Rape is worse when it happens to men

FFS I'm not saying that some rape is worse than others. I'm not Ken Clarke.

What I'm saying is that pregnancy resulting from rape has an ADDED physical damage that others may not have, plus the psychological damage that goes with this in either having to have an abortion or being forced to bring the pregnancy to full term. Handmaiden indeed.

All rape is bad. It's just that for some there are added complications that have more of an impact on the victim.

And heterosexual men who are raped do not have their integrity brought into question.

teenage

Yeah, that fills me with dread too, PW

I feel for my tenage dd and my ds who isn't far behind. For them, I worry. Not for myself.

Oh yes, AF, sadly you and I are of the same kinda vintage, but I have to be honest and say I am enjoying the Wise Old Hag role. Muchly.
Imagine having to be young and with it again - shudder

I only realised that fact about myself relatively recently, PW

at the age of mid-40's!

Why does it have to be 'bad' vs 'worse' rape ffs??

Rape/sexual assault is a hideous thing to befall anybody - male, female, child, adult.
I found the whole flavour of that article extremely distasteful and it reminded me of some of the 'my MC/stillbirth/bereavement was worse than yours' discussions I sometimes come across.

I totally agree that the opinion expressed in the article that men somehow suffer more due to their 'musculinity' having been attacked, suggests that women who have always been raped simply have to accept that from time to time this happens to a woman. Jesus wept. And because women are 'used to' the concept of female rape, it just cannot be as bad for them...

You'd think we'd moved on a bit from when we lived in caves...

And I love the whole 'handmaiden' thing re the author - having noseyed about that radfem website, I think I may be a radfem. Who knew !

Sorry Widow, I hadn't meant that as a generalisation of all young boys who are preyed on by older women, just the lads that I know locally.
The trend makes me cringe. To t he point where i overheard one young boy being asked "have you not done xxx yet? whats the matter with you, she's well up for it"

It made me feel sick that it was some sort of expected right of passage for the youths of my town.

Valar"but I think the boys themselves think its great. "

I guess that's the stereotype boys get battered over the head with. It's no different to "she asked for it"/"led him on"/"what did she expect".

I didn't get the x vs x+1 much when reading the article. But my jaw dropped at what happened next - it's right at the end -
after his 3 hour ordeal, he got home and told his dad and brother and they went to the police and the man got arrested and later killed.
Can you see that scenario happening with a girl?

1. He got home safe - was not murdered.
2. Told his dad and brother
3. They believed him.
4. They took him to the police
5. The police believed him and sought to take further action
6. They actually arrested the guy
7. He got killed.

Haven't read it again - so may have got it wrong. And don't agree with step 7 if it was a vigilante type thing.

But really think, if it was a girl instead, the story would have probably stopped at any of the above steps. And I bet what he was wearing never came into the question.
Don't really think anything comes out of playing top trumps. My only point is I assumed he had never mentioned it for years and years and then came to end and my jaw dropped!!

You don't read much about men being raped in the papers do you. Or sexually assaulted. All the stories are about women and children being attacked.

I suspect that is to do with what the press think will interest people, what they themselves are squeamish about, this subconscious drive to maintain the status quo.

Vesuvia if the victim is a gay man I would put money on the defence raising his sexual history if they can.

Oh that's the other thing I was going to say

If a man who has been raped is demonstrably straight then I imagine his assault is taken very seriously. If he reports it.

If the victim is gay, or does not fit societies idea of what a "red blooded man" acts like / looks like, then I imagine he meets very similar problems to women with getting justice.

ValarMorghulis wrote - "So men who get their case to court will receive a higher conviction case and be more readily believed."

Bearing in mind that the sexual history of female rape victims is often used in court to discredit the victim, and that the average man is supposed to be more sexually "active" that the average woman, I would be interested to learn more about how the sexual history of a male rape victim is dealt with in court by the defence lawyers of the alleged rapist. I'd also like to know how juries react to hearing about the male victim's previous sexual behaviour.

kickass girls get comments about how they were dressed, they must have led him on, being a prick-tease, were they friendly to him what did they expect etc.

It is awful for everyone.

Valar I wonder if only men who have been raped under quite extreme circumstances (a lot of injuries etc) report their rapes, and that is why there is a difference in conviction rates.

