Not just women, but men, are often the victims of the patriarchy

[AZ Progressive]

All you women here, at least the feminist movement has given you rights, awareness, and at least advocacy. Males that are victims usually have much less if any advocacy.

Take for instance the first issue: Male rape victims

Men are raped just as much as women, but men get much less sympathy if any attention compared to women.

"More men are raped in the U.S. than woman, according to figures that include sexual abuse in prisons.
In 2008, it was estimated 216,000 inmates were sexually assaulted while serving time, according to the Department of Justice figures.
That is compared to 90,479 rape cases outside of prison."

"According to official statistics on rape conviction rates, the U.S. Bureau of Justice said 91 per cent of the victims were women and 99 per cent of the perpetrators were men.
Just 9 per cent of accusations made by men resulted in a conviction."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2449454/More-men-raped-US-women-including-prison-sexual-abuse.html#ixzz3MVk1nKmC
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And this doesn't include outside of prisons:

"Data hasn’t been calculated under the new FBI definition yet, but Stemple parses several other national surveys in her new paper, “The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions,” co-written with Ilan Meyer and published in the April 17 edition of the American Journal of Public Health. One of those surveys is the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, for which the Centers for Disease Control invented a category of sexual violence called “being made to penetrate.” This definition includes victims who were forced to penetrate someone else with their own body parts, either by physical force or coercion, or when the victim was drunk or high or otherwise unable to consent. When those cases were taken into account, the rates of nonconsensual sexual contact basically equalized, with 1.270 million women and 1.267 million men claiming to be victims of sexual violence."
- http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html

There's no one out there advocating for male rape victims, thus its not taken seriously. Not to mention the "boys club" insider atmosphere with the male gender that guys are much less likely to tell on other guys. Thus, a male rape victim is going to get much less help than a female rape victim, and is much more likely to be on his own in dealing with the trauma of rape than a woman.

Which leads to the next thing:


Society is much less sympathetic and caring to men

Women can much more freely talk about personal things, but men, no. Women can cry and get sympathetic people all around her, but a man? No. Men are forced by society to hold it all in, because they are reminded by society since little that it will not be sympathetic if they are in trouble, thus a male is burned with coldness on the inside since young. Men get much or all of the credit with success but get much or all of the blame in failure. If men are victims, it is their fault, with less chance of getting help than women. The alpha males at the top of society are emotionally brutal to all of the males below.

Norah Vincent, a lesbian woman who spent a year living as a guy (and wrote the book: "Self Made Man", gives a lot of insight from a woman's point of view.

She says here:

Again, Vincent saw the men struggle with vulnerability. "They don't get to show the weakness, they don't get to show the affection, especially with each other. And so often all their emotions are shown in rage," she said.

"Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have, but they don't have it better," she said. "They need our sympathy. They need our love, and maybe they need each other more than anything else. They need to be together."
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Entertainment/story?id=1526982&page=3

And excerpts from her book from goodreads.com:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/16532.Norah_Vincent

“Dating women was the hardest thing I had to to as Ned, even when the women liked me and I liked them. I have never felt more vulnerable to total strangers, never more socially defenseless than in my clanking suit of borrowed armor.
But then, I guess maybe that's one of the secrets of manhood that no man tells if he can help it. Every man's armor is borrowed and ten sizes too big, and beneath it, he's naked and insecure and hoping you won't see.”

Men have to always put up this image of confidence, of calmness and assuredness, and if a man doesn't then he's basically committing heresy, violating his own right to even nominal respect (at least a straight man, gay men get more leeway nowadays.) And it's not just other men but women as well, who most often are attracted to confidence, and that means men who are able to best put up that front, and men that don't, may have a sympathetic girlfriend, but eventually she will get pissed off if the guy is not masculine enough for her desire. Men, especially straight men, are heavily punished for not conforming to masculine ideals, and hardly anyone out there is sympathetic to them.

This article from salon:

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/14/5_stupid_sexist_things_expected_of_men_partner/

"Because for men, nothing at all can be based on emotion. Generic sexual desire, and the desire to punch someone’s lights out, are pretty much the only emotions men are supposed to experience. And if they have the gall (or the lack of self-control) to experience their emotions, they bloody well better not let on about it.

This one is so common, it’s almost ubiquitous. At least half the men I talked to made a point about it… and a bunch of the ones who didn’t mention it explicitly alluded to it in other ways. David B. says he learned that men are supposed to be “reserved emotionally. Apparently men are only supposed to be passionate about sex, cars, sports and beer. And even then, passionate is not the ‘appropriate’ way for a man to describe his feeling about something.”

David M. got the same memo: “No whining, no complaining, and no crying.” Michael T., got it, too: “To be a man you must be non emotional and disconnected.” And the other Michael: “Have no emotional intelligence / don’t show too many emotions.” Andrew says he learned that a man “is supposed to be hard as nails and is to show no emotion.” Jason learned that being a man means “not showing emotion, being ‘tough’ so to speak — and that one is from peers, family and all of the above.” Dean points out “the usual messages about big boys don’t cry (yes, we do) and how a real man doesn’t complain (yes, they do).” Scott also points to “the boys-don’t-cry mantra.” Ben T. says, “I hate the fact that men can’t be scared of anything.” James says he learned to appear emotionless so effectively that “I did not shed a single tear when my dad died during heart surgery.” And Georges points out, “It always amazed me how brave I had to be to allow my feelings to show.”

