Victim blaming...
by Jess McCabe // 12 September 2008, 11:24
Although the overwhelming majority of rape victims are female, and rapists male, it doesn't always go down that way. Over at the Curvature, Cara has an excellent post which deals with one recent case in which a woman hired as a stripper for a stag do allegedly raped the best man.
Cara's post recognises how similar some of the issues raised are, but also how differently cases involving male victims are treated.
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Eleanor T // Posted 12 September 2008 at 15:16
Now THAT was a great analysis in the post you linked to. Food for thought indeed.
Renee // Posted 12 September 2008 at 16:36
When I first dealt with male rape, I realized that I had made many gender based assumptions. I had always thought of rape as something that specifically happens to women and had totally ignored male victims. I admit that this was a form of gender bias that created a whole group of people as invisible. I am still working through my feelings on this and trying to unpack some of the things that I took as correct. I think part of the problem was that I associate rape with power and I had difficulty seeing a woman with the "power" to rape a male. Obviously this is the case and I have lots of work to do.
Aimee // Posted 13 September 2008 at 18:42
Not to make this too superficial an issue, but I recently watched a (godawful) film called "40 Days and 40 Nights" where the lead (male) character has to abstain from sex or masturbation for the aforementioned time (cue inevitable hilarity as he struggles with his 'natural' male urges to spread his semen about the place at every given oppurtunity ...Gah). Near the end of this film he is chained to a bed by a woman, and whilst he is engaged in some kind of bizarre breast based hallucination due to his lack of sexual activity (?!) a women has sex with him, whilst he quite obviously protests. I watched in horror at what was effectively, a rape, which was seen as okay because the perpetrator and the victim were not a man and a woman respectively. Is it that we perceive women to be weaker, and that we perceive men to always want sex and therefore a woman raping a man is impossible? Because i'm pretty sure it's not and I hope that in 20 years time when society has finally become a bit more enlightened, people are going to watch this film in horror.