Trigger warning for descriptions of rape.
Note: If you are a man who has survived rape, abuse, incest or other sexual violence, please consider receiving support from RAINN. Their National Sexual Assault Online Hotline volunteers are specially trained to deal with male survivors; they also run the 1in6 Online SupportLine, to provide support for male survivors of child sexual abuse, and many other excellent services directed at men.
On the various threads about rape of men, many men have shared their experiences with abuse, sexual coercion, sexual assault or rape. I thought it would be a good idea to have a specific thread where men could share their experiences and receive support from other commenters. Women may feel free to share the experiences of their male partners, friends, family members, etc., with rape.
I have a couple of motivations for this. Partially it’s to raise awareness: a real-life story has as much resonance as a hundred statistics. Partially it’s to help male survivors feel less alone, the same way that support groups for female survivors do– the experience of knowing that other people have gone through the same thing you have is often healing, and even sharing the story in a supportive environment can help the healing process.
This thread is a safe space and will be strictly moderated. Rape apologism or questioning of another commenter’s experiences will be immediately deleted. If you wouldn’t say it to a friend who just told you zie was raped, don’t say it in this thread.
It was early June this year. I’d gone over to a guy’s house to get drunk and watch a bad film (The Room). The friend in question was a guy who I’d cut off contact with for about a year after not being able to put up with his misogyny, and Nice Guy TM stuff, and how I could never call him on sexism without getting a massive offended lecture. Also he’d once grabbed my breast without warning me during a casual discussion of how confident I was about my body (he was checking the cup size). I stopped talking… Read more »
Jesus, that’s awful, Melusin. I’m so sorry that happened to you, and good for you for being able to call it what it was, and being able to share it. I don’t pretend to understand how that experience must intersect with trans issues, but I’d imagine it must be difficult.
It wasn’t until I start reading feminist blogs (& whatnot) that I would’ve thought of this as in any way problematic. I’d say it was forgotten until … more or less, until I was forced to think about why I had such prominent concerns about false allegations with respect to rape cases. I know people sometimes say hearing they’re aren’t alone is helpful – I have no idea. I was dating this woman. We weren’t monogamous, knowledge of our relationship wasn’t public amongst our friends – I’m not sure what to say about our expectations of knowledge of each other?… Read more »
Well, there are all kinds of reactions to rape; some people are horrifically traumatized, other people don’t seem to suffer many negative consequences at all, and still others don’t suffer negative consequences at first them start feeling more later. and any of these reactions (along with ones I didn’t think of) is perfectly okay and completely valid. Neither of them makes the rape any less real or any less wrong.
Thank you for sharing your experience with us.
Most of this comment is from a series of comments I made to a post called “Can Women Rape Men? (RP)” over at FeministCritics back in 2009: My experience falls well outside the extreme range although it now falls under the legal definition of rape where I live. I was a young student at the time, still a virgin and I was visiting a friend out of town. We were at a party and I strangely enough (I thought at the time) hit it off with one of the girls there. After much drinking, slow-dancing and making up we ended… Read more »
Thank you for sharing your experience with us. That is a terrible way to lose your virginity, and I wish you the best of luck in trying to raise awareness of the existence of female rapists.
It’s not so much about raising awareness of the existence of female rapists as raising awareness among women that they also need to take care to not commit sexual assault, abuse and rape. In order to get that awareness one must of course first acknowledge as a real possibility (not only as a theoretical possibility on the outskirts of the realm of reality) that any individual women can do this. Women not having this awareness are at a greater risk to be a perpetrator simply because of ignorance.
Indeed! A lot of women simply do not understand concepts as basic as “an erection does not equal consent,” which puts more men at the risk of being raped or pressured into sex that they do not want.
That’s bad enough. But worse than that, a lot of women are unaware of the social pressure on men to have sex which translates into no right to refuse sex. That is arecipe for rape if a woman initiates, and really no personal fault of hers.
