Male survivors of sexual assault share their experiences

[hannahbanana]

I saw this article that someone posted on my facebook feed:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/spenceralthouse/male-survivors-of-sexual-assault-quoting-the-people-who-a

 

In part I'm glad it was shown, especially on buzzfeed which is very feminist.

Some thoughts that I had while reading:

-how sad and angry I am for what the participants went through, in both the experience itself, and the way that it was received by others

-I noticed that many of the people in the article were transgendered - and does that make a difference? It sounds like many of the transgendered people were women when they had their experience, which makes me feel like the article was still implying that rape is more of a female-oriented issue in general. But that may not be accurate, since I don't know if they include female transgendered individuals in similar articles about women, who were raped when they were still physically men.

 

Either way, I think I would call it a good thing that this article attempts to show that men are also victims of rape, and that they require empathy too. I'd be interested in hearing thoughts.

 

[J. D. Stembal]

I'm not much of a fan of Tumblr picture campaigns. While it is heart-breaking to see a person's facial expressions in the picture, it would promote more of an understanding if the victims were able to speak, and confront their pain. There is an emotional aspect to the human voice that is much more expressive than one frame frozen in time with their words written on a placard. Nevertheless, some of the pictures evoked feelings inside me, like the man who was molested by his TKD teacher and waited 20 years to admit that it happened to someone else. Scrolling through a bunch of pictures of faces and words on your iPhone allows indifference to take control and the emotional reality can easily be dismissed.