Rape Trauma Website

[queerbychoice]

I've just discovered (via chaiwala), a collection of writings by rape victims about being raped. Although I expect it does the victims good to write and read about it, I was also reading them partly to speculate about what effect these writings would have on an actual rapist. I suspect there's a certain segment of the rapist population that would probably just get off on reading them and laugh and say how silly it was for the victims to make such a fuss and get all upset over it. However, I also think there's another segment of the rapist population that doesn't think of what they've done as being rape that might really benefit from reading how badly the things they've done or might have felt free to do in the future can really hurt people. Of course, rapists are probably not highly likely to click on links like this in the first place, but I decided to try to promote the link anyway.

Also, all of the stories I saw were about females raped by males, even though I can't find anything specifically stating that they intended to limit their collection to that, and in fact their homepage addresses male rape victims also. Is it just that no males have submitted any stories to them yet? Why is that? Are there so many fewer males who've been raped than females that the collection is just still too small for any males who've been raped to have gotten around to submitting stories yet, or are males specifically deciding not to submit stories because they feel like it's supposed to be a female-only page? Personally, I'd prefer to see a collection that included all possible gender combinations, in whatever proportions rapes generally occur in.

Comments

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

Are there so many fewer males who've been raped than females that the collection is just still too small for any males who've been raped to have gotten around to submitting stories yet, or are males specifically deciding not to submit stories because they feel like it's supposed to be a female-only page?

A bit of both, I think. Men are less likely to talk about being victims of sexual violence because they consider the stigma of it somewhat worse for them. Most men are terrified of being seen as weak, as victims of any kind, much less of a crime that is usually associated with women, and then there's the whole "men don't talk about their emotions" thing. Not having much of a masculine mentality myself, the first issue is less of a problem for me, but (being hypersensitive) the second issue definitely is. Personally, I'm not comfortable discussing it at all, but I definitely feel hesitant about doing so in an environment that seems exclusive to women, because I don't want to seem like I'm intruding on their space. Plenty of female survivors of male-on-female sexual violence feel threatened by men in something that has been designated a "safe space," and I can totally respect that. So, basically, while I'd feel hesitant to post a story anyway, I'd feel ten times less confident doing so in a space that doesn't explicitly ask for input from all genders. (I didn't actually look at the site myself, though, just addressing the more general issue.)

There was another point I wanted to make here, but I've forgotten it. :/

[djm4]

Not sure if it qualifies as 'rape' (and not particularly interested in duscussing whether or not it does, since I think the details are far more important than the label), but I have a personal account here. If you're interested.

Re:

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Ack. Yes, I agree with what you said, "I think the term fits if everyone recognises that there are degrees of rape and mine was at the mild end of the spectrum." That's exactly the kind of story that I think it would be valuable to include in the collection, or at least in some collection somewhere - I don't know of any website that includes a collection of stories from males who've been raped, although certainly I've seen isolated stories and collections of one-or-two-sentence quotes. I think it could actually be more important to collect in a single place a group of stories from males who've been raped, because I think a lot of people are more hesitant to even call anything done to males "rape," and if the stories were collected in one place then it would be easier for people to see, "Look at all these other people who've experienced this, don't they deserve to have their experiences acknowledged as rape, and doesn't acknowledging mine as rape affect whether theirs are acknowledged too?"