assault, overcoming all of the pressures not to do so and knowing you’ll likely be torn apart in gossip magazines and online forums, and people actually listen to you, his career will probably be over.

But good luck getting to that point.

(Feature photo of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, from Wikipedia Commons)