Photo by Flickr user kharied. Used under a Creative Commons license.

One more thing about the DOJ's belated decision to remove gender of perpetrators and victims from its definition of rape.

I'd just add that there's more than a "completist" benefit to more uniform reporting and response to sexual assault and rape committed by men against women, women against men, men against men, and women against women.* One glaring problem over the last three or four decades has been that apples-to-oranges reporting has made it difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons.

A lot of the so-called "gray areas" of sexual assault and rape -- the social pressure, emotional bullying, taking advantage of the intoxicated, misuse of authority and other power gradients, domestic-partner assault and intimidation, etc. -- have been even more poorly understood in the context of male victims than of female victims.

For years women's groups have struggled to have crimes committed in these so-called "gray area" taken seriously.  It's been even harder to get similar crimes against men taken seriously.  Imbalanced records keeping have exacerbated this, with the result that the extent of the problems of sexual coercion, for both men and women, has been hard to clarify.

We understand pretty clearly that, for women, sexual assault is a lot more than strangers getting the drop on their victims and committing violent penetration (or, in some states, attempted penetration) in the canonical points of entry.  For instance it's generally (if not quite universally) understood that women can be victims of date rape and acquaintance rape, that they can be assaulted while incapacitated, that they can be peer-pressured in ways that amount to coercion.

If nothing else anti-feminists and other boys-will-be-boys apologists demonstrate sophisticated understanding when denying that these non-jump-out-of-the-bushes assaults should be considered assaults.

But outside certain parts of the law-enforcement and assault-awareness communities most people still think of sexual assaults and rape of men in terms of... strangers getting the drop on their victims and committing violent penetration of the canonical points of entry.

Even when it comes to something seemingly as clear-cut as prison assault and rape the narrative relies heavily on the "trapped in a cell with a giant prisoner... his name is 'Bubba'" narratives.

In fact in prison, as in the outside world, sexual assault of men by other men, and of women by other women, are more likely to be "gray area" assaults than the violent assaults of stereotype.  (And obviously "gray area" assaults can be as socially and psychologically as problematic for victims as violent assaults.)

This double standard has been particularly frustrating for men's activists interested in prison reform -- on the one hand they've had to confront stereotypical indifference (or juvenile-humor-like glee!) about rape in detention while simultaneously wrestling with nominal allies who dispute that so-called "gray area" rape is rape at all.

The new, revised standards should help clarify that considerably.

It should also help clarify the nominally eternal argument that sexual predators are almost exclusively male and that victims are almost exclusively either female or minor males.

I imagine that now that the major statistics-gathering institution has correctly broadened its definitions we'll see first, an increase in overall numbers of rapes and assaults and also, second, a fair amount of convergence on the numbers of male and female victims and perpetrators.

I believe these new more clear and more universal acknowledgment of the field of perpetrators and victims is important is that it'll enlarge the pool of people interested in doing something about sexual coercion.  It's been too easy to treat it like a "women's rights" issue (as if that was a bad thing) or a "prison rights" issue (as if that made it better) and into a human rights issue.  The sooner people start getting that anybody can be a victim the sooner we can seriously begin to reduce the overall rates of sexual assault and rape.

And finally, as I've often said, since shocking numbers of perpetrators turn out to themselves have previously been victims taking all forms of rape seriously will help reduce a much-overlooked pool of potential or future perpetrators.

* Recall that most trans people identify as men or women.

Heads Up: This is a long post with lots of triggery stuff about representations of sexual assault in movies, particularly in comedies.  There's a clip of from the movie at the bottom of the post.

Summary: This one's about a particularly graphic one played for laughs in last year's Judd Apatow vehicle, Get Him to the Greek.  Looks like dozens or hundreds feminists from minor Tumblr blogs to the L.A. Times stood up for the male victim.  For all the "but men get raped too" derailment you see when feminists mention women victims the man-o-sphere remains remarkably silent.

Asexual activist Ily digs into the (top grossing!) 1947 Bing Crosby and Bob Hope misogyny and date-rape fest Road to Rio and then lobs the ball back into the 21st Century's court with a dissection of Judd Apatow's extremely popular Get Him to the Greek.

