Since last week we postponed the topic of sexual violence to go see Zach Whals (which hopefully was awesome for those of you who went, I thought he did a great job).
The topic of sexual violence, as many of you already know, is a very difficult subject to talk about. I want to first say that taking care of yourself is the #1 priority. If people feel that this subject is going to be triggering for them, please do what you need to make sure your needs are met. If that means not being able to make it to this session then that's ok. But I would love to see lots of people there because this is such an important topic!
Men enter the conversation of sexual assault in a couple different ways. The first is as survivors, either from childhood or adulthood. 1 in 6 men are surviors of sexual violence and many are victimized before the age of 14. The following clip is an excerpt from a really great documentary called "Boys and Men Healing". It gets at some of the complexities that men face who have been sexually assaulted.
Boys and Men Healing
In addition, gay and transmen experience sexual violence at a higher rate than cisgender or straight men. In many cases the perpetrator may identify as a straight male. Accessing resources and holding perpetrators accountable can be additionally difficult for the LGBTQ population because many resources come from a heteronormative paradigm and LGBTQ survivors report that our current resources and systems often do not address the dynamics of sexual violence in these communities. Here's a quick fact sheet on how LGBTQ people experience sexual violence differently:
Another ways that men enter this conversation is as secondary survivors. A secondary survivor is someone who is affected by the victimization of a loved one, this can often times be a sibling, partner, or friend. We'll spend some time talking about how to be a good support if people disclose to you and what resources are available to secondary survivors as well.
Lastly, as many of you know, a vast majority of sexual violence is committed by men (against people of all genders). 98% of perpetrators are men which shows how starkly gendered this form of violence is. For this reason we may use gendered language (e.g. when referring to a perpetrator we may use "he" and "him", and a victim as "she" and "her"). This language reflects the reality of how sexual violence often occurs, but this does not mean that women cannot be perpetrators, men cannot be victims, or that all perpetrators are men.
This last point is where we as men, of any background or identity, can leverage our male privilege to help change male culture to be less supportive of this type of behavior. We'll spend some time going over how a "rape supportive culture" or "rape culture" operates. This is basically the idea that we can expect a certain level of sexual violence, that it is not a deviation to the norm, but the norm itself. In culture where 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men are victims of sexual assault we have to start analyzing how this violence is enabled, via media, cultural messages, and contemporary constuctions of masculinity. This is a lot of ground to cover so we'll most likely spend two sessions on it.
Lastly, after tomorrow's session we'll be having our next "open session" or what we call "Men in the Movement Presents...". It will be on Monday because next Wednesday is Halloween (and no one wants to go to a program on Halloween, including myself). We'll talk about the open session a bit tomorrow but I have fliers for everyone to pass out if they want to invite friends.
See you all tomorrow!
Peace
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