Does it mean that men are more likely to harass people or is it saying that men harassing men is more common than women harassing women?

Question

[Link to the source where this is found](http://www.gvsu.edu/women_cen/sexual-harassment--82.htm)>**Men are more likely than women to harass**.>Both male and female students are more likely tobe harassed by a man than by a woman. Half ofmale students and almost one-third of femalestudents admit that they sexually harassedsomeone in college, and about one-fifth of malestudents admit that they harassed someone oftenor occasionally. Although equal proportions ofmale and female students say that they harassed astudent of the other gender, male students aremore likely to admit to harassing other malestudents. Almost one-quarter of male harassersadmit to harassing male students, compared toone-tenth of female harassers who admit toharassing female students.My question is: The first part of the paragraph seems to say that men are more likely to harass people, but the later portion of it says that men harassing men is more common than women harassing women. What is the paragraph actually trying to say? Can someone help me calrify this please? Thanks.

Answer 1

Thanks for asking your question! Let's break this paragraph down, piece by piece.

"Both male and female students are more likely to be harassed by a man than by a woman."

This topic sentence lays out the main idea that the statistics in the rest of the paragraph support, which we can rephrase as "men sexually harass people, both male and female, more often than women do."

Now, we'll get into the statistics the paragraph offers as proof: "Half of male students and almost one-third of female students admit that they sexually harassed someone in college, and about one-fifth of male students admit that they harassed someone often or occasionally." So, half of male students, vs. one third of female students, harassed someone. And then, 1/5 of male students harassed someone "often" or "occasionally," so this means that they were more likely to be repeat offenders and continue to harass the same person multiple times.

"Although equal proportions of male and female students say that they harassed a student of the other gender, male students are more likely to admit to harassing other male students."

So, the same amount of men harassed women, and women harassed men. From the topic sentence, that means both numbers should be equal. Except for this: what drives those numbers to be unequal, is that more men harass other men, as the next sentence proves:

"Almost one-quarter of male harassers admit to harassing male students, compared to one-tenth of female harassers who admit to harassing female students."

To sum up, the paragraph says that men are more likely to harass people, and the key point, is that men are more likely to harass other men, as well as harass women.