Sexual Assault: Men vs Women???

Okay, so the other day, one of my associates told me she almost got into a fight with a boy because he said rape wasn’t rape for girls because they “enjoy it.” Now, when I heard this, I was disgusted at this person’s ignorance, but before I even got to address it, she made a point to say that the boy said rape for guys was more traumatic than it was for girls, because for boys you have to manipulate their hormones (in this case I think he meant when it’s the same sex). I was appalled.


As someone that knows women and men that have experienced this, I don’t think this subject is anything to be played with.


Personally, I think rape is always a touchy subject; however, I just wanted to know you guys’ opinion on this matter whether it’s about how you feel on the subject, what you think about what this guy said, sharing your experience, or even if you’re just willing to share any similar experiences.

 

Rape against anybody, regardless of sex, is completely and 100% wrong, but, if anything, females raped by males have it worse than males raped by females or other males. From what my friend told me, only 6% of females lie about being raped and it's just because they want revenge or something, but the other 94% really do get raped.

Then you have females raping males or males raping males, regardless of age, and it's not made as big a deal -- at least for the adults, as I know children being raped by someone of either sex really works people up the same as when it's a male raping a female. Wanna know why!? Because males are supposed to be tough and take it because they're supposedly the sex monsters and enjoy sex, so they therefore should be honored that they were chosen to be a rape victim.

 

I'm... not sure where this person acquired their understanding of rape but it is extremely inaccurate. For starters, a victim of rape will never "enjoy" being raped, regardless of gender. A rape is a traumatic, awful experience that no person can enjoy, besides perhaps the rapist, but that's a completely different story. Point being, no person can enjoy being sexually violated against their will. As for who rape is "more traumatic" for, I don't think that can be tied to gender either, nor is it ever something we can compare. Each victim's case, reaction, and trauma is unique. Some may cope "better" than others, or shoulder their experience in a different way, because they are an individual with differing circumstances.

It is true of course that there are different social stigmas facing rape victims based upon their gender, however. A female rape victim is often barraged with questions like "were you asking for it," "were you dressed provocatively," that sort of tripe. A male rape victim faces the expectations that men want sex at all times from everyone, the insinuation that he wasn't powerful enough to fight off his rapist, and so on. Again, these aren't things we can really compare, nor should we I don't think. Rape is an awful, terrible crime and I would rather we focus on how we can help victims rather than turning their suffering into some sort of contest.

The number of false rape accusations is usually cited as between 2% and 8% depending on the study. However, it's complicated. For starters, most statistics will count a rape victim accusing the wrong person as a false rape accusation -- which is true, a person was falsely accused of rape, but the woman wasn't necessarily lying about being raped -- she simply misidentified her attacker. We also have to look at how our legal system functions: let's say a person is accused of rape. The jury does not feel there is sufficient evidence to prosecute them, and therefore proclaims them "not guilty." The wording is key here -- the jury does not say that they are innocent, as that would be rather absolute. This person may be innocent, or they may have raped someone; either way, it is counted as a false rape accusation.

Furthermore...

https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates

Simply put, it's very difficult to cite statistics on this sort of thing.

 

Yeah, being a person who experienced this when I was younger, I took great offense to what they both said. Obviously, she doesn't know that I went through that or that I had suppressed the memories for so long that it caused me to have anxiety attacks recently when I decided to face what happened to me. I understand people not knowing about it, but at least educate urself so u don't offend others.

 

This is a very touchy subject that I don't usually feel comfortable getting into discussions about, but yes, regardless of gender rape is a terrible thing. I don't see how it would be more traumatic for a man than it is for a woman. Who's to say who is more emotionally and mentally stronger- people will deal with it in different ways. You usually hear of men raping women, and I personally have heard very little on the matter of men raping men/women raping men, but I understand that it does obviously happen.

I personally don't like how some people victim blame and assume females contribute factors towards being raped, like asking what they were wearing? I'm sorry, but a woman should be able to wear a miniskirt without being written off as 'asking for it' or doing so to attract male attention. I honestly don't imagine that happening if it were a guy who is the victim, sadly, so there can be a lot of bias against women. People who put any sort of blame on a victim disgust me.

