This is in response to Richard Jeffrey Newman’s comment about male survivors of sexual abuse/assault being left out of the sexual-assault discourse.
It’s a real problem that merits attention. Too often it gets mentioned as a way to attack efforts to fight sexual violence directed at girls and women or as an excuse to attack feminism or feminists. That exploits male victims and they deserve better.
Unless RJN loosens the restrictions, comments can only be made by male survivors.
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Hah! A2H, you picked up my gauntlet in a way I had not anticipated, and I am grateful. Indeed, my mind is brimming with all the ways I would love to start/enter this conversation, but I am, unfortunately, currently drowning in papers that I need to grade by the end of this week, so my time is very limited, and to say what I want to say in the way I want to say it will take more time than I have. At the very least, though, I want to address the question of who can comment, since I am not sure I would limit it only to male survivors. First, I would not want the thread to be closed to people who hold positions like Daran’s, and I have no evidence that Daran is himself a survivor. Second, I think women do have something to contribute to the conversation I had in mind, which was less a safe space for male survivors to talk about our experiences per se and more a conversation about how our experiences ought to be understood and talked about in the culture at large. (I would be perfectly happy with the safe space conversation, though, if there are men here who would want that.)
I have a lot more to say, and I will try to say it over the next few days, as time allows.
I’ll take that as permission to post, then.
As I said in my direct reply in the other thread (which the spam-fairy ate), I’m not a survivor of sexual abuse. I have done voluntary work for an i-n-c-e-s-t survivor group. I have also been a victim of non-sexual domestic violence. I’ll post more later.
Hopefully I fooled the spam fairy with this one.
Richard, no problem on loosening the rules. I didn’t believe that it was appropriate for me, as a female survivor, to set the parameters for this open thread.
Okay, since I do not have the time to write at length, what I would like to do is post relatively brief “thoughts” that I think are relevant to what this thread might become:
It was feminism, specifically the essays of Adrienne Rich in On Lies, Secrets and Silence, that first gave me a vocabulary for naming the sexual abuse I experienced. This is one of the reasons that feminism, and very often radical feminism, has always seemed to me to provide an accurate description of male dominance and its cultural, social, political, economic and sexual workings. At the same time, precisely because feminism quite reasonably puts women’s experience at the center of its discourse, that discourse does not, in fact it cannot speak adequately to my experience of having been sexually abused when I was a boy.
Now, if all I wanted was, talk-show style, to tell my story, this would not be much of a problem. However, given the number of boys who are sexually abused–statistics I have seen range from 1 in 5 to 1 in 7–the problem of the sexual abuse of boys cannot be framed, simply, as the individual problems of those boys who have been assaulted. The problem needs to be politicized, and it needs to be politicized in a way analogous to the way that feminism has politicized women’s experience of sexual assault, if only because perpetrators of child sexual abuse are overwhelmingly male. (I am not discounting or dismissing or trivializing the fact that there are female perpetrators when I say this, but–at least as far as I know–neither the number nor the patterns perceivable in female perpetrators rise to the level of a social-political hierarchy in the way that they do in the case of male perpetrators.) Discussions of male violance against women and children rarely address my experience, however, because the “children” in those discussions almost always end up being girls. Or, to be more accurate, the experience of child sexual abuse that gets privileged in those discussions is inevitably that of girls.
The challenge, then, for me, has been to find a way to talk about men’s experience of sexual assault that places that experience at the center of the discourse, while at the same time respecting and doing justice to the feminist analysis of male dominance that helped me to name my abuse in the first place. One way of doing that–and since I am out of time, I will end here and put this out for people to take up in discussion, if they so choose–is to acknowledge, up front, that men who have been sexually assaulted, either as children or adults, are victims not of some amorphous societal violence, but of male dominant violence and then to ask not why men might become objects of male dominant violence–that’s easy–but rather how the knowledge that one has been made such an object changes (or can change) one’s consciousness of oneself, of one’s place in the patriarchy and of the nature of the patriarchy itself. (I should add that I am talking here specifically of sexual violence.)
I think the fact that men systematically rape male children and other men points to a key element in the way that male dominance works; there not only benefits for exercising male dominance but consequences for refusing or being unable to do so.
The challenge, then, for me, has been to find a way to talk about men’s experience of sexual assault that places that experience at the center of the discourse, while at the same time respecting and doing justice to the feminist analysis of male dominance that helped me to name my abuse in the first place.