I’d be interested in education about this as well as research into the women who are raping — I’m considering writing to David Lisak, whose work on male predators I quite enjoy (tl;dr Lisak — men aren’t rapists, predators are). I wonder if it’s similar on the female side — not miscommunications or misunderstandings or bad education, just being a scumbag.
alia,
some people are predators. others do stupid shit (quite often while drunk) and spend the rest of their lives regretting it. I think both can apply to rapists.
Here’s an example of what man faces if he even wants to claim a woman raped him:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ask-dr-helen-can-a-man-be-raped-by-a-woman/
Note how his rapist used the threat of a rape accusation. The Patriarchy and coercive power of the patriarchal state in action!
Here’s a good post that discusses how sometimes even feminist discussions of this can imitiate right-wing macho tropes pretty closely.
http://thesuperfluousman.blogspot.com/2010/12/take-it-like-man.html
I don’t actually have any experience with being sexually abused but my friend and her siblings were, including her brother, by her father. She said later that she remembered him also abusing me. However we were all fairly young so I’m not sure it’s that reliable. It puts a new spin on Schrödinger’s rapist.
Just started following this blog a week or two ago. I’ve been thinking about writing down my story (today in fact) and I saw this thread and couldn’t ignore the coincidence and irony. Even though I have shared some of these experiences with a few friends, I’ve never really been able to tell anyone everything. This is my first time doing this, so I apologize for it being long-winded; I’m just taking the opportunity to pour it all out. Also, at times I think my cynicism and dry humor shows through in my writing of the story. It doesn’t mean… Read more »
Thank you for sharing your story with us. You were raped, and it was not your fault. Not because you’re gay, or you were drinking, or had opened your relationship, or went on vacation, or went to a bathhouse. You did not deserve it. Five months is forever — and nothing at all. I’m proud of you for what you’ve done to recover! You’ve worked very hard. The road forward may continue to be difficult for you, or it may become easier. But every day, all you can do is the best you can do. Your suffering is real. We… Read more »
(hugs)
Thank you so much for having the strength to share your story. Your pain is real and I wish you the best of luck in striving to overcome it. Whether you were raped is not your fault; it is the fault of the rapist.
And I have to say that your confidantes are obnoxious. “You wanted it on some level?” No one ever wants to be raped. That’s kind of the general idea.
I’m so sorry for your experience. Thank you for trusting us with it.
Thanks for sharing that story, as awful as it was. The first time I went to a bath house it weas with a friend who gave me a couple of warnings that really sank in. You didn’t have the benefit of that, and it might – might – have helped. But even then there comes a point where a truly determined asshole will get past all your care and precautions – that is not your failure; you did your best. So I hope you don’t still have yourself on any kind of hook over anything like that. (It’s really natural… Read more »
I don’t know that it’s my place to share the stories of the (sadly, many) men I know who have honored me by taking me into their confidence. But I did want to say “thank you” to everyone sharing their stories. I’m so sorry for what was done to you.
I already told my story in another thread. What happened may not have been sexually motivated but it still hurts sometimes. I try not to think about it or else the weight of the world will crush me to dust.
I’m just wondering if it’s okay to be a survivor of bullying and abuse by girls and women here even if it wasn’t sexual. Hopefully that’s okay with the moderators.
I read your post and I would like to say how much I feel for you. No kind of bullying or abuse is okay, and it is not somehow “less” because the person being bullied is male or the bully is female. A lot of my male friends were bullied by men and women, and that is seriously not okay.
I’d also like to point out the sexist nature of “faggot” and “pussy.” That’s one of the reasons I support the eradication of gender roles– so that failure to adhere to them will no longer be punished with abuse.
