The language of abuse doesn’t really matter, Brian C. Rideout writes. Instead, we need to focus on helping and allowing the victims to heal.
Julie Gillis recently wrote a thought-provoking article entitled “Heresy, Rape Statistics, and Getting Away from the Poles” that got me thinking about my own experiences as a male survivor of sexual assault.
In particular she started looking at how we defined rape, and how a definition that involves penetration ignores the fact that some men are raped by being forced to penetrate. As several of the commenters put it thereafter, that an erection has been considered consent, even when it shouldn’t be. Ms. Gillis continued to ask about where the line is drawn, if penetration of the mouth by an object with violent sexual context, for example, might or might not be considered rape.
It is a question that underscores the problem with language and the laws built on it, and it is a vital point in the debate, but when we focus on it I think we miss something even more important altogether.
Please, let me tell you a story.
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I suffer from chronic mastitis, a mildly painful swelling of the fatty tissue and musculature of the chest. In effect it gives me breasts. I hate even saying it like that because they aren’t really breasts, they are breast-like. I could write another article just on the language that floats around men with this problem.
I went through a bout of juvenile depression around the age of 11. I stopped exercising, started eating my pain away, and swelled to an enormous weight, but thanks to the perversity of genetics the fat went to my chest first. By the time I was in seventh grade, I was “better developed” than many of the girls in my class.
This, along with being quiet, brainy, and emotional made me the perfect target for bullying. For the most part, I learned to get a thicker skin. I figured how to deal with words. I learned how to handle violence for the most part, too. But then along came a boy named John …
John’s bullying started out the way everyone else did, probing rude questions in public scenarios, name calling, then punching, and slamming against lockers, but then his violence turned sexual. John would slam me against lockers and grope and twist my breasts. When I resisted, he would smash my head against the locker. It became his favourite game. In class he would rub his chest and flicker his tongue at me, or call me sexually dirty names before lunch to let me know he was planning, and every lunch hour he would attack me the same way.
When I started fighting back, he got two of his friends to help by holding me down while he did it. And he invited them to join in “the fun.. Like every bully with an audience, he needed to escalate. At first he started forcing his tongue into my mouth. Then a couple of times he hit me until I put my hands down his pants and touched him.
The violence hit its peak when John and his friends beat me, and held me against some lockers, forcibly kissed me, then put his hands down my pants and started playing with my penis while calling me his whore and a bitch while his friends groped me. Then they punched me in the gut and left me against the locker.
The worst part was looking up and seeing the teacher in charge of hall discipline meet my eyes then look away, ashamed. She’d been ignoring John’s “little jokes” for three months. To my knowledge, John was never confronted for his behaviour. He got involved in a sports team after that, and had better things to do with his lunches.
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After that incident I lost my sense of worth as a human being. I tried in secret a few times to write a suicide note, but just didn’t have the nerve to finish it, or carry out the act.
For years afterward I held a deep, bitter homophobia that made it impossible for me to allow myself to be alone with other men. I kept all my friendships at arm’s length. I refused to get involved with sports or for that matter, any activity that would put me anywhere near a large number of guys.
I consider myself fortunate that I moved at the end of that year, and I was forced to start over again, including opening myself to new male friendships, including becoming friends with three gay boys. I didn’t release my homophobia entirely. I learned to like and respect gay men, but the idea of having another man touch me would cause me to panic.
I hurt the feelings of one of my gay friends very badly a few years later. He told me he was in love with me, and I had a panic attack. Our friendship slowly died out after that. He committed suicide a few years ago, and I never got he chance to apologize for how I treated him.
Fear of my own sexuality prevented me from learning how to self-pleasure until I was in University, and for years afterwards I felt guilty and dirty every time I had sex.
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I don’t call the things John did to me for that three-month stretch of abuse “rape.” I have had friends who’ve been through far worse than I have. Having someone repeatedly French kiss me and force me to touch his penis is not nearly as bad as some of the stories I have heard.
I also don’t care about what happened to John, or whether he was punished or not for the things he did to me. To heal I had to let go of all the anger and pain and shame of it. Every time I get angry or sad or frustrated about what he did, I’m forced to relive it in my memories; there’s nothing to be gained by opening up old wounds. It saddens me to think that he might have done the same to other boys in the years that followed, and I hope that if he did, the authorities around at the time were more willing to do something than that teacher was.
Whether what he did to me qualifies as “rape” or “sexual assault” or even just “assault” doesn’t matter, because it was just three months of lunch hours.
What does matter to me is the years of pain, shame, nightmares, wounded friendships, lost love, suicidal thoughts, and lost opportunities to make meaningful contact with other men.
It bothers me that a teacher who was supposed to be looking out for me was so uncertain as to how to understand what was being done to me, that she let it go on in front of her for three months … and then was too ashamed to even look me in the eye afterward.
It bothers me that I was living in a time and place where, after what John did, I was made to feel so ashamed and so dirty, not to mention so confused about what happened that I didn’t feel like I could turn to anyone for help.
