...very differently. I don't think that the various people commenting to remind us that rape happens to men, too, is necessarily a belittling of what women go through in dealing with/avoiding rape. I think that something very different is happening and not recognizing that is causing unnecessary friction.
When someone chimes in with a reminder that rape happens to men, too, I think part of why it comes up regularly here is because this is a relatively safe venue. And men, or more commonly, boys, are raped with much greater frequency than most people realize. Or want to realize.
And since it’s essentially invisible in our culture, there are virtually no resources or support for men or boys who have been assaulted. It’s not reported, it’s not usually prosecuted, (for various reasons, but mostly to ‘protect’ the boy or man from the ‘stigma’). And I’m talking about male on male rape, here, since it’s much more common than older women abusing teens or young men, (I’m not discounting the other, it’s just a different dynamic).
I’ve known men who were raped, either in jail or in jr high/high school. And they never told because they were terrified of the response. They carried the guilt and shame of a rape victim all by themselves, without any support, and fully expected to do so for the rest of their lives. I was molested as a kid, so I’m more sensitive to a lot of signs of abuse than the average, and I picked up on their situations and purposely made a safe place for them to admit what had happened to them.
They never thought that they’d ever in their lives be able to share that burden with another human being. They assumed that they were the only ones that it had happened to because you never hear about it. They assumed, (and for the most part rightly), that most people would react badly.
Most people would react badly, in part because we don’t have a framework to guide us like we do for women having been raped.
We know how to react to that, but we’re at a loss when it’s a man who’s been the victim, and that loss comes across as any number of things- most of them bad or more embarrassing- exacerbating the trauma of the assault.
So it’s a vicious cycle, victims don’t tell because people don’t know how to react and be supportive, so the few victims that do tell or are discovered are victimized again by people not knowing how to react.
And many react by turning away in their discomfort, which reads to the victim as a rejection of the victim, not as turning away from the situation they have no framework for reacting to. This perceived rejection increases the isolation and the guilt for the victim.
I think that the recurrent comments reminding us that it happens to men, too, are mostly an attempt to raise consciousness and bring awareness of other victims, so that they can come out into the light of day and be heard, comforted and healed.
I don’t think that it’s a belittling of what we women have to carry, to deal with on a daily basis. I think it’s a way of seeking understanding and acknowledgement for those who don’t even have the most basic support that we accord to female victims.
As mentioned in both rec’d diaries, a significant portion of people believe that women bear some responsibility for their assaults. We all know stories of the trauma women go through on the stand in pursuing rape prosecutions. But we also know that most of us support those women, unconditionally.
When a woman reports a rape, we know how to react. When men or boys are raped, they can’t count on that response. They’re all alone. Assaulted, victimized and alone. At best, people turn away because they don’t know how to react and while they’re probably trying to give the victim privacy, it ends up coming across as rejection and shunning.
I think that these recurring comments are just people wanting the other victims to be acknowledged, to be heard. Rape is a horrible, devastating thing and we need to standardize our response to it regardless of who the victim is. The invasion of one’s body is an invasion of one’s body, a profound assault of one’s personal, physical and emotional integrity and it shouldn’t matter what gender the victim is.
Yes, there are societal, patriarchal frameworks that put women at severe disadvantage in our culture, no question. But there are also societal frameworks that deny other victims support, and those we need to question and adjust.
Just sayin'