I support all survivors of sexual assault. I aim to help eliminate the rape culture society that we currently all experience. That being said, I think we have a lot of work to do in ridding our society of shaming survivors and not holding perpetrators of sexual assault accountable.
Nationwide college campuses have been the scene of many protests against rape culture. Multiple happening on campus at the University of Minnesota. Rape culture is the normalization of sexual violence, which also often includes blaming the victim. We currently live in a society infested with rape culture attributes with sexual violence occurring approximately every 98 seconds in America.
I hope that someday we will live in a society where we support survivors of sexual violence and hold the perpetrators accountable for what they did. Across many college campuses, there has been a lot of support for survivors of sexual abuse, but generally speaking, that support has been directed at survivors of sexual abuse that are women.
The pictures below detail part of the problem:
In the fight to eliminate Rape Culture, survivors of sexual assault that are men are a lot less visibly supported. All too often when I have attended protests to end rape culture or when I hear people talking about ending rape culture, they over emphasize the need to stop men from raping or sexually abusing women. I totally agree, but by using such selective words you ignore a large group of people that also need support. Instead, when exclusive language such as "stop raping women" is used, we alienate all victims of rape and sexual assault who identify as male. There is no doubt that women experience rape more often than men. Out of rape survivors 9 in 10 of them are women, but what about the 10 percent of rape survivors that are men, are they to be excluded from the fight to end rape culture?
I hear all too often "Men can't be raped," and this isn't something that I only hear from people who don't see the problem with rape culture, but also from people who want to get rid of the rape culture that we live in. The definition of rape does not define what gender anyone in the act must be, it simply defines it as the unlawful sexual intercourse by one person to another whom has not consented. If a man is forced by another man or a woman to have sexual intercourse that he doesn't want, that is by definition rape. If a woman is forced by another woman or man to have sexual intercourse that she doesn't want, that is by definition rape. If any human being is forced by another to have sexual intercourse by any other human being that they don't want, that is by definition rape.
By only explicitly talking about and focusing on women survivors, we ignore, erase, and invalidate male survivors. These male survivors could be huge allies to help combat rape culture. In order to fully dismantle rape culture, we have to be fighting for all survivors regardless of gender. Erasing male survivors is alienating allies.
Just as men can be affected by the patriarchy, men can be affected by rape culture, too. By overemphasizing women as survivors, survivors who are men are alienated.
Help to combat rape culture without erasing male survivors!