[F]ast forward to recent years. "Road to Rio" would probably not be written. Of course, the 40's were just more sexist times...right? However, today, we're expected to laugh at a man being raped (not to mention having his bodily integrity violated in countless other ways). Stuff like this has led some people to believe that feminism has gone too far, and now women are holding privilege over men. But I don't think these folks are aware of why we are supposed to find male rape funny. I think it's for the same reason that we're supposed to find men in dresses funny--being raped is feminizing, and therefore embarrassing. At the same time, men are so sex-crazed that being raped (at least, by a woman) is not a big deal to them emotionally. There are a few assumptions here:

...

So yes, I believe that bell hooks was very much correct. Patriarchy does hurt everyone. In a truly post-feminist world, Jonah Hill's friends in Get Him to the Greek wouldn't have laughed off his rape experience. He could have admitted that yeah, there were times when he didn't want sex*, and the other men wouldn't have mocked him for that. And we, the audience, wouldn't be expected to laugh, either.

Source: Asexy Beast

And who, you might be asking, would be making fun of men being raped? In, um, certain quarters the knee-jerk reaction is that it could only be feminists. In this case? Not so much. But they'd be so far wrong radar couldn't find them: the movie was made by Judd Apatow's all-men, no-women-at-all creative team of directors, writers, and producers.  Director? Nicholas Stoller. Writers?Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel. Producers? Judd Apatow, David L. Bushell, and Rodney Rothman. Co-Producer? Jason Segel. Executive Producer? Richard Vane. Associate Producer?Phil Eisen.  Not a feminist in the bunch.  Not a woman in the bunch.  Not even a "feminist man" in the bunch.  It's dicks and balls all the way down till you get to the casting coordinator.

And oh well, one might be inclined to say, it was a comedy for goodness sake, maybe it was portrayed as daffy slapstick. If one did one would be disappointed. While the event is supposed to be just one more bit of physical comedy that befalls a sad-sack character from a police-procedural standpoint it wouldn't be a minor incident at all!

Instead, when the Arron character is physically incapacitated by alcohol but still able to clearly express his absolute lack of consent the woman pins him down, exposes herself to him when he manifestly does not want her to, aggressively and repeatedly forces his attention up her skirt, yanks off his pants, straddles his groin, pulls a large phthalate-laden dildo out of her purse, aggressively rubs it in his face, slaps him with it, forces it into his mouth, and then reaches back and jams it between his legs in a manner that strongly (if anatomically-improbably) implies she's inserted it in his anus.

The most disturbing part to me about the scene is the breezy familiarity with which it's set and directed, as if the producers were... a little too familiar with the way rape committed by drunk people on drunk people actually goes.  (And no, this isn't accusing Apatow, Stoller, or Segal of committing gross sexual assault on drunken victims.  They may have or they might not.  If you asked me I'd guess one or more of the creative team has been on the receiving end either from another man or from a woman.  And, sort of like the victim in the film, they're not resolved to it because of a couple of really fundamental misconceptions of who can be perpetrators and, even more particularly, who can be victims.)

One thing that doesn't seem realistic? Right after the anal penetration the camera cuts away to what appears to be the Arron character's love interest, wearing hospital scrubs at a desk in what appears to be a hospital nursing station, is listening to the entire event on her cell-phone. Her reaction? To shake her head angrily, hang up, and move to put away the phone.  Ha ha, just one more way that poor schlub Aaron I'm pretty sure

And who do we find writing critical reviews of this movie? Ily, an asexual woman,

Alicia Sowisdral of Feminist Review.

