While reading Monday’s article regarding Male Sexual Victimization by Karen
Weiss, I immediately thought of a video I stumbled upon on Tumblr, which
brought me to tears. In this short 30 second video, a young
African-American male describes his sexual assault experience to his friend who
is video taping the conversation.
*Disclaimer: This video includes profanity*
Seeing this young man describe his experience just made me despise society a
little more than I already do. It just baffles me how rape is still
happening because I can’t grasp the fact that people do not understand consent
and having control over no one else’s body but your own. Secondly, how
the patriarchal society has constructed specific gender roles that are
attributed to men and women every day of their lives. As Weiss mentioned, “social
definitions of (hetero)masculine sexuality expect men to be the pur- suers of
sex and women to be the pursued”(292). This is prevalent in this video as the reaction
towards his statement was absurd. I believe that if this was two women telling
the same story, no one would be laughing and it would be taken remarkably
differently.
It is difficult to obtain a lot of information
about this incident through this 30 video but it is enough to recognize that
sexual violence against men is a joke in society.
What I observed was a very
emotionally distressed, traumatized young man confiding in his friend regarding
an act of sexual assault towards him. While recounting the assault, he cannot
even make eye contact with the camera and has tears strolling down his face
uncontrollably. Yet, his friend had the audacity to not only video tape this
confession (by means of entertainment) but to laugh throughout the video. This
can be an example of how men are shamed and embarrassed in relation to sexual
assault which deters them from reporting it to the authorities. This is evident
in Weiss’ article as “references to shame and embarrassment are evident in
several NCVS narratives, mostly in response to why victims did not report their
incidents to the police” (291). It is a never ending cycle in which feminism
gets blamed for the absence of "male sexual violence" in statistics
and is subsequently assumed that feminism only fights for women rights.
On a side note, I
showed this video to my older brother to see if a man's reaction would differ.
I was relieved to see that he reacted the same way that I did and he said that
"nobody should be taken this video in the context of entertainment. Rape
is rape, no matter who it happens to".
Rape is rape, no matter who it happens to.
I agree completely, and I'm so glad you brought up the fact that often times sexual violence against male-identified folks is seen as humorous. Reading through your post reminded me of an interview I saw with I believe Chris Brown, where he talked about losing his virginity at 8 to a 14 year old babysitter. Which in itself is disturbing, but listening to the interview (I can't remember what show it was on, unfortunately) made it all the more disturbing because the guest, interviewer and crowd all unanimously agreed that it was really great he lost it so young, and really showed his sexual prowess, even as a child. The fact that the situation was one of sexual violence, and power differentials was glossed over, and he was told he was so "lucky" that an older woman wanted him.
ReplyDeleteRape is not seen as rape for certain people, and it's so unfortunate that we live in a world where gender dictates what is violence and what is "luck." It is also so unfortunate that power differentials seem to be seen to go only one way (men over women, never women over men). I am thinking of the movie that came out a while ago, "Horrible Bosses" where one character's horrible boss is horrible because she is sexually pursuing him aggressively, when he tells his friends about the issue, he is told it is "not even a real issue," and that he is "lucky." I just see this self-perpetuating cycle happening where men are never victims, and it becomes impossible to report, as you mentioned.