Yvonne McCalla Sobers | #HimToo: Male victims of sexual violence

Twenty years on, Alice (not her real name) still feels crushed by guilt and shame. Her sons still blame her for bringing a monster into the home as their stepfather. They refuse to forgive her for allowing a predator to remain in their home after she became aware that he was sexually abusing them.

Alice witnessed the changes in her sons' behaviour as they entered their teens and a couple of years after she remarried. The one who was normally the quieter became more aggressive, and the more outgoing became an introvert. Their grades slipped and they lost interest, adding to what had been a growing collection of medals for sports.

Working long hours, Alice tried hard not to lose patience with her sons, especially when they were disrespectful to her and their stepfather. She reminded herself that they were having difficult teen years while still adjusting to their father's death in a car crash and that it was natural for them to resent anyone who tried to take their dad's place.

When they started piling up suspensions and being threatened with expulsion, Alice arranged counselling for her sons. They refused to go. When a relative told Alice what her sons confided to him, Alice felt insulted. She believed that her sons were trying to undermine her new marriage. She thought they were trying to bring shame to the family and to embarrass her and their stepfather, who was a distinguished public figure.

However, she became more watchful. More than a year later, she felt she had seen enough clues to believe that "if it nuh go so, it go nearly so." By the time she separated from the predator, her sons had lost trust in her - and in the world. They were damaged in ways that religion, psychiatrists, relocation overseas, and extended family support proved unable to relieve let alone remove.

 

Taboo

 

Until stories of boys and Catholic priests surfaced, the idea of male rape was often difficult to consider, let alone accept. However, more males suffer sexual violence than can readily be imagined. Data are almost non-existent because rape has historically been regarded as a crime committed exclusively against women. In Jamaican law, for example, rape occurs only when someone with a penis forcibly penetrates someone with a vagina. It would logically follow that according to this law, a man cannot be raped.

Rape of males continues to be taboo and, therefore, mostly unacknowledged. Men are, therefore, reluctant to admit that they have been sexually violated for fear that they may be blamed, ridiculed, and seen as weak or gay. Men may fear fighting back because of the immediate consequences of offending the perpetrator(s) or the legal consequences of injuring or killing the perpetrator.

Men who fight back are often badly hurt and try to find inventive ways to explain the injuries that will force them to seek medical help and make police complaints. It can be difficult to find proof of male rape that meets legal or medical standards comparable to female rape. There will be no pregnancy to support claims that unwanted penetration took place. Worse for the male victim is the assumption that he ejaculated, he had to have consented.

Male victims tend to be very confused and distressed by how their bodies can react during a sexually abusive experience. A man may not realise the following:

1. His senses and nerve endings are designed to respond to stimulation in general and to touch or pressure in particular. The penis and testicles, as well as the areas around the anus, are particularly sensitive, and teenage boys can be stimulated even in areas that are not known to be erogenous zones.

2. The way in which a man's body responds to touch is not always under his control. Any pressure or rubbing - riding on a bus, playing with an animal in his lap, or having a prostate exam - can cause an erection. If he is touched or penetrated during an assault, he is, therefore, more likely than not to have an erection and an ejaculation.

3. Pressure on his prostate gland can cause erection and ejaculation. There are men who avoid possible early warning of prostate problems for fear of their body's involuntary response to the doctor's digital rectal examination. This reaction is entirely physiological and will not indicate that he is sexually attracted to his doctor (male or female).

4. Perpetrators may use the body's involuntary response to convince the victim that what is happening is consensual and is not abuse. If the man thinks he was sexually aroused by the abuse, he is likely to be too ashamed and guilty to report it.

5. His body will naturally produce seminal fluid if the prostate gland is touched. The procedure for collecting sperm (when a partner is trying to conceive) can involve electronic stimulation to produce ejaculation. Sexual arousal and sexual stimulation are not necessarily the same. Arousal can be seen as a pleasurable experience that the man has freely chosen. Stimulation, on the other hand, is against the man's will. Fear may mimic familiar signs of arousal by causing the man's heart rate to increase and his breathing to become shallow. This combination of fear, touch, and pressure can leave the man very confused and embarrassed about his body's response.

If the male is unaware of the difference between his body's voluntary and involuntary responses, his self-disgust can result in deep psychological damage.

In addition, he may question his sexual orientation if his attacker was male. If his attacker was female, he may mask his discomfort by perceiving himself as a stud for being able to satisfy a (usually older) female predator. If he sees his body as having betrayed him, he will try to make sense of the violation in the best way he can. He may have difficulty in enjoying sex as fun, intimate, and pleasurable. He may avoid sexual situations when feelings of arousal bring back memories of the abuse, or he may seek out indiscriminate sex that lacks intimacy or connection.

 

Male Rape as Terror

 

Male rape has been used as a tool of humiliation and domination.

JJ described his experience anonymously in an online message board. He said he was a shotta who woke up one night to find the don molesting him. He was raped that night and the don's visits became routine. When the don was killed, JJ discovered that the don had also raped other shottas in his gang. None of them had dared to speak of the experience, let alone lodge a complaint.

Further, none of the shottas dared disobey the don for fear that he would spread doubts about their sexual orientation. Insecurity about their manhood caused the shottas to go out of their way to carry out the most heartless of crimes.

At the same time, they made sure they were seen as violently anti-gay.

It is suspected that THE rape of males in Jamaica goes back to the plantation. Thomas Thistlewood, a sadistic plantation owner, mentioned the rape of a male slave by a fellow-plantation owner. In addition, there are references in some slave narratives to the rape of male slaves.

However, data are scarce because the sexual activity would have been private, slaves had no rights of complaint or redress, and male slaves (unlike female slaves) could not produce bi-racial offspring as proof that rape took place.

Men on modern plantations, termed jails and prisons, are known to be sexually victimised. Rape can be part of initiation into cell life, and the most powerful in the cell are known to have the "first touch". Rape while incarcerated is even more likely to go unreported than rape in the general population.

 

Soul Murder of Victims

 

Being a victim of rape or other sexual violation can cause a male to feel:

1. Inadequate in meeting patriarchal criteria for what it means to be a man: power, control, and confidence.

2. Pressured to prove his manhood. He may engage in high-risk or violent behaviour.

3. Confused over his gender and sexual identity, he may try to prove he is not gay by being overtly homophobic and having multiple sex partners.

4. Unable to have close and intimate relationships. Long taboo practices of male rape leave long shadows on the Jamaican male psyche. It is time to talk. It is past time to heal.

People like Alice and her sons need to find peace in this lifetime. Males like JJ, locked behind visible or invisible walls, also need to find ways to be whole and productive persons.

- Yvonne McCalla Sobers is an educator and human-rights activist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and sobersy@yahoo.com.