As a vocal and public male survivor, I've taken on a lot of abuse, harassment and hate from those who don't want to hear our voices. I get it. Rape is an "icky" topic. Men are supposed to be strong and women couldn't possibly commit sexual violence. They will quote legal definitions, espouse childish mythology and communicate taunts in an attempt to shame and silence. There are any number of "reasons" why we are silenced, minimized, trivialized and outright mocked by the general public and often by sexual violence activists and advocates. Further, if the general public acknowledges male survivors, then it will also have to consider the possibility of female rapists beyond the "wink-wink" emotionally stunted ideology ascribed to at present.
Get over it. We exist.
I've been speaking on a very public stage since finally finding my voice in 2008. That was nearly two decades after I had been drugged, raped and blackmailed into silence. Since then, I've been called every name I can imagine, been publicly shamed in print, told that I "better not reveal the name" of my rapist and been subjected to a ton of other forms of intimidation and silencing attempts. I keep hearing how male survivors don't experience such shaming tactics, yet I keep experiencing such firsthand. I wonder why the need to deny it happens?
As a male who does not identify as "ally" or "bystander" first, but as a survivor and actual stakeholder in sexual violence issues in my own right, I am saddened at how often we are used as cannon fodder by both men and women in battles over who has it worse.
That is yet another iteration of the Oppression Olympics. That is creating a hierarchy of suffering. That is NOT anything approaching actual advocacy work.
If you don't care about our issues, that is fine. However, please stop co-opting our traumas to make the case that "X doesn't care about you and only brings you up to silence Y." Guess what, the advocates for "Y" are doing the same thing with regard to male survivors and our issues by using us as talking points and a "gotcha" in their never-ending gender wars. Such ideological battles are more akin to a turf war or gang fight than anything even slightly resembling mature and reasoned advocacy.
Please. We are actual human beings. We exist. Our issues may not matter to some, but we deserve to be treated with a little dignity and a lot less shallow condescension from people who are only using us to score points in ideological arguments.
Our concerns, our struggles and our lives matter far more than your selfish need to score a quick point at our expense. Is that too much to ask?
Don't bother answering. I'm not asking. You don't actually care anyway. Anyone engaging in such practices lacks the emotional maturity to comprehend why such behavior is abhorrent in the first place.
Advocacy that is not based in compassion and focused on the lives of the human beings affected will eventually fail – and spectacularly. Believe it.
About James A. Landrith
James Landrith is a healing rape survivor, public speaker, Vice President of Men Recovering from Military Sexual Trauma (MR. MST), 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). Landrith can be reached by email at: james@jameslandrith.com or at his personal website/blog.
Thank you for speaking out about this!
June 9, 2014 at 7:44 pm
James writes: There are any number of “reasons” why male survivors are silenced, minimized, trivialized and outright mocked by the general public, and too often by sexual violence activists and advocates.
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Thank you for the advocacy work you do on behalf of men.
Based on your experience since going public, I’d like to hear more about this. Which sexual violence activists and advocates are engaging in this silencing and mocking behavior? My own observation is that it is coming from self-identified feminists. Sexual violence activists and advocates on the MHRA side, such as the bloggers over at “A Voice For Men” appear to be strong supporters of folks like you.
June 9, 2014 at 10:20 pm
you dont get it…
June 10, 2014 at 7:04 am
I’m glad people like you are out there, and not shutting up when people tell you to.
June 9, 2014 at 10:35 pm
“and too often by sexual violence activists and advocates” I can identify with that particular statement. A few years ago (so not in the too distant past) I was working on a sociology thesis, based upon domestic and sexual violence from a male perspective. As part of my research I contacted a number of sexual violence advocacy services around the south of England. When I contacted them they invariably assumed that my enquiries related to men as perpetrators and when I mentioned that my thesis was about men being VICTIMS of sexual violence I was often met with blank expressions of “does not compute!” at best and with downright derision at worst. One particular advocacy group even went so far as to call the police on me for being ‘threatening’ when I asserted to them that male victims DO exist. Out of the 20 or so organisations I approached only two of them acknowledged men as victims but neither of them offered much in the way of any services to actually help them.
The sad truth is that sexual violence cases where men are the victims are probably far more prevalent than any survey or statistic could ever indicate. Just because men don’t come forward doesn’t mean that there are fewer victims overall. And for precisely the reasons that James Landrith outlines in his post.
It’s time that the sexual violence debate was freed from the grasp of the feminist movement and that future dialogue be heard in a more egalitarian framework. Better, hell, even SOME services for male victims would be most helpful and much more work needs to be done to de-stigmatise sexual violence for women, and especially for men, so that those who are victims can be heard and can be helped instead of poisoning their own minds against them and blaming themselves for what happened to them.
June 10, 2014 at 8:50 am
As a recipient of low end sexual assault from both boys and girls for 4 years of adolescence, I couldn’t agree more. Both feminists and their MRA nemises are guilty of this.
July 25, 2014 at 9:47 pm