For the record: I thought long and hard about posting this article. I've made my peace with my doubts and believe it needs to be said. If you disagree, so be it.
Well, Hugo Schwyzer disclosed today that he is a male rape survivor. Okay.
He also apologized for the disgusting, abusive and arrogant manner in which he has treated male survivors for YEARS. He took the posting down, but I've excerpted it below with my own comments interspersed (cached article here).
Hugo Schwyzer on "I’m sorry for denying male rape victims. I was one., posted October 6, 2013":
"The breakthrough came in therapy this week. I had been raped. It happened in 1986, a generation ago, when I was an attention-starved 19 year-old. My rapist was an older Navy sailor, a massive man. I changed several details of our story for a piece that ran in Best Sex Writing 2012. I made it sound consensual, I made it sound hot, It was neither of those things."
Schwyzer is claiming he was raped. I have no reason to disbelieve him on that and I have seen male survivors in denial who willingly hurt other male rape survivors. This would not be beyond belief, nor out of the realm of my own personal experience.
"The vulnerability of men and boys to rape is real and undersold. Despite what a handful of men’s rights advocates insist, the greatest threat isn’t predatory older women. It’s older men. We know the truth about the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts, but what about other institutions in the US and Israel? Are we doing enough to protect our sons as well as our daughters?"
No, we are clearly failing our daughters AND sons across the board. Sadly, Schwyzer helped to foster an environment that minimized and silenced male survivors. Further, society at large and many self-appointed mouthpieces on sexual violence are still actively denying the amount of female predation in this world as well. It isn't a damned competition. Why is it so hard to care about ALL PREDATORS without caveat? Schwyzer still has a great deal of growing to do in this area.
"Technically, I was a legal adult when I was raped by a man twice my age. Had I been a 19 year-old girl assaulted by a sailor in his 40s, there might have been more sympathy. I won’t know, as I only broke down in group therapy this week and told the story about Mike from the USS Mt Vernon and what he did to my body and soul. Given my current state of public disrepute, this might seem a bid for attention. It’s not."
I have no problem believing that he was raped. Whether it is a bid for attention or not would be a separate issue.
"I’ve spent my whole life worrying about men as predators and dismissing the idea of men as victims. I haven’t wanted to see my own victimization as plausible, and I haven’t wanted to remember the details of what got done to me on May 24, 1986, in a seedy little Monterey motel."
Hugo did more than dismiss us. He went on the offensive, minimized our traumas, mocked our concerns and outright acted like an enormous bully. I do wish him success in healing from this trauma, but that does not excuse his prior bad acts and incredible arrogance toward other male survivors.
"Mike scared me, he beat me, he throat-fucked me and told me he’d kill me if I beat him. He hurt me badly. Some of my rage and fear at men has been with me ever since, and it has shown in my politics and my refusal to acknowledge that boys and men can be comparably harmed."
That sounds like a horrible and traumatic experience. As far as Schwyzer's revelation regarding his lack of compassion toward other survivors, that is a copout and an excuse. Hugo is gonna have to do much better than that. Schwyzer owes a debt to the male rape survivors he willfully and arrogantly harmed over the years. The people who aided him in such endeavours share a similar debt. Schwyzer had more than a little bit of help in this regard. I'm not excusing his colluding former friends and colleagues who willfully engaged in same.
"Too little, too late."
He got that right. To ever earn my trust or respect, it truly is "too little, too late." However, it is never to late to begin to heal from any trauma. Time for Schwyzer to shut his mouth, take the lumps he has earned – and he has earned them all in truckloads – and focus on his mental health. Multiple groups of human beings have their own right to be angry with the likes of Hugo Schwyzer and some of his inner circle of supporters.
Time for Schwyzer to listen and learn. He has done far too much talking already.
James Landrith is a healing rape survivor, public speaker, internationally syndicated blogger, civil liberties activist and the notorious editor and publisher of The Multiracial Activist (ISSN: 1552-3446) and The Abolitionist Examiner (ISSN: 1552-2881). He is also the VP-Media Relations for Men Recovering from Military Sexual Trauma. Landrith can be reached by email at: james@jameslandrith.com or at his personal website/blog.