Some Thoughts on Rape as a Man's Issue, Part 2

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.

#YesAllWomen -- The Chocolate Priestess's Story

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I wanted to expand on a post I did on Twitter and Facebook for the #YesAllWomen movement... or at least I hope it will become a movement that actually turns into actions and changes.  One way to try and do that is to continue to share stories so I'm going to start off what I hope is sharing by the rest of my sisters writing this blog.  Original text from my FB post is in Italics.

I am a survivor.

Some people still use the word victim perhaps because that is what the police use or what those who want to "help" use.  The problem with using or accepting the word victim is that it emphasises your powerlessness.  While your power may have been taken from you it was not all taken from you.  The fact that you survived, that you are here, shows that.  You could have given up, you could kill yourself, but you didn't, you haven't, you are here.

You are a survivor.

I survived childhood abuse ranging from the psychological to the sexual at the hands of men, boys, and even a mother. I tried to tell but nothing helpful was done.

When I was about 2 and a half, the boyfriend of my only sister who still lived at home digitally raped me while he put a hand over my mouth and told me that my sister liked this.  My parents weren't home and my sister was in another room.  He was fast and brutal, he was done by the time my sister came back into the room.  I didn't tell her because according to him she liked this sort of thing.

What type of little sister doesn't want to be like her big sister?

The next time he assaulted me it was with his brother at their house.  They opened their pants and brought out their dicks, they didn't touch, they didn't have to because their words, tone of voice, and actions threatened me.  I ran this time, I fell down the stairs trying to make my way back to my sister who was talking with their mother.  I told, the mother and brothers denied; I can't remember what my sister did other than take me home, but the boyfriend was with her.  I told my mother but the boyfriend said I was lying.  My mother believed me but didn't do anything other than forbid me being with the boyfriend without her there.

He came into my room a few months later at Christmas just to show me that he could still get to me if he wanted to.

The way my mother dealt with it was a pattern that made my mother partner to the abuse.

When I was assaulted by a cousin and witnessed him assaulting his sister and told both my mother and their grandmother who was their guardian... my mother kept me away from them for a good five years until we were in the same school.  I found out years later that my cousin raped his sister regularly after that point all through high school until she finally left.

By the time I was raped at the age of six by a high boyfriend of a high babysister, I didn't even bother telling my mother.  I just hid my bloody underpants in the trash and demanded a lock for my door.  I think she must have known because I never had a babysitter after that; my parents took me everywhere or we just stayed at home.

Her actions said that this was just something that happened that girls had to learn to deal with... I often wonder what happened to my mother when she was a girl but she never wanted to talk about it and she's dead now so I'll never know.

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I could have given up at that point but for some reason I instead started defending others and I learned to defend myself.

I should have given up, hidden away, since that was the pattern my mother showed me.  I didn't and I think I didn't because I had nieces and nephews ranging in age from only six months younger to 18 years younger.

Maybe my personality just isn't cut out for not defending others?  Maybe it's the same drive that pushed me to be a storyteller, leader, teacher, and dominant in my household.  By all rights it should have be nurtured out of me especially when coupled with my mother's psychological abuse that tried to get me to be the servant of all... YUCK!

I channeled her "lessons" into protecting others and by the time I was 16 I was starting to apply those lessons to protecting myself.

I survived a psychologically abusive boyfriend in high school who used to use his pets in an attempt to coerce me into activities I didn't want. I can't say the way I fought back was ideal but the coercion stopped.

I had a few boyfriends in high school and I stupidly went for the asshole instead of the nice boys who wanted to just please me.  I don't think it is because I really liked bad boys more, because frankly other than his attempts at violent emotional manipulation he wasn't bad in most ways.  He used to threaten the kittens on his farm, actually put one in a microwave and threatened to turn it on unless we went back to his bedroom and did something... I fought back by turning the tables on him sexually and I actually beat him up a few times in response to his threats.  The threats stopped.

Now I'm not saying that was a great way to fight back but frankly I never should have had to fight back at all!  He could have just asked for sex or even tried to seduce me into sex, that's part of our mating rituals, but threatening tiny animals?

These experience taught me some important things -- go for the nicer boys and you have the power.

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I survived sexual assaults when I was at college both in the USA and in Italy. I fought back each time and even contacted the police who managed to catch one of them.

Of course there may always be someone out there with more raw physical strength or the benefit of surprise.  You can't control others, only yourself.  I think it is very sad that I was trained by my high school in self-defense workshops to defend myself but it came in handy.

