Female on Male Rape posted 2/15/2008 1:42:50 PM | 1 kudo what's this?     report abuse tagged: rape, psychology, sex, gender

thehatinthecat

(this was a paper I wrote a few years ago while I was in college, its unpolished, boy was my prof mad about that. Anyways I figured I'd share this with all of you and see if any of you had anything intresting to say.)
Female on Male Rape
A Brief Perspective
thehaitnthecat

As I’ve been reading Kipnis work Knights without armor I’ve become struck by the large division in certain laws, social work fields, and culture understand, specifically I have become interested in the issue of male rape, notably rape preformed by adult females to another adult males. In my attempts to research this topic I have found that there has not been much academic research into this subject, “[u]ntil quite recently men were exclusively identified as perpetrators of sexual coercion and women perceived primarily as victims” (Fiebert and Tucci 1998). This has made my research into the subject harder then I thought at first, often on the Internet you will only find passing references to female on male rape, almost as an afterthought like “oh yah to be politically correct we’ve got to say that men can be raped to, maybe we should say that women can do the raping but not give any actually information about it.”

Bailey in her 1998 article “A question of violence: women raping men” she refers to “[f]emale to male rape is an anomaly, and throws into question hegemonic conceptions of rape, sex and violence” (Bailey 1998). However in Fiebert and Tucci’s study published the same year they found that seventy percent of the 182 male students they studied at California State University, Long Beach had experienced some kind of female sexual coercion in the past five years (1998).

Bailey’s article is based on interviews with fifteen women from a Victorian university, and that most of the women were in sex and gender subjects. Bailey presented the women with a story about male rape by a woman she interviewed by the name of Sarah.

I will present a portion of the interview here:
Sarah: He is someone that I found I was in love with, um we just got along really really well(….) And I kept sleeping in his bed but we never had sex. And there’d be a couple of times that I’d kiss him but he’d sort of pull away and ‘no, we’re just friends’(….) I eventually wrote him a letter because he told me he was in love with my best friend(…) and I’m like ‘oh good, thanks’(….) And I—this is so bad—went back to his place, he was really drunk. He couldn’t get himself undressed so I undressed him, got into bed with him(….) He fell asleep and I thought f*** this, took his cock off, and started f***ing him while he was a sleep!(….) [T]he desperation(….) It was so bad, man—I was like what am I f***ing doing! Got off of him and sort of had a breather(…) thought I can’t believe he’s asleep got back on and started again…and then thought nope, you can’t do this(….) So I got off and(…) pissed myself about it for days, but then I realized: I raped a man. I raped a guy(….)

Alice: So how did you feel at that point?

Sarah: Disgusted(…) and so sad in myself really that I had to go to go to that extent to try and get the love that I wanted(….) I still find it funny though(…) and I’ll tell you why I think it’s funny is because—it’s something that women don’t do(…) if it was a guy we would be up in arms about it(…) that’s what makes it almost humorous, that you know for once it’s a women doing this, needing a f*** and going for it.

Alice: Is that what it was for you?

Sarah: No, no (….) It was I want him to be inside me, I want to feel him inside me, I want him to love me. I felt used and hurt to that point that I did it(….) [T]hat you know, f*** you’ve used me, so I’m going to use you. (Bailey 1998)

Already we can see a disturbing trend in how women view rape, that idea of “f*** you’ve used me, so I’m going to use you” (1998) is similar to the mindset people find with men sometimes the “I bought you dinner you’ve got to put out some” or the “you dressed like that and you expect me not to f*** you?”

Similar ideas are expressed by the women that Bailey presented Sarah’s story to, Noni is an example of that: “I see it as a bit of a hoot, I don’t have a major struggle with it as a woman(….) I feel sorry for her, very much so(….) But other than that he got what he deserved” (1998).

I see many of the women who Bailey interviewed as dehumanizing the victim, “[a]bove all, the discussion is subversive in that it is a forum in which only women are speaking about this episode, and the women involved is the subject—the man concerned is nameless, faceless, and is little more than a penis” (emphasis added Bailey1998 ).

According to Bailey most of the women identified with Sarah, Kate said the following “[s]he’s desperate you now, she’s kind of in love with him(…) she’s so desperate that she would do that, I think that’s sad(….) I’m not condemning her” (1998). And only few of the women that Bailey interviewed said that Sarah had done something that was intolerable. Marie said “I don’t feel a bit sorry for her, I don’t care how obsessed she was with him(….) Lots of men, most men rape for that reason. That is the reasons they rape, is they’re inadequate(…) they want a power over somebody. She’s getting something that she wants….” (Bailey 1998.)

Bailey also indicates that the women also had trouble of viewing Sarah’s act as violent, many of them could not view it as so since there was no invasion of the man’s body, where with a woman when she is raped there is often some form of penetration. Olivia tried to define violence as some that has a physical or mental effect on another person Olivia went on to say that since the woman is not entering the man that it that the trauma for a man raped by a woman is less sever (1998). Ingrid framed it as violence by turning the roles around: “(…)if it was the man harassing the woman, it probably would be regarded as violence” (1998).

Olivia and a number of the other women Bailey interviewed identified so much with Sarah that they presented her as the one who was damaged by the experience, that because of her “love” for the man being the motive for the rape that she essentially raped herself.

Bailey also talks about how the disconnect “between feminist theory, men’s violence and this narrative are disquieting” (1998). She talks about the contradictions that she discovered between the theory of rape being no consent, use of power to control the situation and penetration, and their view of Sarah’s pain and desire. In addition to that Bailey addressed the fact that the story was also in some ways appealing to the women, that the way Sarah’ presents it in such a “masculine” way, talking about taking his jock off and f***ing him, “that it is perhaps shocking, this is also what appeals to us what makes us smile, laugh uncomfortably, even feel excited” (1998).

As I mentioned earlier Fiebert and Tucci presented a study in which seventy percent of one hundred and eighty-two male co

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Blogs by thehatinthecat: Female on Male Rape II Female on Male Rape Sun Fall Its you I like Busy Life Girl in the War Pray for Peace Mark Twain on War Omega Blues Well this is going to be an intresting week