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.

There's no guarantee that a female rape victim will be cared for by a woman. In Scotland, the government didn't even want to give female rape victims the right to ask for a female medical examiner when reporting a rape (having just been raped, with the medical examiner needing to collect semen etc for evidence). After a big battle in the Scottish Parliament, it was grudgingly agreed that she could ask (but there's absolutely no guarantee that she will get a female and not a male).

We try to offer everyone what they need. Some men do prefer women as counsellors. But we also have to protect those women from, to be utterly crude, becoming wank fodder for some seriously damaged men. We learned that lesson the hard way and we won't be doing that again!

So we have an all male committee/admin team to run the male centre who liaised with us re staffing, policies, procedures etc. Which is how we ended up with a 3rd service that is mixed sex (and also has a transgender specific route which was forced upon us by our long standing trans overseer - single man who makes it his business to report us to every man and his dog, repeatedly)

We are a tiny service. This sounds complex but in reality is 2 distinct services with small single sex refuges and a separate group, no refuge space, for anyone who doesn't want to access the single sex provision - staffed by the some of the same people that work in the single sex spaces. We are forever changing our policies as needs in our area change.

This is why, in our 40 years of existence, we have only had a men's service of about 8 years. We are a women's service. Run by women for women based in our own experiences. Supporting some kind of male service was forced upon us when funding criteria changed about 9 years ago. There was no male service within about 40 miles so we set up a small service and promised to run it, pay for it, keep it going in order to maintain our own funding

If you have any thoughts on how we should do it I am all ears.

I think some men may view a man being raped as worse. I had a man say to me “at least” when a woman is raped most of the time she is straight and it’s a man. Whereas a man being raped may not be gay. That was about 20 years ago and I still remember that stupid comment.

It’s like when some men insult women by saying they are “too ugly to rape”. Respond “cool - sounds good to me” and watch them look confused.

Also depictions of women being raped are very normal.

New to our small service this month: we have 6 women and 1 man, none of who reported their rape/sexual abuse to anyone. All of whom feared to access medical help for fear of being forced to disclose details. This is not unusual. With each new client all of our initial time and money is spent supporting our clients to get the medical help they need immediately!

Oh my actual God re what that man said. What a disgusting thing to say.

The physical pain or anal rape does not bear thinking about...whether man or woman......aside from that I think men carry more of a stigma aside from the rape. It still isn't something that's really talked about and very rarely represented in the media. The only programme.I can think of who have covered it is Hollyoaks with the latest episode and another one well over 20 years ago. I actually think it happens a a lot more than we'll ever know, it just isn't being reported.

I think that OP was saying the male rape may be perceived as worse, not that it is worse.

I think that men do. I think most women would think any and all rape is horrific and see it all as equally hideous.

But I can see blokes thinking in terms of ‘orifice designed for penis’ (I know, but that’s how some of them will think) and ‘orifice not designed for penis’ and then adding on the humiliation of it being a male-on-male act. I’d certainly say society paints m-m rape as worse. Perhaps unless the victim was gay… and then I can see them being treated similarly to female victims.

Sorry, what the fuck is this shit.

Why the fuck are you putting rape on a sliding scale? I didn't get pregnant from my rape but I was strangled and beaten and sustained damage that means I can't carry a child. Should I actually get over it because at least I didn't get pregnant? Is that it?
Is raping a child who has not yet gone through puberty bad but wow, thank god she couldn't have got pregnant, would've been SO much worse if she could've!

And elderly women who have gone through menopause? that's not so bad either? And infertile woman? Or are we only concerned about women who are fertile and of child bearing age? And everyone else, including men are just on the "Who cares pile at the bottom"

Fucking hell. I hope your DS has a better role model in his life

I think a lot of people do, yes. For the reason that most heterosexual men have never had a penis in their anus. Whereas a majority of adult women have had a penis in their vagina. (This does not represent my own view.)

Both absolutely hideous.

I think it may come as more of a shock to a male victim, by adulthood most women are all too aware of the risk of being assaulted or raped. Many have been, or been grabbed or propositioned or had a rough, scary or unpleasant sexual encounter with a man that has made them consider the possibility.

Most men are lucky enough to have got to adulthood without ever having felt that kind of vulnerability around men and so when it happens, while it's equally awful, the difference between life 'before' and 'after' might be even greater for a man.