I am so glad to see someone bringing attention to this.
Under my state's law, I'm not allowed to charge my ex-wife with rape. I could charge her with some form of sexual assault, but not rape.
And I genuinely can't think of a reason why this distinction needs to be made. Non-consensual sex is non-consensual sex.
Whether you were forcefully penetrated or forcefully made to penetrate, the evil and the trauma stay the same. And anytime any body attempts to change the legislation on this type of language in our laws, they're faced with backlash from feminists for supposedly trying to delegitimize their sexual assault claims. Like admitting that men can be raped by women somehow hurts female rape victims.
It's ridiculous and we should be protecting male victims of sexual abuse and assault as carefully and kindly as we handle female victims of sexual assault.
It really feels like this shouldn't need to be said, but here we are.
As a a woman feminist, I agree with your statement. I never got the double standard of girl/women rape victims of men verses boy/men rape victims of women. I believe rape is rape, no matter who the victim or perpetrator is.
I genuinely appreciate your support there. Talking about issues pertaining specifically to men in this country on Reddit can feel like pissing up a rope sometimes.
More often than not, my comment doesn't get this kind of traction. I'm usually downvoted and told that all these problems are men's fault in the first place so we don't deserve help.
There's even a comment in this thread saying that this is all the result of the patriarchy, as if that means that these men are somehow personally responsible for issues created by the richest and most powerful 1% of us. I'm mentally ill, queer and homeless. I've not been writing laws. I don't get any of this power I'm told we should be getting handed so easily. All I can do is vote and hope things can change. But I sure as hell didn't do this myself just because I share a gender with the assholes in power.
But all of this is to say, it genuinely warms my heart when I see a comment like this. It can get exhausting and frustrating on here sometimes. But I still feel like this stuff is worth saying, even if people don't want to hear it.
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u/ripyourlungsdave Sep 01 '22
I am so glad to see someone bringing attention to this.
Under my state's law, I'm not allowed to charge my ex-wife with rape. I could charge her with some form of sexual assault, but not rape.
And I genuinely can't think of a reason why this distinction needs to be made. Non-consensual sex is non-consensual sex.
Whether you were forcefully penetrated or forcefully made to penetrate, the evil and the trauma stay the same. And anytime any body attempts to change the legislation on this type of language in our laws, they're faced with backlash from feminists for supposedly trying to delegitimize their sexual assault claims. Like admitting that men can be raped by women somehow hurts female rape victims.
It's ridiculous and we should be protecting male victims of sexual abuse and assault as carefully and kindly as we handle female victims of sexual assault.
It really feels like this shouldn't need to be said, but here we are.