Sexuality Happens

I posted this blog back on December 13th, 2007. However, given that it is Sexual Assault and Awareness Month, I am re-posting it, because I think it is very poignant to what is going on in our society. We always think of sexual assault as male on female, and MAYBE male on male. However, men can be sexually assaulted, both by other men AND BY WOMEN. Contrary to some legal definitions, erection DOES NOT equal consent. So as you think about preventing assault, and supporting survivors, please please please do not forget men who have been coerced, harassed and/or assaulted, for there is just as much, if not much more shame associated with being a male survivor than there is with being female. RAINN helps ALL survivors, so if you’d like to donate, please see the link at the bottom of this post.
-Essin’ Em

You know, after a conversation with friends the other night, and a talk with AAG, I’ve been thinking a lot about sexually assault, and unwanted sexual experiences from a different perspective.

I’m a survivor of sexual assault. It happened my first year of college, and while it’s not something you ever get over, I’ve done a lot of processing and work, and I’ve worked for sexual assault prevention groups, and on hotlines, and it’s not a touchy “I can’t talk about it subject.” It’s a big activist thing for me. However, it really gets me when anyone makes it a women’s issue, because it’s not, not from ANY perspective. It’s not only women that need to watch themselves, certainly the people who are doing the assaulting need to take the responsibility, but it is ALSO not only women that are the survivors (I like that term a lot better than victim) of sexual assault/violence/pressures/abuse.

I’m not minimizing AT ALL, in any way shape or form what happens to women. AT ALL. Let me state that first. It happened to me. It happens to millions of women everyday.

It needs to stop. That goes without saying, and I will work to stop sexual violence against women until my last breath.

But we also need to think about men. Men are “victims” as well. I don’t just mean men that are survivors of incest and child abuse. I don’t just mean men that are survivors of domestic violence or stranger rape (5-10%). Let’s look at our social construction of masculinity and male (esp heterosexual male) sexuality in our society.

Imagine going off to college and wanting to not be sexually active, and still wanting to be “cool” and fit in. You go to a big party, you meet some “cool” new guy “friends” and suddenly, everything about being cool and fitting in is about sex. They introduce you to an older woman, maybe a sophomore or a junior, and she is all over you. She tells you she loves to deflower freshman boys (I’ve met women in college like this; they do exist), and to fit in with that crowd, you have to “prove” your sexual prowess. By this point, you’re drunk, and you’re scared, and you just want to make friends They show you to a room upstairs, shove you inside with the hot sophomore, maybe hand you a condom if you’re lucky, and lock you in, telling you to bang on the door when you’ve “done your duty and proven yourself.” You just want to go home, to get out of there, but don’t know how to do it without physically pushing this girl off of you. You tell her no, you’re not interested, and she asks you if you’re gay. You tell her no, you’re just not ready for sex yet. She pushes you onto the bed, takes your clothes off, gives you oral, and has intercourse with you. After you come, she opens the door, tells all the guys that you’re a real man now, and you’re finally accepted.

Things like this happen allllllllll the time. If the sexes were reversed, that might VERY easily been seen as date rape, or at least sexual coercion, but here, it’s generally seen as a guy finally manning up and losing his virginity in such an AWESOME way. I see it as a form of sex assault, to be honest.

Look at the movie 40 Days and 40 Nights. At the end of it, Josh Harnett ties himself to the bed so that he won’t touch himself (to fulfill the end of his Lent deal). His ex comes in and RAPES HIM. She has sex with him completely unconsentually as he is saying no and struggling. Then, his current girlfriend comes in and rather than comfort him, or help him deal with the situation, she tells him how “disappointed in him” she is. The movie completely makes light of the fact that a male was just sexually assaulted, because clearly a guy is “always” wanting it, and therefore cannot be assaulted.

Social and peer pressures make it hard for men to ever say no, especially in settings like high school, college, offices (rumor mills, the water coolers), construction sites, etc, where groups of guys “prove themselves” as men based on sex. If they aren’t having sex, they are seen as weaker, possibly as gay, not as “real men.” If they tell a woman they are with that they don’t want to have sex, sometimes she will feel unwanted, that she has done something wrong, that he isn’t “man enough”, that he is gay, that he “can’t get it up” etc.

Again, peer pressure and social conceptions pressure many guys into having unwanted sexual experiences that they aren’t ready for and don’t want to have. Some of these sexual experience a woman has can be placed at sexual assault, but I think it is very important that we won’t completely discount men when we talk about this subject; men are struggling too from this whole Tough Guise (thank you Jackson Katz) issue, and may need support in the same way that women do, but we are so quick to categorize ALL men as villians in the area of sexual assault and violence.

Just something to think about.

Essin’ Em

Donate here to help fight against sexual assault. Tell them I linked you (Essin’ Em or my blog name) and it’s for GBBMC2008
GBBMC2008 info