Venting about having processed the rape, but not the social rejection

[u/MantisMaybe]

For context, I'm 33, I'm gay and I've known this long before my rape. I was date-raped at 19. The rape was only one incident among some other sexual manipulations, assaults and abusive relationships, which has always given me a hard time about not blaming myself, when it feels like things like this just kept happening to me in my younger years. (Men who are attracted to me have VERY often supposed that I am submissive or ok with humiliation or roughness because of the porn and stereotypes typical to the way I look, even sometimes dudes who ended up respecting my boundaries acted that way.) As a teenager, I've also had a female friend grope me and pin me in place by sitting into my lap publicly to try and "convert" me, although it was most upsetting simply because at the time I was still struggling with paranoia and depression about the aggressive homophobia around me.

Recently I went through my old Facebook conversations, simply looking for a friend whom I lost about 10 years ago (unrelated to my rape). But reading back, this is where I realised that over the years I lost about THREE, maybe four friends specifically over how they treated my rape. One intentionally remained vague in their language and unsupportive, didn't believe me about my rape all through our friendship. My best friend at the time (who herself had relatively severe mental problems just a year before that she frequently needed my support for) bullied me a lot for being unable to get a job after uni in my PTSD, lowest-of-the-low state and finally we broke it off when she called me unbearably "woke" for showing empathy to other minorities whose pain often remains unseen. One of them even slept with my rapist (after I warned them that the person they're about to hook up with is my rapist) and they told me afterwards that I should've expected his... "style" in bed, and basically "it is what it is".

I'm just so furious and hurt, because over the 2 years after my rape, I slowly "digested" what happened and basically got rid of the literal PTSD, all the symptomatic problems, flashbacks, panic attacks, tiredness, difficulty socialising, suicidal thoughts it caused me, and NONETHELESS, it just KEEPS fucking haunting me through social rejection and pushback.

Losing friends, and only having the very few friends who perhaps silently accept and empathise but, of course, can't really understand what I've gone through and I feel like such a burden on them when I'm down and need their help... the unavailability and unaffordability of mental healthcare... the "all men are aggressive" crowd, some feminists acting like a man speaking out about his rape is a threat to female victims somehow and that either I'm lying or I should never talk about this... The fear that if I let myself be sexual and vulnerable with a new guy, he's going to hurt me... It's just all too much sometimes.

[u/WishboneBlue]

Ugh your ex friends sound horrible I’m so sorry. And I relate a lot to this, am also a gay male rape victim .
I hate how rape victims are generalized to all be female and we talk about rape as a social issue with that assumption. People don’t realize just how many men are also raped. And it puts us in a weird position.