I was sexual assaulted by a complete stranger in my own dormitory in the basement one day.  I had seconds to think of what to do with him on top of me on the couch where I had been just watching TV waiting for my laundry to be done.  I told him that this was cool but I really needed to check my laundry and then I'd be back and not distracted by it.  I don't normally lie, I don't see the need 99.9% of the time, but I had lived with lies my entire life, I know how to do it and I did it well then.  I went out of the room toward the laundry and then up the stairs to get my RA who called campus security and the police.  The police were almost pleading with me to press charges, make a statement; I was surprised that they thought I'd do otherwise.  It turned out that this man had done this at least three previous times; he did it once more but because of my report the campus security was able to react faster and soon the police had him.

I don't blame the other women he assaulted for their assaults; I do blame them for not doing more about it after the fact.  I know that won't be a popular thing to say and I've probably pissed off my sister writers here on Butt-Kicking Women but I feel strongly that this is the truth.  As long as women do nothing, as long as we just mourn and cope then we continue to be powerless not by because we are but because we chose to be.  When you are quiet, when you refuse to press charges, when you shy away from letting others know, then you support your abusers continued behavior and you become his partner in crime just like my mother.

I didn't just stop there -- I wrote letters to the school newspaper and my hometown newspaper letting them know what happened to me.  I even stepped out into the hall when tour guides were bringing prospective students and parents to campus and told my story if I heard the tour guide make a stupid claim about how safe the dorm was.  I'm sure the university higher ups hated me.

In Rome I was fondled three times on the public bus system -- those were crimes of opportunity and crowdedness and I could have ignored them but I didn't.  The first I was with my boss from the library where I worked and told him immediately as I stepped away; he glared at the perp and stepped between us.  The second time I jerked away and told the guy off and some wonderful old lady started hitting him with her big purse.... big purses my Italian girl friends told me held big books so you could hit men who did that in public.  It was so common that no one stepped in when the old woman hit the perp and young women were prepared to carry big books to do this.

The third time I am most proud of my action because this time I grabbed the assaulting hand, curled mind into a fist around it, and punched back with it into the perp's own groin as hand as I could.  He gasped and pulled the stop cord and got off as quickly as he could.

I stopped taking the bus after that and just walked everywhere I needed to go unless I was with friends who could all gather around in a group.  Was that being afraid and letting my fear guide me or was it removing myself from potential threats?  I'd like to think it was the second.

I helped a group of other survivors in support groups, worked for the sexual violence awareness program on my campus, and as many of you know worked as an educator on sexual issues for a several years even when it brought me negative attention back in NYC at Columbia University. I've worked to educate not just the general public and those in the support groups but also health care providers.

I've done many things that I hope have been helpful not just for women but for men as well in regards to sexual violence and sexuality.  I pushed at Drake University to have a men's table for our Sexual Violence Awareness Week.  I reached out to men I knew had been raped or assaulted just to offer a shoulder, an ear, just plain old recognition that it happened to them, too.

I've spoken up to defend the men in my life when they have been targeted by other men for a perceived weakness in their manhood.

After I stopped letting myself be attracted to the "bigger man" and starting dating real men, I realized that they, too, are targeted by other men.  This ranges from the messages they receive in mass media to the fearful looks they get from women when they are in elevators or just walking down the street to actually assaults and insults from other men.

Before I got married my then boyfriend and I were walking down a street from my summer apartment to campus where I was working.  The frat house were on the way and as we walked some asshats decided that they needed to not catcall me but insult him by telling him how he didn't deserve a hot babe like me (also insulting to me by the way since I wasn't a work of art for them to jerk off to but another human being).  I turned around at one point and marched back and told the ringleader off. He was shocked, didn't know what to do, my boyfriend had to pull me away before I started getting physically violent.

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See just like I was motivate to protect my nieces, nephews, and others, I was motivated to protect him.  I've done this for other male friends and partners, too, but I also try to get them to talk and act on their own.

These asshole who were raised to think that they have a right to take whatever or whomever they want they don't listen to women or girls, they might or might not listen to their mothers, but they very well might listen to you.  Men, boys, fathers, uncles, grandfathers... the ball here is in your court.  Either teach yourselves and each other to control yourselves or you may discover that women and girls will reach out collective limit and fight back in a way you really don't want.

My point -- stand up for yourself and your loved ones, teach your children to stop all of this gender and sexual aggression, or in my opinion you are also the abusers that the rest of us must survive.

I haven't and won't do the one thing that is really going to make a difference -- raise my sons to be human beings and my daughters to be human beings, too.  I haven't had kids, I won't have any, for a lot of reasons.