It bothers me that I had difficulty coming to a functional relationship with my own sexuality for nearly fifteen years because I had nowhere to turn to.
It bothers me that there was no support group I could join or hotline I could call as a male survivor of sexual violence. That I was so desperate for some way of letting all of that pain out that jumping out a window or cutting my wrists opened seemed like a valid choice.
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When we talk about men as survivors of sexual violence, we still don’t talk about them as human beings. They are a statistical anomaly, or a political cover-up, or a problem in our discourse. We use glib language like that which commenter Archy on Ms. Gillis’ article quoted to sidestep the survivor’s humanity:
For the sake of the small but suffering number of male victims—and for the far greater number of women who are the victims of men—we need to shatter this pernicious myth about the male body.
In final analysis I care less about the politics of language, or the (mis-)representation of the issue in statistics, or even the laws aimed at punishing the perpetrators. What I care about is being given the opportunity to speak about what has happened, to heal, and to be treated with compassion.
And I care about us making sure that every survivor of sexual violence, whatever form it might have taken, be given that chance to shed their humiliation and anger, rather than carrying it around for years. If that means finding other language than “rape” to use, and accepting that it will take years for male survivors to get the legal and governmental recognition they deserve, so be it. Let’s just get down to healing and raising awareness before one more boy loses a friend, gives up on sports, or contemplates suicide.
—Photo s.thornton/Flickr
If you need backup, try the feminists who know there are women getting that same treatment as you, then being dismissed because “they’re not sexy enough to assault”. Be not afraid of the “radical” label. It only means they believe that asking us to compete against each other whilst being held to separate, old gender binary standards leads to…well this kind of shit.
They’d be better to have on side than the men who’ll claim to be “financially raped” because they’ve had to pay for their kids shoes.
Truthfully, I try to look at all sides of the issue. If you can get past all the sturm and drang, I think both groups still have a lot to give to male survivors of sexual violence. If you look past the angry vocal minority (in both groups), you see that both sides ultimately have a lot of compassion for the survivors, and want to help in different ways. After all, you don’t get angry if you don’t care. In the end, I think we really all want the same thing, but we are so bad at understanding one another… Read more »
Thank you Brian, stories like yours need to be told. I was bullied in my teen as well, but it wasn’t as sexual or as invasive as your experience was. Without reading stories like yours, I literally could not imagine this kind of experience. Conversely, having read them allows me to better understand people and, in case I would meet someone with these kind of “touch fobia”, I hope I’d be able to understand (I’m a very tactile person). Talking about bullying, what happened to me was that, the day I reacted and slammed that bully against the lockers (I… Read more »
Thanks for reading Crescendo. Your comment shines a light on the basic decency that I think is inherent in most people. You heard about the pain going on in someone else’s head, and the first thing you did was say how much you hoped you would understand. Its words like those that prove to me over and over again that the good people outnumber the bad. I was going to school in the early 90s, and there was an unspoken code among teachers about bullying: boys bullying girls was intolerable, girls bullying boys didn’t happen (I have physical scars that… Read more »
@Brian: “I have never been able to trust that I would be protected by authorities in any form after that, and I still don’t believe that there will ever be justice in the world.” I’m sorry for you. It’s a terrible feeling to go around with. Personally, to balance against my fear of unfairness, I’ve become better at speaking for myself. I think it’s important being able to express our POV and telling someone “Hey, you aren’t fair with me, and here’s why”. Even with autorities. Having a “victim mentality” (“Oh, never mind, they won’t care about me anyway”) is… Read more »
Don’t get me wrong, there is a big difference between believing there is no justice in the systems we create and adopting a victim mentality.
It is one thing to accept that a system is broken, and a totally different to assume that there is nothing to be done. We can always speak for ourselves, fight for improvements, and speak out. Human beings, especially Men, thrive best when we have a cause, a purpose, or see something we would like to change.
Add another to the blamed for fighting back, getting detention and other disciplinary matters over it. I found the guidance counselors to be a big waste of time, anything the school did to stop bullying to me usually made it worse so I gave up trying to ask them for help. I felt totally isolated and that only I could take care of myself, I was close to taking a cricket bat to school one day and putting just 1 of them in hospital to show how serious I was about wanting to be left alone, nothing major, just some… Read more »
Thank you for your honesty– as a female, it’s honestly difficult to imagine the violent sexual abuse that occurs on between men. My heart goes out to you.
I completely understand your (past) fear of being touched by men. As a woman, I have that same fear. I don’t like to hug, be touched, or even be near men thanks to past abuse. I imagine many women have that same feeling, but hearing you frame it as a man helps me understand. It’s real fear and trauma I have to overcome, not just being a “prude.”
