MALE RAPES - A taboo discussion

Rape- I know what image will come to your mind- a female victim brutally raped by a male perpetrator- and you are not at all wrong. This is what we associate to when we hear the word rape. Just like a few decades ago, women and child rapes were denied, so is the situation with male rapes. When you first hear the word male rapes, it is often automatically attributed to a man being raped by another man or the notions of homosexuality. And true that, maximum cases which happen are homosexual cases. There is a certain stigma attached to it, and that denies you as a masculine man if you were not able to fight back or even if you were able to allow them to rape you.

And that fear of being declared as “weak” stops them to report such cases or they think others will accuse them of having permitted the rape because you know, we say, “Men always want sex.” Men even fear of calling their experiences as rape because ha society- “You can rape but you cannot be raped.”

Don’t you think that males go through the same sense of fear and mental disturbance and lose all physical control when they see this happening? Don’t you think they are victims of a crime? They did not cause it to happen- nothing they were wearing or doing caused it. Nothing about their physique made them deserve the sexual assault. The threat of violence was real equal and the fear was real.

Being asked about sexuality, sex life and whether they cheated their girlfriend is the worsening after effect of reporting the crime and that is why almost 90% of the cases go unreported. But that doesn’t mean they did not suffer trauma- mentally and physically. The secret community in the world somewhere knows that men get raped too. It is not in the mirror world or in the illusions of people who think masculine, it is real and it exists. What was he wearing? A buttoned up shirt with jeans- that made him or her do this?

Gay community and even females rape men when they want to protect relationships. Don’t you think when we call them cruel, they may also be at some point experiencing that cruelty?

I know it is girls who experience the most cases but the men who experience have had worse experiences than she rapes. The world should be horrified by people like Reynhard Sinaga who look for intoxicated men outside nightclubs, drug them to nearly death and make them a victim. In all the societies and communities that exist throughout the world, the male patriarchal society claims them as brave men , being able to protect themselves and that is how this topic is suppressed.

Can’t we actually believe this? Are they not humans? They are also victims of patriarchy who behave dominant under the pressure of society. For a moment, let us fell their pain- both of getting raped and more of concealing that rape- hiding it inside them and dying with it. Can we for a moment think that they may suffer more mental problems when they are raped and yet they do not confess? You know why? Because “ Tu toh ladka hai, brave hai, apne aap ko sambhal lega.”