I had someone tell me of their abuse for the first time today but they weren't the first person. The way that abuse resonates through a person's life is in ways unique to that individual but if you hear enough stories from enough abused people you begin to see patterns. It's those patterns that distinguish one form of abuse from another. Victims of physical violence most certainly are traumatized but sexual violence has a way of changing our lives that those who don't experience it have trouble understanding. For all our conflicts with feminism and it's premises we ought not fail to understand the substantial impact of this sort of violence on peoples lives. In legal terms I'd rather not privilege one set of victims above others but practically speaking they are very different issues. There is such a thing as a greater violation or offense against a person and sexual offenses tend to resonate like no other.

Feminists have done a great deal of work in this area. They've expanded awareness and made a non issue into an issue. Let's pay them due respect for their contribution to the society. That said the same compassion they taught us to extend towards women must be extended to men and that's where the conflict emerges.

Male victimization across the board is regarded in a way not much different from how we regard those who have survived combat. The whole concept of male disposablity is at once revolutionary and mundane in that we've internalized that status to the point of not feeling for men in general. When someone insists we regard male suffering in the same way as we do women we revolt against the radical shift in perception whose implications we'd find abhorrent in their own right. That's not good enough.

Elevating the victim status of males to the level of females means we have to care as deeply about male victims as we do female victims. That's hard for men to do when they've spent their whole life operating by these double standards. It's also hard for women to do when they've spent their whole life doing the same. If we want to actually change hearts and not just minds we have to practice what we preach.

What is our approach to dealing with male/female victims of sexual violence whom choose to voice their concerns here? Do we simply choose to have at it or do we employ the vast body of knowledge feminists have already created to meet this challenge?

Being anti-feminists should not amount to being against the healing support mechanisms feminists have discovered after decades of advocacy work. We should learn from them so we can help men in the same way they help women. There is more to this than simply being against a faulty ideology that excludes our gender from the vast pool of people in pain. Just as slaves learned to find good in the very religion of their slave masters we can find good in the ethics of feminists scholars who took the time to analyze the dynamics of victimization and the implications through a persons life. We need to step up our game so that we can serve the very people whom we hope to help and the path to that has already been laid down by the very people we are in conflict with.

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Feminists have a lot to teach us and if we foolishly disregard those lessons we'll end up hurting the very people we are trying to help.

Men's rights ought achieve feminism idealistic goals of attending to the needs of both sexes as a model for society going forward. Having seen the ills of one sided advocacy we ought not fall into the same trap. Victims are victims. We should seek to help them all and leave bias to those whose bigotry has blinded them to the pain of others outside the purview of their cause. We may think we speak for half of humanity but in fact like feminism we speak for them all. The interrelated narratives of the sexes does not permit one or the other suffer or prosper without substantial impact on the other.

Let us follow the lead of organisations like SAVE. Stopping abusive and violent environments across the board ought be our goal and with an established organization like that on our side we should be doing all we can to elevate it's principals throughout the movement.

Let none suffer. Let none be ignored. Let's end the pain.