The “Faggot” and “Pussy” thing I’m already over. In fact, you might say I’ve gotten over what the boys and men did to me. All that’s left to heal is what the girls and women did. I’m on the right track though it doesn’t help one bit to learn there are hardly any resources available on girls and women who hurt boys and men. Not to mention people would rather look the other way than talk about girls bullying boys. I guess it’s all up to me to do the talking since everyone else prefers to stay silent on the… Read more »
I was sexually molested when I was 16, but I don’t think it has affected me much. However my experience and how I feel about it now has left me a bit curious. Was there something different about my molestation, whether in type or degree, that it has had such a minimal impact on my psyche and sexuality, is there a temperamental difference that leads to some being more scarred by it than others, or perhaps some other factor or combination thereof that I’m not considering? To say it hasn’t affected me much is, of course, conjecture. Who knows how… Read more »
Not everyone is affected equally by traumatic experiences. In war, for instance, some people end up broken for the rest of their lives; others who have experienced the same thing manage to return home and not suffer many negative consequences at all. There are some kids who manage to survive abusive families with only minor negative consequences. Why wouldn’t it be true with rape? This isn’t to suggest, of course, that people who suffer traumatic experiences and become fucked up for the rest of their lives because of it are somehow making it up, or weaker than people who don’t.… Read more »
The interesting part for me has been how others feel the need to tell you how you should feel about it. I didn’t feel it was my fault, and I decided that some experiences are simply out of your control. At the time I felt clever for being able to get away, and felt like I had learned something. Others, however, insisted that I should feel traumatized. School counselors told me I wasn’t processing the experience, that I was suppressing my feelings. Friends told me I should feel angry about it. Letting go of my need for control was actually… Read more »
I don’t know if I should post this on a thread for male survivors but I was molested at the age of 13 by a 26 year old man who groped me a few times.
I punched him. He never did it again. It’s mostly a non-event for me.
@typhonblue
I want to ask you an important question. I’m not judging you, or chastizing you in any way, please believe me when I say that because my question could be easily misconstrued:
Why do you feel that you want to bring that up here?
I’m not accusing you of anything – in fact, I suspect that you might find feminist spaces unaccomodating for women who have been molested/raped/groped but don’t feel particcularly traumatized by it. But I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
>Why do you feel that you want to bring that up here? Mostly due to Ramesses saying what happened to him didn’t bother him. I don’t know if what happened to me was similar, but it didn’t bother me, also. Not like having been sexually abused by a woman did. That gave me PTSD, suicidal depression, intense feelings of self loathing. (I think it might have been that the guy who did it seemed immediately and intensely remorseful, more like he had a ‘wtf did I just do’ moment rather then it being planned with a whole string of ‘I’m… Read more »
I guess what I can get out of it is that sometimes sexual abuse can be horrific and sometimes it can be just one of those things.
My would-be rapist intended to rape me. If he felt remorse, it didn’t show. I kept my wits about me and managed to escape, sexually assaulted but also a little bit proud of myself that I had managed to escape. Thinking about it now, it never occurred to me to call the police. The second time I was sexually assaulted that year it was by a friend my age. I used less wit and more violence to get away from him. He never did it again. It’s mostly a non-event for me (except it’s a story I enjoy recounting to… Read more »
This is the first time I’ve ever told this story to ANYONE. I was in college, freshman year. I went down to a party at the college apartment complex (small school) and managed to lose my keys to my room. I needed a place to stay for the night, so a girl I had been talking to (friendly, mildly flirty) that night offered that I could stay on her lounge couch. When we got to her apartment, she said that she forgot that she had agreed not to let people they didn’t know sleep in the general living area –… Read more »
(hugs) Thank you for sharing your story with us.
You can define your experiences in any way which helps you; if you don’t wish to identify as a “rape survivor,” then of course you don’t have to. However, continuing intercourse after one partner says “no” seems, to me, like a pretty clear-cut instance of rape.
Remove this if it’s inappropriate here. But I wonder if it would be helpful for some survivors to be able to label what happened to them as rape but not see the person having done it to them as a rapist? In other words, they were raped but the person who assaulted them was clueless as to what they were actually doing?
