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Male Victim of Sexual Assault – A Male Survivors Story

A brave member contacted MSP and wanted to share a piece he wrote about his experience of sexual assault.

I am one of many male victims of sexual assault.  This is my story.

Something I feel very passionate about is gender rights and equality. I am a keen advocate for female equality and empowerment. I think Emma Watson’s HeforShe campaign is wonderful and if you haven’t seen or heard her United Nations speech then you should Youtube it immediately. Her speech is nothing short of inspirational. I have grown up idolising women: their strength, determination and courage in the face of adversity and centuries of patriarchy, facing not only sexism but in many cases racism, ageism and defending their personal choices, such as on abortion. Powerful women in the modern media world such as Katherine Ryan, Lena Dunham, Jameela Jamil and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to name a few, educate me and help me to reflect upon, and question, the world around me each day as I follow their latest blogs, videos, podcasts, essays and career moves. There is nothing more important I think than women being made to feel important, seen and respected.

Many people still think that feminism is a dirty word. That it means to belittle men. That a feminist is someone who dislikes men. A ‘man hater’. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published her talk ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ in 2014, and she refers to herself as a ‘Happy African feminist Who Does Not Hate Men’ – here, Adichie is highlighting the problem that people fighting for gender equality still face – that feminism is seen as a cultural, racial and sex specific issue. It isn’t. Adichie continues to defines feminism herself, naming it as ‘a man or a woman who says, “Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better”.’

According to Rape Crisis England and Wales, approximately 85,000 women and 12,000 men experience rape or sexual assault every year – that’s almost one sexual assault every hour. It is a statistic impossible to comprehend. When I was 19, I was assaulted by two women. It took a long time for me to get my head around the concept that a woman can be an abuser – sexual assault is not a crime perpetrated solely by men. That is a stereotype that must be acknowledged and discussed more openly. The Atlantic ran an article called ‘The Understudied Female Sexual Predator’ in 2016 by Conor Friedersorf.  In the article, it refers to Lara Stemple, Director of UCLA’s Health and Human Rights Law Project, who states that “…among men reporting other forms of sexual victimization, 68.6% reported female perpetrators.” My assault, although it may seem small to some, has over the years caused much mental anguish for me, and for a long time I kept asking myself one question: How on earth could women have done this to me? That was the voice of shame starting to creep in.

I was working in a pub. It was a great job and I was earning a good wage for not really doing that much. I’d pull a few pints, serve meals, get rooms ready for weddings and breakfasts and tell jokes and swear with everyone I worked with. It was fun. I enjoyed it and was more than capable of keeping on top of busy weddings, moaning guests and large groups. For a lot of the men who worked there I was the first gay person they had really spent any extended time with. This was a small town, still getting to grips in the early 2010s that gay people existed. Often the chat would turn to banter and fake flirtations, all of which I found very funny. It felt good to be accepted and I was never once subject to any homophobic slurs by the staff. The staff, I say.

The thing with drink and work parties or weddings, means that a lot of people get loose lips and will occasionally make the odd jest at “the gay” who is able to pull a pint. Who’d have thought that a gay man was capable of such as masculine act? Or a drunken guest may think it’s acceptable to follow me to my car at two in the morning after a fourteen hour shift and thrust a shoe in my face telling me how much I’d enjoy it if they “f****** me with their friend’s stiletto”. That particular anecdote is courtesy of man who had been married not twelve hours earlier. Romantic. All of that I could handle. They were drunk. They were idiots. It didn’t really bother me. Until the time it happened with a woman. I was working late and was the last member of staff to tidy up the smallest bar in the venue. We’d had two wedding functions that night and the larger room had to be cleared and set up for an event the next day. Everyone else was working in that room and I was left to get the other room at least presentable for the hotel guests’ breakfast. I was just about done putting glasses in the dish washer and counting up the cash till when two women, clearly plastered, came back from their hotel rooms and asked for more to drink. I told them the bar was closed (it was past three in the morning) but that I could maybe sneak them some leftover food from the kitchen if they wanted any. They weren’t interested in that, but they didn’t leave either. I was tired and had been working all day and been on my feet for hours. I apologised and said there was nothing I could do and motioned to the shutdown till and the various beer taps that were off for the night. They didn’t sit down in the bar seats or make to go either: they just stood there and giggled in between swearing at me. I don’t feel embarrassed to say that it was a little intimidating having two drunken, loud and (how can I be polite?) ‘interestingly’ dressed women goading me into getting them more alcohol in a tiny room with my back against the bar wall, my only way out being through the end of the bar where the two women were standing, and a good two minute walk from anyone else in the building.

