The Rape of Men

tesscaline said:
No, it's not missing the point. Plenty of female children are raped by anal penetration. What does that have to do with "taking someone's masculinity"? Nothing, that's what.
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Perhaps to you, me, and many other people who have taken the time to think rationally about it, but certainly not to the men in African who's wives leave them. Certainly not for a lot of the general public even in the US who can't even frame the men as raped. Remember, for many people a man asking for help is seen as less deserving of that help. This is because they view him as less of a man. A man complaining about having sex, even non-consonantal sex, can be viewed as a whiny less-than-man because everyone 'knows' that men always like it.

I don't think that woman was talking about how things should be but how they are perceived. If it weren't viewed as 'taking someone's masculinity' then it would be easier to come forward!
 
tyr_13 said:
Perhaps to you, me, and many other people who have taken the time to think rationally about it, but certainly not to the men in African who's wives leave them. Certainly not for a lot of the general public even in the US who can't even frame the men as raped. Remember, for many people a man asking for help is seen as less deserving of that help. This is because they view him as less of a man. A man complaining about having sex, even non-consonantal sex, can be viewed as a whiny less-than-man because everyone 'knows' that men always like it.

I don't think that woman was talking about how things should be but how they are perceived. If it weren't viewed as 'taking someone's masculinity' then it would be easier to come forward!
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The problem is WHY they are perceived that way. As I explained, that perception is based upon sexist and anti-gay (homophobic even) sentiments.
 
tesscaline said:
The problem is WHY they are perceived that way. As I explained, that perception is based upon sexist and anti-gay (homophobic even) sentiments.
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Yes, it is potentially worse because there are sexist and other bigoted forces at work in the world. Those people and perceptions really exist though, and if they make things worse, then it is worse.

Personally I'm a bit on the fence about whether it is worse or not. Women have plenty of unique problems from rape due to their gender as well. Though, those problems might be lessened for prepubescent children -- by that I mean the extra damage caused by a messed up culture might be lessened.
 
tesscaline said:
The problem is WHY they are perceived that way. As I explained, that perception is based upon sexist and anti-gay (homophobic even) sentiments.
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Well, no, it really isn't necessarily anti-gay. Sexist of course. The same applies to men who have been raped by women. They are seen as less of a man because they one, needed help, two, perhaps admitting to needing help or having a problem (which is a pretty big sin for a man in western culture at least), and three, admitted they don't always want sex.

Now I'm not at all saying that homophobic sentiments don't play a part. They do because of the more than small part of the populace who hold homophobic sentiment and aren't always rational. Realistically, one could be a rampant hater of homosexuality and still not see a man being raped as another man as 'taking away his masculinity'. Such a person could just twist the rape into more so called 'proof' that homosexuality is evil and tied to rape. It's just not always a part of the general view on male rape.
 
Drachasor said:
Personally I'm a bit on the fence about whether it is worse or not. Women have plenty of unique problems from rape due to their gender as well. Though, those problems might be lessened for prepubescent children -- by that I mean the extra damage caused by a messed up culture might be lessened.
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Indeed. Not being a woman, I can't really know what it's like to be a female rape victim, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss the variables.
 
JJM 777 said:
Quite simple. The vulnerable are abused. The Pope Bishop Major knows, but refrains from bringing legal justice to the offenders. Perfectly Catholic logical.

So now we know that tens of thousands have been victims? So where are tens of thousands of lawsuits against the offenders?
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Wanted to add:

The Pope President of USA knows, but refrains from bringing legal justice to the offenders. Perfectly Catholic American.
 
sputnik said:
Personally I would have no problem with being raped, so long as the female has no STD's and doesn't end up pregnant that is. Oh, and she is quite tidy too ;) ... fantasies aside...
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It's a common submissive fantasy, but everyone who has it seems to imagine things... a bit sanitized. They'd like to be "raped" by someone they like, and in a nice way, and with them knowing what's happening, and generally it not being much of a rape.

But, male delusions of being THAT great and desirable aside, it probably wouldn't be the prom queen that forces herself upon you.

And the encounter may go more like in the Spokane County case, where a guy has been chained, threatened with a knife and brutally tortured in addition to the rape part. Which most people wouldn't exactly find fun. In fact, I think even most submissives would be scared by that happening in all earnest, without a safeword, and not by someone they arranged with but by someone who probably is really crazy and unpredictable.
 