And if a guy is not good looking and/or masculine and charming and/or smart and good in making money, and including if short, he's f***ed in terms of ability to get a woman and no one will have sympathy with him on that, except maybe porn toy manufacturers. At least women have other women to talk and confide with, and often women can deal with being alone. Men much less often have friends that they can confide with.

And once again, there's hardly anyone advocating for men in this because if men do so, it will be seen as a mark against one's own image.


Number 3 is gender freedom. This is pretty easy to recognize: thanks to the feminist movement, women have freedom expressing their masculine sides. While there is still disdain and perhaps social pressure against, its still relatively light compared to men. At least in the western united states, I've often seen butch lesbian women working in places. How many cross dressing men have you seen working in places? Even the way that gender transitioning transgender women are treated is light compared to straight men that dare be feminine. Maybe someone like Dennis Rodman, who has already proven his manhood, is given more leeway in cross dressing, but not so to other guys. It's probably also in part due to anti-gay hysteria (which in part could be a means of making men to conform to rigid social standards.) So thus in combination with men not being able to express emotion compared to women, men also have to hide their feminine side except maybe some parts (like being caring and nurturing) if they are with women (and many are often not), and even then, say, a significant other, often will get pissed off like in the last one, if the guy is not masculine enough for her needs. And there's not going to be any advocacy in this part, for obvious reasons. Look at all the ridicule of the "metrosexual" and that IMO was hardly feminine.


Number 4 is competition. While there is competition within women (especially when it comes to dating and protecting ones's partner, among other examples), competition is more a way of life for men than women. Everything is seemingly a competition, including things as small as intense debates that break out from small discussions. Men continually have to maintain their masculine image, and that includes winning in competitions and challenges. Much of male social activities eventually decide the pecking order, and it is pretty harsh to be on the lower end of the pecking order in any group. Passive males are much more punished than passive females.


So thus, there's always the pressure to succeed and win, or to not stand down and protect turf, even in small group competitions. You always have your image being challenged, and I'd bet for many that's continual anxiety. Hardly anything, especially among western straight men, can be seen outside the context of competition. You can't just do something and expect that your image will not be modified based on the outcome. I would bet that women are significantly more egalitarian in general, especially women that aren't the highly ambitious career women (who, studies show, tend to have long ring fingers compared to their index finger, vs nearly equal length for most women) and also that women do more activities that are not competitive.

This is also probably why men feel threatened by a dominant woman, along with the chauvinism that goes on within the male gender, it is thus seen as an embarrassment and a mark against a male's image if he allows a woman to dominate or beat him.

And of course, when it comes to competition, no one cares about this, because it's seen as men's nature to be competitive.


I will say this, that perhaps much like poor white southerners who never get help because of their racism and denial of being a victim, males are still stuck with their male chauvinism while being hurt by their own gender. However, male chauvinism from my own experience is pretty much burned into the head of males since little as part of the "being a member of the male gender club" and is done so through things like "you throw like a girl" and other sayings that instill the idea that females are inferior. I don't think it is guys fault for that, its the male society instilling it in the new members of the club, and the chain reaction continues with each new generation.

But all you women here should appreciate what you have that men don't, and that male privilege can often also be a curse.

[chervilant]

1. Feminists have long pointed out these

issues, and the fact that patriarchy is damaging to all.

[thucythucy]

4. To say "there's no one out there advocating" for male rape survivors is not true.

The rape crisis center at which I volunteered for a decade absolutely worked with male survivors, and advocated for them when requested. Other rape crisis centers with which I'm familiar have been doing so as well. In fact, feminists have been at the fore-front of advocating for men who are raped, have been for decades now.

What recognition there is of the issue is largely because of the pioneering work of feminists. Susan Brownmiller, in "Against Our Will" spent a significant number of pages talking about prison rape, and how it's used by the authorities to control prisoners and torture those they see as a threat--for instance, antiwar activists in the '60s. This was a groundbreaking work published back in the 1970s, one of the first times, if not THE first time, the issue of male rape was discussed in anything like a political/social justice context.

All the materials I was trained with to work with male survivors were written or at least co-written by women--mainly because most men back then saw rape as "a woman's issue." It isn't feminists who have been holding male survivors back--it's the patriarchy, specifically, most often, other men. And it should be noted here that when men are raped, it's most often by other men.

The whole stop rape movement was started by women volunteers who got tired of waiting for society to change of itself. The first rape crisis centers were founded by women volunteers, using their own resources, to set up hotlines and safe house/counseling centers. This was because the courts, the police, the medical professions--all of which were dominated by men--refused to take rape seriously. To a great extent, they still don't--witness the tens of thousands of rape kits rotting in police warehouses.

Feminists get it. They've known how the patriarchy, and specifically sexual violence, impacts men as well as women, boys as well as girls, for decades now. They absolutely take male rape seriously. In fact, generally speaking, when someone makes a prison rape "joke" on this discussion board, it's often the feminists here who protest. So in that sense, addressing your complaints about male rape not being taken seriously to feminists is preaching to the choir.

It's your fellow men who need to be educated. That's where your efforts might be better spent.

Good luck and best wishes.