I’m not sure that I understand the difference between women’s and men’s experience of sexual assault. Can you expand on this a bit?
Or, to be more accurate, the experience of child sexual abuse that gets privileged in those discussions is inevitably that of girls.
I get the feeling that those discussions are almost always within the sphere of feminism. Rarely do I hear a discussion of child sexual abuse (aside from condemning abusers as “sick”, etc.) outside of feminist circles.
Richard Jeffrey Newman (in the other thread):
I don’t see how to discuss the dismissal side without addressing the cultures and subcultures which dismiss it.
I don’t have an experience of sexual abuse to talk about. I can talk a little about the domestic abuse, and how that connects with the experiences of some of the male sexual abuse survivors I’ve worked with (though I don’t claim that it connects with all male survivors’ experiences, and perhaps not your experience).
But there are limits to what I would say about the domestic abuse, which I’ve not come to terms with, even in a supportive space. Even if there is no hostile intent, this place feels hostile to me, even in a dedicated thread.
Instead of making generalised criticisms of how I “muscle in” to the discourse, why don’t you refer to specific instances, so we can talk about what I actually did, and why. In the thread from which this came, I objected to those who seek inclusion being characterised as “wankers” who “whine”. Is it “antithetical to feminism” to object to this? What does that say about feminism?
What kind of space are you talking about? I don’t want a homeland for male survivors. I don’t want reserved seats at the back of the bus or separate but equal provision. I want inclusion.
The whole ‘derailment’ discourse is a silencing strategy. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed it, but there’s a thread derailment going on right now. It started here, with an unprovoked abusive attack on someone who isn’t even here. I made one post in his defence, and the pile-on has started. I won’t post there aain about it, because I know that if I do, it will be me who is blamed for the derailment – not the person who launched the unprovoked abuse, but the proxy for the victim of it. So I fall silent.
Can someone please fix the borked markup.
Jake Squid:
I don’t know if there’s a significant difference in the experience itself (and I’m not qualified to opine). There’s a difference in the way society in general (and feminism in particular) responds to it.
Not entirely, as there are male-created survivor spaces. But it’s the female ones that get the lion’s share of the resources and recognition.
Many years ago, I was an administrative support worker of a group for both male and female survivors. We had a funding application rejected on the grounds that the funder was supporting the local Women’s Aid Centre, and therefore there was no need to support us. Set aside for a moment the fact that the services we offered to women were complimentary to and non-overlapping with those of the WAC; what this episode illustrates is the complete invisibility of male survivors, despite our efforts to centre them in our campaigning material.
Sorry, but I’m a men who’s been there. I would advice any other men who have had this “experience” to just shut their mouths on this thread. You are going to become an object of feminist “analysis” and the like. There are other places where you can really talk.
I forgot to connect that last paragraph with what Jake said. The point is that while many male survivors seek inclusion into the (currently discriminatory) mainstream (feminist) survivor discourse out of principled opposition to apartheid, others do so because that is where the recognition is and that is where the resources tend to end up.
When I was 14, I had sexual contact with a woman who was then in her early 30s or late 20’s. I thought of it as a positive thing at the time, and for much of my subsequent life, but I have somewhat ambivalent feelings about it now.
As I get older, and I find myself at or past the age she was, the age difference becomes more and more apparent, and I wonder at the two sides of it . . . she did not hurt me, but what she did was not something that an adult should do with a child.
One of the most difficult things to cope with around this has been the cultural attitude of how sexually molested boys “must have had a good time” *wink* *wink* *nudge *nudge*, which tends to minimize the seriousness of things like this happening. Also, since I actually did have a good time, feeling like it was partially my fault, and wondering if, since I enjoyed myself, then that means that nothing wrong happened.
I still see her from time to time, and we’re cordial.
I have both affection and resentment for her.
Nothing wrong happened from your side.
Something wrong happened from her side. She shouldn’t have done it. She had a duty not to engage you sexually as a minor. There was no corresponding duty on your side.
How you felt about it, at the time and afterwards, is your business. Society has no business telling you how you should or should not feel, or making you feel like crap for not feeling differently from how you did feel.
If that makes any sense.
“Nothing wrong happened from your side.”
——————-
I assume that Richard Jeffrey Newman has the sole focus.
I had a female baby sitter on my side, although I’ll let you all loose with feminist analysis and a reduction to nothing. That’s not my target here, my target is to tell readers:
I’d like to stress for men who have had this in their childhood: There are website that will really talk to you. This isn’t the place.