Drachasor said:
Personally I'm a bit on the fence about whether it is worse or not. Women have plenty of unique problems from rape due to their gender as well. Though, those problems might be lessened for prepubescent children -- by that I mean the extra damage caused by a messed up culture might be lessened.
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I have my doubts there. First of all, quantifying the "amount of damage" seems to me to be virtually impossible. How can you put a value to each person's "damage" in order to compare the average amount in one group to the average amount in another? And how do you distinguish the damage from "messed up culture" from the damage of "messed up life experience period"?
 
sylvan8798 said:
Sabrina, do you think the end of DADT will help? It seems to me like some men would be hesitant to come forward for fear that their being gay would be discovered in the process. Maybe trying to fly under the radar and not get themselves noticed.
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I'm honestly not sure. Given that if anyone got even the smidgen of an idea that a soldier was gay prior to the repeal of DADT, the soldier could then be more or less run out of the military, I suppose it's possible that prevented many men (and women, for that matter) from reporting the rape if it was by someone of the same sex. But as I said in my previous statement, there's still this image of a stoic male soldier in existence that, IMO, did more to prevent the report of any male rapes in the military than being thought gay would have. Sadly, rape is something we more or less expect to happen only to women; male rape is still an area where our blinders are firmly on due to the perception of the male as stoically enduring life's travails and not asking for help. If DADT WAS a factor, I'd hope that soldiers would now feel more comfortable with coming forward to report their sexual assaults.

The problem lies in the fact that most soldiers don't want to be seen as the "Blue Falcon"; i.e. the one who causes all sorts of trouble for their peers, either by not doing their jobs or tattling incessantly. It's why the anonymous option exists; the soldier can report a sexual assault but not have it reported to their unit chain of command unless and until they decide whether or not they want to bring charges. If they decide not to, the advocacy programs offer them access to counseling and other means of help; if they decide to report, the advocacy program offers the counseling and then advises them on the best way to proceed. But most soldiers don't want to be seen by their peers as betraying a fellow soldier, even if that fellow soldier attacked the reporting soldier, so the reports of sexual assaults probably remain low more as a result of that rather than being afraid of being viewed as gay before the repeal of DADT.

JJM 777 said:
Quite simple. The vulnerable are abused. The Pope Bishop Major knows, but refrains from bringing legal justice to the offenders. Perfectly Catholic logical.

So now we know that tens of thousands have been victims? So where are tens of thousands of lawsuits against the offenders?
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You could not be more wrong.

That is the exception rather than the rule in the military, nowadays. As I said in my previous post, if the soldier's chain of command is being uncooperative, there are means by which the soldier can go over them to get redress for their attack. All soldiers are aware of them as well; the programs are described in POSH training and soldiers are told who their local advocate is on their particular base during the training. I don't know a single CO who would ever shunt a complaint like this to the side; and if they did, the unit chaplains would never stand for it (the chaplains are, in a way, outside of the normal command structure due to the nature of their jobs; if the advocacy programs are there for the soldier outside of the unit, the chaplains are the soldier's advocate INSIDE the unit).

The fact is, you're operating with a skewed perspective when you say things like this; the only cases that are reported in this manner are the ones where something clearly was not done in accordance with DoD regulations, but what about all the cases that ARE handled properly? I don't have statistics (I'm not sure that's something they advertise anyway due to the sensitive nature of the situation), but it is extremely likely that far more cases are handled properly and the problem dealt with in accordance with the UCMJ than not.

JJM 777 said:
Wanted to add:

The Pope President of USA knows, but refrains from bringing legal justice to the offenders. Perfectly Catholic American.
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See above; you really don't know the military.
 
sputnik said:
All your talk about sex with a MAN is missing the entire point - I was talking about children. It is pretty obvious that the paedophile rapes a male child by sodomy, and in my ex-girlfriends case, by vaginal intercourse.

For some reason he stopped when she started menstruation. Sick *********** twat I would strangle him to death if I had my way, but she considered her terrible childhood as less worse than a young boy in the typical Catholic Church mainstream.

Calling her a latent homophobe is the most obnoxious thing ever. That is precisely the last thing she was.
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People deal with sexual assault in many different ways. By explaining how other people have it worse, she may have been trying to see herself as strong, able to bear her "lighter" abuse, or she may have been examining her own abuse by focusing on other people, or just trying to show that she wasn't too "damaged" to feel empathy. It doesn't really matter. The discussion was about her.

