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“Male” Rape Victims

When the sensitive topic of rape is brought up, most people think of women. A woman who was assaulted, violated, and taken advantage of. Rape and the presence of rape culture is unfortunately very prevalent in our society, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that men can be and are victims of this, too.

Male rape victims are rarely ever taken seriously. One might think, “How can a guy get raped?” Most cisgendered, straight men who are greeted with the subject usually say something like “He should just be glad he got laid.” However, they only speak of males who have been raped by women – because heterosexual men always want sex with women and should take it any way they can get it, right? Yet, they exclude the fact that men (especially incarcerated men) are often raped by other men. Why? Because a woman can never be the aggressor? Because it’s impossible for a woman to “overpower” a man?

Rape isn’t always about physical strength, it is most commonly an abuse of power and control. We, as a society, need to get past these harmful gender roles/stereotypes – that men are strong, women are weak – and help these victims, as opposed to making them feel inadequate, small, and completely unwilling to come forward about what they’ve gone through.

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If a woman is reluctant to come forward about being raped in fear of not being believed or that her rapist will not be charged at all, then of course a man would be entirely silent about his male/female rapist. According to traditional gender roles, a man is supposed to be strong, devoid of emotion (stoicism: the endurance of pain or hardship without a display of feelings and without complaint), and hyper-masculine, heterosexual, cisgendered, etc. All these roles and expectations are toxic limitations on the male gender, their personal character, and their natural experience as a human being. How can we expect male victims to feel comfortable speaking about their aggressor if these gender roles are blocking them?

1 IN EVERY 33 AMERICAN MEN ARE VICTIMS OF RAPE. Almost 10% of rape victims are male. Their experience with rape, let alone not feeling safe enough to come forward about the assault, can have an extreme negative effect on their mental health. Survivors of sexual assault are 3 times more likely to suffer from depression than the average person, 4 times more likely to attempt/complete suicide, and 13 times more likely to develop an alcohol or drug-abuse problem (source: Rape Crisis Center). These statistics are high enough to mean that our negligence and ignorance is almost as detrimental as rape itself.

Men are portrayed as highly sexual creatures – without exception. Every man is expected to be overly-sexual and constantly thinking about, talking about, or thirsting after the sexual experience. Boys will be boys. It is ingrained in our psyche and in our society. This is why “asexual” men are known to suffer from severe social anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression. They do not know where they fit into this stereotype, because conventionally, men are depicted to live for sexual encounters.

Instead of expecting all men to always be eager for sex, open to sex with anyone they can get their hands on, and appreciative of every kind of sex…how about for one second, we imagine that men are actual human beings? How about we imagine that they are not always or ever stoic, hyper-masculine, heterosexual, cisgendered, devoid of emotion? How about we realize that they can be assaulted, violated, and taken advantage of…just like women? How about we realize that not all men who are victims of rape, were assaulted by women?

Any person of any gender, race, age, or sexuality can be raped.

More light needs to be shed on this topic, and our society must stop the dangerous hyper-sexualization of men, and maybe then, male rape victims wouldn’t have to be called “male” rape victims – but just victims.

National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1 (800) 656-4673

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