Despite growing literature that supports the idea that males are victims of abuse about as frequently as females, there is still resistance against acknowledging male victims. People are socialized to view men as invincible and incapable of the type of vulnerability that permits victimization. So even when the facts point towards that male being a victim of abuse, a lot of people cant quite reconcile “Man” with “Victim” due to their own patriarchal beliefs about men and manhood.
Of course, like all toxic masculinity, this harms everyone. It creates a barrier for males seeking support as they know they’ll be disbelieved and/or seen as inferior for allowing themselves to be victims. It obstructs the level of intimacy and trust between men and just about everyone else. It means we have more broken men.
While some people might just be ignorant about male abuse, others are actively against acknowledging it’s existence. It’s as if admitting that abuse is not as gendered as we are led to believe will prevent us from tackling it. They seem to want males to continue to suffer. Those people aren’t ignorant in my opinion, they’re bad.
Here’s 3 things I hear these Bad People say all the time…
1) Most people who abuse males are also male
I’m never sure what this is meant to mean, in all honesty. Does it mean that the abuse matters less because a male did it to a male? Or that the little boy grows up to be less of an abuse victim because he is male and I don’t know, stronger? More resilient?
If 20% of boys experience abuse as a minor, that’s still 1/5 boys who were abused. Abuse harms your social and emotional development. The belief that somehow being male and having a male perpetrator reduces the impact of abuse is one aligned with male supremacy.
Or maybe they’re saying that those males deserve abuse because statistics show most perpetrators of abuse are male. They think of men as this monolithic entity and hurting one of us will hurt us all. So those young male children who are abused are merely paying for the sins of older men. That’s why it’s significant to note that these abuse victims were abused by other males. It means the abuse is not as bad, and also a little bit deserved.
2) But the stats say…
Anyone who has actually looked into statistics around gendered abuse knows that results are inconsistent. As well as the fact people aren’t always aware of what constitutes abuse, we also know that men are less inclined to admit to it even when it is occurring.
For this reason, citing these statistics blindly is a common tactic used by those trying to downplay the prevalence of male victims. By this point, anyone who spends time at length talking about abuse is aware that men experience abuse about as frequently as women, all things considered.
The statistics also don’t cover much ground. For every child that was abused by a male, there were usually female caregivers who failed in their duty to protect the child.
For example, many children were abused by the male partners of their mother. Men she allowed in her home.
Often, this is indicative of her own cycle of abuse but why does history only matter when the perpetrator is a woman? If a history of violence, neglect and emotional deprivation doesn’t excuse a male abuser, it should not excuse the female caregiver who prioritized bonding with a guy over protecting her kids from a predator. She is also an abuser.
As a Queer man, I know many of my Queer brothers have had to remain in abusive relationships because they’ve already been cut off by a Queerphobic family.
That’s a failure to me. All the mothers who turn their backs on their adult children because of who they are, meaning that they have nowhere to turn should they need to escape a toxic situation? Yeah, that’s abuse. And mothers’ are guilty of that type of alienation of their Queer children far too frequently.
The fact remains that a lot of people are well aware of the toxic relationship they’ve had with their mother and how their mother either abused them, or failed to shield them from abusers.
So sure, men are abusing kids at frighteningly high levels, but their wives, mothers, sisters and grandmother’s are giving them the access to do it. Often to sustain their own female/male relationship with the abuser.
3) Women get abused by men all the time
People often make impassioned speeches or articles about the tendency men have to use women’s spaces to process their own trauma. They encourage men to hold their own conversations about male victims instead.
However, should we try to uncover some of the myths around male abuse, Bad People often resort back to saying “but men do it to women”. They’ll then go on to list their perspective of statistics that reveal women to be victims of abuse more frequently than men.
Let’s suppose for an instance, it is true that females experience abuse at far higher rates than males throughout their lives. Let’s also pretend that women are only rarely perpetrators. It still wouldn’t be appropriate to dismiss with those who have experienced such abuse by saying they’re the “unicorns” of their gender.
It doesn’t change their trauma other than to perhaps highlight they must have deserved it since nobody else was treated the same way.
If anything, that leads the male to become more isolated, less inclined to share their trauma, and more inclined to abuse as a result of not managing their own trauma. It’s a worthless endeavor that only serves to maintain the status quo.
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Acknowledging the existence of male victims takes nothing away from female victims of abuse. If anything, it promotes empathy and in turn, unity.
Rejection and dismissal of male victims and the attempts to ostracize them and minimize their experiences only works to conceal abuse further.
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My Previous Articles on Male Victims:
Female Sexual Abusers are “Rare”
Sexually Abused Boys Were Just Kids Too
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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