James Landrith, on how not to create a hierarchy of suffering.
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As a vocal and public male survivor, I’ve taken on a lot of abuse, harassment and hate from those who don’t want to hear our voices. I get it. Rape is an “icky” topic. Men are supposed to be strong and women couldn’t possibly commit sexual violence. People will defend those stereotypes without even knowing they’re doing it.They will quote legal definitions, espouse childish mythology and communicate taunts in an attempt to shame and silence.
There are any number of “reasons” why male survivors are silenced, minimized, trivialized and outright mocked by the general public, and too often by sexual violence activists and advocates. Further, if the general public acknowledges male survivors, then it will also have to consider the possibility of female rapists beyond the “wink-wink” references and outright jokes about them.
Get over it. We exist.
I’ve been speaking on a very public stage since finally finding my voice in 2008. That was nearly two decades after I had been drugged, raped and blackmailed into silence. Since then, I’ve been called every name I can imagine, been publicly shamed in print, and been subjected to a ton of other forms of intimidation and silencing attempts. I keep hearing how male survivors don’t experience such shaming tactics, yet I keep experiencing those tactics firsthand. Why do some folks feel the need to deny that it happens?
As a survivor and actual stakeholder in sexual violence issues in my own right, I am saddened at how often we are used as cannon fodder by both men and women in battles over who has it worse.
That is yet another iteration of the Oppression Olympics. That is creating a hierarchy of suffering. That is NOT anything approaching actual advocacy work.
If you don’t care about our issues, that is fine. However, please stop co-opting our traumas to make the case that “X doesn’t care about you and only brings you up to silence Y.” Guess what, the advocates for “Y” are doing the same thing with regard to male survivors and our issues by using us as talking points and a “gotcha” in their never-ending gender wars. Such ideological battles are little more than turf wars, and fall well short of sincere advocacy.
We are actual human beings. We exist. Our issues may not matter to some, but we deserve to be treated with a little more dignity, and a lot less shallow condescension, from people who are only using us to score points in ideological arguments.
Our concerns, our struggles and our lives matter far more than your need to score a quick point. Our card is not yours to play. Is that too much to ask?
Advocacy that is not based in compassion and focused on the lives of the human beings affected will eventually fail—and spectacularly.
Believe it.
Photo—DerrickT/Flickr
As a recipient of low end sexual assault from both boys and girls for 4 years of adolescence, I couldn’t agree more. Both feminists and their MRA nemises are guilty of this.
“and too often by sexual violence activists and advocates” I can identify with that particular statement. A few years ago (so not in the too distant past) I was working on a sociology thesis, based upon domestic and sexual violence from a male perspective. As part of my research I contacted a number of sexual violence advocacy services around the south of England. When I contacted them they invariably assumed that my enquiries related to men as perpetrators and when I mentioned that my thesis was about men being VICTIMS of sexual violence I was often met with blank expressions… Read more »
I’m glad people like you are out there, and not shutting up when people tell you to.
James writes: There are any number of “reasons” why male survivors are silenced, minimized, trivialized and outright mocked by the general public, and too often by sexual violence activists and advocates. — Thank you for the advocacy work you do on behalf of men. Based on your experience since going public, I’d like to hear more about this. Which sexual violence activists and advocates are engaging in this silencing and mocking behavior? My own observation is that it is coming from self-identified feminists. Sexual violence activists and advocates on the MHRA side, such as the bloggers over at “A Voice… Read more »
you dont get it…
Thank you for speaking out about this!