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On the 25th of July 2019 the BBC published an article by Katie Silver “Forced Penetration: If a woman forces a man to have sex is that rape?”. For many of us sane folk the obvious answer is YES on the presumption that sex with out consent is rape, regardless of the gender of the victim or the attacker. However, besides dispelling the myth that men can’t be raped by women the point of the article is that in UK law men can’t be recognised as rape victims. When I saw it I wanted to do something so the first thing I did was to check and see if there was a petition set up that I could sign which I did. Then I went through the comments people had posted on twitter and responded letting them know that there was something that they could do to help support victims and get the law changed. There were people commenting and talking and coming forward about their experiences of rape I was even contacted by the person who set up the petition and thanked for my efforts in promoting their petition.

However, despite the tweets having literally tens of thousands of views my efforts generated I estimate about 1,000 extra signatures, it was closed early due to the general election and achieved only 1,717 signatures. To be considered for debate in parliament 100,000 are needed however to get a formal response from the government only 10,000 are needed. Please please please sign similar petitions if you can and share them or this article and encourage others to do so.

Below I’ve an extract from a video posted about the experiences of the person who set up this petition (with their permission), how they have struggled since to be acknowledged & be heard, so you can see what it means to them and people who’ve faced similar situations.

My Experience As A Male Rape Victim

About 8 years ago when I was 18 I was walking home from an ex’s house after having a small argument with her. It was about half one in the morning so I didn’t expect to see anyone out and old “fiend” of my ex as out seemingly looking for me. When she found me she started a conversation by asking why I wasn’t home etc. normal friend chat. I explained why so she invited me round her’s to discuss it being a mutual friend, I went because all mine were out with their partners or spending time at home and I needed someone to talk to. We went to her’s, started talking and having a few beers as you do at 18. The next thing I know is she came back from the kitchen and I end up with a knife held so tightly to my neck that it drew blood. [I’ll spare you what happened next because I think you can probably guess what happened] – is there anything you are comfortable discussing about what happened, even in general terms, that might help the audience understand the seriousness of such a crime or how it is carried out – similar to the myth busting sections in the bbc article. After about 10 hours she finally stopped, I left as fast as I could and that was that. Fast forward 6 months, I’ve not heard from her and me and my ex have broken up. I start to think about what happened, I started doing some research in to it and I saw that a feminist group in my area were holding a small talk for survivors of rape. I went along but I was asked to leave because it was a place for rape survivors, I said that I was one, only to be told that men can’t be raped by women, some even said that men couldn’t be raped in general. To me that sounded ridiculous, but I left, went home and started looking in to it and low and behold under UK law, they were right. (How did it make you feel?) I couldn’t believe it, how could they (they who, the government/legal system?) dismiss me and men like me so easily, we have no where to turn, no shelters, no victim meetings, hell, I barely knew anyone who could understand what I went through. About a year later I saw her again, and that in turn brought back the memories. It destroyed me, it sent me in to a spiral of depression, I tried to commit suicide but failed many times, but there was still no help for people like me. That’s when I started noticing these people called men’s rights activists popping up, some with stories similar to mine. I started talking to a few and a couple managed to convince me to report it, just in case. So I did, I went to my nearest station only to be told that what I went through wasn’t rape, in fact they couldn’t tell me what it was because it didn’t even fit the definition of the nearest sexual crime it could be which was sexual assault with an object….

Final Notes

Unfortunately, I put this blog to one side, by the time I came back to it the video had been removed from YouTube (But I captured the main parts) and the victims twitter account suspended. I don’t know why this happened, however, I had a chance to watch some of his other videos and read his tweets prior to this. He was engaged in a lot anti-feminist conversations as well as producing videos aimed at criticising feminists and people in the LGBTQ community which made me feel uneasy. However non of that, as much as I disliked it, makes this person any less of a victim, or means that they shouldn’t be believed because all victims should be believed. I wanted to talk to him more about his experience and ask him about whether he felt it affected his current views. i.e. was the reason for his attacks on feminism a direct result of his experience of being turned away by the group mentioned in his video? Was this him lashing out at the people that he felt should have been there to help him? I am now unable to verify these accounts as I don’t have contact with him, but there are plenty, such as those covered by the BBC & by others, which are. As someone who cares a lot about equality, I feel it is important for us all to push to have the law changed, so that rape is recognised as rape, regardless of the gender of the attacker or victim. We need to do more to ensure help and support reaches even more survivors. There are so many fantastic groups out there such as Rape Crisis and Manchester Survivors, to name a couple, who need our support, not just financially, but also petitioning MPs directly or via petition.parliament.uk (when the website if working again) to help change the law to give more protection to victims, all victims, everyone has the right to justice x

Additional

I am concerned that this blog has the potential to be hi-jacked by people with anti-feminist views, because of the experience of the victim. I want to make it stunningly clear, this is not that. Feminism didn’t cause his rape. It’s clear from what the victims says that he was likely turned away due to a lack of understanding and education. When the BBC posted the article on twitter there were thousands of comments, and a lot were people saying that men can’t be raped for various reasons like, if they are sacred, they can’t get aroused, which is a myth. Nor did feminism cause the disparity in the law. This is about a lack of awareness and understanding of this kind of rape in order to encourage people to come together to change the law so that male victims of female rapists have access to justice. Please, be human kind x