Warning: this opinion is about rape
Hello, tumblr. My name is Jack. I’m 17 years old. As you can tell by my name, I’m a guy. And last year, I was raped by my older male neighbor. I’d put my tumblr URL here, but I’ve received some disturbing and frankly borderline triggering messages in regards to my rape, so I’d rather not risk it. I hope you understand.
Introductions aside…
When I first went through my rape, all the supportive posts on tumblr about male rape victims was very comforting. I’m glad people acknowledged that guys could be raped and that they matter.
However…
I eventually had much more bitter feelings towards these posts when I noticed a certain trend with them: almost all of them belittled female rape victims in some way.
Just because someone is talking about girls/women getting raped doesn’t mean you need to derail it with “guys get raped too!”. As long as nobody is denying that fact, it’s unnecessary. Not every conversation about rape has to include all demographics of rape victims. There can be posts about male rape victims only, and there can also be posts about female rape victims only.
It seems like people also act like female rape victims have it soooo easy and should just shut the fuck up, because male rape victims have it harder. A lot of women in my life including my friends and my sister have been raped, and it isn’t any easier for them. They still are told they deserved it, not given the legal attention they deserve, and accused of being liars and bitter sluts. That doesn’t sound easy to me. Male rape victims deal with a unique stigma as well (as in, some people don’t even believe we can get raped, which sucks) but that doesn’t mean it’s much easier for the ladies.
And another thing, why can’t tumblr have one nice photoset or post about male rape victims without some dumbass commenting “Because they’re men, nobody will care” or “This won’t get nearly as many notes as the female version”? Uh, shut the fuck up? You’re ruining the powerful message behind the post. And also, rape isn’t a fucking contest.
This not only pisses me off because I care about women and female rape victims, but it also pisses me off because I get the impression these people don’t actually give a shit about male rape victims at all. They only seem to use us as a prop in arguments to derail discussions of feminism, female victims, etc. by using a vulnerable group who has been through a horrible trauma. How sick is that?
While it’s important to spread awareness of other types of rapes besides male on female, there’s way to do so without derailing or talking over other victims.
So, as a tl;dr to this opinion: if the only time you talk about male rape victims is in some way to downplay or belittle women getting raped, then fuck you. You are a piece of shit, nothing more.
We deserve to be mentioned in our own posts rather than in derailment, and women who have been deserve a chance to talk about their experience without someone derailing saying men can get raped too when nobody was denying that fact. Fuck. You.
