Published today, the Stern Review sets a new benchmark in discussions of rape and sexual assault by referring to victims in gender neutral terms. Male rape was only recognised by English and Welsh law in 1994 and as a result there is little statistical history, with what there is varying wildly. According to the Stern Review, the victim is male in around 8% of all recorded rape cases. The unrecorded figure is thought to be far higher. UK charity Mankind suggests that three in twenty men are victims of sexual violence – a figure that corresponds with statistics in the States. Neither takes into account instances of rape within prisons – to which there is a collective state of denial in the UK, relative to the US.
Rape and sexual assault are seen as women’s issues – the victims are female, the perpetrators male. But it is no longer acceptable to pretend, as some do, that rape and sexual assault are only committed by men against women. The proportion of men who go onto report sexual assault is extremely low and the number of victims greater than government or media coverage would suggest. Male rape victims face an enormous amount of social prejudice in coming forward. One organisation working with male victims told the Stern Review, ‘very few men will access the police to report a rape, they don’t want to feel less of a man, don’t want to be regarded as gay.’
The problem of reporting is a serious one. The British Crime Survey 2001/2 reported that whilst 4.2% of women and 4.2% of men said they had been victims of domestic violence in the past year, only 19% of men went onto report it compared with 81% of women. Last year ChildLine reported that having ‘specifically targeted boys, hoping to reassure them that it was not a sign of weakness to ask for help’ they had seen a 196% increase in those who reported sexual abuse since 1991/2. It would seem that with the stigma removed male victims come forward.
Sexual discrimination often stems from assumptions about gender; for example, that men are strong and able to cope while women are weak and vulnerable. Feminism has done much to challenge this gender essentialist view. However, both men and women can still be persecuted for not conforming to gender stereotypes. Not only does society’s persistence in equating ‘feminine’ with ‘inferior’ result in continuing discrimination against women, it also results in discrimination against men perceived to have transgressed masculine norms. An extreme example of this is homophobia. A recent study by Stonewall showed that boys who act ‘like girls’ are the second most affected group by homophobic language within schools – above those pupils who are openly lesbian, gay or bisexual. Similarly, the homophobic obsession with anal sex arguably has less to do with the act itself – increasingly acceptable in heterosexual discourse – than the perception that a man is denigrating himself by taking on what is perceived to be the passive, feminine role.
These are the prejudices that victims of male-male rape face. However, whilst the Stern Review is gender neutral in its discussion of victims it remains committed to the view that the perpetrators are uniquely male. The report acknowledges the important role the law plays in shaping public opinion, citing polls that ‘show that the majority of people have a view of who is to blame for rape that is in line with the definition of rape found in the law.’ This would suggest that the existing law, which always views the man as the agent in sex, makes it almost inconceivable for a man to report sexual assault by a woman. Yet it does happen and denying it not only discriminates against those victims of female-male rape but also maintains a masculine discourse in which ‘real men’ are the agents and never victims. Furthermore, by always portraying the man as the agent and denying that men can also be anxious, passive or vulnerable, society prescribes a masculine behaviour that is distinctly aggressive. We dictate how men behave in one breath, while asking them to control themselves in the next.
Recent high profile cases, like those of Vanessa George and Madeleine Martin, force us to confront the gender essentialism that suggests sexual violence is a male preserve. The kind of commentary given here by Barbara Ellen demonizes men whilst covertly reinforcing traditional gender assumptions that assign a nurturing nature and passive sexuality to women and an aggressive nature and sexuality to men. What’s more, it compounds the sexual discrimination faced by male victims, describing victims of sexual assault in almost solely female terms and depicting male victims as an emasculated minority.
Feminism has done much to enable these conversations through the dismantling of gender. Society needs to take heed and challenge those gender essentialists, including some feminists, who erect further binaries. Being a victim of sexual assault is not determined by gender and in saying so gender essentialism fails both men and women. It dictates the terms of the debate, it tells us how to be. Only by doing away with it all together can feminism achieve its objectives of gender and sexual equality for all.