Daran:
This is not the conversation I am interested in having. First, it is merely personal and is ulimtately about whether or not you are justified in saying what you say/doing what you do on these thread, and I am interested neither in proving that you are unjustified nor in giving you the chance to justify/vindicate yourself. You object to my use of the phrase “muscle in”? Fine. I take it back, but the fact is that instead of focusing on finding a way to talk about men’s experience of sexual abuse and/or domestic violence on and in its own terms, what you do is spend a lot of time and energy trying to win/insist on/force/pick-your-verb what you call “inclusion”–and it is this goal that I am calling into question, not because I think we should not be able to talk about male and female survivors as survivors of the same phenomenon, but because I think that male and female victims/survivors are situated differently in relation to sexual violence and that difference cannot be accounted for through any simplistic notion of inclusion.
For example, and Jake, this gets to your question about specific differences that I think there are between the male and female experience of sexual violence. First, I should say, that I am not talking about the experience during the assault/abuse itself, but rather the experience of how abuse shapes our lives and how we give our lives shape in response to the abuse. So, this is something I want to write about at greater length, but I do not have the time right now: I remember reading that one of the differences between how male and female survivors cope with their abuse is that male survivors tend to become deeply involved with pornography, while female survivors don’t. This was certainly true for me–and it is about the natrure of that involvement that I want to write more. The explanation for this was that pornography proved to be a kind of “safe place” for male survivors because it is a world in which everything is sexualized, just like the world an abuser creates for/imposes on his victim.
The explanation is actually a lot more complicated than that (and, I should add, is not a defense of pornography as valuable for survivors) and when I have the chance to write a longer post I will elaborate on this further. My point here is simply that understanding this aspect of the male survivor’s experience–and while I do not claim that all male survivors have this experience, I think it is a deeply important part of that experience to understand–requires a conversation that takes place on its own terms, not in the context of trying to win inclusion in the feminist discourse around women’s experience of sexual violence.
Finally, Myca, a book I would recommend is Victims No Longer, by Mike Lew. It was the first book popular book published in the US specifically for male survivors of child sexual abuse, and it deals specifically with the experience you describe. Reading this book changed my world in helpful and important ways. It is definitely worth a try.
I look forward to when you have more time Richard – in large part because I think what you are getting at is so completely different than my experience.
For me, one of the biggest consequences of experiencing total lack of power is, well, the lasting feelings of total lack of power as well as an extreme distaste for physical aggressiveness of any sort in myself. This clearly had an externally detectable effect as I continued to be a target of abusive men (and a few women) well into my 30s. Hell, I may still be – I just don’t get out much lately.
… requires a conversation that takes place on its own terms, not in the context of trying to win inclusion in the feminist discourse around women’s experience of sexual violence.
I agree with you. If your experiences with and consequences of sexual abuse differ significantly from those of women there really isn’t room in a feminist discussion of women’s experience of sexual violence for you. Well, some space but probably not enough/not the right place to delve deeper into the things that are different for you. One of the things that I’m hoping to see here that doesn’t seem possible for most men in a feminist, woman-centered thread is respect for difference of experience as well as, perhaps, deeper insight into commonalities.
I’ll see about checking that book out of the library.
Myca wrote:
One of the most difficult things to cope with around this has been the cultural attitude of how sexually molested boys “must have had a good time” *wink* *wink* *nudge *nudge*, which tends to minimize the seriousness of things like this happening.
Yeah, this is why so many people don’t discuss this with friends and family. Unless you’re talking to people who have some sort of understanding or empathy you’ll find your experience minimized. But I believe that anybody who has an understanding of the dynamics involved in sexual abuse (particularly of children) and its emotional and psychological consequences will not minimize your experience.
BeenThere:
Don’t be so quick to assume.
For several years I was a regular poster to the usenet newsgroup talk.rape. At first sight the group looks extremely hostile to female rape victims/survivors, mostly because of the malicious crossposting from soc.men which I’d call a sewer of antifeminism except that would be an insult to sewers.
It was always like that, the whole time I was there, yet for several years there was a core group of native t.r regulars who were among the nicest, most thoughtful, sensitive, and kindest people you could ever hope to meet. Many of them had been raped themselves, or had loved ones who had been raped. For this group of people, t.r was there home on the net, and all the noise and garbage from next door was part of the ambience. It wasn’t for everyone but neither was it ‘not for anyone’.