 

The way to stop sexism (or racism or any type of discrimination) is to stop talking about it. Segregating men and women as rape victims and turning it into a competition about who suffers more is stupid. Rape is a horrific and terrible crime regardless of who or what the victim and rapist are. Men and women are more similar than we think and I recon it's more the social stigma that affects us i.e. Men are supposed to be super tough and either fend off their attacker or just deal with it. Not true, perhaps they are scared of hurting the woman, perhaps it's another male raping them or perhaps there is another reason- like they were asleep, it doesn't matter, the psychological trauma will still be the same. Of course, women are seen as the frail gender who will be so deeply psychologically affected by the event that they must suffer more. Also not true, well the deep psychological trauma is but not the fact they suffer more. It's like the "What hurts more: Giving birth or being kicked in the balls?" No one will know because no one can experience both.

I don't know whether or not it is classed as rape but about 4 years ago I had a boyfriend who I was deeply infatuated with and he always strongly hinted that he wanted to have sex which I didn't want to do, I was 14, I wasn't ready. We did other stuff which I didn't want to do (he never asked, he just sort of did it and I joined in out of fear of losing him). But one day I said no and cried, he hugged me and said it wouldn't happen again. That night we went to his Grandparents wedding anniversary party (so I only knew him and his immediate family) and he didn't say a single word to me, it felt like I had done something terribly wrong and all that evening I was so petrified of losing him so I just went with it, hating every second of it. It has caused me an awful lot of problems with self image over the last few years but I don't know if it is classed as rape or not.

 

In truth, avoiding subjects does nothing to help. You've already made up ur mind, so why not talk about it. Actually avoiding it results in ignorance. I mean, if we stopped talking about things in history, we'd never learn from our mistakes and who needs that?

 

Morgan Freeman, if I'm not mistaken. Great quote. :'D

That's not really the idea behind the statement, but I get why you'd think so. The point is to quit putting superfluous labels on serious problems that affect everybody, and speak as equals, or as close to equals as we can ever get. Nobody's saying you shouldn't talk about sexual, racial, religious etc. prejudice or its effects on different groups, but a lot of people miss the illness for the symptom. If you take away their sex, race, class or creed, people will find another excuse to hate and harm. That's the underlying issue.

 

understood and well said.

 

Well, there are women who genuinely have rape fantasies, and there are female rape victims who have had orgasms from being raped, even when they previously have never experienced an orgasm (not that I'm implying that the person being raped enjoyed the raping by any means).

However, even though these people exist it doesn't mean that all women enjoy rape, or secretly want it. Perhaps that's where the misinformation from your friend comes from.

But yeah, rape is possible for anyone, and is equally wrong against anyone.

 

I didn't say it wasn't awful for males as well. However, it's worse for females in the sense that the "females are meant to be housewives / slaves" social stigma still exists in our society in areas and is therefore added stress on top of the stress from being raped.

 

Any stigma is bad, but being expected to be a housewife or slave is, in my opinion, a lot worse than being expected to be strong-willed and dominant.

 

In my opinion: Rape is rape and the effects are different for everyone. So what might be traumatic to one person may not be as much to another. This is just me speaking from my personal experience.

 

What really also troubles me is what some people perceive a young female child's account (I'm going to say aged 4 for instance) on their sexual assault by an older male individual, and how in some instances it is people they already know, like an uncle/cousin/family friend etc. Chances are most are blackmailed or threatened to never breathe a word of it, or something really bad may happen to them.

It scares me how certain people state that victims at that age (who do happen to tell someone) "imagine" or "falsify" that this kind of thing happens (therefore making them unreliable in court), leaving these very kids to live for the rest of their lives with memories of what had happened to them.

 

Support.

Yes, in my experience that is true. You tell someone, and they tell u that u imagined it, or that it was ur fault.

Personally, when i went through this, I told my god father after he saw what happened, and he threatened to tell my mother if it happened again. He made it seem like it was my fault about what happened. He didn't even put the blame on the guy that assaulted me. Things like that are the reason ppl don't tell other when they r sexually assaulted or raped. You think no one will care.

It took me until my 8th grade year to tell someone, and it was my bf. Then it took me until 11th grade to come to terms with it. By then only 2 ppl knew. My family still doesn't know.