Chris Anderson explains that when the media frames male victims of sexual abuse as “lovers”, the world becomes a less safe place for children.
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When is abuse not abuse?
“Whether or not it seems fair, when adults and children have unforced sex, the child is always the victim.”
(from Child Molesters: A Behavioral Analysis, P. 6)
This is a quote from Kenneth Lanning, a retired FBI special agent whose area of expertise was the investigation of child sexual abuse. One of the very important things to note about this statement is that it is gender neutral.
In much of the reporting on sexual abuse or coercion involving male students and female teachers there is a glaring problem. The victimization of males is very often written about in terms that minimize and normalize the incident while downplaying the potential criminality of the perpetrator.
We are finally starting to see data that challenges the dominant paradigm that men are not victims, or are at best a trifling minority of the victims of sexual violence. According to UK stats about 40% of domestic violence victims are male. According to research from Lara Stemple at UCLA law, in 2010 through 2012 criminal justice statistics shows that males and females experienced sexual violence at roughly equal numbers). And even more recent research from an American Psychological Association published study reported that 43% of young males said they were sexual coerced, identifying females as the coercers over 90% of the time.
But on a recent episode of Real Time, Bill Maher went on a tirade about this last study. Instead of making any statement acknowledging that males can, in fact, be sexually victimized, he joked about the 43% as suffering from “Lucky Bastard Syndrome” As a result, the message many took away from the skit is that if any man ever claims he was sexual violated by a women, then he must be lying and should be mocked, scorned, and humiliated.
While much of the coverage of female teacher/male student scandals is not that egregious, it still upholds the principle that a male who is sexually abused is somehow less of a victim that a female. In a brief survey of news items from one 24 hour period, 3 stories came up referencing the abuse of male students by female teachers.
The first, reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer was highlighted by a tweet from the Inquirers’ Twitter page that outraged many people.
It was later taken down, and an apology tweet was issued.
The next day, the Daily News in New York managed to have a double dose of demeaning language. In Utah, the case of another female teacher who stands accused of sexually abusing a male student was reported on as a “relationship” between the accused and the alleged victim. While another story about a teacher accused of abusing 2 male students from was reported this way:
A Queens gym teacher accused of a year-long tryst with a teen student wrestler also bedded a second student, sources said Tuesday.
Hours after Joy Morsi, 39, of Massapequa, L.I., pleaded not guilty to charges of raping the Grover Cleveland High School student when he was 16, two sources confirmed to the Daily News that additional charges were expected after a second student lover came forward
Abuse is abuse. It is not a “relationship”, a “tryst”, there is a perpetrator and a victim. Again, whether or not it seems fair, when a child – and yes a teenager in high school is still developmentally and legally a child – has unforced sex with an adult, the child is always the victim. While it may be true that not all males who have these experiences are scarred or severely harmed, many are.
As it stands today when male students are sexually abused, more likely than not they can expect to be referred to as lovers, not victims. This double standard makes it tremendously harder to hold accountable teachers who break the bonds of trust given them by parents, and it makes it far harder for many of the young men who have been abused to get the help that they need.
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Lead photo: Flickr/Paul Reynolds
AMEN to that!
Children are children, and if they are sexually abused, it will stuff them up bigtime, no matter what their gender. Or the gender of the abuser.
Hi Frank, Well. MaleSurvivor is working hard to build a movement that puts healing first. I think that’s a big part of the issue. Too often we get bogged down with debates over who is harming who, instead of talking about how do we fix it. I also think we need to recognize that prevention strategies that don’t actually help survivors heal are missing the mark. A big part of the challenge is getting people to start framing and talking about victimization issues in a new light. I think we also need to look creating change on the small scale… Read more »
Frank, Thanks for your note. First things first, I think that anyone who really wants to make a difference has to recognize that the issue that we need to focus on is not what is done to marginalize group X, rather we need to engage in dialogue that educates people that ANY group that is marginalized causes harm to ALL groups. There is a bitter war of rhetoric that is beginning to emerge between advocates for men and advocates for women that is quickly turning as toxic as the partisan divide in Congress. Also, there is a very important dynamic… Read more »
Chris, As a determined centrist myself, and someone who thinks that women still suffer indignities, assaults and much worse on a daily basis, I couldn’t agree more. I am not interested in a Victim Olympics either. And yet, I cannot bring myself to say that means the suffering of boys and men should be left without attention and without address. If a white man is cut, does he not bleed? And if we, as men, are expected to feel and live out empathy and compassion for girls and women who suffer, and to make that tangible (as we are and… Read more »
BTW, the following article, including the link to the study by Jessica Turchik of Stanford regarding the surprisingly high level of sexual assault on college age men, is worth a read.
http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/crime/hard-truth-girl-guy-rape/
Chris, Thank you for this article. Thank you also for posting the link to the Stemple & Meyer (American Journal of Public Health, June 2014) study of the Federal data. I paid the $30 to pull that study from being the pay wall and I thought they should be commenced for going after CDC for burying the obvious lead from the data: that men and women suffer sexual violence in almost exactly equal numbers, 1.270 million US women in the 12 month study period and 1.267 million men in the same period, and that many of the offenders were women.… Read more »
Unforced might be a bit of a misnomer, but I admit that I don’t have a better term for it. As bad as this sounds, it’s even worse for juvenile boys in prison. If you want to be outraged, a prominent feminist in Canada, and a university professor, Adele Mercier, has made statement in effect justifying the rape of underage boys in juvenile detention. “exual victimization” is there defined as ALL SEXUAL ACTIVITY with facility staff. And the numbers are that, among males in juvenile facilities: 5.2% of MALE YOUTH engage in unauthorized sexual activity with MALE STAFF; 89.1% of… Read more »
Thank you John, for bringing that to my attention. I had not seen it before. I will be adding this to my resources.
Chris,
the primary source for the statistics cited in Johns’ comments comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report titled: Sexual Victimization in Juvenile
Facilities Reported by Youth, 2012.
There was also a survey done a few years prior just like there has been for adult prisons under PREA. The victimization figures in the previous survey weren’t significantly different for either adult or juvenile prisons. I didn’t want people to think this was a “recent” discovery. It’s been known for years and hasn’t yet been effectively addressed. One of the better articles I’ve seen (written by a feminist I might add) which looks at the previous survey is http://thecurvature.com/2010/10/29/justice-department-repot-on-sexual-assault-in-juvenile-detention-minimizes-violence/ Also read the comment at the end to see what we’re up against. It’s dripping with rape apology. The commenter… Read more »
Sounds about normal for your average feminist.