Instead I try to empower the young women and men I've taught, I try to treat boys and girls I interact with fairly and evenly, but I'm not a parent so I have to trust that those of you who are can realize that YOU are the only real change that can work.

What have you done to stop the cycle of violence?

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Image Credits, Sites I found each image at:

Image 1: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/yesallwomen?source=wtfrt&position=2&query_id=-1

Image 2: http://radioornot.com/blog/yesallwomen-and-chriss-dad-is-right/

Image 3: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/470663166675144705/TETKi-RX.jpeg

Image 4: http://eyesonlife-ginahunter.blogspot.com/2014/04/violence-against-women.html

Cut the crap!

Cerise writes:

I have recently noticed an alarming trend in our language.  It is a specific form of negative body-talk.  So many articles, ads, and women use very violent imagery when discussing parts of their bodies.  Think about it:  banish your butt, burn fat, carve off your curves, destroy your belly, slice your flab, melt your belly, dump your gut, kill your cravings, blast your thighs.  Is this a nice way to talk about yourself?  What would you say to a product that promises to destroy women's bodies?  Doesn't sound so nice now, does it?  What about slicing, cutting, burning?  Why is it okay to use language like this?

I can't decide where this language comes from.  Does it spring from our acceptance of violence against women in popular culture?  Does it come from our habit of insulting overweight people (and, for that matter, not-so-over-weight celebrities?)  Is it just an expression of the very real loathing some women feel for parts of their bodies?  

Well, stop it!  I don't care where it comes from.  It is not okay to talk about yourself or anyone else this way.  Don't buy products that promise to act out violence on your body.  Don't accept this sort of language.

When I took a college course on propaganda (very cool course, by the way), we discussed the insidious impact of propaganda.  Even if you are a very smart, educated person, it seeps into your thinking.  Even if you know it is propaganda, if it is repeated often enough, it soaks into your head.  Even if it is clumsy, stupid propaganda, if it is not contradicted, it is hard to resist.  Advertising is perhaps the most pervasive form of propaganda in our society.  Don't say it is trivial, it is not.  Don't think you can ignore it, you cannot.  But do not accept it.  Do not let it go unchallenged.  The best way to combat propaganda is to recognize it for what it is and to actively disagree with it.

Promoting Guns (or Banning Them) Isn't a Solution

Not long ago I commented on FB about a Rachel Maddow segment on "trends in mass shootings" in the USA -- I asked if what she mentions were really all of the mass shootings there had been over the past 70 years.  Most people who replied ignored my question to jump in with their own personal gun agendas but a few had actual intelligent replies, questions, and ideas.

You can thank them for this post no matter how much it pisses you off.

First here is the clip from Maddow's show that I was talking about:



As a historian, as someone who considers herself to be fairly logical and rational yet capable of great empathy, I try to see all sides of an issue, often playing the Devil's Advocate -- not the movie, the rhetorical device.  It may take you a while to figure out my views on any subject because of this but once I have a view, once I have my ethics and morals checked against the facts and lined up in what I believe is a non-hypocritical fashion I am very unlikely to change my mind unless you have factual information that I lack.  Actual facts not selected statistics or your opinions.

The argument, it is not a debate because that implies a civilized discussion and the gun thing is not civilized in the USA, rarely is about facts on either side. For every statistic that one side pulls out, the other side discovers another one; for every story on one side there is a counter, real or not, on the other side.

The very fact that we can even talk about sides in this gun argument demonstrates the real problem with gun violence in this society: We don't give a damn about each other, not really.

You see there is no such thing as gun violence.

There is only violence.

Guns do not do violence any more than a knife, a rock, a bottle of acid, a book, or any other object or tool commits violence.

Human beings and other animals are the ones who can do violence and we do it very, very well.

Now you might think that all of this means that I'm pro-guns.

I'm not.

I'm also not anti-guns.

What I am is anti-violence.

And I say this knowing full well that a few weeks back I told you all how much of a challenge it can be for me to control my own actions when I get really angry.  I take responsibility for my actions and reactions and that is what is lacking in this gun argument.

Pro-gun folks claim that adhering to laws and regulations is against their constitutional rights conveniently ignoring that the rest of us have constitutional rights that their behavior and choices may stomp all over.

So often these same folks who are screaming we can't have regulations and laws about guns often support more laws and regulations about voting, abortion, getting federal or state aid, and anything else they dislike.  These same folks often tell us to not be afraid of checks at airports or the government wanting to know about the people you call or looking into your life because if you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?

I find this type of hypocrisy beyond acceptable.