Sarah M at the feminist anti-rape site SaferCampus said

I’m pretty used to rape being used as a punchline, especially when men are the victims. This usually comes in the form of jokes about prison rape, but I’ve also seen more than enough films in which a guy is basically forced into having sex with a woman or is really uncomfortable with it (like, he’s in a relationship and she’s seducing him!) and it’s supposed to be funny because ya know, women can’t rape men LOL! And prisoners deserve it! That’s bad enough to me. But this was just so beyond explicit—the guy is sodomized with an object while saying no and then uses the word rape to describe it—that I was genuinely shocked. I actually can’t even imagine an explanation of how this is funny outside of the fact that a man being raped is SO IMPLAUSIBLE to folks that it’s just laughable. You’re not watching a “rape scene” because call it rape all you want, it couldn’t be real rape, so it’s funny.

Lauren Brachman at Equal Writes put the consequences in black and white

[I]f that is the way we view rape and sexual assault, aren’t we doing a disservice to men? The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) reports that 1 in every 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Do we emasculate the men who survive sexual assault because our culture constantly reminds us that real men do not get raped? Are these assaults as funny as the rape of Aaron Hill in Get Him to the Greek?

You might argue that women are not the only assailants of the sexual assault committed against 3% of all American men. Often, men assault other men. But don’t worry – Get Him to the Greek is an equal opportunity exploiter! Aldous Snow, one of Green’s “best friends”, also assaults him. This time Aaron Green is coerced into inserting a balloon of heroine into his anus. Later Aldous Snow digitally penetrates Aaron Green, violently ripping out the balloon. Was there an outcry in the theater when we all witnessed this assault? Not that I could over hear over the laughs and guffaws of my classmates.

I found a Tumbler post that's nested three deep with women harshly attacking the idea that rape of a man could ever be funny, with the angriest denunciation of playing male rape for laughs coming from a (now deactivated) Tumblr blog called thehumorlessfeminist.

Sigh.

For all the men that show up saying "but men get raped too" anytime someone starts complaining about rape culture in movies you'd think there's be a few more men chiming about, you know, men actually getting raped in movies.

ZOMG! While digging further into the convention that rape in popular media is ok when it's women raping men, as in The Wedding Crashers, I ran into a pretty cool, and awesomely level-headed website that deals directly with the issue. It's called, not quite correctly, Television Tropes and Idioms. Not quite correctly, I say, because it covers not just tropes in TV but also movies, comics, and advertising. Also, in a way even better, in anime, hentai, and fan-fic.

What's fun about the site is that while they seem pretty solidly informed about the realities of sexual assault and rape they don't treat the issues as a gender or moral failing, they treat them as the lazy, knee-jerk, graceless, and unskilled writing clichés they almost always are.

Rape Is OK When It Is Female on Male

Obviously if you're watching a scene with a woman tied to a bed while a man forces sex on her, the final act of that movie will involve said man getting shot in the face by Bruce Willis. If, on the other hand, it's a man being tied down and forced into sex by a pretty lady, well, you're watching a wacky romantic comedy. — C. Coville, 6 Romantic Movie Gestures That Can Get You Prison Time, Cracked.com

Rape is a cruel and evil act, beyond kicking the dog or many of the most villainous acts in media. Except when they fall in love with the rapist, of course.

In a number of works, however, there is one other exception: when the victim is a man, and the attacker is a woman.

This kind of rape is often treated as nil since men are stereotyped as having nothing but sex on the brain, always eager for it and cannot be traumatized by sex if it is arousing. Consequently, a man raped by an attractive woman is considered a lucky man and a man being raped by an unattractive woman is comedy gold. Because of this, most examples are from comedies.

Compare Rape Is Okay When It's Female On Female, Rape Is Funny When It Is Male On Male, Rape As Comedy, and Rape Is Okay If It's Divine On Mortal.

Source: Television Tropes and Idioms (note: click through to see myriad links and examples)

So that's pretty straightforward -- right on the money when it comes to easy dismissal of sexual assault on men. (The Wedding Crashers is referenced in the lead quote and mentioned first under "Movies" in very-long list of examples.) And good for them.

But check out the scorn they heap on the fan-fic trope they call Rape Is The New Dead Parents (emphasis in 2nd paragraph mine.)

