Bryan Proffitt from XY online- highlights the latest rape myth that “innocent men have their lives ruined” because of women’s vindictiveness. He goes onto say that in reality it is the women and girl survivors who have their lives changed beyond belief and are expected to deal with PTSD and other issues relating to the belief that being male entitles men/boys to sexually abuse females because they are not human – just expendable objects.
The following essay is about the ongoing struggle against sexual violence, especially in the context of the last year’s events in Durham, NC. Readers should know that it could trigger difficult emotional responses among survivors and those folks close to survivors.
Won’t Believe the Hype by Bryan Proffitt
Please note that this is not a post regarding the Duke rape case but more how these beliefs easily transfers to how society here in the UK views male sexual violence against women and children.
I will not approve any rape apologist comments.
Kudos to Jennifer.
Whilst ok, I did see a bit of his male privilege and blindness to males-as-perpetrators and ‘waddabout teh menz’ creeping in with point 1:
An extract of my comment (still in moderation) at Brand New Feminist (Grace’s blog):
Adult males are in little danger of being raped, and although that danger is miniscule, the perpetrator(s) will be male, not female. Even in childhood/teen years females are more than twice as likely to be sexually assaulted than males (around 20% and less than 10% respectively), and again, the clear majority of perpetrators are male. The statutory rape of young males by females is statistically very small, and as Grace mentioned, if females number among the perpetrators, either have a history of abuse, but more often they have been coerced into the act by an adult male co-partner.
It is time to stop examining the victims, and artificially highlighting ‘men are victims too’ (which is grossly misleading as adult males have no where near the chance of being raped than adult females), and focus on the perpetrators, who are almost always male.
That was an emotional read, but a good one. Yes, I find the “menz lives ruined!” myth appalling. At most, these menz will experience for a few brief moments of theri lives what it’s like to NOT be a privileged white male in this society.
The rest of us, well, we do it every day.
A point I really loved in the essay:
“Imagine the survivor of a traumatic car accident being asked for a second-by-second detailed account of a crash in which she lost a leg and watched her child die. Would we expect that she would tell same exact story twice? Would we call her a liar when it inevitably changed, as certain details became clearer while others clouded?”
So tell me, random apologist, every detail of that car accident you were in. Exactly what time was it? The make, model, year and color of each car within view? Where was each at any given point in time and what color was the light at each of those times? Did you look at other drivers wrong? Did the model of your car just scream, “you know I want a challenge”? Don’t you know that is a danerous intersection? What were you doing there anyway? And during rush hour? With the radio on? Don’t you know how distracting that can be? Why, you were just asking to be hit!
Here’s my favourite reply to ‘menz lives ruined by false allegations’.
Question: Do you know how many times Ian Huntley was accused of rape before he murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham?
Answer: five times.
Question: Do you know how many of these cases got to court?
Answer: none, they were all dropped by the police or CPS because of ‘lack of evidence’.
I rest my case.
* Huntley also faced several allegations of having under age sex. None of these got to court either.
The answer to your car question is that yes, the car was just asking to be hit — that shiny bumper was just too much temptation for the other car, and it had ‘an uncontrollable urge’ to hit the car.
Replacing ‘the car’ with ‘female’, ‘the other car’ with ‘male’ and ’shiny bumper’ with any number of substitutes such as short skirt, out alone, low cut top, drunk…
Of course ‘hit’ can either remain, or be replaced with ‘rape’.
Don’t forget that the person who crashed into the car could have been distracted by the shiney shiney chrome work and couldn’t help it!
Thanks Stormy for highlighting Bryan Proffitt’s gender blindness. What Profitt should have written is that when boys are sexually abused the perpetrator is almost always male. That is the ’sticking point’ – the fact it is males who are committing acts of sexual violence NOT females. But, given this fact it is overwhelming male on female sexual violence which is the real epidemic not mythical innocent men falsely accused of rape by mythical vindictive females.
The seriousness of 1 per cent of males getting raped is 100 per cent in some minds. And once again, the conversation is diverted to ‘what about the men” and women defending THE FACTS.
Not worth the paper it was printed on or the bandwidth it took to post it.
Now – I feel that most of that essay was pro-female. with exception of No1 and No 6 which talked of men in prison.
I didn’t want to be massively negative, because there were some good points. However, as you say Sparkle, No.6 is also a huge sticking point – especially when less than 1% of rapists (total rapes, not just reported rapes, that is c.5%) are even being put in prison.
There are just some people, mainly male people, who actually should be locked away for the rest of their lives. Time and time again we see rapists get out, and go on a further, often more violent raping spree. The lack of long custodial sentencing, or indeed any sentencing, is one of the reasons why the rape culture is so far out of control. We have seen that leniency is not the answer.
Anyway, Profitt did ask for feedback.
The Daisy troll strikes again. “daizy” is not Daisy.
Luv ya Lloyd!!
[...] Won’t believe the hype. posted at Sparkle*Matrix, we get a discussion of the myth which is being pitched by many people [...]