How about this?  The laws and regulations are a way for the gun owner to accept responsibility for their right to own the guns.  Making sure you do the legal thing, making sure you follow regulations demonstrates that you value the nation, the constitution, and your fellow citizens.

Now before you get misled into the "but criminals" argument, stop and think for a moment -- of course criminals won't follow the laws or regulations, they are criminals after all. DUH!

But if you aren't a criminal why can't you follow the laws, why can't you support the regulations?  Isn't that what many of you would tell me when I didn't like a new abortion law or getting x-rayed at the airport?

I mean, you want the rest of us to follow all these other laws and regulations you support so why shouldn't you do the same for the laws and regulations that we support?

I think our gun laws are lacking in one specific area: education.

Before I could get a driver's license I had to take driver's ed and pass two different exams.  Then as I moved to two different states I had to study their driving laws and pass their exams.  I do it without complaint because it is logical to ask people to have a basic understanding of the laws and how to drive a car.

Why wouldn't it be reasonable then to require gun safety and gun usage education before you can buy one?

Beyond reasonableness of the regulations or not, the very existence of gun laws does not really address the problem of violence with guns, other weapons, or human body parts.

Laws do not magically create adherence to them and enforcement by authorities can only do so much unless you want to see every constitutional right you have completely disappear.

People obey laws for one of three reasons -- fear of punishment or belief that following them is useful or because you are raised to simply obey.

This is the problem with gun laws and violence involving guns -- people do not fear the punishments, they do not believe the laws are useful, and they believe they can do whatever they want whenever they want.

Violence happens when we lack control and when we lack empathy.

If you are out of control and you have access to a gun you are likely to use it to commit violence; if you don't have access then you are likely to use another tool or your body to commit violence.

If you don't believe that other people (or animals) are worth very much (or anything) and you have access to a gun you are likely to use it to harm others; if you don't have access to guns then you are likely to harm others in different ways.

Now some folks say that they feel safe with a gun or safer... than what?  I could understand feeling safer if you are wearing armor or if you stay locked in your house or surround yourself with walls of bodyguards.  A gun is not a shield, it will not prevent someone from harming you or your loved ones, it may only end that harm sooner.

Unless you intent to just randomly shoot anyone who looks at you or makes you feel unsafe (making you the violent one by the way) the gun is a way to react to violence or the threat of violence.

On September 16, 2013, a man went into the D.C. Naval Yard and shot people. Even when authorities that were trained to use guns well came, it took time and more harm was done.  Some folks claim that had guns been in the building to begin with that the shooting could have been stopped... no, it may have been ended sooner but it could not have been stopped.

Stopping the gunman (his name I won't give because he doesn't deserve that kind of attention) from doing any harm had to come before he took his gun out to begin with.  How could that have been accomplished?  Well, the armed guards could just shoot everyone who came into the building, they could run everyone through x-rays or do cavity searches on everyone, they could even have simply refused to let anyone in because if no one is inside no violence can be committed inside.

But you see a gun isn't necessary to do harm to others.  Soon after the D.C. event a different type of public violence was happening in Indianapolis that I'm betting a fair number of you haven't heard about.  On September 23rd police reports about a man around Indy stabbing people started popping up on the city news stations that we watch.  The attacks happened so quickly that the victims barely had time to react.  Having a gun wouldn't have stopped them from being stabbed because they were shocked this happened to them in the first place and simply could not react for a few seconds while the stabber ran off.

You gun can only react as fast as you; it can only shoot as well as you, it is only a tool you use.

Sometimes we get lucky like we did yesterday (October 3, 2013) at the Capitol Hill in D.C. again when a woman rammed her car into barriers around the Capitol and then tried to drive away.  No one other than the aggressor was shot but two others were injured by the car.  I don't want to say more about this because details are going to continue coming out.

It isn't men who are violent.  Women, teens, even children have committed incredibly violent acts with and without guns.  Guns just get flashier headlines and have the potential to harm more people in a given period of time.  But then so would a bomb and I don't see people screaming that they have a right to keep and carry around bombs.

The best tool we as a society have against violence begins when each baby is born.  If we teach (as parents, as family, as friends, as neighbors, as cities, as states, as nation) each baby, every day from the moment of birth until what we all hope is an old-age death that violence is not acceptable and not a solution then we have a shot at stopping violence.

Guns can only shoot either start or end violence; they can't prevent violence from happening.

So don't tell me that your guns or your gun laws will prevent violence. Stop lying to yourself and to your nation.  Person up!  Take responsibility for ending violence from day one until the very last day of your life.