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‘Oh you're a guy, how could you be raped by a woman, that makes no sense’: towards a case for legally recognising and labelling ‘forced-to-penetrate’ cases as rape

SamaelET

December 30, 2022

36 upvotes

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-law-in-context/article/oh-youre-a-guy-how-could-you-be-raped-by-a-woman-that-makes-no-sense-towards-a-case-for-legally-recognising-and-labelling-forcedtopenetrate-cases-as-rape/8166CABA33BBE64EBBAD384E1FE13551

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Title	‘Oh you're a guy, how could you be raped by a woman, that makes no sense’: towards a case for legally recognising and labelling ‘forced-to-penetrate’ cases as rape
Author	SamaelET
Upvotes	36
Comments	4
Date	December 30, 2022 4:37 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Male_Studies
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Male_Studies/comments/zz4x5f/oh_youre_a_guy_how_could_you_be_raped_by_a_woman/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Male_Studies/oh-youre-a-guy-how-could-you-be-raped-by-a-woman.1215637 https://theredarchive.com/post/1215637

Comments

[–]SamaelET[S] 4 points5 points6 points 3 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

Analysing the experiences of male forced-to-penetrate victims highlights how coercion takes multiple forms. At its most extreme, the coercion for these men included threats by the female perpetratorto kill herself : I was 17 and dating a much older woman ... I went to her apartment to break up with her and she said that if I did she would kill herself.

Blackmail was also reported by several male victims [...] 'A teacher in high school found out I slept with a different teacher. She threatened to expose the situation if I didn't sleep with her'

More general forms of verbal pressure, typically from girlfriends, were also documented on multiple occasions within the experiences analysed. This verbal pressure was often combined with the use of another aggressive strategy, such as intoxication of the victim or the use of physical violence by the female perpetrator

Intoxication played a significant role in many of the experiences analysed, with multiple men reporting intoxication as a result of alcohol and/or drugs in their forced-to-penetrate experiences. Many men reported being so heavily intoxicated that they were unable to consent to sexual intercourse or to resist the actions of the female aggressor. In many cases, the men themselves became drunk or were drinking with others, such as at a bar or a party, before the incident occurred. In such cases, the female perpetrator appeared to 'take advantage' of their intoxication to ensure a lack of resistance.

The experiences of other men document women actively participating in their intoxication, suggesting that the perpetrators intentionally got them drunk before having sexual intercourse with them.

The use of physical violence or restraint has consistently been documented as the least common aggressive strategy in cases of female-perpetrated sexual violence. Research has put the prevalence of this aggressive strategy as occurring in somewhere between 2 and i0 per cent of cases. [...] The use of weapons was also documented in a minority of cases. One man described how he was threatened with a gun as a child before being forced to orally penetrate his female babysitter [...] Another man was threatened with a knife whilst being sexually violated multiple times by multiple women over a twenty-four-hour period.

[–]SamaelET[S] 3 points4 points5 points 3 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

The possibility of pregnancy has long been recognised as a particular physical harm potentially arising from non-consensual penile-vaginal penetration for female rape victims. Indeed, in 1984, the Criminal Law Revision Committee 'sought to distinguish penile-vaginal intercourse from other forms of penetration on the ground that penile-vaginal rape risks pregnancy' (Rumney, 2007, p. 483). However, such a view faced fierce criticism, with academics such as Temkin (2002, p. 61) arguing that all women, including infertile, menopausal and sterilised women, were protected by the law of rape, and therefore the risk of pregnancy could not be viewed in such a narrow way. The inclusion of oral and anal penetration within the existing legal definition of rape, and more readily available protections from pregnancy such as contraception, the 'morning after pill' and abortion, reflect the fact that the risk of pregnancy is no longer central to understandings of rape. Thus, this arguably cannot be used to justify the exclusion of forced-to-penetrate cases from being legally recognised and labelled as rape. Although there is no risk of pregnancy as a physical harm occurring to the victim in forced-to-penetrate cases as in cases of female rape, there is however a risk of the female perpetrator becoming pregnant as a result of compelling the male victim to have vaginal intercourse with her.

In the experiences analysed, nearly all of the male forced-to-penetrate victims reported experiencing emotional and psychological trauma similar to that acknowledged as being experienced by rape victims. This included fear, anxiety and distress, as well as changes in their behaviours towards, and relationships with, women.

As such, in their experiences, some of the men explicitly documented that they did not report their experience to the police or indeed to anyone else for fear of stigmatisation and disbelief [...] Others noted how, when they did disclose what had happened to them, they were not taken seriously: 'I felt powerless and ashamed. I told some people but they kind of laughed it off. I think if gender roles were reversed it would've been taken more seriously'

Another emotional trauma highlighted in the experiences was the experiencing of uncontrollable sexual arousal, which actually allowed the men to be compelled to penetrate the female perpetrator. Research on male sexual arousal has highlighted that men can experience erections 'in various emotional states such as fear and anger ... and [thus it] is not necessarily indicative of pleasure or consent'

Despite the arguable strength of arguments to recognise and thus label forced-to-penetrate cases as rape within legal discourse, significant concerns have been raised, particularly by some feminist scholars (see e.g. Mooney, 2006; Novotny, 2002), around such an approach undermining the gendered nature of rape, where men make up the majority of reported perpetrators and women the majority of reported victims. The particular concern raised is typically that the incorporation of compelled penetration within the legal definition of rape would result in a gender-neutral approach being taken, which would mean that the issue of gender would no longer be central to discourse and discussions around rape.

In short, my response to such questions is 'no'. It is an unquestionable fact, based upon existingn statistics, that the majority of reported rapes are perpetrated by men against women, and it is certainly acknowledged that this is part of a larger societal discourse of women's inequality with men. Indeed, by legally recognising and labelling forced-to-penetrate cases as rape, and thus women as rapists, there is no suggestion that women would become the main perpetrators of rape, nor that men would be more likely to experience sexual violence than women. There is also no suggestion that discussions of gender need to cease, around who either the victims or the perpetrators of rape are. Indeed, quite the opposite. Rather, I would suggest that we need to expand our existing discussions in this area to recognise the possibilities of female perpetrators who victimise men.

'Perhaps our analysis has been wrong all along. Instead of gender privilege being the source of power and control for males, perhaps power and control are equal opportunity variables available to both women and men, previously hidden in the privacy of interpersonal relationships and unspoken sexual violations, and under layers of homophobia and biphobia. If so, women and men must both be targets of prevention and accountability as well as both be activists addressing hierarchical structures of dominance.' (Girshick, 2002, p. 99)

[–]SamaelET[S] 8 points9 points10 points 3 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]eldred2 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link