Daran, I am inclined to agree with BeenThere that a feminist blog, particularly this feminist blog, is not the appropriate place for male survivors to discuss or share their experiences. While I do not want to make any assumptions, I do wonder what the actual intentions of this is thread are. The introduction to it was less than inviting to male survivors.
I am mildly interested in participating in the discussion, but past experiences on this blog suggest it would be better to refrain from doing so. I certainly would never feel comfortable disclosing any specifics of my experience as they would likely be used to attack me or to attack other male survivors.
Toy Soldier:
Since this thread was opened in response to my comments here, and since the very brief introduction that A2H wrote seems to me to be a valid effort to affirm the value and importance of talking about/listening to men’s experience of abuse, while defining the thread as inhospitable to the use of male experience as a distraction from women’s experience of abuse (a use to which I think it is pointless to deny that men’s experience of abuse is put), I am wondering what you felt was less than inviting. I am also wondering whose intentions you are suspicious of, mine or A2H’s.
Myca wrote:
Here is where I think that feminist analysis can actually help develop a way of talking about the male experience of sexual abuse. The attitude that Myca so accurately describes is part and parcel of patriarchal male heterosexuality: the idea that men–and boys beyond a certain age–are by definition always wanting sex, that all heterosexual sex, any heterosexual sex, anywhere any time is, by definition, not merely good for, but also a good for men.
It is a commonplace in feminist thinking that these attitudes are at the heart of men’s inability to see, respect, etc. women’s sexual boundaries, but these attitudes also mean that men are understood to be without the boundaries necessary to keep out unwanted sexual advances, an understanding (men don’t say no to sex, right?) that is particularly evident in cases where the abuser is a woman, but that I would argue also functions in situations where the abuser is a man.
Unfortunately, I do not have the time to develop that argument further–and I hate the fact that I keep having to apologize for my lack of time–so let me end with these questions: How do our notions of gender roles contribute to the way in which we understand what it means for a man to have been the victim of/to have survived sexual assault? How would that understanding change if we were able to undo those gender roles, even (for now) if only as a thought experiment?
I would never suggest that this is the right place for you or indeed for any particular male survivor. That’s not my call. And I certainly can understand if you (or any other survivor) feel you must limit your participation here, or if you feel you can’t participate at all.
But I respectfully disagree with the suggestion that this place (or any place) is unsuitable for male survivors in general. I base this on my experience with (admittedly mainly female) surivors some of whom positively thrived in the most hostile environment imaginable. I’m not convinced that men are necessarily different from women in that respect.
Nor is this thread intentionally hostile. I’m believe in Richard’s sincerity. I don’t think he wants this to be a hostile. I don’t think he “gets” why it might be for people like you, but I don’t find him malicious.
I intend to accept his invitation to “to talk about [my] experience of … domestic violence on and in its own terms”. I’ll post the disclosure on my own blog (more safety for me) but I will link here. I hope Richard will read it, with perhaps a more open-mindedness than he has show so far, towards how feminism has contributed (negatively) to that experience, and how it can be intentionally and unintentionally hostile.
(I started the post, but lost it in a computer crash. And I’ve been distracted…)
RJN, this part of the opening:
is antagonistic, accusatory and inaccurate. It is difficult to discern whether the anger is directed at male victim advocates or male victims themselves. Nevertheless, it is hardly inviting.
A2H’s. Again, I do not want to make any assumptions, but given the randomness of this thread, the history of this blog and the comments made on other threads, the gesture seems more like an attempt to prove no feminists would ever attack male victims or derail a thread about male victims rather than a genuine desire to discuss male victimization.
Granted, that is an assumption. The gesture may in fact be genuine. However, it is akin to conservatives suddenly asking gays to discuss their experiences in a conservative environment.
This will be my last comment on the subject of anti-feminism and derailment in this thread. I would much prefer a discussion about how people interpret, live with and integrate the experience into their lives.
….the gesture seems more like an attempt to prove no feminists would ever attack male victims or derail a thread about male victims rather than a genuine desire to discuss male victimization.
Yet, no woman has derailed this thread (and here we are at comment 23 ) and there has been no suggestion that your interpretation has any validity. But, somehow, this thread was derailed from its stated intention by (mostly) anti-feminist men at comments 7, 10, 14, 18 and 22 talking negatively about feminists. In a space specifically designated as being for male survivors I find this notable.
