Sensitive - Do people believe that male rape is worse than if a woman is raped?

[Spookyseason13]

There was a soap on last night and it featured a man being raped. It was quite graphic and obviously a horrific thing to happen to anyone in real life.

It’s being discussed a lot by the shows fans online. From the comments I’ve read, a lot have either said that they couldn’t watch it as it was too upsetting, or saying how the storyline was too much, or just generally saying how awful it was.

I’m interested to know if people feel that somehow a man being raped is worse than a woman being raped.

The reason I ask is because sure I feel that sexual violence against women is fairly normalised and commonplace entertainment on TV and doesn’t seem to attract the same level of shock and horror. Often the woman is even blamed for putting herself into a dangerous situation.

No, you didn’t, I’m glad you brought it up. It’s certainly made me pause and think.

As it is for men, of which I’ve been informed by professionals working in the field of the crime going to court.

I’m inclined to agree with this. I can only imagine that gay men might be blamed due to homophobia.

Just as women are still blamed because of misogyny .

I don't think it's true that male victims aren't shamed and blamed. Even more so if they are gay.

Perhaps it is but it isn’t really in the common sort of view or parlance, is it?

If a man is wearing cycling shorts or swimming trunks people don’t make remarks about him asking for it. If a schoolboy wears shorts we don’t call him jailbait. If a man walks home alone we don’t comment about what an unwise move it was, or if he’s been drinking heavily we don’t make well what did you expect type comments.

She did- read the title!

We’re talking about rape victims , not people walking home alone who haven’t been raped.

I think it’s a violation no matter who is the victim. Support systems differ, but in most situations, I would assume a straight man is far more likely to be believed, albeit might be harder for them to go to the police about it.

Because they can victim blame and say he must have been asking for it, like they do with a woman, consciously or subconsciously.

I'm not but I suspect that you have very poorly chosen the words you used in your post to actually articulate your question.

By asking if something is worse, it implies something can be better. That's categorisation.

If your question is actually "do you think that society normalises sexualise abuse against women?" that's a fair and reasonable question but that's not what you asked.

You attempted to categorise rape but your choice of words and that implies that their is a better type of rape. Words matter and you've just them poorly and insultingly.

Yes, would be interesting to know stats to compare. How often men who rape men are convicted vs those who rape women. I bet it is a higher percentage.

I have been raped and 100% think that if it had been an anal rape, it would have been worse.

Im not sure what that means though, like would it be worse for a straight man instead of a gay one? That doesn’t seem right, but it does feel like there’s a difference.

All rape is horrific, obviously, but there are different circumstances surrounding each of them. The worst thing for men is probably that they’re already not very good about talking about their feelings, but even if they wanted to, there is very little support in the aftermath in comparison to what’s available to women. There are so many women that share the experience, they can relate to others and receive solidarity to help them cope, but men don’t have that.

I think it is worse in many cases, firstly its going to definitely be anal which is naturally going to be more painful, secondly I think the psychological impact (as a general rule, not every individual will follow it) is going to be worse.

For a man I think it's much more likely they will feel more shame and avoid seeking support after, with professional or personal support.
Many women will speak to friends or family after, I can't imagine many men going to their friends to talk about it.

No, she’s asking if our (as in, the general public’s) perception of male rape is that it is worse / more shocking than female.

And as for your latter post - did you understand me at all? A woman who walks home alone and is raped can expect ‘well why did you’ type comments in the way a man wouldn’t.

The whole thread actually reminds me of the outrage over a cancer sufferer (I think it was bowel cancer) saying she ‘wished she had breast cancer’ - she clearly meant and explained that the funding and research into breast cancer meant that the survival rates were high, but this wasn’t true for the cancer she suffered from. Of course, half the population didn’t read beyond the headline and howls of outrage about one cancer not being worse than another went up and down the country.

I’m sure you are not suggesting that I blame anything on the victim. I can say with certainty that when the word rape is used that most would infer a female victim and male perpetrator. Because that is the common scenario.

I don’t think it was poorly worded. Quite a few people had no trouble understanding exactly what was meant, so it can’t have been all that badly worded!

Rubbish men get the same victim blaming!

You can be orally raped, can't you?
I'm actually not sure on this.

They're both terrible things and I don't think it's helpful to try and establish a hierarchy of which is worse.

People's experience of rape is very personal and of course individual people experience it differently, regardless of gender

Rape is rape, its equally awful for male and female victims.

I think this patriarchal society we live in does tend to deem male rape as 'worse'.

Mens thoughts and feelings are generally centralised so in the situation of a man raping a woman they give the man the benefit of the doubt, say the woman led him on etc etc because they can see situations they have been part of in the perpetrator.

In the case of a man raping a man they may have some degree of empathy as to what it would be like to be the victim and so it seems worse because they know that it could also be done to them.

Both are abhorrent, but one is very much downplayed and normalised.

I think it would be difficult to get accurate figures. Not all women will report rape. I imagine the goes for men, maybe they'd be even less likely to report it due to male macho feelings.

I’m not attempting to categorise it.

However I do think that for a lot of people, even if they wouldn’t admit it, they probably do believe deep down inside that one is worse (for the victim).

Of course I can’t prove this. But I think that the fact that female rape and sexual violence is a very normal occurrence on TV certainly demonstrates that people aren’t as shocked or upset by it.

Why? We were told that there is a massive stigma with juries concerning male rape particularly amongst older members

I wasn't infering that was your view, I only tagged you to reply the first part of my response, the rest was my personal view.

I do think many men subconsciously blame a female victim, she was out late/what she was wearing/being on her own/being drunk etc, so seeing it happening to a man will be more shocking because - unremarkably to a woman - it could have been THEM!