John Dwyer discusses why rape is not a gender issue and how society should not accept male rape.
Here is what’s happening in our government:
In 2001, the Human Rights Watch brought the prison rape crisis into the national spotlight with their piece, “No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons.” It takes two years, but Congress responds with the passage of PREA, the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The Act, while being highly-laudable, took a zero tolerance policy against prison rape and like most zero tolerance policies, was apparently rather ineffective. Fast forward nine years, May of 2012, and the Department of Justice has finally published federal regulations to support the zero tolerance policy of PREA.
Congress declared, with the passage of the bill, that the costs would not be “substantive.” The regulations that were released last month are expected to cost up to $7 billion over 15 years, which sounds huge, but is actually less than 1% of the penal system’s overall cost, and that’s at the high end of the cost projection. However, the American Action Forum has declared the cost to high fight prison rape.
And here is what’s happening in our media:
Comedy shows like Saturday Night Live routinely use prison rape to get a laugh. In a “Scared Straight” parody, actors find it so funny that they break character. Even when it’s not the basis of a joke, male rape is still grotesquely misunderstood.
The previous season of True Blood featured Jason Stackhouse being raped by a line of women queued up for the opportunity. Apparently, news outlets and the show’s creators did not really understand just how truly fucked up those five long minutes of “comeuppance” were.
Is there ever a situation where it would be okay to describe a woman being raped as being deserved? I would argue no, and so why are men then treated differently? Female victims struggle in surprising numbers from the shame of their automatic arousal responses, yet I’ve had to argue personally with nurses who don’t believe men can have unwanted erections. If only that was true, adolescent boys everywhere could breathe a deep, collective sigh of relief.
There is a disconnect between reality and the general public’s perception.
Rape isn’t a Girl thing, or a Guy thing.
This disconnect only furthers the divide between men and women. I can’t argue and say that the latest regulations for PREA are the best way to fight this. The best way would be to confront our cultural beliefs, insensitivity, and basic misunderstanding of human physiology.
Do you think that will cost less than $7 billion? With man-hour costs (unintentional pun, I swear), do you think it would cost less than even $7 trillion?
Photo by: WeNews
Preventative measures help so much. It’s pretty much always going to cost more to treat someone who has been through trauma and abuse than someone who hasn’t. How can we expect prisoners to act civilly in our society once released if they aren’t treated like civilized humans, but instead like animals. Actually scratch that, animals are probably better treated on the whole (maybe I am being sarcastic, maybe I’m not…). I think the best thing for prisoners is a SAFE environment with access to education, therapy, anger management, counseling, etc. Through my own counseling it allowed me to drop anger… Read more »
The male victim of male rape is more-or-less out of the closet. A great victory for justice.
The male victim of female rape is, sadly, almost completely invisible. Well, here we are:
http://i.imgur.com/Ps9wW.jpg
I noticed in that image that the “forced to penetrate” statistic is listed under “Other sexual violence” instead of “Rape.” Are they implying that forcing a man to have sex isn’t rape?
Also, where did that image come from?
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/NISVS/index.html
In the full report, start from page 17 I think.Tables 2.1 and 2.2.
… yet I’ve had to argue personally with nurses who don’t believe men can have unwanted erections.
The old “erection equals consent” argument. You wouldn’t expect people to still believe that but sure enough there. I guess some people will grasp for anything they can to silence male rape victims. And you actually had this argument with medical professionals? That’s just messed up.
I generally shy away from such simple definitions but I don’t think I could have put it more succinctly myself, Mike. Agreed. Sex should always involve consent from both parties (even if it’s implied and safewords are involved!) and as far as I can imagine, anything else is wrong.
And I have a pretty good imagination!
Completely agree. Rape is when one person forces another to have sex against their will.
Correct, rape is not just a girl thing or just a guy thing but both. If the sexual encounter is not consensual then it is rape. No one ever deserves rape no matter what.