The rape of men

[the_gabih]

Of all the secrets of war, there is one that is so well kept that it exists mostly as a rumour. It is usually denied by the perpetrator and his victim. Governments, aid agencies and human rights defenders at the UN barely acknowledge its possibility. Yet every now and then someone gathers the courage to tell of it. This is just what happened on an

Comments

[chasingtides]

This is all kinds of horrifying.

[x_butterfly19_x]

This is truly awful but I'm glad you shared.

[starsinshapes]

It's weird to me that some people think that because you're a man, you can't be sexually assaulted/raped.

The fact that the wives leave them makes me a bit angry for some reason.

[the_gabih]

Just a bit?

[starsinshapes]

I'm trying to be calm.

[the_gabih]

Ah, fair point.

[chasingtides]

I'm trying to articulate a thought that isn't fully formed. But it's something about framing rape as something that only happens to women, hurting both men and women - obviously when the surviving men have no resources it hurts them, brutally, but there's something niggling at my mind that this is brutal and harmful on all counts.

[kishmet]

Maybe because the whole idea that rape happens only to women posits women as somehow weaker? I think the reason people don't want to believe men can be sexually assaulted is because men are viewed as stronger - the very root of the problem is the perceived (false) disparity between men and women. So believing that men can't possibly be raped just reinforces the "men stronger/women weaker" false dichotomy.

Don't know if that's what you were thinking, but that's what came to my mind.

[chasingtides]

True. I am and always have been uncomfortable with the gendering of sexual assault. Feminising it - making rape a women's issue to the point of excluding men (which happens in first world countries as well) is... there's a problem there?

I also think there's a problem with the idea that being raped makes you weak, somehow. Being mugged or tortured don't have the same connotations, but somehow rape does. Maybe gendering it has something to do with that, maybe not, but I think... I think the whole thing might be fucked up and fucking up survivors and how they can cope?

(Note: I might also find this upsetting and hard to articulate as a dude who's a survivor and had trouble finding resources as such. I do think the culture surrounding the gendering of rape makes it ... highly gendered in a weird way. I think it's great that women have support and that there has been a movement to help and aid them. But articles like this and talking to other male survivors makes me scared and sick because of that weird gendering.)

[kishmet]

There is definitely an enormous problem there. I don't know quite how to talk about it, because I don't want to seem like I'm going "But what about the menz?!" you know? At the same time, though, I think the assumption that only women are/can be raped does a huge disservice to women, too.

Now, I think a focus on the fact that it's overwhelmingly men who commit sexual assault would be okay, and would accomplish a lot more. I don't know.

(fwiw, I'm in basically the same boat as you are. And at the time when I was assaulted I wasn't out as male to anyone around me, so the bizarre gendering of SA and of my own personal experience by others... really, really fucked me up. So.)

[smirk_dog]

This is horrifying.