It's already been explained how her actual statement is homophobic. Worse, it perpetuate ideas that keep male victims of sexual assault from seeking help. If admitting to sexual assault means that a male victim loses further control because society can now take his "masculinity," he has greater reason to deny it happened. Which means that the victim has no support and the attacker has a better chance of repeating.

There is no "worse" rape to the victim at the time the assault is happening. It is dehumanizing, not emasculating.
 
tesscaline said:
The problem is WHY they are perceived that way. As I explained, that perception is based upon sexist and anti-gay (homophobic even) sentiments.
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As you suggest or hypothesize.

I agree that it's sexism, albeit a kind of sexism that gets a lot less airplay than sexism against women.

I think that the anti-gay/homophobic aspect is way overblown. For one thing, this "less than a man" thing happens with other forms of victimization or even simple injury without someone to blame.

It starts quite early. Boys who are injured on the sports field are told to man up and just take it. Occasionally, there is a component that can be linked indirectly to homophobia, where the boy is called a "sissy" or something. However, even in the absence of this, the training happens.

Actually, it happens earlier than that. See http://www.jstor.org/pss/1128199 It's only the first page, so I had to look it up in a university library. Basically, a bunch of adults were shown an infant engaging in a certain behavior. They were then asked to guess the emotions of the child. When told that the child was a boy, they overwhelmingly answered "anger," and when told that the child was a girl, they overwhelmingly answered "fear."

To me, the most interesting part of the study was that there was no correlation with the political beliefs of the adults. That is, progressive, gay-positive adults were just as likely to make those sexist judgments.

So, while one can make a plausible homophobia connection with some of this, it is more than a bit of a stretch to consider it a definitive explanation.

A better explanation (one popularized by Warren Farrell) is that males are conditioned to be soldiers, while females are conditioned to be caretakers. This receives support from primatology. Even in primate societies such as those of baboons (largely matriarchal, and in the case of the Berkeley baboons, strongly matriarchal), essentially all young males and most older males are relegated to be at the periphery, providing defense against outsiders. Relics of this exist in human societies. Most armies are overwhelmingly male, and except in cases like Israel for a brief time, involuntary conscription for combat is exclusively male. Even when armies are wholly volunteer, they rely on a steady supply of conditioned males. So does business.

Now, we could go a lot further and ask why this is, or rather why we as humans haven't gotten rid of it by now. I don't know. The answers are probably complex, and at this point, there is even less room for a homophobia explanation.
 
bookitty said:
People deal with sexual assault in many different ways. By explaining how other people have it worse, she may have been trying to see herself as strong, able to bear her "lighter" abuse, or she may have been examining her own abuse by focusing on other people, or just trying to show that she wasn't too "damaged" to feel empathy. It doesn't really matter. The discussion was about her.

It's already been explained how her actual statement is homophobic. Worse, it perpetuate ideas that keep male victims of sexual assault from seeking help. If admitting to sexual assault means that a male victim loses further control because society can now take his "masculinity," he has greater reason to deny it happened. Which means that the victim has no support and the attacker has a better chance of repeating.

There is no "worse" rape to the victim at the time the assault is happening. It is dehumanizing, not emasculating.
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Granted it is no worse at the time it is happening, but afterwards it could be. Much like women have to deal with the potential accusation of being a slut. That's sexist too. It doesn't make it any less real.

Basically, sexism can make bad things worse. It isn't sexist to recognize that (or homophobic to recognize homophobia can make things worse).
 
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epepke said:
As you suggest or hypothesize.

I agree that it's sexism, albeit a kind of sexism that gets a lot less airplay than sexism against women.

I think that the anti-gay/homophobic aspect is way overblown. For one thing, this "less than a man" thing happens with other forms of victimization or even simple injury without someone to blame.

It starts quite early. Boys who are injured on the sports field are told to man up and just take it. Occasionally, there is a component that can be linked indirectly to homophobia, where the boy is called a "sissy" or something. However, even in the absence of this, the training happens.

Actually, it happens earlier than that. See http://www.jstor.org/pss/1128199 It's only the first page, so I had to look it up in a university library. Basically, a bunch of adults were shown an infant engaging in a certain behavior. They were then asked to guess the emotions of the child. When told that the child was a boy, they overwhelmingly answered "anger," and when told that the child was a girl, they overwhelmingly answered "fear."

To me, the most interesting part of the study was that there was no correlation with the political beliefs of the adults. That is, progressive, gay-positive adults were just as likely to make those sexist judgments.

So, while one can make a plausible homophobia connection with some of this, it is more than a bit of a stretch to consider it a definitive explanation.

