Male Sexual Assault Exists Too.
We will be discussing the issues and the distress of the present but silent male rape cases and survivors. Using the #MeToo movement as a strong example, female sexual assault, rape, and many more things have been strongly present through history.
It has been made into a norm that women are the victims and males are the attackers. We decided that this would be a good topic to present on because cases of males being sexually assaulted and harassed are not as vocalized and pushed forward as events such as the #MeToo movement.
We understand that there are more cases on women than men but men have been pushed to be silenced because one of the most predominant reasons is they facesome additional challenges because of social attitudes and stereotypes about men and masculinity and that’s why we chose to discuss this, to make it aware that anyone of any age, gender, sexuality, of any kind can be sexually assaulted.
Rape cases in today’s day and age have been directly correlated to specifically female survivors. Studies of these cases have been extensive and followed up on even through the survivor’s own perspective. Until recently, male rape victims have received little to no attention in adulthood, and even less in childhood and military. Along with these studies, many men, like their female counterparts, have rarely reported to the legal, medical, or mental health systems for assistance. Many of these stories reflect the arguments made by women that their experiences hold a sense of hame, humiliation, and self-blame.
Even so, male rape victims are even less likely to report these cases.This also ties into the toxic masculinity angle where if these cases do come up, they are usually neglected or seen as a joke. If a man relays this information to another man, they would be more likely to made fun of through a means of, “But if it was a girl then who cares what happened.”
The important thing to note is that this isn’t a female to male or male to female only occurrence. There are many cases of men being abused by other men and more so in the younger years of a man’s life.
In today’s society, men are often overlooked when it comes to sexual assault and they are often bombarded with toxic masculinity which affects men when it comes to speaking out. We are trying to address the situation that men are in, and we want to find survivors opportunities to heal. If men continue to stay silent, and don’t get opportunities to heal, it can lead to abuse of alcohol, depression, and sometimes even suicide.
Sometimes people forget that anyone can be a victim, no matter their size, shape, or gender and a perfect example in the media is Terry Crews.Crews recently revealed how he was sexually assaulted by a “high-level Hollywood executive.” He revealed on Twitter what happened to him, also adding “This whole thing with HarveyWeinstein is giving me PTSD. Why? Because this kind of thing happened to ME,” he wrote.
It gives us much to think about because when we think of Terry Crews, we think of the very happy actor with large muscles and a very masculine outlook. We wouldn’t think this kind of thing would happen to a very famous celebrities like Terry Crews but because of these gender norms and shame or self-doubt, believing that they should have been “strong enough” to fight off the perpetrator, he didn’t reveal this until some time later when Harvey Weinstein was exposed.
What we aim to achieve is to send out the message that males can be victims too. We want to inform everyone that everyone matters and we need to look at every single story, and not push them away. We want to let victims know that they matter.