Men-Tion Not.
Sexual abuse exists in a stratified society in which communities may perpetuate myths due to a generalized lack of knowledge or understanding about sexual relationships and the concept of sex in general. People often tend to ignore such issues because they are not comfortable with discussing them openly. Most often the claims of the male victim of sexual abuse is termed to be baseless, ridiculous and fabricated.
In the news coverage of sexual abuse in recent years, scenarios with male victims aren’t depicted too frequently. When they are, the language often looks something like this:
“This may seem bizarre that a guys who is presumably laying back and having oral sex and one assumes he’s enjoying it — or at least tolerating it — is not consenting simply by doing that, but under that definition if he didn’t say ‘YES’, she’s a sexual violator.”
A description of a man performing sex acts on an unresponsive women would have raised a lot of red flags for most of us: Is she conscious? Is she too drunk or too afraid to speak up? If the supposed victim is a man, these questions suddenly vanish or become a sort of tired parlor joke. However the reality is not humorous. Women do sexually assault men on a regular basis. Each year, according to an estimate in a literature review, roughly 19 to 31 percent of male college students experience some kind of unwanted sexual contact and researchers say that the vast majority of that is perpetrated by women. We can clearly see how sexual abuse against men is a hidden problem and it also contradicts standard assumptions and cultural scripts about male aggression and female passivity.
It also shows the lack of awareness among people regarding the issue of sexual abuse against men. This is a clear example as to how gendered cultural scripts help conceal and laugh away a legitimate problem. There is this common notion attached to men being sexual predators, always sexual, always wanting something. It’s high time that we challenge this age old idea.
There have been several reports which suggests that men who experience sexual assault or other kind of violence by intimate partners are less likely than women to report the incident to the police. They frequently think that no one would believe that a woman sexually assaulted them, and are often embarrassed to fend off an attack by a woman. This shows how due to societal pressures men don’t report cases of sexual abuse because they fear that people are going to raise questions over their masculinity. Men fear of being perceived as ‘’Gay” or not masculine for having experienced sexual abuse.
A study conducted in the United States suggests that two out of five men who are sexually abused experience long term effects. For those who do, the fallout can be serious, including symptoms of post traumatic stress. The negative effects are particularly common in cases where older women take advantage of teenage boys, especially when alcohol is involved. People are more likely to find coercion of women by men acceptable, as compared with the reverse. We’re also more apt to label an incident of heterosexual sex as rape if it involves a male aggressor on a female victim, perhaps in part because men are seemed as more threatening. News reports and training programs on sexual assault may acknowledge that it’s possible for men to be victims, but they typically focus almost entirely on male on female assaults rather than the reverse.
Its high time that we should throw out these traditional scripts which believe that sexual abuse against men is a myth and its time that we debate and discuss this issue globally and make sure that people are aware about this serious problem. Proper sex education is the need of the hour in order to deal with this issue and stricter laws and greater vigilance on behalf of the state is required to prevent such crimes.
People should understand that “NO MEANS NO’’ is not only for women but for everybody.