A better explanation (one popularized by Warren Farrell) is that males are conditioned to be soldiers, while females are conditioned to be caretakers. This receives support from primatology. Even in primate societies such as those of baboons (largely matriarchal, and in the case of the Berkeley baboons, strongly matriarchal), essentially all young males and most older males are relegated to be at the periphery, providing defense against outsiders. Relics of this exist in human societies. Most armies are overwhelmingly male, and except in cases like Israel for a brief time, involuntary conscription for combat is exclusively male. Even when armies are wholly volunteer, they rely on a steady supply of conditioned males. So does business.

Now, we could go a lot further and ask why this is, or rather why we as humans haven't gotten rid of it by now. I don't know. The answers are probably complex, and at this point, there is even less room for a homophobia explanation.
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It's not overblown in situations like those described in Africa, where men are afraid to come forward about sexual assault not just because of sexist themes, but because of very real fears of being thought to be gay (which is illegal).

It may be "overblown" when discussing how the subject is handled within the more liberal sections of the US, but... I'm sorry, I hear way too much from people about how some random sexual interaction between men is only "gay" if you're the one on the receiving end -- blow jobs, anal, whatever -- and the following sentiment that "gay men" aren't "real men". Homophobia even, about thinking that a man being anally penetrated will "make him gay" (no matter who that penetration is done by, or why).

There are entire segments of the world's society for which you're only "gay" if you're the "bottom" in a male-male sexual interaction (some portions of the middle east have been discussed on these forums in the past, for example).

I'm not saying these responses are solely based on anti-gay sentiment. I'm saying that there is a combination of sexism of anti-gay sentiment at work behind these sorts of views. Ignoring one or both of those sentiments does no one any good. Both have to be addressed, and fought against, to solve the problem.
 
It's emasculating to be overpowered despite being strongly motivated to prevent being so. The details of how it happens aren't particularly important as far as the perceived emasculation is concerned. I don't think anti-gay / homophobic beliefs are particularly relevant.

Emasculation is the destruction of the fantasy that an individual man is capable of resisting threats to his (and his loved ones) safety from the will of others. It's proof to the individual man and to everyone else that he is *not* the alpha male.
 
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If you're interested, take a look at the comments made by Deb Singh here on why men aren't welcome at the main "Take Back the Night" march.

She implies that the sexual abuse of men isn't as important as that of women because not as many men apparently experience it.

Could you imagine how a man who has experienced such abuse would feel to have their experiences de-legitimised like that?
 
You know, I never "got" the whole emasculation thing, and needing to constantly prove that one is still a man, usually by doing something stupid and/or aggressive, and/or being pegged in a stupid role. You'd think that someone could just look down and see what kind of genitals they've got, really.

How is it supposed to work anyway? Does anyone actually think that someone's balls will fall off if they don't drive like a deranged idiot, or if they're nice in a relationship, or in this case if they report a rape?

And when that kind of a stupid culture is actually getting people raped, I'd say it's high time to change it.
 
HansMustermann said:
You know, I never "got" the whole emasculation thing, and needing to constantly prove that one is still a man, usually by doing something stupid and/or aggressive, and/or being pegged in a stupid role. You'd think that someone could just look down and see what kind of genitals they've got, really.

How is it supposed to work anyway? Does anyone actually think that someone's balls will fall off if they don't drive like a deranged idiot, or if they're nice in a relationship, or in this case if they report a rape?

And when that kind of a stupid culture is actually getting people raped, I'd say it's high time to change it.
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Good luck with that. I think it's hard wired from our ancestors, though I'd be interested to discover a culture where men do not compete with each other for status.
 
There's a difference between competing and actually being expected to prove to be a man, to the point of being expected to act stupidly to prove some comically absurd version of testosterone poisoning. Sure, competing to various degrees is natural for most mammals. Glorifying the most absurdly extreme version of male insecurity, however is something else.

And honestly, I can think of plenty of cultures where the stereotypes were at least different enough.

E.g., the Japanese weren't expected to be knuckle-dragging brutes to qualify as men. In fact just about everything about a samurai, from wearing kimonos with big stonking flowers and butterflies, to being supposed to actually be into poetry and appreciating nature's beauty, to gardening to make a beautiful garden in front of the home, etc, would get one suspected of being gay in many places nowadays. It's anything but the western stereotype of testosterone-poisoned man.

So I'd say there's hardly anything actually built in about the expected Real Man behaviours.
 
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