Living Well is a fantastic support organization for male survivors of sexual abuse and sexual violence. Not only are they using awesome posters like the one above to help change the ways in which male survivors are often shamed or disregarded, but they also offer support to survivors over a broad range of subjects.
Among many other things, Living Well’s site offers a run-down of some of the challenges men face when deciding to tell others about the abuse they’ve lived through, and guidance for how to best handle the challenge of disclosing abuse when the survivor is ready to do so.
Visit Living Well, and share this resource to help support survivors of sexual violence and abuse.
Another resource for men in dealing with disclosing abuse is a site called Just Tell for Facebook is spreading the word about the ways in which male survivors of sexual abuse are often regarded. The mission of JustTell is to empower youth to disclose sexual abuse to a trusted adult.
Please visit Just Tell’s Facebook page, and to learn more about the ways in which Just Tell helps teenagers cope with abuse and figure out who to talk to, visit their website, JustTell.org
About The Good Feed Blog Editors
And society in general’s answers to these questions are: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no.
I ask for permission to translate this article an to publish it on my blog.
I wont do anything without your permission.
Thanks for helping the sexual abuse of boys/men come a little more out of the shadows and silence we prefer to impose upon a touchy, taboo topic. Even abused men fail to talk w one another or support each other for the most part. In one recent twelve step recovery meeting (NA) out of five guys attending, three in a row shared that they survived some sort of sexual abuse growing up. Later that week in another meeting, an older guy with a tough, rough demeanor shared how angry he still feels about being sexually abused. There is a companion web site that also is a resource ….
See: http://www.malesurvivor.org/
thanks again, lots
drdanfee
Great poster! It takes a lot of courage to break the silence….victims are often silenced or ignored, or told to go away because no one can bear to listen to their terrible stories…
Thanks for posting this!
Am I ignorant if I suppose or suspect that men who admit to being sexually abused are looked down upon more than women? What does that say about male power in society?
No, you’re not ignorant. Male power is a vague phrase, but I think it says that society is so invested in upholding its specific system of gender that it really doesn’t give a damn whom it chews up and spits out in the process.
Believe it or not I just told my ex-lover of 28 years ago about my being sexually abused at 16. We dated for a while when I was 19 years old. Still screwed up from the abuse, I didn’t have the courage then to discuss such a topic. The start of the 80′s was a very different time and place. However I would encourage the youth of today to talk about it with the person you are involved with. Me being 47 years old now, looking back how much easier it would of been if I’d had the courage. It does get easier !!!!!!!!
I was looking for a story on this blog about the subject. Did I miss it?
Anyway, I know a women who was abused as a 6 year old for several years. She won’t talk about it other than to tell me it happened. She says its in her past and behind her.
I am sure she developed alter personalities but I am not sure if that is because of the abuse or if they were there before the abuse. It becomes so shook up you can’t tell who she is from who she might have been.
I had always thought that the abuse was very terrible and so must be for the victom. I am not so sure anymore. I think there is pleasure associated with it so it is not so much like a rape as it is a secret between the adult and the child that the child may look forward to.
God I hate adults being sexual with kids.
Even an org as good as this one seems to be about helping male victims of sexual abuse still won’t do it unless they point out women have it worse in their presentation of stats.
Why do you assume that’s done with malicious intent?
When the focus is supposedly on male victims how can it not be malicious or at least bad or misguided faith? There is countless material on how men are more abusive than women. Most of the discourse on DV\rape\abuse today still regards it as something “men do too women”. But giving male victims some space still requires a disclaimer that women have worse?
If a guy tells you and wants to talk about it, these tips (posted yesterday) might help you respond more effectively. They don’t really tell you what to say, but they do offer suggestions for how to listen and how to talk.
