Every female student’s hand went up when I asked who had ever been catcalled, holla’d at, or been the focal point of unwanted verbal or physical sexual advance, harassment, pressure, or abuse.
Every hand.
Some students admitted they had been the receiver of this kind of blatant verbal abuse since ages as young as six years old.
Six. Years. Old.
Every hand. These students have told me stories—in front of male students who were willing to listen and learn (and many male students agree on seeing and hearing the same)—of the pressure they feel to be sexual objects or to physically please their boyfriends or girlfriends when they don’t want to, along with the strange dress code rules that seem to say to them, you’re the reason Johnny and Bobby are horny and misbehaving.
And the overwhelming reports, not just from my students, of the sexual abuse that takes place, it seems, to almost all girls and young women from men they trust or men they have no choice in trusting—the uncle, stepfather, the older brother’s friend.
It’s the same story over and over, and men don’t see it. Boys don’t see it. I didn’t see it until I was out of high school, and because boys and men don’t experience it to the extent that females do, many of them can’t see it and therefore deny that it’s a reality, or that it’s a reality on par with physical abuse.
Or, like the sexual abuser, they assume that women like it and want it, and that their purpose is for sexual pleasure, even though they may be too young to know what’s really going on.
For a young woman to not only know what’s going on when she’s abused, leered at, catcalled, or advanced upon, but for her to have complete knowledge of what the abuser wants is psychological torture, trauma, and a demand that young women should never have to deal with.
Physical abuse doesn’t demand that you perform or make the abuser feel good—physical abuse demands you feel guilt or shame and get beaten, although there are variations of abusers and torment.
These experiences and surveys aren’t from just one class, however, but a recurring scene and conversation in my classroom over the years as we’ve discussed current events, Shakespeare and literature, rhetoric, debate topics, and the usual potpourri of themes that come up while working on ideas for critical writing.
As an English teacher, I always aim to foster a safe and friendly environment where my students can engage the text, conversation, and each other without threat of alienation or abuse; our class conversation often tends to focus on “Text to Self” and “Text to World” discussions, and whether we’re discussing Hester Prynne, Montana Wildhack, Lenita Crowne, or Penelope, Calypso, and Circe, the subjects of sexual assault, gender bias, and society’s expectation are not far.
My male students—much like I was in high school and college—are unaware of the abuse that women have to endure.
It’s a whole “Woman vs. Society” theme that our male-dominated authors didn’t give a ton of attention to over the past few thousand years of literature.
But every hand?
Every time?
It’s time we slowed our conversation, listened more intently than ever before, and talked about this so we can put a stop to sexism, abuse, torture, and trauma in our lifetime.
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People like Jeremy want men to “wait” to talk about their own rapes. Wait until when? Men have the right to talk about it now.
I find it morally repugnant that a site that is supposed to be about men’s issues keep wanting to silence men’s issues. I also find it morally repugnant that a site that claims to stand against sexism, supports casual sexism against men and misandry quite happily. Telling men ON A MEN’S ISSUES SITE to be quiet and go away over an issue where they have very few outlets because “women have it harder” – well, there simply is no word for it.
Last year the National Crime Victimization Survey turned up a remarkable statistic. In asking 40,000 households about rape and sexual violence, the survey uncovered that 38 percent of incidents were against men. The number seemed so high that it prompted researcher Lara Stemple to call the Bureau of Justice Statistics to see if it maybe it had made a mistake, or changed its terminology. After all, in years past men had accounted for somewhere between 5 and 14 percent of rape and sexual violence victims. But no, it wasn’t a mistake, officials told her, although they couldn’t explain the rise… Read more »
Raymond and Triumvirate, You bring up good examples of why the patriarchy hurts women AND men. Abuse that boys get from anyone regardless of gender is, of course, sickening. The power structure that is the patriarchy makes it so we don’t discuss those issues around boys. However, the rates of abuse toward boys/men are significantly less than that of women. As for the objectification, this is how I see it. Yes, the male strippers are being seen as sex objects. But when they leave work in casualwear, they are allowed to live their day. They aren’t seen solely as sex… Read more »
Interesting! I had to google cisgender hah. Ok. I’m cisgender. For me, power is an illusion. You only give it as much control as you allow it to have. I have power over my wife when she lets me. But she’ll take that away if she doesn’t want me to have that power. (Think about something easy like -“you choose what to have for dinner tonight, honey”)
The power structure that is the patriarchy makes it so we don’t discuss those issues around boys. If that is the case then why is it that even people and organizations that (at least on paper) claim to want to end patriarchy do the exact same things? For example its supposedly patriarchy that makes it so that we don’t discuss issues around boys but at the same time even proponents of rape culture almost never bring it up when a grown woman rapes an under age boy. However, the rates of abuse toward boys/men are significantly less than that of… Read more »
Then why call it “patriarchy”? The implication is, and has always been, that the system only benefits men. This is why male victims of anything are told to shut up and go away or are told “boo hoo broflake! Check your privilege!”
Because gendering negative things (and only negative things because gendering positive things as male is bad) is not just tolerated its encouraged.
Another article that paints abuse as male perpetrated with only female victims.
Maybe boys deny its existence because so many people, like you, don’t acknowledge it happening to them?
