You know how pretty within minutes a feminist mentioning rape culture online a Men’s Rights Activist or other anti-feminist is going to chime in with either “but women commit rape too” or “but men get raped too?” Many of them get awesomely passionate about their real or potential or at least hypothetical experiences on the receiving end.

So… quick question: when it comes to the now-overflowing allegations of sexual assault and exploitation of boys in the Catholic Church hierarchy what is the MRA position and what, if anything, are MRAs doing about it?

I ask because I genuinely don’t know: I don’t ordinarily follow MRAs enough to be able to track the credible ones so MRAs could be all over this and I just haven’t heard. If so, though, Google is being unusually nonforthcoming about it. So I had to ask.

This is another one of those areas where society in general, and men in particular, have been freeloading off of feminist women for nearly 40 years. Who’s done the heavy lifting on issues like, oh, say, rape? Who’s done the heavy lifting on issues like, oh, say, authority-based sexual coercion and harassment and the abuse of power differentials for sex? Women have. Mostly feminist women.

And yeah, sure, inside our social narratives that makes 100% sense. And even in reality, since the vast majority of those raped, coerced, harassed, bought, sold, and otherwise leveraged are women it still makes 75-85% sense that women would have been most motivated to pull that weight.

But look at the stuff going on in the Church. I’m confident there’s another shoe out there waiting to drop on sexual abuse of girls by priests. I mean, we haven’t been hearing about it but it’s bound to turn up. But you know what? In the meantime it’s about priests sexually abusing boy, after boy, after boy, after boy after boy, after boy, after…

If ever, on the planet, there was a legitimate issue for men to get involved in you’d think it would be the issue of shocking numbers of boys and young men being molested, raped, abused and generally sexually preyed upon by, largely, other men. It ought to be a major issue particularly for men who claim simply to be attempting to organize themselves politically and socially the way women have already been doing for several generations.

Because, it’s turning out, men really do get raped too! In very large numbers. And whereas one particularly ill-organized church is in the spotlight I’m… pretty sure once people really start asking questions they’re going to start discovering lots, and lots, and lots of other denominational vectors for abuse of men and boys. Lots of secular ones too. (Not even including the nervous heh-heh-don’t-drop-the-soap prevalence of prison rape.)

And it’s not like sexual assault of boys doesn’t have profound influence on them! It’s not like trauma, ambiguity, neuroses, and sexualization doesn’t happen to boys either. (Secondary question: how different would men’s sexual behavior be if some fraction of former boys weren’t trying to regain control after loss of their own sexual autonomy? Food for thought.)

So you’d think this issue would just be tailor made for MRAs. And yet I’m really hearing nothing. (Remember, there could be lots of MRAs saying it, but if I’m not hearing it…)

At any rate, this appears to be yet another area where men are seriously getting free rides on the backs of feminist pioneers. And it seems like if the men’s movements and men’s rights movements are serious about their stated intentions this would be a very, very good time for them to begin stepping up to the plate.

Denial based on Rule of Desire #2 is no longer a valid excuse.