As I tried to ignore them and move past, hoping they’d just assume that they wouldn’t be getting their own way, various vulgar and homophobic words were thrown my way and then, out of nowhere, I felt an excruciating pain between my legs. One of the women had thrust her hand between my thighs as I’d walked between them and grabbed my genitals. She pulled and squeezed and laughed and swore and would not let go. I was trying to walk away, twisting myself free from her vice like grasp, but she would not let go. I didn’t know what to do. I was trapped, stuck standing up with this woman’s hands in between my thighs.  Should I make a joke of it, not create a big scene? No one was nearby anyway. Should I try to prise her hands and fingers off me and run away? Should I swear back at her and call her out for the molester that she was? It must have lasted for about a minute – one short but painfully long minute of her pulling and tugging and squeezing, her friend laughing, jibing, pointing, taking pictures on her phone. She eventually let go and stumbled forward. She made another gesture with her hands towards me but I had managed to get far enough away. My testicles and penis were incredibly sore.

I didn’t tell any of my co-workers. I walked home alone. I crept into my bed and crawled under my covers. It was late and my parents were asleep. In the dark of my bedroom I remember touching, rather than looking at, my penis and testicles. They were so painful. I cried. I tried to go to sleep. It wasn’t until I showered the next morning that I saw blood, dried where the woman had scratched and dug into my scrotum so violently that she had punctured the skin made me bleed. I didn’t mention it to my parents the next morning. I didn’t mention it to anyone at work the following day.

I am sure that some people reading this might think “So what? It’s not a big deal”. I’m not for one second going to make out that what happened to me is comparable to rape or a violent sexual assault. It happens to too many women, men and children all over the world – the statistic I shared earlier proves just how out of control this crime is. However, what I have come to realise from this situation – and in the days and months afterwards when I would catch myself thinking about it, consciously or not – was that I felt, more than any other emotion, ashamed that it had happened to me. As a young man, I felt shame that I had been groped and assaulted by two women. I say two women because the friend who stood by and mocked and photographed and did not prevent the crime is, in my eyes, just as culpable. Yet it took me a while to realise that my feeling of shame was wrong. I was stuck in a loop thinking ‘You’ve been felt up by a woman and want to complain about it? Surely, a young man being touched up by a drunk woman is something to be broadcast and laughed about and proud of? Isn’t that socially more acceptable than a man groping a woman?’ No. It’s just that it’s not spoken about enough. Think about it: when was the last time a newspaper or magazine led with a story of a man being sexually assaulted by a woman? I presume it doesn’t happen as often as female sexual assault, but I realised that sexual assault towards men, no matter how insignificant the event might seem, is just not spoken about in our society. Anywhere, by anyone, in any real open forum. Women are rightfully considered brave and praised for being open about horrific events that have happened to them. We live now in a #metoo world and the conversation around female sexual abuse is important and vital and needs to be had. But men need this voice too. If a young man is groped or molested or raped he needs to know who to talk to: where and how and when.

Would I have been more vocal about it if it had been a man who had attacked me? Would it have seemed more brutal or violent? Possibly. Was I ashamed it had happened at all? Yes. Was I ashamed that it had been done to me by a woman? Yes. Did it seem to me that I was weaker because it had been done by a woman? Yes. Does this present a larger issue, highlighting the stereotypes we have about gender differences? Sadly, yes. Had this to-ing and fro-ing in my head about being groped and sexual politics and who should be blamed ruminated in my mind, spiralled and echoed for many, many years? Yes. Rape Crisis England and Wales reported in 2017 only around 15% of those who experience sexual violence report it to the police. I didn’t report it. I was part of – no, am part of – that 85%. I told my parents about it a while afterwards. They were angry and hurt for me. They wanted me to tell my workplace, but I didn’t.  I only ever told one friend, over ice cream in a café. I can’t remember where we were exactly. She said she wanted to slap the woman in the face. At the time it made me laugh, but in retrospect I’m not sure my friend’s response would have been so jovial if it was a female friend saying she’d been penned in by two drunken men and groped whilst working late at night, in a bar, with no one around, and then had to walk home in the dark, alone, at three in the morning.

But that question, no matter how much I tried to ignore it, still wrapped itself around and inside my head: How on earth could women have done this to me? I should have been asking myself how I was feeling, thinking, recovering, but shame doesn’t work that way. The voice that had already been attacking me for years didn’t work that way. It just added to the dirt and guilt I was already experiencing.

To return to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she wrote of an ambition for “A fairer world” and that to get there “we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently…” I agree. Society needs to continue to work on supporting both men and women in speaking about their feelings. In expressing anxieties and shame. In helping each other get through moments of unspeakable pain.

The day after my assault I got up early and went back to work. I was on the morning shift and had to set up that same bar. I didn’t tell anyone at work what had happened. I never asked anyone to look at the security camera to see if the two women could be identified. I never saw them again.