Thanks for sharing that with me. The fear of being touched is something that I want to devote some serious thought to, and maybe another article or two will come out of it. It is terrible when someone touches you in a caring and compassionate way and all you feel is your skin crawling and terror. It taints just about every good feeling you can have related to other human beings. It’s far worse when nobody understands why you won’t let yourself be touched. So many of them get angry, or feel rejected, or somehow turn it into a game… Read more »
A courageous and worthy article. I have nothing else to say.
cosigned
Thank you both.
What an incredible story and journey you’ve been through! It’s courageous of you to share such a tormenting time in your life; kids are cruel at that age! That teacher of yours who knew about all this bullying/sexual abuse was at fault for doing nothing about your situation; i believe she had a fiduciary obligation to stop the bullying or at the least report it to higher-ups or police. Had this happen today, I’m sure she and that school would be sued! Good to see that you have taken these experiences and helping others to learn to open-up, heal and… Read more »
Brian – thanks for telling your story. It helps to illustrate the breadth of experiences that come under that banner of sexual assault. For too long those experiences have been ignored, just as your teacher turned away and ignored reality. “In final analysis I care less about the politics of language, or the (mis-)representation of the issue in statistics, or even the laws aimed at punishing the perpetrators. What I care about is being given the opportunity to speak about what has happened, to heal, and to be treated with compassion.” I see exactly where you are coming from. Survivors… Read more »
Another note. I too carried a distinct fear of being touched by gay men. It is the result of similar experiences. But, thankfully, I have slowly learned to love my gay male friends and to know in my physical self that an embrace is not a sexual “come on” and that being open to others is not an invitation to abuse. But it’s been a long time coming. A long long time. Also, I am of the opinion that my abuser was not and is not gay. Just cruel. And in need of contact he could not find in any… Read more »
Mark, you have a very valuable perspective on bullying and being bullied, its one that I am going to be thinking on and writing about in days to come, no doubt. The funny thing with the bully who assaulted me, was that he was having frequent sex with multiple girls. I once found myself in a movie theatre behind one of his girlfriends as she descried the experience of giving him a blowjob to another girl. It wasn’t so much that he had no other way to express himself, than that it was he was working out something very dark… Read more »
I can definitely agree with that Brian, most of my bullies I believe had abusive homes and simply brought that pain to school. It’s like a ball of fire where you have to keep passing it on instead of someone just dumping the much needed water on it. Whilst most of my bullying wasn’t sexual, I feel the same or similar principles are at play as tools in the great toolbox of evil that is abuse. I ended up with a heavy depression and social anxiety disorder from it, feared being around certain kinds of people and infact avoided human… Read more »
I’m sorry for what you went through. Many of us have similar stories. Where bullying crossed the line into the clearly sexual. But an element of the sexual is always there. In many cases, it’s about making hidden sexual contact for the bully. If unchecked, such behavior grows over time. If our children could learn early enough that pushing and grabbing are not right, we could keep such behaviors from growing into an outlet for suppressed sexuality. From growing from the excitable actions of toddlers into the adult actions of monsters. But the intention to teach that physical bullying is… Read more »
This was a very good post. Thank you for sharing your story. Just to add to what you stated, I do not think terminology really helps when dealing with abuse on a personal level. Far too often people get caught up in whether this act “counts” as rape, sexual assault, or abuse. As you said, that matters far less than the impact those acts have on a person. More so, we cannot tell how something will affect a person. I know men who were only abused once who seem more severely impacted than someone like me who grew up with… Read more »
Jacob,
Thank you for reading. You hit the nail on the head. When we talk about the laws and statistics, we forget that there are real human beings who have been hurt in the most intimate level human possible. Sexual violence hurts almost every part of a human being, and it lingers a whole lifetime. No two survivors are the same, nor are their experiences or what it takes for them to heal.
I’d like to think people are more important.
I am an overweight male myself and was groped and called all manner of names by girls n guys at highschool, one incident was during class and I swore at him, teacher took notice and what ended up happening was she called the police to talk to us in a school parade the next day. The police said it was sexual harassment, I believe I remember being asked if I wanted to press charges but I just wanted it all to end and everyone to stfu about it but after that the groping stopped at school but the verbal abuse… Read more »
I’ve been trying for a day to articulate all the thoughts that your comment has stimulated, and there is just so much to say. I think that guys who are sensitive, and ones who are overweight from a young age find themselves wrapped around a chunk of pain that affects everything: their sexuality, their self-esteem, their motivation, their dreams, their chances of success, their feelings. It definitely destroys their ability to trust and relate to other Men, and to Manhood. It is a whole-man pain. And ti took me years of intense work, study, practice, therapy, drama, prayer, relationship trouble,… Read more »
Thank-you. Interesting read, I’ve seen quite a few of these wounded men in my time. Missing out on positive male role models has taken quite a toll I must admit, my father died when I was 18 and I didn’t have any other men to look up to at that stage. It really taught me the importance of a good solid male role model when you desperately need one in your life and can’t find one, the only ones I knew and saw regularly were macho “eat cement n harden up” types that were insecure to the bone. I use… Read more »