Like how conviction rates for women being raped have reduced as numbers of reports have gone up.

I just wish attitudes could change to all of this across the board.

vesuvia - yes under Sharia law you can only claim rape if the rape was also witnessed by two independent MALE witnesses. So many women who claim to e raped are judged as adulterers.

Kickass - the situation you describe isn't technically rape. It is sexual assault. A rape involves the penetration of a penis. I know it is just a technicality.
There is a woman locally to me who seems to have worked her way through all the local lads. She has them all in her home, buys them cigarettes and alcohol and has slept with them all. Some are as young as 14.
She was pregnant by one lad. He was 15.
I cannot understand why these lads parents have not made a complaint to the police about her, but I think the boys themselves think its great. They don't realise how damaging such confusing early sexual experiences can be later in life.

I'll read the articles in a minute, but just thought that something I heard this week fits here.

I friend of work told us that her son, when he was 15 was raped by a woman of 35.

The woman did not go to prison, and my friend was told comments such as 'it's every boy's dream, he must be delighted' and 'well his penis worked, so he must have enjoyed it' and 'it wasn't really rape if he took part'.

From that perspective, I should imagine that his experience was worse than the same for a 15 year old girl.

However, in general I don't think anyone should EVER play 'top trumps' with trauma. Victims are victims, and no matter how much we fail to empathise, we should sympathise and support.

I have read that, in some parts of the world, governments imprison women for adultery if the woman has been raped by a man who is not her husband.

Do those governments punish male rape victims in a similar way? I have not heard of any cases of a male rape victim being imprisoned for adultery or executed for homosexuality.

I am astounded that someone feels it necessary to make a competition of woe between rape victims. It is absurd in the extreme.
to be sexually violated is one of the most traumatic things anyone will deal with, irrelevant to the gender of the victim.

My only thought would be that as a male victim there is likely to be more physical "evidence" of the rape. And the idea of the rape being an act of control and power rather than lust is more easily conceived by a jury than it is for a female victim.

The misogyny of society runs so deep as to be more likely to believe that the "poor man" was confused by the womans behaviour, that she had dressed provocatively or changed her mind "beyond the point of return"
Whilst a man couldn't possibly have wanted to be sodomised as the idea is oh so very unnatural.

So men who get their case to court will receive a higher conviction case and be more readily believed.

And whilst that may bring a modicum of comfort, that does not wipe he event from memory. So it certainly doesn't undo the trauma of the initial rape.

thus making the only difference between male and female rape the statistics for "justice"

In some places women and girls are forced to marry their rapists, or are murdered, or are ostracised.

It's not a case of "worse" or whatever, but simply seeing and understanding the entire range of consequences that happen around the world. In places where women and girls are property, rape can mean you will be executed. That can't be ignored.

Having to deal with an unwanted pregnancy resulting from a rape, makes the individual case for the pregnant raped woman worse, but I don't think you can then extrapolate it to claim that on a population base rape is worse for all women because some women have to deal with additional adverse consequences. Rape poses the risk of serious health implications at any rate (eg HIV and other STDs), so whilst unwanted pregnancy and the connected risks and problems is a serious health implication which cannot affect men, I don't think that this can be used to make the argument that rape for women is worse.

Not least, because you could use it to tell a woman who suffers after a rape without falling pregnant that it can't be all that awful, as she doesn't have to deal with pregnancy. And that'd be truly horrific.

I felt very safe going about the place when I was visibly pregnant, dworkin.

Funny, isn't it.

@widowwadman

As someone who is no longer fertile I don't have the ADDED risk of becoming pregnant. However my daughters are fertile and none of them are on long term contraception. Yes the outcome in terms of possible physical damage is greater for them. An unwanted pregnancy, in my view, is physical damage. And I was infertile in my 20s for a short spell and felt much safer.

I was getting two cases mixed up I should say. There was a very famous case in India, where a woman spoke out, but the story I meant was a different one in Pakistan.

Sorry that last paragraph was a bit garbled - meant to say something more like, "But, I don't think coming down to the personal experience level is the best way to go," or something like that, then start a new sentence.

(Photoediting at same time as posting comments, probably not a great idea :) )