Thoughts on victim blaming of a male survivor from the mensrights sub

iainmf · 2022-01-23T23:20:51+00:00

Something I struggle with is the tension between supporting victims and also not treating bad sexual experiences as worse than they are.

On an individual level we should support people who say they are victims.

On a societal level I think we need to recognise that people have bad and unpleasant sexual experiences that are not sexual assault. I'm concerned that we are creating trauma by encouraging people to interpret more and more things as assaults.

How we feel about something is significantly influenced by our interpretation of it. For example, I recall a TV show where in one scene a man pats a woman's bottom, thinking it was his wife. How the woman feels about it changes as she learns more. when she doesn't know who it is she feels annoyed, when she finds out it is a strange man, she feels upset, when she finds out it was an honest mistake and the man apologises, she just feels slightly embarrassed. If she saw the bottom pat as sexual assault she might have felt a great deal of distress.

So I think we have to find a balance between helping sexual assault victims and not creating distress in people by encouraging them to understand their experiences as assaults.

Cfox006 · 2022-01-23T19:17:56+00:00

I think this story has more to do with the pressures men have when it comes to going through with sex. He gave consent multiple times and highlighted that the only reason why he went through with it was because he wanted to not let her down. I.e prove he was a “real man” by having sex with her.

I’m a male survivor of rape so I take this stuff seriously. I’d consider it sexual assault if he said no multiple times. He consented. He only did it to not let her down. They didn’t force him. I don’t consider it rape.

duhhhh · 2022-01-23T18:15:31+00:00

I'm a very strong advocate for male victims of heterosexual rape. To me this sounds like a crappy sexual experience rather than rape. To me if a relationship doesn't have safewords and an agreement otherwise, no means no and yes means yes.

My fwb asks me if i’m alright. I say yeah it’s fine cause i don’t wanna disappoint her

and

I don’t know what happened, I wasn’t comfortable with the situation but I didn’t say no. I don’t know why or how, it kinda makes me feel sick talking about it. I felt and do still objectified about it. Idk why I assured my fwb that I was okay with this, I wasn’t. It didn’t feel right. I feel guilty cause she asked me, but I still said yes.

means it wasn't a sexual assault in my book. I don't believe in retroactively removing consent.

He can feel violated. He can think it was a traumatic sexual experience. He can be angry at his partners. He can't claim they sexually assaulted him when he said yes rather than no.

ExMuzzy · 2022-01-23T23:01:24+00:00

This was unwanted consensual sex.

I think people, especially men, need to learn to say no to sex they do not want. You can revoke consent during sex too. He may be traumatised which is valid but I also do not think the women involved are rapists. I would say the same had it been the other way round.

The mensrights community has always insisted that regretting sex after the act does not make it rape, so I do not think they are hypocritical in this regard.

matrixislife · 2022-01-24T04:18:47+00:00

One of the regular positions taken in the MR sub is that consent is consent. No one is required to read between the lines, if you are asked and you say yes then you have consented, assuming there's no coercion in play. That's not a position you change just because you feel like it, it either applies to everyone or it applies to no one. I would say it applies here, OP was asked several times if he was ok with it all and each time he said that he was.

This is NOT victim blaming, the question is whether there's a victim here at all. Regret following an encounter does not make you a victim, and does not mean that you have been sexually assaulted.

GaborFrame · 2022-01-24T23:16:47+00:00

I'm also sorry he had a bad sexual experience. But

Long story short I end up in bed with the three of them. Worst sex of my life.

is not assault. Unless he left out some important details, it was literally just what he said: bad sex.

politicsthrowaway230 · 2022-01-23T18:26:20+00:00

People who are truly sexually assaulted have no doubt. If someone is unsure, they almost assuredly were not assaulted. Date rape drugs and other mental impairments being an exception.

was especially revolting, considering a fuckton of men don't recognise their experiences as rape, particularly if raped by a woman.

Also "he chose to drink so has to lump the consequences of what other people do to him while drunk" (paraphrasing), seriously?

I very much hope a feminist sub doesn't latch onto this and be like "seeeeeeeee even men don't care about victims, so why should I?".

As an aside, archive.ph logs you into u/nathan131412. Is that account run by someone who runs archive.ph or? Hope it's not logging you into a random account that you can see the email of lol.

funnystor · 2022-01-23T18:00:11+00:00

They're suffering from internalized misandry.

2022-01-25T14:37:34+00:00

Finding red flags in a story isn't victim blaming. FFS.

ExMuzzy · 2022-01-23T21:06:07+00:00

[permanently deleted]

TheLWMA · 2022-01-23T17:32:02+00:00

Things like are the reason why I dislike that sub. Bear in mind that you're allowed to bad mouth women on that sub with little to no repercussions.

genkernels · 2022-01-25T14:23:55+00:00

Assuming that story isn't the gender reversal that it reads like seems a bit silly to me. As does calling anything remotely related to this a thing that a person "survived". But even if that story was to be taken unironically:

He wasn't a victim, he volunteered. And in this case that phrase counts even more than it usually does, since this isn't as far removed from the man's action as alimony usually is. The men's movement isn't masculinism. The response to shitty situations needs to be mitigating them first and bemoaning them second -- especially when the story is presented as something that merely happens to the storyteller, who in this case seems rather intent on externalizing his own actions.

Title	Thoughts on victim blaming of a male survivor from the mensrights sub
Author	tittltattl
Upvotes	49
Comments	45
Date	January 23, 2022 5:20 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/saylc1/thoughts_on_victim_blaming_of_a_male_survivor/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/thoughts-on-victim-blaming-of-a-male-survivor-from.1097983 https://theredarchive.com/post/1097983

Comments