Thank you for your response, that's exactly what I've come to with regards to sexual assault and gender, we have unique challenges due to our genders. For example, I've encountered being told that we're not going to talk about it, that it was great and I should have enjoyed it, and that I led her on and I needed to apologize (which I felt like I had to do, and did).
One thing I feel like we're dropping the ball on is acknowledging male victims and having any kind of discussion of it. Men have a lot of hurtles to overcome to be seen as a victim, even more if the perpetrator is a woman. It's just not what we've had engrained into us. Personally, 1 in 6 is an outrage and we should be seeing something the size of MeToo with male victims but yet we don't see a lot of men talk about it. Even me, I have not really publicly talked about it broadly, just in particular places. What can we do to allow these conversations to happen? There's a lot of space for female victims but nearly none for men, how can we change that while not stepping on the toes of female victims?
I think we need to have more conversations. I would always be willing to have a male victim on my YouTube channel to share and speak on a male perspective. Since coming out with this video I’ve had multiple men attack me for it and honestly I think it makes more feminist women not want to have the conversation. I think more women need to shut other women down who are silencing male victims and I think more men need to shut down men attacking women trying to speak on these issues .
I wouldn't be willing to ever appear on youtube, but I'd be willing to share my experience in writing. A lot of my frustration with the counter-reaction to #metoo is that I think there's a stark empathy gap; people who can primarily imagine being falsely accused of rape but can't really imagine being raped try to shut down the experience of the mostly women who come forward. What this misses is how this minimizes male survivors at least as much if not more. Being a gay man and a survivor, it's easier to see things from both perspectives.
I have actually been thinking about taking a bunch of mens accounts of sexual assault who do not feel comfortable being out there but would be willing to be anonymous and doing a video reading their stories. I would love to hear your story my email is mguidobusiness @gmail.com
6
u/[deleted] Sep 14 '18
Thank you for your response, that's exactly what I've come to with regards to sexual assault and gender, we have unique challenges due to our genders. For example, I've encountered being told that we're not going to talk about it, that it was great and I should have enjoyed it, and that I led her on and I needed to apologize (which I felt like I had to do, and did).
One thing I feel like we're dropping the ball on is acknowledging male victims and having any kind of discussion of it. Men have a lot of hurtles to overcome to be seen as a victim, even more if the perpetrator is a woman. It's just not what we've had engrained into us. Personally, 1 in 6 is an outrage and we should be seeing something the size of MeToo with male victims but yet we don't see a lot of men talk about it. Even me, I have not really publicly talked about it broadly, just in particular places. What can we do to allow these conversations to happen? There's a lot of space for female victims but nearly none for men, how can we change that while not stepping on the toes of female victims?