I find it strangely depressing that even the initiatives trying to help male victims of sexual assault for some reason can't bring themselves to frame it as such.
by FenrisSquirrel
I find it strangely depressing that even the initiatives trying to help male victims of sexual assault for some reason can't bring themselves to frame it as such.
by FenrisSquirrel
10 comments
I think a lot of this is intended to make it easier for men to process than the word “rape” tbh as it can be very hard for men to conceptualise themselves as victims of rape or sexual assault especially if the perpetrator wasn’t a man
I agree with others. Rape and sexual assault is generally seen as a ‘woman’s issue’, not only does it have to be sensitive to how men view themselves when this happens. But also ensure men around them don’t ridicule them.
I think you are missing the point. Rather than getting into defining varies categories and levels of sexual abuse, a wide net is used. You can’t judge a persons experience just because you can label the act.
What could be a broader and more simple way of referring to this kind of thing? I don’t personally think of myself as a victim of any kind of rape or assault but I’ve been in situations I really didn’t want. It’s a good way of talking about it.
I get why you want it to be written as sexual assault. We should generally name things as they are. But just having a few male relatives in the UK who sadly have been abused, they don’t want to name it. They won’t call it what it is. Most of them bury it deep down and have suffered greatly because of it.
I think calling it something like this, an “unwanted experience” makes men more open to talking about it and accessing that counselling. If they only said “free counselling for rape victims”, many men wouldn’t take it up because they don’t consider themselves rape victims, or don’t want to come to terms with it just yet.
It’s probably based on the wording used in surveys. The number of people who will say they’ve had an “unwanted sexual experience” is quite different to the number of people who will say they have experienced “sexual assault” or even “sexual harassment”. Surveying people using one term then reporting it as the other is misleading and unfair to those surveyed.
Hey man, this is an ad for guys that might not want to call what they’ve been through “assault” because that’s a difficult word to confront. There being a service and it being advertised, specifically in this way, is good.
Edit: I get being upset at not calling assault assault, especially when it comes to men where such things are often minimised, but there’s a good reason that they’ve done that here.
There might be a lot more to this than apparently not being straight-talking.
As I understand it, it is literally, legally almost impossible for a woman to be convicted of raping a man. The only circumstance in which this is legally possible is if a man is raping a man, and the woman is an accomplice. ***If*** this is the case then the wording may well be very considered and deliberate to take account of that fact.
There is a recent [Chris Williamson podcast with George TheTinMen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GttH7hScu4g) which goes into this and many related issues, mainly around male mental health.
In fact, from the conversation, I wonder if George had some significant role in this campaign (if it is a campaign).
Perhaps the legal system can be blamed for this. In UK law, a woman cannot legally be a rapist because of how rape is actually defined. I’m sure there’s a campaign to change the definition somewhere out there but I can’t find it rn
Gays randomly grabbing your cock in a bar cos your in a gay bar assuming your gay and don’t mind being groped they don’t like it when you object like I shouldn’t be there. That’s not on. If I was to grab a girls arse all hell breaks loose.