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The rape of men
"Often, she says, wives who discover their husbands have been raped decide to leave them... "They ask, 'If he can be raped, who is protecting me?'"...
Men aren't simply raped, they are forced to penetrate holes in banana trees that run with acidic sap, to sit with their genitals over a fire, to drag rocks tied to their penis, to give oral sex to queues of soldiers, to be penetrated with screwdrivers and sticks. Atim has now seen so many male survivors that, frequently, she can spot them the moment they sit down. "They tend to lean forward and will often sit on one buttock," she tells me. "When they cough, they grab their lower regions. At times, they will stand up and there's blood on the chair. And they often have some kind of smell."
22% of men and 30% of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence...
International aid organisations are failing male victims. Her study cites a review of 4,076 NGOs that have addressed wartime sexual violence. Only 3% of them mentioned the experience of men in their literature. "Typically," Stemple says, "as a passing reference"...
"The organisations working on sexual and gender-based violence don't talk about it," he says. "It's systematically silenced. If you're very, very lucky they'll give it a tangential mention at the end of a report. You might get five seconds of: 'Oh and men can also be the victims of sexual violence.' But there's no data, no discussion...
There's a fear among them that this is a zero-sum game; that there's a pre-defined cake and if you start talking about men, you're going to somehow eat a chunk of this cake that's taken them a long time to bake"...
"I know for a fact that the people behind the report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," he says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female...
When I contact Stemple by email, she describes a "constant drum beat that women are the rape victims" and a milieu in which men are treated as a "monolithic perpetrator class".
"International human rights law leaves out men in nearly all instruments designed to address sexual violence," she continues. "The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 treats wartime sexual violence as something that only impacts on women and girls... Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced $44m to implement this resolution. Because of its entirely exclusive focus on female victims, it seems unlikely that any of these new funds will reach the thousands of men and boys who suffer from this kind of abuse. Ignoring male rape not only neglects men, it also harms women by reinforcing a viewpoint that equates 'female' with 'victim', thus hampering our ability to see women as strong and empowered. In the same way, silence about male victims reinforces unhealthy expectations about men and their supposed invulnerability""
Amusingly, one feminist complained in the comments (ignoring what was the most disturbing part of the article for me: how feminarchy is trying to silence, sideline and ignore male rape):
"Why the hostility toward feminists in some of the readers' comments? Are feminists to blame for male rape (as well as every other evil in society these days)? I doubt any feminist reading the article feels anything but revulsion with regard to the rapists (who were not feminists - just in case you were confused) and I'm quite sure all of us feel nothing but sympathy for the victims. Blame the perpetrators."
Someone pointed her to one of her previous comments:
"Really - should society allow men to comment on crimes of sexual violence?"
She "clarified" that she meant "Should society allow men to comment on crimes of sexual violence against women?", but this just exposes feminarchy even more blatantly.
A good characterisation:
"Typical conversation:
A: We must end violence against women and girls
B: I agree, but what about men and boys too
A: How dare you marginalise women and girls
B: Well, I did say too. And actually, men and boys a fair bit too
A: Yes, but it's perpetrated by other men and boys
B: What difference does that make to the victims?
A: (snarkily pretends not to understand)
I'd say that's about where we are, A?"
Another commenter points out (in response to an affirmation that "the perpetrator class *is* monolithic. In these countries, in these war situations, it *is* exclusively composed of men, acting out masculinity's obsession with the use of sex as violence and power over"):
"Women also use sex as a means of violence and power. Research conducted in the US show that 95% of male victims in juvenile detention centres are abused by women http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/mar/11/the-rape-of-american-prisoners/ and that another report highlighted that women raped in US prisons were more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted by another woman than a man"
He later adds that: "I have it on very good and high authority that when some UK Rape Crisis centres began to accept and help male rape victims they received death threats and even threats of having their offices fire bombed. Apparently these threats came from volunteers at other rape crisis centres"
Of course there's someone accusing them of "liberal condescension, which habitually appears in their reports on developed countries", but that's another problematic matter...
Keywords: women men victims of war, international law feminist group men victims war, women innocent, war crimes, women = victims, feminists war deaths campaign