I and we at GMP observe and are sympathetic to any abuse towards any children and adults for any reason–but just think–your first response is to deny that sexism and sexual abuse against women isn’t important because it happens to men. You completely disregarded the exact reason I wrote this. Let’s talk about that. Female victims of sexual abuse outnumber men by larger numbers, and that’s what we’re talking about. We will take on men’s numbers and experiences in future articles, but you and I need to see and listen to women’s experiences right now. A lot of abuse and… Read more »
ll you have to do is read this … Narional Domestic Hotline
http://www.thehotline.org/2014/07/men-can-be-victims-of-abuse-too/
Like EVERY WOMAN EVER, I understand what those girls are saying, having experienced it myself many a [thousands of] times. It’s the background noise of our lives. Now, we know “every man” is not a rapist. But we are trained to be vigilant nevertheless. We are taught to fear men–their propensity for violence, their scary anger, viscerally knowing we are no match for your strength. We are well aware of how vulnerable we are. And every 6 seconds when an American girl or woman is raped, and every day when the news reveals yet another wife/exwife, girlfriend or ex-girlfriend is… Read more »
I’d love to open a conversation with you, Jeremy, about the other end of the dynamic. I’ve been in similar situations where women have catcalled, groped, fondled and have made me to feel uncomfortable just for being attractive to them. I feel this is the case for many men. We just don’t talk about it. At 7 years old my mothers partners daughter came into my room and tried to initiate sex. I think you may want to rephrase the question in a way that your boys students can understand too! Take Magic Mike XXL as an example. Although I… Read more »
Raymond, thank you for sharing–your experience is awful and noted, but the media against women and in favor of exploiting women is too overwhelming to dismiss, and we plan on addressing men’s issues like this as well, but men getting catcalled and abused sexually by men and women is nowhere near the rate it is for girls and women, although we hate sexism and rape culture towards any child or adult. Magic Mike XXL is nothing compared to the millions of videos and pictures solely focused on exploiting women–the stats just aren’t there for men like they are for women.… Read more »
That’s a valid point! – I can’t answer that! However, I do know that when confronted with actual gender stats it’s a lot closer than we think. Spousal abuse at home for example. I’ve done a million and one courses on protecting vulnerable adults and each and every time I’m shocked by something new. I’m of the same mind that we should be very aware of what you say, the exploitation of women – but for me I’d rather not detract the issue away from men either if that makes sense. Because, you and I feel too. Would it not… Read more »
Rape and sexual abuse stats aren’t even close between men and women though…we need to pay attention to women because men aren’t doing just that, they’re brushing away rape culture (toward women) because they are discounting women’s narratives and stories as if they’re not important, as men have always done. All rape is bad, but rape is used as a weapon against women around the world in higher proportions than against men–1 in 7 for women, 1 in 71 for men…so we have to talk about women and sexism and the issues I’ve written about. We will talk about men,… Read more »
Jeremy, there’s an errant notion here that gender (and/or the statistical imbalances when viewed solely through the lens of gender) somehow either proportionately aggravates or mitigates the individual or collective societal significance, impact, and causes of rape or assault. It doesn’t. To the person who has been raped or assaulted, it doesn’t really matter to them to point out that -by the overarching demographic grouping of gender- they should feel either proportionately or statistically more or less outrage, based on the larger relative correlations of gender. A relative correlation (or discontinuity) by gender and only gender is not the same… Read more »
And yet girls and women are raped and sexually abused–as a group across time and geography–ten to twenty times moreso than men. History has favored men over women since the first men invented the first religions and schools. We can escape it, but we have to first admit that we have to escape it.
For wont of a better of a better description, groups do not really ‘escape’ things- causality is the summation or the remainder of both corresponding and conflicting choices. We, as a civilized humanity, do not escape consequence, but rather would rather initiate (hopefully) choices which would lead to positive and equitable consequence (Now, how we define those things, of course, varies dramatically, and all too often, diametrically). Be that as it may, individuals make choices, which, inevitably, affect themselves as well as others. Variably, an individual can choose to harm or choose to heal (in correspondence with, or in spite… Read more »
You don’t get to tell people when they can talk about male victims. Men should talk about it now or else it will never get talked about. Women rape victims are not more important than male ones.
You mentioned “around the world? Let’s talk the US, OK. Because when you use figures from around the world, it’s misleading. Because when you speak of around the world I was surprised to see that countries like Australia, and Sweden were on the list of the top 10. So if you want to go there, some of the highest numbers come from Muslim countries, so I don’t think you want to go there, do you? Also Rapes per million, US is #14 behind #6 Sweden, #11, Australia. That’s not to say that our numbers are good but it puts things… Read more »
As you stated, some sexuat abuse toward women is unreported. Given the fact that society has worked, for countless years, to provide opportunities to report sexual abuse, to address sexual abuse, identify sexual abuse as abuse for “women,” What do you think the male “unreported” amounts to? I would venture to say that with respect to unreported instances, males far out number female. What’s worse is that women have been educated as to what sexual abuse it where as males have not. Old men who date younger women are considered leches but cute names for old women who do the… Read more »
Raymond, This was excellent! “There are a large number of Muslims in the US. They get a bad name because of ISIS and HAMAS et al – and we tell people off for calling them all terrorists.
The same can be asked why is it acceptable to say “Rape Culture”?”
“Men getting catcalled and abused sexually by men and women is nowhere near the rate it is for girls and women, although we hate sexism and rape culture towards any child or adult. Magic Mike XXL is nothing compared to the millions of videos and pictures solely focused on exploiting women–the stats just aren’t there for men like they are for women.” That’s a curious plank upon which to rest or weight a moral argument- The relative morality or immorality of an action (what makes it immoral to begin with, what makes it fundamentally reprehensible is not actually its frequency… Read more »