I saw a comment on a q4men post here, the commentor talked about his experience getting raped by a woman and how people saw him as “less manly” because of that.

I’ve been thinking about rape and gender roles a lot lately, so here’s my take.

I was raped as a toddler by my babysitter (I’m a woman and she was too), even though I was 3 years old I remember all of it, I never told anyone until last year when I was talking to a friend and the topic popped up.

She somehow understood what I went through but told me that “at least it wasn’t a man”

As simple as a comment that can be, it made me relive my trauma, and I desperately started googling about woman on girl rape, and most of the pages I found talked about how those are rare incidents and queer women should not be regarded as rapists since that’s a minority.

I am bisexual, I have experienced homophobia before, I’ve also experienced people trying to justify me liking women with me being raped by my babysitter, and of course I know queer women who rape children are a rare minority, but the problem goes far beyond.

Men are typically regarded as the “strong ones” who can dominate women, they’re called potential rapists online by extremists.

This is extremely sexist behavior, you’re not only making men more likely to be sentenced for something they didn’t commit, but you’re also ignoring the thousands of victims who have been raped by women.

Sexism isn’t just one sided, institutionalized gender roles affect everyone. I’ve seen people on here saying women have privileges over men, which is not true.

As I said, men are always the “strong ones” and the “potential aggressors”, while women are the “weak ones” and the “victims” and you probably get my point.

Because of this people think women should be protected as if we were children, which just gives us less autonomy and this sexist way of raising kids affect us as adults. We’re raised to be the victims, and to go for careers that will make us victims, the underpaid caregiver is a frail woman who was told as a kid she should have a career but make time for her kids.

So this aggressor/victim or strong/weak dynamic we have in our western society tells men their mental health is not important, or that they have to be the primary provider on their household, that’s why even though typically masculine careers pay more, men work the most unpaid extra hours. They’re the aggressors, the ones who don’t have to care about themselves because they know they’re stronger and can hold everything on their backs.

SO BACK TO RAPE BECAUSE THIS WAS HORRIBLY LONG, the aggressor/victim dynamic dismisses men who’ve survived rape as they always have to be the strong aggressor, and ignores women who committed rape because the weak victim profile just doesn’t fit with the sex offender one.

Edit: thanks for the people reassuring me about my experience, I’m actually really good now, I’ve got the closure I needed and that’s also why I even posted this, 8 months ago it would’ve triggered me just reading something like this