Continuing my thoughts from last Friday I wanted to share the story of one male rape survivor who is also my partner because he and I discussed the study and my post about at some length. I'll call him "S" to offer him privacy. Those who may know him please respect that if he wanted to share this more with you, he would have done so already. He's allowing me to bring up what I do below in the hopes of getting folks to think.
My partner, S, and I have a lot in common even though we are 11 years apart in age. Sadly, one of the things we have in common is surviving a series of childhood and teen sexual attacks, harassment, and rape. We know when my abuse started and what happened at various ages; we aren't sure with him because he's decided he doesn't want to drag up the details. It is a valid way to survive and live now even I'm always concerned there might be a flashback around the next corner.
His one rape we did talk about after last week's post here on this blog happened when S was a teenager, I believe 15 years old. Here is what S has told me in the past: He was jumped by a group of older boys and men in the boys' bathroom at school after the normal day was over. They threatened, they had at least one knife, they each anally raped him, then they shoved the knife inside and cut him up. Afterwards he pulled himself together, washed up as best he could, and went home.
S told no one until he told an online therapist years later and then told me a year after that. His parents and sister still do not know.
The next morning he noticed a wide streak of white hair on his head so he dug around and found a hat. He kept wearing hats, refusing to take them off even if he got into trouble with his parents, until the hair grew out enough that it was cut off. Extreme shock seems able to do that to hair.
But S's way of surviving this went beyond not talking and wearing a hat.
S started growing out facial hair, wearing more "butch" clothing, taking on very public extracurricular activities so that he was never alone and was very much in the public eye. The men/boys who raped him taunted him for being girly, for being a loner, he was going to stop those things from attracting any more attention.
S told me during our conversation last weekend that he never thought of it as "rape" because rape didn't happen to boys or men, only girls and women. It took him a few years to even think of it as sexual assault.
"What was it?" I asked him.
"It was just the cost of being different," S automatically muttered then recovered and said, "I didn't have the words to describe it."
I hugged S so hard and so long after that.
I get the normal protective reaction that I'm sure other women and men have when they learn that their loved ones have been raped -- anger, thoughts of revenge, fear that I could harm in some inadvertent fashion. But having been through this myself I know that my feelings and need to do something can in many ways be stealing the power from the survivor.
Instead I told S that he was a strong man, that he did an amazing job of getting through school, and that he was powerful for continuing to survive it. If his rapists goals were to make him conform he's overcome that and turned into his own man.
The physical scars from the knife part of the rapes have impacted our love life so thanks a lot bastards for damaging one way my lover could enjoy sex! However we embrace a multitude of sexuality so, once more, he's proved himself stronger than the rapists.
While his rapists harmed him deeply I think our rape culture harmed him even more.
This culture sets up the idea that men are rapists and women are victims. This culture denies that men/boys can be victims and therefore they great difficulty even doing the internal work to survive because to even admit that something was done against their will might strip a male survivor of manhood since the rape culture tells them that men can't be raped. They turn the anger inward and harm themselves or outward and harm others; female survivors do this to but we have more public resources to help us fight those two anger directions.
S's rapists ultimately failed as he learned to be himself again and overcome the anger trying to harm him or make him harm others.
S proves himself to be more of a man every day than any of those rapists could ever hope to be as they cave into their impulses and violence probably over and over and over again since study upon study show that multiple rapes and multiple types of violence are very common among rapists.
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