"It turns out that Darkness, Diabolo, Crab and Goyle's dad was a vampire. He committed suicide by slitting his wrists with a razor. He had raped them and stuff before too. They all got so depressed that they became goffik and converted to Stanism [sic]. —My Immortal

"The rape was thrown in there for good measure." — Bennett The Sage on the above

A lot of amateur writers out there find the tragic backstory appealing. After all, most of the interesting characters didn't get raised in Suburbia, USA with a loving, complete family that cared for them. That's just boring. But Character Development is hard... You mean you have to explain things? But it takes so long to establish mental illness, and physical handicaps would only get in the way. Can't you just say they got raped and be done with it?

Anyway, this is the tendency for writers who are just starting out, or for very lazy writers, often of fanfiction and role playing, but it can appear just about anywhere, to just casually drop rape into their characters' story for Deus Angst Machina or Wangst. Usually found in backstory, but it's not uncommon for rape to happen "on-screen" via two sentences that wouldn't qualify as IKEA Erotica. The writers want to add some dimension of frailty to their character and give a good reason for moodiness, but it's done in such a flimsy and unexplored way that it means... nothing. It's mentioned like mentioning a casual detail on a college application. Perhaps the hallmark of the Sympathetic Sue, this trope tends to evoke kneejerk righteous anger with its use. It takes one of those horrible things which take years to get over, if ever, and turns it into a rather cheap shock.

...

The classical line for this trope is "Jane once got raped when walking home one night [optional:and her parents didn't care]."

Note that this is not merely Rape As Backstory. While it often overlaps, that has its own page and is neutral. Also note that this is not just poorly handled rape; it has to be out of the story's attention within at most a minute and never show up again.

The trope name comes from the fact that Parental Abandonment used to be the stock "tragic background" of badly created characters. Perhaps due to a combination of dead parents being considered cliche by uncaring writers (and less common in Real Life) and the fact that they think rape spares everything short of the character's virginity, it has replaced the dead parents for lazy tragedy.

Physically abusive parents are quickly becoming popular as the go to tragic backstory. Then again, rape is often still involved.

Examples of this in amateur writing are too numerous to list and too forgettable to remember. It still occasionally makes its way into the more dubious works, however. Differentiated from Rape As Drama and Rape As Comedy in that its neither of these. It's just... there.

Before adding an example, please think of whether or not the trope could be removed without impacting the rest of the story any more than 2% requiring a rewrite.

See also how rape is dismissed in Rape Is Okay When It's Female On Female

"in large part based on the idea that lesbian sex is not "real" sex. Men, penises, and penile penetration are central to sexual relations; without a penis involved, there can be no sex, and without sex, there can be no rape. Therefore, anything a woman does to another woman is "not a big deal."

And check out Rape Is Funny When It Is Male On Male

But male rape is funny... At least to the guy doing the raping. — Theory of Everything

It's not.

A subtrope of Rape As Comedy. Usually played for laughs when a known straight character is hit on by another man, especially one that's physically larger.

Even when it's not supposed to be funny, it's still considered funny. Scenes like the outright rapes shown in films such as Deliverance, Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption are obviously supposed to be horrific; however they are routinely snickered at, rather than cried over as with male-on-female rape-scenes.

Anyway, it's a cool site throughout.

Image via AllMoviePortal.com

Speaking of the difficulty men have being taken seriously when they're sexually assaulted, and speaking of the eternal MRA lament that feminists never take sexual assault of men seriously, in comments to This sounds this post, the distinctly feminist Ozymandias (of Ozymandias's Crushing and Venting Engine of Doom) takes seriously the problem male victims have, well, being taken seriously.

This sounds like an opportunity to rant about Wedding Crashers!

Seriously, THAT MOVIE. A movie in which a woman was tied up, had her mouth duct-taped and was forced into sex with man, whom she then had to learn to love, would never have been greenlit and would have been subject to boycotts and protests. But because it's a man, somehow he can't be raped?

I hate our culture sometimes.

She said it here

I hadn't seen the movie (not a huge surprise) but the Wedding Crashers plot summary actually is pretty bluntly assaultive (sexually and otherwise) but it's all jolly fun because the victims are mainly guys, right?  Ugg!

Hat tip Ozy!