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-good-life-10-tips-for-helping-men-talk-about-their-problems/
Strangely, I’ve told both my mother and my wife about an incident at age 9 by an older neighbor/friend and the response from both was…silence. I’ve mentioned it twice to my wife and she didn’t really say a word. Nothing. No “so how do you feel about it? Want to talk about it?” etc. Silence.
drood, i’m incredibly sorry that you received that reaction.
to me, as a complete non-professional, it would be good to see if the two of you could go to counseling together to talk about that incident. she should react, but from a wife’s perspective my guess would be that she doesn’t want to say the wrong thing and make you feel worse.
our first reactions to hearing about abuse are not often our best ones. they’re riddled with society’s stupid shit, and not enough guidance on how to handle the issue of male survivorship. that’s why we work so hard at GMP to create an environment where men are able to talk about abuse of any kind and feel somewhat “normal”. we aren’t able to control the environment as well as MaleSurvivor.org does, but we do our best.
ultimately, you deserve to have someone hug you and tell you that you were just a kid and you didn’t deserve to have the older friend do that to you, and that you’re not alone.
i’m hoping for you that you guys can get to that place.
Thanks Joanna, the thing is, for a long time I viewed it as a kind of “rite of passage,” if that makes sense. I honestly believe he was doing me a favor (attempting to showi me how to masturbate, exposing me to porn, etc.), I wasn’t really devastated by it, although I never forgot the experience. However, having worked with sex offenders in corrections, I see it now for what it was…predation. He was older/stronger than me, I looked up to him, the event occurred while my older brother and I were staying with his family (our Mother was in the hospital for an operation, so I was scared/lonely/vulnerable, etc.). He took me for a ride on his dirt bike (what 9 year old boy doesn’t want to do that?) and took me to an old abandoned house in the neighborhood (as a kid who was intrigued with mysteries, Scooby-Doo, etc. I thought this would be great fun also). The fact that he singled me out (didn’t ask my older brother), effectively “separating me from the herd,” reinforces my view now that it was predatory, even though he neither touched me nor asked me to touch him. The point was, I felt afraid; I knew what he was doing was making me uncomfortable. At 45, I look back now and am beginning to see the lasting effects. I know now with near 100% surety that I was not his only victim; his sister, I honestly believe, was molested by him as well.
sorry-the above post should read ” I honestly believe he THOUGHT he was doing me a favor, like he had discovered this incredibly great thing (masturbation) and couldn’t wait to share it. Only later I realized he singled me out to “share it” with.
Drood, your story I fear is all too common. I think that predation is so tricky, and creates a confusing feeling inside the victim as he or she grows up, toward the abuser. There’s a certain pleasure that goes along with many cases of sex abuse, because the predator is good at “grooming” – and part of creating shame is by making the kid feel pleasure, so they feel complicit.
And the friendship, admiration and pleasure mix together to make it hard to hate the abuser, which would make life just so much more simple, wouldn’t it?
I hope you find a way to process this with your wife. If you ever want to write about how you came upon discovering that this was abuse, after a lifetime of seeing it differently, I’d love to see a draft and consider it for publication. Email me at joanna at goodmenproject .com
How about
“…laugh at me?”
“…wonder ‘why didn’t I do it?’”
I’ve been sexually harassed (but not abused) and even things like that hurt pretty badly.
Danny, it hurts because
1.) it’s cruel, boorish and thoughtless (that’s a no-brainer)
2.) they made an assumption about you not based in fact (sorry, I’m not familiar enough with your posts to know if you’re straight, gay, etc. Either way, no offense intended and I am not making an assumption here)
3.) they said such things to de-value you. As has been said countless times, rape, DV, harassment (not just sexual) is all about POWER.. Intimidation, slurs, etc. are just one way to accomplish the goal.
4.) Also, you don’t mention how old you were when the harassment occurred or is still occurring; if it was as a teenager, possibly because you did not fit the narrow male “stereotype,” your tormentors were not secure in their own orientation, etc.? Pick a reason; most males unfortunately have not become very enlightened.
Stay strong
1. True.
2. No problems you’re working with what you know (if it makes you feel any better I’m still thinking on that myself).
3. I think in my case it wasn’t a matter of them actively trying to devalue me but rather that they simply just weren’t paying attention to the effect it had on me, based on the assumptions you mention in point number 2.
4. Let me be clear this was a one time event of sexual harassment ( that happened when (thankfully?) when I was an adult.