I firmly believe in the ability of any survivor to define their experiences in the way that’s most healing for them and, given the wide diversity of human beings, I have no doubt there’s at least one person out there helped by the idea that though they were raped the perpetrator was not a rapist. In addition, in some cases (without saying anything about how common they are), what you describe may be the case. For instance, a woman who thinks that an erection equals consent may rape a man without being aware of what she’s doing. Which is one… Read more »
If I can comment on this, I’d really, really like to. Please delete if you find it to be offensive or damaging. When I come across women with similar stories to mine who call it “rape” – my hackles get up. I can feel my heart race, I can feel my face flush. I get angry. It’s like I just want to say “Damn you, woman! You weren’t raped. That was just an unfortunate non-consensual sexual experience! Man up!” and then I realize the in-sensitiveness of my statement and how I would feel if someone said the same thing to… Read more »
“It’s like I just want to say “Damn you, woman! You weren’t raped. That was just an unfortunate non-consensual sexual experience! Man up!” and then I realize the in-sensitiveness of my statement and how I would feel if someone said the same thing to me.” I wonder if this isn’t behind a lot of the so-called MRA rape apologia. When it happens to men, they just have to suck it up and move on. So when people make a fuss about the same situation happening to women, they get angry. “I want it to be different. This is so fucked… Read more »
@typhonblue “How different? Different from what?”
I’m not sure. I think, in that sentence, I want women’s “rape” (with my circumstances, but the genders reversed) to not be allowed to be called “rape.” Because I’m Gender Egalitarian, if something doesn’t work with the genders reversed, then we need to find a new way to work it.
But in a more general way – I want the world to be different – I want unwanted sex to be as rare as unwanted free cake.
I have seen exactly that, though it’d be a betrayal of confidence to give details. Sometimes thinking of someone as a basically decent person who made a terrible mistake that hurt you… that’s easier. Maybe it’s even more accurate. To put it another way, I think telling someone not to forgive, when they want to, is as wrong as telling someone they have to forgive when they don’t want to.
this is patently obvious in the case where the person raping you was asleep at the time. fwiw.
typhonblue said: But I wonder if it would be helpful for some survivors to be able to label what happened to them as rape but not see the person having done it to them as a rapist? It might not be helpful to all survivors, but this is a very interesting legal analysis on the concept of “rape without rapists,” e.g. when the “act of rape” has occurred from the perspective of the survivor, but the “crime of rape” did not occur because there was no mens rea. For example, the initiator made a judgment of consent that was reasonable… Read more »
Thank you for being courageous enough to share.
I realize that my story isn’t “that bad.” But it’s my story. I don’t consider myself a “rape victim/survivor.” But it was not consensual and it did not stop when I verbally expressed it. I don’t care what this is “called” but I know it made me feel terrified and helpless and I still remember it to this day.
Like you say its your story so you are the one that decides how how “bad” it is.
This part really got me. I’m sorry for what happened to you, and that you didn’t feel you could defend yourself physically. I don’t advocate violence, but it doesn’t seem right that you should have to endure whatever you want to think of that experience as because you were taught never to strike a woman (I presume, even in self-defense).
Just to clarify here, my mother raised me to be a non-violent man. She DID however say, that if I was ever being attacked, that I had the full right to defend myself, man or woman. I just didn’t get the memo that non-consensual sex was an “attack,” I suppose. And generally: Thank you to everyone for the non-judgmental response. I was honestly terrified that when I wrote this I might’ve gotten a response along the lines that I should’ve fought her off – or in some other way blamed me. I really think that hearing that from you all… Read more »
“I just didn’t get the memo that non-consensual sex was an “attack,” I suppose.”
I’m not surprised. Men rarely get the message that their sexuality is something they have a right to defend. Alternatively many men would rather be raped then hit a woman.