Issues With the Weiss Article

Karen Weiss’s piece on “Male Sexual Victimization” is by far the most positivistic piece we have analyzed so far in this course. I question the cause and causation that has led the piece to acknowledge men’s victimization in sexual assault to rely so heavily on a positivistic model. Is there a demand that men’s plight in this system have statistical backing to be held relevant? Or is the article parsed this way so it can be made more relevant to a hegemonic patriarchal society?

I also question if these American statistics hold true across the borders. Too often is American society conflated with Canadian. In Canada we have a different form of masculinity which is far more influenced by our frontier environment than the heavily militarized masculinity that is dispensed in America.

Furthermore, the article fails to address the long lasting psychological effects that these events have on male victims. Where Campbell’s “Thinking To Feeling” creates a strong visceral reaction in the readers to the victims tragedies Weiss’s piece glosses these trauma’s in its positivistic reporting to mere sentences. I appreciate the nuances Weiss offers us in understanding barriers created by constructs of masculinity identifying and reporting sexual assault, such as pride and shame, but the article fails to identify the importance of her study.

The study fails to acknowledge the lasting traumatic effects of male victimization and how they differ from a woman’s experience. In doing so it also fails to acknowledge if current post trauma support systems are able to provide support to these victims.

Weiss’s article also has some serious racial suggestions which are glossed over. The article suggests that roughly 82% of rape victims are white, regardless of gender. Is the research and reporting only interested in this race? Or is there under-reporting in different socio-racial-economic brackets? Or is this simply a problem of access for study? In the Canadian context, explicitly because of the legacy of residential schools and colonialism, sexual assault against first nation’s people alone would clearly problematize these American statistics.

There is a certain irony that the highly factual account of male victimization is itself alienating to the experience and lasting effects of these victims.