Richard:
Toysoldier:
I, myself, are not at all suspicious of A2H’s motives in this respect, but I agree that as a practical matter, Richard should directly moderate this thread (if this has not already been arranged), if only to avoid the situation, if moderation action is required, of having to wait for him to come on line to make a moderation request, and then having to wait for her (or Amp) to come on line to implement it.
I have sent an email to amp asking him to give me moderator privileges, but I don’t know if he is back online yet. I will let you know what happens.
I agree that it might be wise for you to stay out, for the time being. We’re not really discussing antifeminism or derailment. What we’re discussing here is safety. Safety for people who have had encounters here in the past, which have left them feeling hurt and abused. You’ve played a part in some of those encounters, and you’ve aligned yourself with others who have played a part.
Whether or not you agree that your behaviour has been abusive is beside the point. It’s how the people we’re trying to bring in feel, and we’re going to have to talk about safety, and ground rules, and such stuff, for a lot longer, if we are to bring them in.
You may feel that this is unfair, and that it’s we who’ve abused you. But this is already a comparatively safe place for you. It’s your home turf. Cut us some slack.
I agree that there’s unlikely to be direct intervention by female poster. As ms_xeno already said, she wouldn’t “dare. I don’t think anyone else would dare either.
(Waves magic wand.) *Poof* You have moderating privileges.
Daran wrote:
Jake didn’t say it would be wise for him to stay out of this thread; he said that he was done commenting on the derailments issue.
With all due respect, Daran, I feel your comment steps over the line. Jake belongs on this thread as much as anyone else. If you want a “no past critics of anti-feminism allowed to participate” discussion, that’s perfectly cool — you should do what you need to, in order to have safe space. But “Alas” is not the right place for a “no past critics of anti-feminism allowed” discussion.
There’s a lot of mutual suspicion and dislike here, on both sides. I’m willing to try and put that aside. But it has to be mutual, or it won’t work.
[Edited to desnark.]
Is this thread limited to sexual assault/abuse or other kinds of abuses (emotional/psychological) visited on males can be discussed, too?
To all and sundry: Now that I have moderator privileges on Alas, I am thinking that the wise thing to do would be to start this thread again, but with a post that foregrounds some of the issues raised so far, so that the discussion can move forward. Since I cannot post to Alas from work, where I am now (thanks, Amp, for posting this comment for me), I will not be able to post the new blog entry until Friday or Saturday–though I will try to do it sooner–and so I ask for your patience. (I also need a little bit of time to ponder hun’s inquiry.) Obviously, people can continue posting comments to this thread, though I am beginning to think that would be counterproductive since the provenance of this thread calls its intentions into question for some people, while its tenor and its content feel undivorcable from the false-rape-accusation thread where I made the comment that prompted Abyss2Hope to open this thread in the first place.
Also, Daran, while I am willing to accept that yours and Toy Soldier’s and BeenThere’s intentions in the discussion so far have more to do with safety than with antifeminism or derailment per se, I have to agree with Amp that your comment to Jake crossed a line. He too, especially because he is also a survivor, is entitled to a safe space in which to have his say, and he is as entitled to call out what he perceives as antifeminist threats to his safety–which includes the ability to have what he sees as a constructive discussion–as you or anyone else is to call out perceived feminist threats to yours. I am motivated to say this not only becaue Alas is a feminist space and because my own political and ideological biases are pretty unambiguosly feminist–and so to take an anti-feminist stance as the basis for any set of discussion rules runs counter to the editorial policy of the blog as a whole–but also because I think that if men who have been abused are going to be ab le to talk to each other as a community, and it is as a community that we need to be able to speak if we want to be taken seriously, then we cannot divide ourselves into men-who-have-been-abused-and-embrace-feminism and those who don’t. Hopefully, the blog post I am going to write will address at least some of these concerns and reassure people who want to participate that they will be able to have their say. But, as I said, above, please have patience. Thanks.
I apologise to Jake Squid.
I never suggested that he wasn’t entitled to use this thread, and I’m sorry if I gave that impression.
I did assume that the dynamics of the site would make it sufficiently safe for him. That assumption was not justified, and in any case, that’s not my call to make. He is entitled to take part in the safety discussion.
I guess Richard is still busy with other things…
Yes, hun, sorry to say: I am swamped with end-of-semester related things. I have, however, been making mental notes for the post that I will write. Next week, if I am lucky. If not, the week after the semester ends. Again, my apologies.
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