This is a difficult story to write. How do we talk about men being raped by women, when we don’t know what that looks like? We don’t have words for it and there are very few news articles about it.
But incidences of sexual violence against males – perpetrated by females – is more common than we think.
A survey of 40,000 households in the US found 38 per cent of the victims of sexual assault were male.
Partner this with a recent analysis of data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the US, which found 46 per cent of male victims were sexually assaulted by a female perpetrator.
In Australia the numbers are similar. An analysis of the 2013 ABS Personal Safety Survey found one in 25 men have experienced sexual assault since the age of 15. That, in the year leading up to the survey, almost one in three victims of sexual assault were male. And that more men experience sexual assault perpetrated by a female, rather than a male.
Oftentimes, it’s the somewhat-predictable scenario of an older woman, and an adolescent or prepubescent male.
“Consent can’t really be given when you’re in that state no matter how immature or mature you may feel,” Aaron Gilmore told News.com.au of the abuse he suffered between the ages of 12 and 18. “She was genuinely nice to me. I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my own mother, I even called her my second mother. She won my trust.”
Sometimes it’s child abuse.
“One of my best friends was raped by one of his mom’s friends’ daughter. He was 8, she was 17. He was ‘lucky’ and she was ‘just confused’. His dad called him a player, lady’s man, etc.” – fxckthehalo told Reddit
Sometimes the victim is an adult male. Penetrated, or forced to penetrate, without offering consent.
Top Comments
how about the VERBAL ABUSE many men suffer during marriage?
in Australia only women are protected by the law! not to mention that if you report this as a man you may be JAILED because the woman may lie to the police and they will believe HER regardless of truth!
In most places, neither women nor men are protected from verbal abuse. Most domestic violence programs will do nothing without hospital admission records or serious bruises and lacerations. Police often do nothing without a doctor's recommendation based on ER reports.
Kudos to Caitlin for writing some truth about this facet of gender violence.
I was in a relationship where I was statutorily raped by a school friend's mother over a 15 month period when I was 15-16. She was the grown-up and should have never put me, as a lad, in a situation which would generate confusion, guilt and eventual social isolation when we were discovered by her husband. I had told her on many occasions that we had to stop, but her response was always "this ends when I say so".
More recently, I woke one night with my (now ex) girlfriend exploring my anus with her finger, even though I had told that that area wa out of bounds.
I have had a casual lover get physical as she insisted that I would enjoy being penetrated with a sex toy, grabbed on the crutch by a strange female in a bottle shop, pinched on the butt at nightclubs, at work and walking down the street and been sexually harrassed by a female superior in the workplace. I have an aunt that also used to get a bit too close and creep me out.
The paradigm that only males commit sexual violence is bunkum.