On Being Raped by R.M. Douglas

Author:R.M. Douglas [Douglas, Raymond M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5095-8
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2016-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

Rape is a gendered crime, but not in the sense in which that term is conventionally used. There’s no disputing that it is perpetrated against particular kinds of human bodies, and minds that have been shaped by the experience of living in those bodies. As a man, my rape did not expose me to some of the consequences I would have faced had I been a woman, including but by no means limited to the risk of pregnancy. As a heterosexual, my later experiences of sexual intimacy do not resemble the events of that night to anything like the same degree that they would if I had been gay. Any number of similar examples could be cited.

I’d be the last person in the world to claim that gender makes no difference. Obviously it did to me, and in ways that did not always serve to mitigate or reduce the painfulness of the experience. To be a man who has been raped gives rise to unique problems, though not all men will encounter them in the same forms or process them in the same way. The range of normal male responses to sexual victimization, like female ones, is very wide indeed.

The first problem, of course, is establishing that he has been raped at all. Women are already very familiar with that dilemma, and to escape it must satisfy a rigorous set of criteria. To qualify as having experienced a “true rape” (or what Whoopi Goldberg charmingly describes as “rape-rape”), a woman must have been attacked (i) by a stranger; (ii) in a well-trafficked, public place; (iii) while decorously dressed; (iv) without having consumed alcohol or other mood-altering substances; (v) after physically as well as verbally resisting (bonus points for torn clothing and photogenic injuries); and (vi) in such a manner as will enable her to provide an accurate and prompt description of the assailant to the police.

In their way, the requirements for the male victim are no less stringent. He must be attacked by several assailants, not just one, for to permit himself to be overpowered by a single attacker represents culpable failure on his part and itself goes a long way to explain, if not actually to justify, his assault. Not only must he physically resist, but he must continue to do so until beaten to the point of insensibility or death. The forms of his rape must not require any activity on his part (e.g., manual or oral stimulation of his attackers) that might give rise to awkward questions about the unwillingness of his participation. He must not be in prison unless, like the hero of The Shawshank Redemption, he is able to establish definitively his innocence of any crime. He must be heterosexual, but must also not display any involuntary physiological response to the attack: neither erection nor, above all, ejaculation. Afterward, he must personally assume responsibility for visiting an equivalent level of nonsexual violence upon his attackers, without involving or even notifying the authorities of the original crime.

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